I. 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" (Source: 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 illegible

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. Diffusion--> De-fusion: Reappropriation makes punk style comprehensible, conventional, absorbs subversion
c. Subcultural resistance through style is fleeting

 

II. Is Language an Apt Metaphor for Understanding Clothing as Symbolic or Communicative?

A. Too much langue, not enough parole or individual agency

1. Signs seem more important than people
2. Barthes: capital "F" Fashion: what is role of this knowledge in everyday clothing choices? Are the signs really so systematic and clear?

B. Lack of history

1. How are new meanings created?
2. Semiotic focus on system of signs fixes meanings, ignores clothing as agent to create and express social change

C. McCracken: We read clothing signs differently from how we read language signs

1. Ubiquity of clothing as language metaphor obscures how we read clothing
2. Ways we construct and read speech

a. Choose word from a category (paradigmatic class)
b. Combine with other words in syntagmatic chain
c. Result: Comprehensible communication that allows for infinite individual expression

3. Ways we construct and read outfits

a. We don't read outfits as syntagmatic chains, link by link
b. We read the overall effect of an outfit
c. Combinations aren't infinite
d. What happens when the overall look can't be read?

i. Puzzle solving: "Well, he wears that jacket because he used to be a businessman, but it doesn't fit with the pants and shoes because he's lost his job and is on the skids" (65)
ii. Stress some items, ignore others
iii. Interpretive confusion: "The exercise of even a small degree of combinatorial freedom by the wearer created not discourse, but confusion" (66)

D. Madonna in 1980s: code ruptures (first picture, second picture)
E. Smaller subsets understand the code of clothing: age, gender, class, etc.
F. McCracken's conclusion: If clothing is a communicative language, it's not an effective, complex, or flexible one
G. Clothing as self-construction?