Page 105 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

Identity, Lifestyle, and Subculture 89

from the musical and personal identity style of heavy metal, which had
come to dominate popular music in the early to mid - 1970s. Groups such
as Led Zeppelin and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer were perceived by the
young people who became punks as much too professional in musical style.
Their music could not be learned or practiced by beginners because it
entailed enormously expensive stage shows that few save the supergroups
could afford. The music of groups such as Queen and the Moody Blues
literally required orchestras. The lads who hung out at the SEX shop on
Kensington Road in London wanted nothing of this. They rejected the long
draping locks and ornate clothing of the heavy metallers and glam rockers,
and instead emphasized a more rowdy and rough look that took the form

of tight, ill - fitting clothing and homemade ornamentation such as safety
pins. Rather than pleasing orchestral music, they made music that delib-
erately hurt the ears and offended mainstream taste. They embraced the
radical politics of anarchism.
Punk was unique in its extremity at least initially, and it followed a
trajectory over time that is common to such subcultures. Eventually, punk
clothing was sold by the same clothing chains that were initially rejected
by the punks, and punk style became mainstream. The Sex Pistols gave way
to the Clash, a much more recognizably professional group of musicians.
The punk preference for black clothing persisted into a new subculture
called Goth in the 1980s. Underground music, especially in such US music
scenes as Washington, DC, preserved the loud aggressive radicalism of
original punk, but like heavy metal, it too spawned a reaction. In the mid -
1980s, young people began to prefer softer sounds and lyrics that explored
emotions. MTV branded this music “ Emo, ” and around it grew up a sub-
culture with the usual mix of affiliative elements that bond people together

and make them feel part of a shared community and dissociative elements
that differentiate them from those around them.
“ Emo kids ” wear their hair long in front and comb off to one side.
A base of straightened black hair is often streaked with exuberant colors
such as magenta and green. Add tight jeans, white belts, and hoodies (bor-
rowed from African American hip hop culture), and you have a “ typical ”
Emo kid. Like other subcultures, Emo is characterized by a particular style
of thought and feeling that gives expression to aspects of the lives of young
people. If punk expressed the class rage of poor English kids, Emo draws
on the heightened emotionality of people who are experiencing particular
kinds of feelings strongly for the first time and for whom some of those

emotions can be quite overwhelming. Emo reaches especially toward