Fashion and Rebellion
The modern writing I currently admire the most is Vice magazine. Like any New Yorker, I have an annoying urge to be the elitist prick who’s the first to declare anything as being “over” the moment it starts to gain popularity and recognition, yet as much as I’d like to bash Vice as being cliched or a parody of itself, I simply can’t. Because their obnoxious prose never gets old to me. Every time I pick up an issue to check if it’s lost its edge yet, it’s still awesome.
Sometimes I read Gawker.com and think I hate snark. Then I read Vice and realize, no, I only hate snark that tries to hard, snark as a substitute for insight or wit rather than as a way to enhance good insight and wit. When you’ve got the acerbic insight, acidic wit and street smarts to back it up, snark can be awesome. Kind of like how we as a society claim to hate cockiness and narcissism, yet forgive it in the truly talented at the drop of a hat. I read the prose in their record reviews and get insanely jealous that I can’t write like that. Not ashamed to admit it.
I love this piece on fashion they had by Christopher Bollen called “I Love Fashion,” especially the following insights (emphasis added by me):
Fashion has often been noted for sucking the meaning out of subversive signifiers and peddling them as popular wares, thereby destroying their once-volatile expression—when even avant-garde designers like Viktor & Rolf use safety pins in their Fall 2008 collection, they are appropriating punk without keeping true to its trash rebellion, its spectacular refusal (even with “no” written across the models’ faces). Of course, one part of fashion is business. Let’s admit this now. Fashion has to dress the world’s population and likewise pay for all of the mills, designers, retailers, clerks, magazines, and advertisers invested in it. But subversion is fashion too. Mainstream and subculture work as strategic dance partners here. The point of subculture is always to fight against the hegemony, and when their signs become appropriated or outdated, the resistant have to find new, unexpected, jarring visual methods of revolt. If this game of invent-and-take weren’t built into the system, most women today would still be wearing house dresses, and a leather jacket would still mean trouble. You can’t dress up in the revolutions of your parents.
Not all creative radicals work outside of the system. There are plenty of groundbreaking designers who indeed advertise, make money, and sell on the third floor of Barney’s who are still following a vision of art and exploration. Even elitists need to recognize that real change (that word these days!) succeeds best when it meets the world with some sort of handshake. Is fashion art? Really, the more interesting questions is “Has art become fashion?” So far that is still the ugly unaskable. Fine art makes a critical stink about being compared to fashion because it knows how close that gets to admitting what really controls its revolutions—the market. Is it more dubious to create with the full acknowledgement that, yes, this will be tagged with a price, it is part of an economy that does dictate it to a degree, or to pretend that you are still employing liberatory gestures outside the order while you and your gallery are getting fat from the byproduct? I almost admire the honesty of the fashion world. It makes no bones about recognizing how much the market plays a role in its developments. Art could use a more honest mirror in its dressing room.
Ultimately the downside of fashion is the fetishizing of the ever-shifting object. But the upside is that it still can be an individual play of decisions. If we have to walk around in these balls of fabric, those willing to roll the dice can use them, screw with them, turn them into billboards or bellwethers. Even to hate fashion is still to realize its power, and anything that has power can be used, appropriated, or rechanneled. We do not want our lives to become lifestyles, as luxury brands are quick to create. But the best way not to become slaves to fashion is to embrace its potential. Slaves don’t hug their masters. Refusal isn’t revolution. Try that one on.
Sometimes I have to wonder, what is it exactly young people want to revolt against so badly here in America? Too many apps available on their Iphones? I mean outside of just some vague concept of “the establishment,” which really comes down to a proxy for whatever unresolved parent issues from our teenage years we’re to petty to let go of. I know it’s not perfect here, and there are things that are worth fighting to change (too many taxes is my bugaboo), but I’ve spent some time abroad in some real shitholes, and I have to admit, we’ve got it pretty good.
Why do so many people have to convince themselves something is anticapitalist, nonconformist or part of an imaginary “revolution” before they give themselves license to enjoy it?
(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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Ironically, I think it is an instilled hate for “the establishment.”
http://patrickdeneen.blogspot......ities.html
Most likely it’s the act of rebellion, not the institution being rebelled against, that matters.
a_cs last blog post..A quantitative biologist clueless about quants nonetheless muses about them
A lot of this has to do with the suburban upbringing which has become the white middle-class norm since World War II. It’s easy to laugh at the “authenticity”-seeking herd mentality of SWPLs, but there really is something “soulless” about growing up in a world where every cultural impulse gets reduced to a choice between consumer goods. It leaves the sensitive, artistic kids who end up working in fashion, media and the arts with a sense of alienation that lasts long after they become responsible adults. This leads to SWPL behavior, where well-paid middle-class professionals try to pretend they’re still “rebellious” and “anti-establishment.” It’s a case of cognitive dissonance.
Part of this, as Abe suggests (it’s always good to see another fan of Patrick Deneen), comes from the sorry state of American education. Middle-class suburban college kids don’t get the broad education in world history and culture (in all its wild, bloody glory) that might give them a renewed appreciation of just how lucky they’ve actually had it; instead they get facile “anti-capitalist” and “feminist” analyses taught by people who are just like them but twenty or thirty years older. The ones who take to the rhetoric go to graduate school, perpetuating the cycle.
Unlike Ricky Raw, I can’t stand _Vice_, but to their credit, they usually refrain from grad-school politics and write honestly for and about the people they actually are: wealthy snobs playing urban hedonist with Daddy’s money. The editor-in-chief is even (horror of horrors) a registered Republican — he did an interview with The American Conservative a few years back.
This article and your commentary remind me of this book, that some blogger(maybe even you)recommended (I don’t recall). The authors partially explain counter-culture as part of belonging to a group, status seeking, and other things.
Also, are music reviews worth reading? I’m not trying to be snarky here; I gave up on them at a young age. My music knowledge was then too limited to grasp the references and I found the metaphors, similes, and other parts of the prose used to describe the music too confusing.
There’s much to think about here, both in the original post and the comments that that post has so far inspired. First up, re Vice magazine, I don’t pick it up much myself (so I’m not that familiar with it), although I have become a big fan of their online TV channel, VBS.TV. I also recently picked up a copy of their new movie doco, ‘Heavy Metal in Baghdad’, which I’m looking forward to watching.
I’d agree with a_c that often it’s the act of rebellion that’s considered more important than whatever it is that’s being rebelled against; I think many, if not most, people just like having something to struggle and fight against. (It puts me in mind of those classic lines from ‘The Wild One’: “What’re you rebelling against, Johnny?” “Whaddya got?”) That’s not entirely a bad thing, either. Struggle helps give life meaning, after all, and so often success depends on not doing what everyone else is doing anyway.
Re I_Affe’s comments about music reviews, I don’t have much time for ones that are too confusing myself. Interestingly enough, I’ve been writing reviews for an independent publication in my own neck of the woods for years now, and tend to keep mine as straightforward and free of jargon as I can (mainly because I still don’t know what a lot of musical terms mean myself!). At first, I felt a bit uncomfortable about doing this, thinking it was broadcasting to all my readers what an ignoramus I was, but then it occurred to me that I couldn’t be the only one left utterly baffled by reviews filled with fancy words and obscure references. Indeed, one of the best reviews I ever read was a very succinct one that appeared in a little underground magazine. The publication in question had reviews of a whole heap of releases, each review quite brief and ending with a score out of 10. Anyway, in the aforementioned review, the author had simply written “THIS IS THE BIGGEST HEAP OF SHIT I HAVE EVER HEARD!” and given the release in question a rating of “Not even worth a zero”. Perversely enough, of course, that only made me want to track down and buy a copy of the release myself, just so I could find out how bad it really was!
The Vice music reviews aren’t great because of the music they review or any great critical insights, I like them purely for the prose and language used. You don’t have to be interested in or know about the music to enjoy the reviews. In fact, it’s often better if you’re not. They’re just mean-spirited and snarky but in such a creative and vividly descriptive way. It would be like if the writers at Gawker tried to really be creative and vividly descriptive in their snark rather than aiming to sound like a mean girl character from a teen movie.
A review of a record by a guy called Mt. Sims:
A record by Wilderness:
A review of group Sam Champion’s record:
A review of a record by Pepper:
A review of Fiery Furnaces:
Followed by a review of Quiet Hooves:
The Walkmen:
A compilation record:
Why do so many people have to convince themselves something is anticapitalist, nonconformist or part of an imaginary “revolution” before they give themselves license to enjoy it?
I think this may be the same thing that causes so many youth to try to be non-conformist by mimicking their peers: a desperate attempt to feel important. Unfortunately individuality isn’t gained by mindlessly aping others, nor by rebelling for it’s own sake. It’s a weird paradox in which they try to act out formulaically to gain approval, an attempt to form a collective identity differentiated from that of the preceding generation. In psychological development group identification is the primary goal of the teens and early twenties. In ancient times this probably served them to integrate into the tribe and secure their future at a time when they were old enough that no-one felt obligated to provide for them, but young enough that they had not accumulated power and resources for themselves. At this age they are still more dependent on the establishment than other adults, but likely resent the fact.
alphadominances last blog post..AD on G Manifesto ~ Notorious: The Rise of American Gangster Chic
For me, I don’t read reviews to decide whether or not to buy anything. I’ve never read a movie or music or TV review with the intent of finding out whether or not something is good or not, so for me unlike most of the population I don’t really care how insightful the review is. The only exception is when I hate or love a movie or record so much that I feel like reading other reviews to find out if I was alone in my hatred or love. For example with The Dark Knight I hated that movie so much I needed to read reviews to see if I was the only person to realize what a turd it was.
So yeah, if you actually want enlightening, nuanced analysis of a record to decide whether or not to buy it, Vice magazine sucks for that.
Zosimus, they’re really getting into covering travel to unconventional places too. I plan to get Vice’s travel guide next.
I have read and utterly love that book, but I can’t remember for the life of me whether I ever discussed it on the blog. Regardless, let me take the time recommend it without reservation to anyone reading right now.
I’ve done that too, particularly when I’ve really hated a movie that everyone else seems to have been raving about (and there’ve been quite a few like that). A movie (or rather series thereof) that did this for me was Peter Jackson’s adaptation of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. LOVED the book (so much so that I was pretty much devastated when it finally ended, even after 1000-something pages); LOATHED the movies, which I felt dumbed down the source material to an unforgivable degree.
Yeah, that’s a big part of the appeal for me wrt VBS. I’ve just finished watching the aforementioned ‘Heavy Metal in Baghdad’, and found that that was fascinating just as much for what it showed about life in the aforementioned city (at least as it was a few years ago), as it was for the main subject: Acrassicauda, Iraq’s only heavy metal band. (It also had a bit about life in Damascus (which is where the above band eventually fled to), which seems to be a surprisingly hip, happening place.) One interesting (if occasionally stomach-churning) VBS online documentary I saw was ‘Toxic Napoli’, which revolved around illegal waste disposal in Naples, and the devastating effects this has had on the population and surrounding countryside. It dovetailed nicely with some stuff I’d read about the subject in Roberto Saviano’s surprise best-seller ‘Gomorrah: Italy’s Other Mafia’ (a very good book BTW).
I’ve become a real fan of travel writing myself of late, having read quite a few books by people who’ve gone to some really unpleasant parts of the world, and survived. (A lot of the places they’ve gone have been countries on the Failed States Index. After reading about life in them, you can see why!) Africa is a place that holds a particular interest for me, and I’ve come across a couple of really good authors on the continent. One’s an American guy called Karl Maier, who’s written about his experiences in Nigeria (‘This House has Fallen’) and Angola (‘Angola: Promises and Lies’); the other’s a British woman called Michela Wrong, who’s written about the Democratic Republic of Congo (‘In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz’) and Eritrea (‘I Didn’t Do it For You’). I’ve just started the last one, but it’s already looking like it’ll be a cracking read.
Re: Fashion
1976-Vivienne Westwood, Sex Pistols manager and seminal punk fashionista Malcolm Maclaren’s muse and partner, creates the leather/rubber/chain/fetsh wear/safety pin couture at Sex Boutique.
2008-Vivienne Westwood is lead designer for fashions featured in the “Sex and the City” movie.
Talk about sucked-out meaning…