infomercial
05-21-2011, 11:21 PM
By Daniel S Traber
Chapter 5 "L.A. punk's sub-urbanism"
to page 133.
Part of the allure of popular music is that it offers fans tools for
identity construction. Music can open sites for people to negotiate
their historical, social, and emotional relations to the world. The way
fans define and understand themselves is intertwined with the varying
codes and desires claimed by a taste culture associated with a specific
genre (Grossberg “Another” 31).In two recollections
about the Canterbury we see how particular signifiers of race and class
are deployed to establish the rebel credibility of inner-city subjectivity
denoting genuine Otherness. Craig Lee lists a catalog of their new neigh-
bors that relies on racial and class markers to indicate its stark difference
from home: “black pimps and drug dealers, displaced Southeast Asians
living ten to a room, Chicano families, bikers from a halfway house, in
addition to various bag ladies and shopping cart men” (Belsito and
Davis 22). . Eleven years later, Trudie duplicates Lee’s roster of marginality:
“When we first moved there, the whole building was full of criminals,
SSI people, hookers, bikers, and pimps” (Spurrier 122).All this locates punk’s self-
marginalization physically and philosoph-
ically, but where do they stand historically in relation to their identity as
an Other? The domestic and foreign battles of the late-1960s were a dif-
ficult time for Americans trying to make sense of their country’s future,
but the post-Vietnam years saw the United States transform into a
demoralized nation deeply wracked by uncertainty. The historical
record proves a daunting one indeed: a lost war; the scandal of
Watergate; the feminist and racial identity movements reminding
Americans their nation has not lived up to its egalitarian promise; soar-
ing inflation and interest rates; energy shortages and oil embargoes
causing a decrease in real wages; deindustrialization and downsizing;
increased divorce rates and the fading nuclear family model of domes-
ticity; Three Mile Island; and hostages in Iran. All these events led to a
widespread feeling that America’s day was past. This was instrumental in
the upsurge of neoconservatism, culminating the decade by sweeping
Ronald Reagan (whose recycled optimism countered Carter’s “malaise”)
into office on a platform of laissez-faire economics, tax cuts for the rich,
and rabid anticommunism.
The impulse behind this self-fashioning and its class politics is the
disdain of whiteness as a privileged life(style). Legs McNeil’s comment
on the New York scene signals how L.A.’s white rebellion differs from
what others proffer as punk’s impetus: “[W]e were all white: there
were no black people involved with this. In the sixties hippies always
wanted to be black” (Savage 138). (This despite Patti Smith, the New
York scene’s reigning queen, claiming to be a “rock ‘n’ roll nigger”
because she is “outside of society.”) McNeil’s statement certainly does
not apply to L.A. punk because it was racially mixed from the start;
however, to ignore that whites were the majority is also to ignore how
they appropriate a sub-urban identity. In trying to deny the benefits of
their race, these kids are negating the entire system upon which the
United States was founded, came to power, and truly functions.
Turning to the sub-urban applies their treason against the dominant
white social class buttressing suburbia, but aiming at a particular portrait
of whiteness—based on a conflation of racial and class categories—
drifts toward essentializing both whites and nonwhites. A standard
image of white bourgeois middle-class life is reified as the norm, such
that it remains entrenched as the nation’s dominant ideology. This is
addressed in detail shortly, for now I want to establish how whiteness
is configured by these subjects.But punk’s disjuncture between dominant and subordinate cultures
gets complicated when race enters the picture. Ironically, these two
narratives fit snugly into the prevalent negative image of the under-
class. They accede to the racist assumptions of underclass discourse by
glamorizing the “pathological” activities attributed to that group.
Both Geza X and KK ennoble the kind of behavior conservatives bran-
dish for their periodic inner city witch hunts. Punks act this way
because they think it is how the sub-urban Other is supposed to
behave. What is revealed is how L.A. punks rely on the center’s discourses
for a sense of marginality. This dilemma is a cultural negotiation—a
rhetoric and practice built on the conflicting belief systems they are
questioning—but that qualification must confront the issue of punks
positing a stereotype as sincere rebellion.
There is a hazard of overlooking the way those whom punks try to
emulate are themselves performing classed and raced (as well as gen-
dered and sexed) identities. The discourse of sub-urbanism asserts the
punks’ belief that they are immersed in an “authentic” mode of exis-
tence. They deny the Other’s own ability to perform by treating the
underclass identity as “real” instead of a possible role. They ignore the
boundaries determining how far certain people are allowed to go with
any such performance. The lower status of most minorities prevents full
participation in the nation’s politics or benefiting from its patriotic
promises. This accounts for why suburban punks were attracted to the
idea of the sub-urban to spurn the complacent life of conservatism.
Barry Shank’s discussion of punk’s subterranean nature repeats the ges-
ture of Morris and Cervenka by emphasizing the connection to
marginalized racial groups a punk lifestyle opens:This circles us back to Black Flag’s song,
seeing how punk flips the
majority/minority binary. Minority status is the valorized element for
this group. They recognize the structural racism in American society
even while essentializing the nonwhite Other into a victim role—
casting nonwhites as simultaneously threatened and threatening. What
aims to be a critique of repression ends up an agent of it by utilizing a
stereotype of inferior, violent, and immoral nonwhites. 13 Ultimately,
punks are working from a particular condoned image by playing out
the authorized subjectivities they associate with that habitus and expect
to find there. 14
Chapter 5 "L.A. punk's sub-urbanism"
to page 133.
Part of the allure of popular music is that it offers fans tools for
identity construction. Music can open sites for people to negotiate
their historical, social, and emotional relations to the world. The way
fans define and understand themselves is intertwined with the varying
codes and desires claimed by a taste culture associated with a specific
genre (Grossberg “Another” 31).In two recollections
about the Canterbury we see how particular signifiers of race and class
are deployed to establish the rebel credibility of inner-city subjectivity
denoting genuine Otherness. Craig Lee lists a catalog of their new neigh-
bors that relies on racial and class markers to indicate its stark difference
from home: “black pimps and drug dealers, displaced Southeast Asians
living ten to a room, Chicano families, bikers from a halfway house, in
addition to various bag ladies and shopping cart men” (Belsito and
Davis 22). . Eleven years later, Trudie duplicates Lee’s roster of marginality:
“When we first moved there, the whole building was full of criminals,
SSI people, hookers, bikers, and pimps” (Spurrier 122).All this locates punk’s self-
marginalization physically and philosoph-
ically, but where do they stand historically in relation to their identity as
an Other? The domestic and foreign battles of the late-1960s were a dif-
ficult time for Americans trying to make sense of their country’s future,
but the post-Vietnam years saw the United States transform into a
demoralized nation deeply wracked by uncertainty. The historical
record proves a daunting one indeed: a lost war; the scandal of
Watergate; the feminist and racial identity movements reminding
Americans their nation has not lived up to its egalitarian promise; soar-
ing inflation and interest rates; energy shortages and oil embargoes
causing a decrease in real wages; deindustrialization and downsizing;
increased divorce rates and the fading nuclear family model of domes-
ticity; Three Mile Island; and hostages in Iran. All these events led to a
widespread feeling that America’s day was past. This was instrumental in
the upsurge of neoconservatism, culminating the decade by sweeping
Ronald Reagan (whose recycled optimism countered Carter’s “malaise”)
into office on a platform of laissez-faire economics, tax cuts for the rich,
and rabid anticommunism.
The impulse behind this self-fashioning and its class politics is the
disdain of whiteness as a privileged life(style). Legs McNeil’s comment
on the New York scene signals how L.A.’s white rebellion differs from
what others proffer as punk’s impetus: “[W]e were all white: there
were no black people involved with this. In the sixties hippies always
wanted to be black” (Savage 138). (This despite Patti Smith, the New
York scene’s reigning queen, claiming to be a “rock ‘n’ roll nigger”
because she is “outside of society.”) McNeil’s statement certainly does
not apply to L.A. punk because it was racially mixed from the start;
however, to ignore that whites were the majority is also to ignore how
they appropriate a sub-urban identity. In trying to deny the benefits of
their race, these kids are negating the entire system upon which the
United States was founded, came to power, and truly functions.
Turning to the sub-urban applies their treason against the dominant
white social class buttressing suburbia, but aiming at a particular portrait
of whiteness—based on a conflation of racial and class categories—
drifts toward essentializing both whites and nonwhites. A standard
image of white bourgeois middle-class life is reified as the norm, such
that it remains entrenched as the nation’s dominant ideology. This is
addressed in detail shortly, for now I want to establish how whiteness
is configured by these subjects.But punk’s disjuncture between dominant and subordinate cultures
gets complicated when race enters the picture. Ironically, these two
narratives fit snugly into the prevalent negative image of the under-
class. They accede to the racist assumptions of underclass discourse by
glamorizing the “pathological” activities attributed to that group.
Both Geza X and KK ennoble the kind of behavior conservatives bran-
dish for their periodic inner city witch hunts. Punks act this way
because they think it is how the sub-urban Other is supposed to
behave. What is revealed is how L.A. punks rely on the center’s discourses
for a sense of marginality. This dilemma is a cultural negotiation—a
rhetoric and practice built on the conflicting belief systems they are
questioning—but that qualification must confront the issue of punks
positing a stereotype as sincere rebellion.
There is a hazard of overlooking the way those whom punks try to
emulate are themselves performing classed and raced (as well as gen-
dered and sexed) identities. The discourse of sub-urbanism asserts the
punks’ belief that they are immersed in an “authentic” mode of exis-
tence. They deny the Other’s own ability to perform by treating the
underclass identity as “real” instead of a possible role. They ignore the
boundaries determining how far certain people are allowed to go with
any such performance. The lower status of most minorities prevents full
participation in the nation’s politics or benefiting from its patriotic
promises. This accounts for why suburban punks were attracted to the
idea of the sub-urban to spurn the complacent life of conservatism.
Barry Shank’s discussion of punk’s subterranean nature repeats the ges-
ture of Morris and Cervenka by emphasizing the connection to
marginalized racial groups a punk lifestyle opens:This circles us back to Black Flag’s song,
seeing how punk flips the
majority/minority binary. Minority status is the valorized element for
this group. They recognize the structural racism in American society
even while essentializing the nonwhite Other into a victim role—
casting nonwhites as simultaneously threatened and threatening. What
aims to be a critique of repression ends up an agent of it by utilizing a
stereotype of inferior, violent, and immoral nonwhites. 13 Ultimately,
punks are working from a particular condoned image by playing out
the authorized subjectivities they associate with that habitus and expect
to find there. 14