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- Volume 8, Issue 3, 2019
Punk & Post-Punk - Volume 8, Issue 3, 2019
Volume 8, Issue 3, 2019
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‘There’s nothing I can do’: Bad faith and the narrative maintenance of ethical identifications
More LessIt has often been emphasized in narrative sociology that individuals strive to present themselves in a good, ethical light and that they attempt to make themselves the protagonists of their own stories. However, less work has been done on what happens when individuals are confronted with a necessary contradiction in their narrative that conflicts with their subjective ethical positioning. In this article, I use evidence from my qualitative research into the anarcho-punk subculture in Philadelphia (2016) to show that in such a situation, the narrator may use what Jean-Paul Sartre called ‘bad faith’, the denial of personal responsibility or choice, to protect their ethical identification through narrative.
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Côté punk: Marc Caro
More LessComing to comics and cinema culture in 1970s Paris, Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet brought their do-it-yourself (DIY) ethic to the screen with L’évasion (Jeunet, 1978), Le manège (Jeunet, 1980) and Le bunker de la dernière rafale (Caro and Jeunet,1981) – awarded shorts that would set the tone for Delicatessen (Caro and Jeunet, 1992) and La cité des enfants perdus (Caro and Jeunet, 1995). Acknowledged outsiders, the duo embraced a certain bricolage of early cinema, an interest in the carnival and apocalyptic science fiction applied to narrative and mise en scène. In this article, I argue for a reading of their cinema through the lens of DIY and punk. This is evident mostly in the works of Caro, who suggests that côté punk takes root in a passion for George Méliès coupled with adventurous explorations in sound and spectacle, a heightened intertextuality and a reclaimed retro-aesthetic, as foregrounded in Caro and Jeunet’s DIY ethic and Le bunker’s long-running double billing at the midnight movies with David Lynch’s Eraserhead (1977). From this, I study imagery and influence in Caro’s comics, graphic novels, films and music over the years. The duo’s recent exhibits in Paris and Lyon and publications offering retrospectives of their cinema make this scholarly inquiry all the more timely.
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Hypervisibility in Australian punk scenes: Queer experiences of spatial logics of gender and sexuality
By Megan SharpIn this article, I draw on the knowledge and lived experience of queer people – some of whom also identify as trans, gender diverse and/or non-binary – who actively participate in Australian punk scenes. Using socio-geographical research of intersectionality, critical race theory and spatiality I find queer experiences of and in punk highlight a complication to claims of female and queer invisibility, one that takes into account spacial formations. Attending to queer, trans and gender-diverse people’s experiences, hypervisibility presents a conceptual entanglement where genders, bodies and sexualities attract attention from a dominant, patriarchal group, rather than being rendered invisible by it. This hypervisibility appears steeped in unintelligibility where being visible but unknowable presents a range of issues such as standing out not only in physical punk spaces such as gigs, but on digital platforms and in everyday life. As such, this article builds on a feminist thesis of invisibility politics by aiming to elasticize knowledges of gender, resistance and subcultural participation among marginalized groups.
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Who remembers post-punk women?
More LessWho remembers post-punk? Its cultural and musical presence in the late 1970s and the early 1980s is often celebrated by many, despite the numerous hardships that British society faced. From industrial disputes and strikes to anti-Thatcherism and youth unemployment, it was a transitionary time in British history. How do we remember post-punk? Established since the 1940s, memory work and oral histories provide an opportunity for this, although they simultaneously raise a multitude of issues, not least from terminology. ‘Individual memory’ and ‘collective memory’ both allow for misrepresentations, although Sara Jones contends that the latter ‘requires actors, both individual and institutional, to construct, transmit, and support particular narratives of the past’. It is hence paramount to ask: who has been permitted to remember? When considering memory alongside gender identity and post-punk, one can observe some of the opportunities that it afforded women, and yet debate continues to contest their ‘empowerment’ and ‘increased’ representation in popular music. Historically much memory work has been conducted by women, whilst oral histories of punk and post-punk have predominantly been written by men. Ultimately, this article examines the memory and representation of women through semi-structured interviews, revealing anecdotal nostalgia of post-punk by members of what was termed Generation X (those born between 1955 and 1975).
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The Top of the Poppers sing and play punk
By Russ BestleyBy the mid-1970s, the music industry had a long history of accommodating and recuperating teenage rebellion, and punk’s defiant message of radical change also offered new opportunities for commercial enterprise. A rush to sign new bands who could be (broadly) associated with punk and the concomitant shift towards ‘new-wave’ styles led to a degree of UK chart success for a number of groups. The inclusion of punk and new-wave songs on a series of low-budget compilations featuring cover versions of contemporary hits strikes a particularly discordant tone with punk’s self-styled image of a break with traditional music industry conventions. The albums released on the long-standing budget compilation series Top of the Pops between mid-1977 and early 1982 tell an interesting story about the cultural recuperation of punk, new-wave and post-punk, and ask questions, perhaps, about the legitimacy of punk’s often mythologized ‘outsider status’. From their saccharine cover images, harking back to the pin-ups of the 1950s, to the awkwardly dated language of sleeve notes and the notion that the diversity of contemporary ‘pop’ is not tarnished by subcultural differences, these albums reflect a fascinating period in punk’s acceptance, maturity and, perhaps, reluctant commodification.
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‘I hold the key to the sea of possibilities’: Patti Smith Group and the occult
More LessPatti Smith Group’s (PSG) music occupies a puzzling spot in punk history, given their oscillation between stylistic elements common to rock and roll and a range of ideas inherited from literature and avant-gardism. This article suggests that Smith’s work can be understood in light of her interest in the occult, part of a broader project to render rock and roll as a form of ritualistic practice. I begin by examining the way in which Smith and her commentators engaged with mystical themes, looking not only at her direct relationship to the spiritual world, but also her peculiar interpretation of rock. From there, I argue that Smith extended occult aesthetics, seeking the magical impart hidden within the milieu of midcentury US mass culture. Concluding with an analysis of ‘Land’, one of the group’s most iconic songs, I claim that the singer ultimately attempted to transform punk into an act of musical palingenesis, a form of sonic rebirth.
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Book Reviews
Authors: Kevin Quinn, Mike Dines and Russ BestleyA Hidden Landscape once a Week: The Unruly Curiosity of the UK Music Press in the 1960s–80s, in the Words of Those Who Were There, Mark Sinker (2018) London: Strange Attractor, 392 pp., ISBN 978-1-90722-263-4, p/bk, £15.99
Soap the Stamps, Jump the Tube: A Story of Punk, Motorbikes, Witchcraft, Sandwiches, Squats and Sewing, Gail Thibert (2018) London: Unbound, 272 pp., ISBN 978-1-91261-818-7, p/bk, £10.99
Dayglo! The Poly Styrene Story, Celeste Bell and Zoë Howe (2019) London: Omnibus Press, 192 pp., ISBN 978-1-78558-616-3, h/bk, £25.00
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Album Review
By Russ BestleyElectrical language: Independent British synth pop 78–84 4CD box set, London: Cherry Red, £29.99
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Exhibition Review
More LessPunk Lust: Raw Provocation 1971–85, Museum of Sex (MoSEX), New York, 29 November 2018–30 November 2019
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