How does contemparory representation compare to previous time periods?

Youth Sub-culture

What is a youth sub-culture?

• A group of individuals who are united through a common values system and taste (clothes, music, politics etc)

• A group who are also positioned outside the mainstream, and who unify as a response to the mainstream

Sub-cultures

• Emo
• Chavs
• Indie
• Goths
• Geeks
• Skaters
• Punks
• Mods & Rockers
• New romantics
• Skin heads

Skin heads
A skin head is a member of a youth culture that originated among working class youths in the UK in the 1960's.
Some skin heads differed as some were part of a group, a racsist group, and ones were against racsism.
Skin heads generally all wore Dr Martens.
Skin heads also wore brands such as, Ben Sherman, the famous Harrignton jackets and Fred Perry and Brutus. They also wore polo tops from these brands.
The first skin heads were greatly influenced by West Indian, specifically Jamaican, rude boys and British mods, interms of fashion, music and lifestyle.


What are the values of Sub-culture?

Link to values... how the sub-culture view:

• Conformity and rebellion
• Attitude to capitalism and consumerism
• 'Tribal' rivalry
• Traditional or 'neophile' (a person who loves novelty, one who likes trends; person who accept the future enthusiastically and enjoys changes and evolutions)
• Ideology in 1950's and 1960's - peace, Rebellion against parents, Radicalism - reactions against the post war
• Many groups are involved in protest and resistance against the mainstream
• Teens will often move betweeen Sub-cultures, and older youths mix and match styles/values from a mix of Sub-cultures
• Or that adults can appear to conform for most of the working week, but re-enter the Sub-culture at specific time (weekend, festivals etc.)

Sub-culture

• In the 21st centuary the 'dominant meaning systems' (that define the mainstream) are crumbling.
• "There is no mainstream. There are many streams". Mainstream is in perpetual flux, rapaciously absorbing alternative culture at such a fast rate that the notion of a mainstream becomes obsolete.
• So if there is no mainstream then there is nothing for the teens to react against- instead they are driven by other motives; and these must be understood on their own terms, individual terms.

1950's Teddies (Teds/Teddy Boys)

• Anti-establishment, some of the original juvenile deliquants
• Their uniform - drainpipe trousers, drape edwardian jackets with velvet collars, string ties.

1960's Mods

• Mod (originally modernist to desccribe modern jazz musicians and fans) is a Sub-culture that orginiated in London in the late 1950's and peaked in the early to mid 1960's
• Uniform hard to describe as they were prone to contininous revitalisation

1960's Skinheads



Early 1970's Punk

• Emerged from the USA, UK and Australia
• Sub-culture based around punk rock
• The punk Sub-culture is centered around listening to recordings or live concerts of a loud, aggressive genre rock music called punk rock, usually shortened to punk

The cultural revoloution

• What had just happened before the 1950's?
• Britain was entering a period of increased freedom and affluence
• Many of the old social cultural structures began to be challened, especially by the young
• What do you think changed and how might this changed the way in which British lived?

• Rationing was coming to an end
• The American way of life had started to become key to aspirations of the British public (both culture and material goods) (deregulation of broadcasting in 1954 = introduction of commerical tv)
• Increased avaliability of cheap colour magazines brought a profilefation of advertising for luxary commodities, much of it originating in America
• A world wide economic boom (postwar regeneration schemes)
• Labour was defeated by the Consveratives at the 1951 General election . This change in government marked a shift from the state control increased indiviual freedom the Conservative election slogon promised to 'Set the people free'
• Youth given more freedom through the deregulation and commercialisation of society

America's Influence

• To the average Britain it offered a rich and desirable future
• Cultural imperialism - Culture imperialism is the practice of promoting, distigusishing, seperating, or artifically injecting the cutlure of one society into another (America influence on Britian post-war)

The cultural revoloution

• Massive increased in the production and avaliability of consumer good stimulated mass consumption
• People expected to have goods such as televisions, refrigirators, music systems and cars as a basic requirement. Before the war these had been luxary items avaliable only to the most priviledged sections of society

• By the 1960's consumption had become less connected with utiliarian needs, and more to do with status and comfort (Maslows Hierachy of Needs)
• The era of the 'lifestyle' had begun, and specailist retailiers began to spring up, providing outlets where people could buy into new identity based around design of fashion
• As youth culture became more dominant, these attitudes rapidly spread among other social groups, and for many people their consumption choices began to underpin their personal identity

Social mobility

• As a result of the state-funded education system, many children from working class families had gone to study at college and uni
• Higher education, together with increased affluence, helped to create an increase in social mobility, and with it a blurring of the old class basied disticntions between High culture and Mass culture

• Affluence, social mobility and the advent of the mass media, combined with a government that placed individual freedom at the heart of its agenda, had transformed British society
• There was a general feeling of optismism, but also a sense of uncertantity. New freedoms and liberties had been gained, but as a result society had become more fragmented and less predictable