I. Neich (1982): An Example of a Semiotic Approach

A. Self-decoration, Mount Hagen (Papua New Guinea)
B. Self-decoration is subsystem of overall system of signs

1. "self-decoration sets" = parole
2. categories of item (headdress, wig, and apron) = langue

C. Example of the moka

1. Photo of men in moka
2. Denotation: meaning in specific context, i.e. rank, giver versus receiver
3. Connotation: references to qualities or meanings outside specific context, present throughout entire cultural reality
4. Messages can be unconscious: "People may not themselves be fully aware of the statements about social values that their decorations are making" (219)
5. Self-decoration = attempt to order and resolve oppositions in meaning

a. Male vs. female
b. Solidarity vs. opposition

D. Meanings within subsystems (language, types of birds, gender, kinship) vary, but subsystems connect to each other in a kind of metalangue (underlying unconscious structure of meanings in Mount Hagen society)

 

II. Structure versus Agency in Semiotics

A. Agency = personal choice of what to wear
B. Structure = system that creates our personal desires
C. Semiotics views structure as decisive in Fashion because it creates a symbolic universe in which one is forced to operate
D. Potential for opposition? Not really: still working within terrain of Fashion
E. Hebdige: punk of late 70s and early 80s as instructive example of futility of style as semiotic form of resistance

 

III. The Advantages of Looking at Clothing as Language

A. Re-cap: two semiotic approaches

1. Barthes: Fashion knowledge constructed through written clothing
2. Neich: bodily decorations as symbolic language, some unconscious, explore and mediate existential contradictions, such as how men can be both feminine and masculine

B. Semiotics takes material culture seriously: every object is part of system of meaning
C. Systematic framework

1. Barthes: image clothing, written clothing, real clothing
2. Neich: denotation and connotation ==> metalangue map of Mount Hagen cultural universe
3. Solves Veblen's problem of explaining how value is recognized

D. Semiotics uses concrete, mundane as point of entry into deepest cultural meanings

 

IV. The Punk Subculture

A. Variation on semiotics: What if clothing's purpose is not to communicate but to make communication impossible by being unintelligible?
B. Novel clothing resists readings, points out ambiguity of signs (Saussure), destabilizes fixed meanings
C. Dick Hebdige: subordinate groups manipulate signs to subvert normalized meanings
D. Style as resistance: "...the tensions between dominant and subordinate groups can be found reflected in the surfaces of subculture -- in the styles made up of mundane objects which have a double meaning" (2)

1. Straight world is angry and afraid of subcultural signs
2. For subculture members, items signify Refusal and group identity
3. In Britain post-WWII subcultures include beats, mods, skinheads, teds, and greasers

E. Punks: most detached, most reviled Brit post-WWII subculture
F. History of punk

1. NY clubs, early 70s: Velvet Underground, New York Dolls, Ramones [Example: I Wanna Be Sedated]
2. England: late 70s, punk = "a reaction against the pretentiousness of the prevailing bands of the mid seventies, progressive rock bands with songs so indulgent and inaccessible to the youth of Britain that there was a palpable gap in youth culture" (http://www.essortment.com/history-punk-music-england-1976-1981-60665.html)
3. The Sex Pistols

a. Formed in 1976 by Malcolm McLaren, includes Johnny Rotten
b. 1977: Sid Vicious joins
c. 1978: Sex Pistols break up during US tour, "Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?"
d. November 1978, Sid's girlfriend Nancy Spungen stabbed to death in hotel room, Sid arrested for murder
e. February 1979: Sid dies of heroin overdose while awaiting trial
f. Sex Pistols music: God Save the Queen and Anarchy in the UK

G. Hebdige's social and historical account of punk

1. Combines bits and pieces of beats, mods, skinheads, teds, and greasers
2. All British subcultures = response to growing black presence, "phantom history of race relations since the War" (45)

H. Hebdige's semiotic analysis

1. Subculture is "Noise"

a. "Interference in the orderly sequence which leads from real events and phenomena to their representation in the media" (90)
b. Style as "an actual mechanism of semantic disorder: a kind of temporary blockage in the system of representation" (90)

2. Purpose of Noise

a. "The communication of a significant difference, then (and the parallel communication of a group identity), is the 'point' behind the style of spectacular subcultures" (102)
b. "intentional communication"
c. Umberto Eco: "semiotic guerrilla warfare" using torn t-shirts, safety pins

3. How punk style works

a. "The punk subculture, like every other youth culture, was constituted in a series of spectacular transformations of a whole range of commodities, values, common-sense attitudes, etc. It was through these adapted forms that certain sections of predominantly working-class youth were able to restate their opposition to dominant values and institutions" (116)
b. Chaos, signs don't make sense to straights
c. Ruptures signifier-signified relationship, uses bricolage: swastika example
d. Not just inversion of meanings, but lack of meaning

4. Reading punk style

a. polysemy: signs generate infinite number of meanings
b. Julia Kristeva: "signifying practice" = "the setting in place and cutting through or traversing of a system of signs" (120); people as creators and manipulators of signs
c. Hebdige: punk = radical signifying practice, tries to remain illegibile

i. Working class identity is decontextualized
ii. Floating Noise

5. Why punk?

a. Uproot dominant ideologies behind class system
b. Stylistic refusal to participate in consensus of meaning
c. Display power to deform

6. Punk's internal cohesion: homology, the elements of the lifestyle fit together
7. Does resistance succeed?

a. Punk signifiers are reappropriated as capitalist commodities, become "fit for public consumption" (130)
b. Reappropriation makes punk style comprehensible, conventional, absorbs subversion
c. Subcultural resistance through style is fleeting