Locating the Punk Preppy (A Speculative Theory)
2008; Wiley; Volume: 41; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.1540-5931.2008.00532.x
ISSN1540-5931
Autores Tópico(s)Gender, Feminism, and Media
ResumoIn a previous article on whiteness and Los Angeles punk, I interrogated suburban kids who attempt a total break with their origins through the subcu44lture; now I want to think about a subset of punks who do not. It has long been a doctrine of popular music studies that music functions as a means of identity construction, yet those subjectivities do not always fit snugly into the descriptions found in books and documentaries, where the quoted commentators given ultimate authority on movements and scenes are usually taken from the ranks of the true believers.1 When performers mix musical genres they become groundbreaking artists, but what about a fan's identity, beliefs, and values being built on combining antithetical spheres? I will attempt to flesh out one example of this dilemma by contemplating the confluence of two opposing modes of public self-presentation: the preppy and the punk. Specifically, I will theorize the punk preppy as a hybrid figure creating a subjectivity outside the definitional confines of either source. Research in cultural and identity studies has often emphasized the importance of contradiction in grasping how people, culture, and society intermingle. The punk preppy illustrates the point as it dances along the contours of both the margin and the center, balancing roles in subordinate and dominant cultures; thereby reminding us, once again, that the ways and meanings of how consumers use texts can rarely be placed into tidy columns. While punk preppies may be genuine fans of punk there is a limit to how far they are willing to immerse themselves in the subculture and/or its ideologies. The music may appeal to their tastes, and/or occasionally dressing up in bits of punk gear may be fun and carry with it a marker of difference, and/or the political ideas of punk may jibe with some of their own, yet punk preppies reject a totalized, monolithic investment in the culture—they refuse to take their membership in the lifestyle all the way. Can we explain this beyond dismissing the practice as a false rebellion? Or does the punk preppy simple co-opt punk's rebellious symbolic capital? Gary Clarke warns "that the elements of youth culture … are not enjoyed only by the fully paid-up members of subcultures. … Any empirical analysis would reveal that subcultures are diffuse, diluted, and mongrelized in form" (176–77; also see Hebdige 122). The mixture of performed identities reveals the limits of a discursive investment in transparent authenticity, so it is more productive to consider punk preppies (always imagine "some not all" before those words) in terms of a double refusal, rather than rebel posturing or subcultural passing. The unifying factor of these identities is that they are primarily associated with specific fashions, ways of dressing used to name a recognizable type. In other words, you know one when you see one and no one is going to confuse a punk for a preppy, and we readily assume the subject's own desire for distinction informs the logic of the display. Ruth Rubenstein compares clothing to language in that it relies on a system of signs and symbols that "become significant only when they are used in a specific social context" (8). This representative function highlights how once we attribute some meaning to our clothing it becomes a "style"—our style—used to define us, which is not to say it cannot become naturalized. Moreover, the clothing defining preppies and punks are ascribed with specific ideological underpinnings. These fashions represent a visible way of life, one in which what you wear says something about what you believe. Certainly every fashion has an underlying politics (even if it is unconscious), but preppies and punks just seem so much more obvious: the conservative conformist vs. the left-of-center nonconformist.2 That these cultures are actually quite diverse—there are Nazi punks and liberal preppies—and there is broad variance in dedication to the codes of dress and values is beside the point because the stereotypes reign in the imagination of most believers and outsiders alike. The punk fans' responses to what defines "Punk" not only constrain the participants but reveal the limits imposed on the musicians performing under this rubric. Many created their own idiosyncratic sound, as well as their own "look." Scores of bands brought absolutely nothing new to the genre, while those who made the slightest move away from the reified conventions were charged with cultural, thus community, treason. The Minutemen's Mike Watt criticizes hardcore punk for "solidif[ying] into a kind of orthodoxy of that fast guitar style. … [After] the espousal of going for it, and try anything you want, [we were] being expected to deliver a certain thing" (qtd. in Heylin 550). The punk preppy, however, is a more convoluted site of intersecting signs, such that its elements—be it clothes or musical leanings—cannot be read into a singular new object that wholly encapsulates them. Before proceeding, I want to acknowledge that I am not engaging in a traditional academic or (supposedly) objective ethnography, though I will refer to one by Kathryn Fox that claims such authority.3 As regards sociological data, it is a lost time and the people who would have even classified themselves this way are gone (albeit there were not that many anyway, even if we forego a stringent definition of preppy). The punk preppies never get to speak in Fox's study, so I am offering an act of theoretical conjecture about the possible motives and results of this identity, at the very least to complicate matters about a small phenomena in punk culture from a certain era. Returning to a past struggle over the meaning of punk identity is relevant to contemplating the state of punk today, if you are actually concerned with that issue. More interesting to me is how the punk preppy contributes to rethinking the notion of identities across the board. To that end, I will note similarities between the two groups, develop a response based in theories of hybridity and performativity, and close by considering the political implications of this identity. What lessons does it offer or deny us about identity construction in that the punk preppy exposes limits to imagining a freer space for manipulating the contours of the self, and pushes us into a confrontation with ambiguity—a key goal in any transgressive model of hybridity. Thus, the language of uncertainty (maybe, could, some, sometimes, etc.) will be prevalent but necessary because it is the vocabulary of hybridity. And while there are obviously political ramifications, no grand prescription for political action will be outlined. Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction shows taste is not a transcendent, universal value or truth unchanged across history and geography. Rather, taste is based on hegemonic standards associated with accepted social distinctions, thus serving to maintain existing social differences in the construction of identities: "[Taste] unites and separates. … And it distinguishes in an essential way, because taste is the basis of all that one has—people and things—and all that one is for others, whereby one classifies oneself and is classified by others. … Objectively and subjectively, aesthetic stances … are opportunities to experience or assert one's position in social space, as a rank to be upheld or a distance to be kept" (56, 57). Who does not already know that sometimes people choose objects depending on the social and cultural messages they convey rather than their utilitarian use value? The goods people consume can be a means for creating subjectivity, for signifying their identity to the world, as well as themselves. Clothing is, of course, one of the most prevalent tools for such expressions of the self. I assume we all share a generalized idea about the defining sartorial details of preppies and punks.4 Preps are clean-cut—ironed, tucked, and ordered—with clothes not meant to offend others or distinguish themselves in their natal environment. The basic uniform of khakis, button-down and polo shirts, Weejuns, ties, suits, and anything tweed is a conservative style chosen to evoke affluence, tradition, and good taste rather than flagrant self-expression. Ironically, of course, that is exactly what it is. Alison Lurie casts preppy fashion as a placard for monotonous upper-class living: The clothing was "backward-looking in design and allowed very little scope for personal taste or imagination. … The aim was to look as if not only you but your family had been rich and dull for several generations" (164–65). Punk fashion, on the other hand, is associated with antitaste, it intends to stand out in a crowd, often intending to scare, shock, and offend the average person: dirty, torn, and disheveled; clothing self-marked with slogans and band names; outlaw biker leather jackets decorated with the threatening points of metal studs; hairstyles that practically taunt with cold indifference the threat of limited employment opportunities.5 These are crudely drawn stereotypes but they contain the kernel of accuracy necessary for us to proceed. In short, both styles intend to send a message, both mark the subject's position socially and politically, and both are exclusionary. Establishing the difference between themselves and preppies is a serious concern for punks in the early eighties. In my L.A. punk article, I use the 1983 documentary film Another State of Mind as evidence of a general punk attitude toward affluent whiteness because the film's interviewees "pick out preppies, rather than hippies … as the opposite that helps them grasp their [rebel] identity as punks." In essence these fans declare that being a punk is a conscious choice against preppiness which is "the alternate subjectivity open to them" (Traber 42). In the same year as the documentary, the Phoenix skate-punk band Jodie Foster's Army released "Preppy": "You're a preppy, a preppy/You're so fucking lame, you all look the same … Underneath the alligators is a fucking clone." This analysis of preppy conformity relies on omission, by eliding how punk's own shared stylistic codes are a chosen "act," apparently assuming they are more "natural"; yet if we substitute punk for prep and safety pins for alligators the point is utterly applicable in the reverse. The Dead Kennedys offer a similar critique in "Terminal Preppie" (1982). Like JFA's song, this one relies on the criticism of preppiness as a boring sameness: "Wanna fit in like a cog/In the faceless machine … Some day I'll have power/Some day I'll have boats/A tract in some suburb/With Thanksgivings to host." The song calls out the true dividing line: an inherited privilege with an attendant access to power. The preps are seen as kids with futures and live according to the rules that will give them a life of affluence. In depicting punks as a group of shared characteristics my purpose is not to tame their otherness from the dominant culture by reducing them to sameness; i.e., they are really no different from us so there is no problem here (see Barthes 151–52 and Hebdige 97–98). Does the possibility exist that the mainline punks are also diverse? Of course, but the prevalent opinion as expressed by those quoted by most sociologists and interviewed in documentaries (most recently American Hardcore [2006]) constitute the master narrative, the discourse of a monolithic punk identity that excludes those who are not true believers. None of the examples above mentions the possibility of mixing the two subjectivities, but the borderline separating preppies and punks is actually a thin one, with at least three areas where we find surprising similarities. First, the principle of simplified fashion. This is a tricky area because many punks put a lot of effort into their appearance, still there was always the notion of rejecting the flamboyant styles of 1970s rock and pop stars for more quotidian clothes like jeans, t-shirts, and sneakers. One can find examples of the style branching into more creative haircuts and symbolic accouterments chosen to shock—the female performer in only her underwear or the trash bag worn as clothing—but once the avant-gardism wore off and the scene sent its shoots out from the underground there was less of this. Nonetheless, a common refrain from most participants is that these are the clothes in which they feel "comfortable." Preppy fashion has always followed this principle of common sense. The clothing is of a more expensive brand-name caliber and quality, but preppies are not concerned with being designer mannequins. Basic, comfortable and functional defines preppy style, the difference from punk being that it is chosen according to a different standard: tradition rather than transgression. Furthermore, the use of brand name products should not reduce the preppy to a mindless clone because punks are as attached to logos and branding as any other materialist. Whether it is a Lacoste crocodile or a band's name on a pin, both distinguish between the like-minded and the poseur, both make a public statement about the person wearing the icon. Second, there are distinct parallels in the fashion itself. Punk's day-glo colors share a correspondence with the loud, garish "go-to-hell" colors preppies occasionally wear with the strange pride that comes from being mildly obnoxious. Lime green and hot pink (for women and men) are the famous colors meant to attract attention and are decidedly unfriendly in the sense that they confound a non-preppy's notion of appropriateness. (Notably, these are also the colors on the US cover of the Sex Pistols debut album—shocking colors for a shocking band.) Clothing made from patches of varying plaids, kelly green trousers, shorts with an embroidered whale motif, all efficiently signal membership and mindset to strangers, they work as doubled signs expressing group belonging but with a dandy's edge of arrogant exuberance. They represent an excess, not as signs of affluence but an uncontrollable surplus that exceeds the rules of mundane fashion—much like punk style. But is it only relevant within one group, one context? How would this outfit go over in an early-eighties punk club among the leather jackets and colored hair? I once saw a punk girl in Toronto wearing bright red pants that would not be alien in preppy circles (only tighter and with Doc Martens boots), so if you strip it down to the basic fashion idea they are simpatico and should get along just fine. Right? It is all a matter of context—right? Tartan plaids are another resemblance. The New York Times style section has cited this detail but reverses it as punk appropriating "preppy plaids worn ironically" (Trebay A9). The plaids of punk appeared variously as kilts, workmen's flannel shirts and swatches attached to the boots, but it is the bondage trousers that really mix up the preconceptions.6 In England the style is an appropriation of a national fashion trademark that reinterprets Britishness by attaching it to "deviant" sexual pleasure. The same happens in American punk because plaids are one of the favorite choices of staid preppy affluence. Khakis work in a similar mode by denoting different connections to social class. For preppies, chinos are the second skin, but they can have working-class significance with the brand and material. Although jeans are more prevalent with punk, in America Dickies are the working-man's nondenim choice, while Brooks Brothers chinos are manufactured for a completely different kind of work environment. There is also the androgyny of both styles. Certainly, each group has ways of dress that mark the differences of gender, but much of the fashion actually blends the sexes more than separating them. Button-down shirts, band t-shirts, turtlenecks and crew-neck sweaters, jeans, khakis, sneakers and combat boots—again and again you find clothing deemed "appropriate" for either gender. Even haircuts cannot offer assurance if female preppies have bobs and the punks sport mohawks or liberty spikes. Once again, this is not an across the board statement; there are women in either culture who use more recognizably "feminine" fashion cues, and punk boys might wear an earring—the point is that it is not just a given. I emphasize the females here because both styles have a more masculine emphasis. It is going too far to claim gender stereotypes are undermined or reversed—they are not, neither are gender roles—but for punks and preppies there is a degree of flattening gender difference that makes the cultures similar to each other and different from others.7 In short, for them it is not "weird" to dress this way. Finally, these cultures share certain attitudes with regard to themselves and other people. There is, of course, a focus on the self as both a body on display and a center of desire. Clothes are fetishized as symbols representing personal belief; they are also a short cut for judging and assessing others to fit them into an ontological framework. But what are the mannerisms underpinning these worldviews? Attitude has always been the quality heralded as what truly defines being a punk, more so than fashion or musical style. In choosing the commonalities I will draw from that 1980 bible of all things prep, Lisa Birnbach'sThe Official Preppy Handbook, assuming her list was by and large taken to be accurate, or at least had a modicum of influence on tyro preps who were not to the manner born and bred. We find that five out of her seven preppy "attitudes" match punk's basic approach to dealing with the world. Ennui: Everyone celebrates punk as passionate, energetic, and exciting, but ennui better describes the attitude toward craftsmanship, employment, and life in general—what a bother, not worth the effort, who cares. Everything is a bore so you keep looking for something that is not. Of course, you are so cool that nothing can ever satisfy your needs. Cynicism and Sarcasm: Either one is a tool for deflating others' enthusiasm, self-assurance and sense of superiority because you are the one who is superior. Like ennui, you just could not care less about whatever it is someone is rattling on about. This is the armor that protects you from all the disappointments you just know will happen; after all, if everything is stupid and boring in advance then you will never be hurt by hoping it might have been otherwise. Worldliness: Preppies achieve this by touring the world and experiencing enough of life to be jaded and weary of it all (Birnbach 217). Punks acquire it through the street credibility that comes from contact with the darker side of existence. This can be one rationale for the punk preppy in that he/she craves something more risky and exotic than a suburban keg party. It is a matter of new experience, and the fewer people back home to have done it the better. Esprit de corps: Never be fooled by punk's anti-elitism discourse, they are snobs through and through. The exclusivity of the clique is a shield against all the groups that rejected you (or might if you had tried to join). Exclusivity is built into punk culture by the imposed restrictions of the larger popular market, for punk fans of this period it took serious work to discover bands, find their records and then find the venues that might actually allow this music to be heard. If one put in the effort, status would then be gained by knowing the key people, the secret handshake and the knowledge of subculture minutiae used to blackball those who might try to join your sect. It is the most difficult attitude to maintain because the hierarchical lines of purity are always being redrawn in the shifting sands according to who or what is in or out. Elitism and cliques can take varied forms, but the intention is always the same: to differentiate, demarcate, and discriminate. In summary, preppies and punks share more qualities than either might recognize. In walking the line and interweaving the values of these zones the punk preppy does not necessarily face a drastic disjuncture where identity confusion is the only possible outcome. We can find a politics in this maneuvering, yet it will not meet the high standards of optimism and certainty which some demand of their cultural practices. If you need proof that there even is this creature called a punk preppy, the earliest I know of comes from Birnbach: "A subgroup of Preppies are connoisseurs of punk. Some of them simply read the music columns in the SoHo Weekly News… for shock value, and some just like to dance to punk music. But there are serious prep-punk types who would dye their hair blue if they did not work in law firms, and who spend their weekends … on the Lower East Side of New York" (165). This indicates that a type of preppy was haunting record shops and clubs in the late 1970s and needed to be named, but it is the early 1980s when it becomes a concern for the scene. From an academic perspective, Kathryn Fox's ethnography of a small punk scene in 1983 (the same year of the documentary film and JFA song) places "preppie punks" on the low end of the scene's hierarchy, describing them as people "concerned with the novelty and the fashion" of punk who are "drawn to the excitement of the scene" (361). Finally, a smaller and more telling artifact comes from that ubiquitous emblem of fashion associated with popular music: the button pin. Figure 1 shows a pin (copyrighted 1981) with "PUNK" written in the typical ransom note script of cut-and-paste letters juxtaposed with "PREPPY" in a more traditional font with serifs. Mixing the fonts would have been a more exact way to evoke the notion of mixing styles but it gets the basic idea across. What it also reveals is that someone assumed there was a person out there who might pay a dollar to proclaim this identity on their lapel.8 Punk Preppy pin circa 1984–85. So let us try to give the punk preppy some shape (like the pin I prefer Punk as the modifier of Preppy to signal it is the element added to the base identity). There is less of a specific style to which we can point because the degree of fashion immersion is as varied as the individuals. One might simply dress prep and listen to punk; or switch between the look depending on the spatial context (punk in one, prep in another). The kind of punk preppies I find interesting are those who blend facets of punk style or incorporate elements of a punk sensibility and attitude into their everyday clothing and/or behavior. For example, consider the sloppy preppy—wrinkled, unbuttoned, untucked, ungroomed (see note 8). There really is a way to dress in prep clothing that undermines the ideology of neatness, and by extension upends assumptions by marking a territory outside the externally enforced rules and preconceptions attached to the uniform. Fred Davis stresses that "what some combination of clothes or a certain style emphasis 'means' will vary tremendously depending upon the identity of the wearer, the occasion, the place, the company, and even something as vague and transient as the wearer's and the viewer's moods" (8). We can draw out a similar insight through Dick Hebdige's theory of style as a signifying practice. He notes how conventional, nonsubcultural styles still transmit meanings: Each ensemble has its place in an internal system of differences … which fit a corresponding set of socially prescribed roles and options. These choices contain a whole range of messages which are transmitted through the finely graded distinctions of a number of interlocking sets—class and status, self-image and attractiveness, etc. … However, the intentional communication is of a different order. It stands apart—a visible construction, a loaded choice. It directs attention to itself; it gives itself to be read. (101) The minutiae of the punk preppy's visual performance lack the more outlandish quality of what Hebdige terms "spectacular subcultures"; nonetheless, that idea of intention, of presenting oneself to be read differently in both preppy and punk contexts, makes that subjectivity challenging, perhaps all the more so because of its subtlety. In terms of fandom, the punk preppy can be just as genuine and knowledgeable a connoisseur of punk rock as the true believer. Admittedly, their rebellion is partially enacted through the products one consumes but that is no different from the punk as consumer. Yet Kathryn Fox's"hardcore" punks remain confident in their ability to pick out so-called "preppie punks" because the style they wear at events is not the one they live in; thus, they are ridiculed for the "manufactured quality of their punk look" and that they are "not willing to give anything up for a punk identity" (361). The irony is not only that these "real" punks do not consider their appearance to be manufactured (first, how else could we tell they were punks; second, it denies the original self-consciousness of punk as a taking control of one's identity), but that aside from commitment to the lifestyle "real" punks sniff out poseurs by their appearance: "Haircut and clothing were the decisive clues" enabling "real punks" to "spot a preppie from a distance" (363). The paradox here is that appearance continually sneaks through the hardcore discourse as being the final arbitrating factor that determines like-mindedness. But clothing, behavior, and musical taste are ultimately weak points for establishing a sense of authenticity because it only requires that one learn, mimic and obey the rules of the style more accurately. Johan Fornäs argues that focusing on authenticity is less fruitful than considering such details in the light of contextualized self-reflexivity and the relationship an individual has to a text-object, such that "authenticity appears as an option and a construction rather than as a given fact" (168). One's sense of belonging is then freed from the discourses of natural origin or purity; instead, identity is framed as the product of localized rules which create the boundaries of membership. Conversely, a totalized dedication to the lifestyle definitely segregates the true believer from the tourist. Fox's description of punk preppies cites how they "often lived with their [middle-class] parents; they tended to be younger, and were often in school or in respectable, system-sanctioned jobs" (361). Not living the punk life to the fullest is what makes their loyalty to the scene, the style, the ideology—every postulate of it—questionable.9 And rightly so, as hybrids punk preppies are different, but to cast it as teens playing with identity (which so few actually do) simply to discover a "true" self or to irritate their parents, of being nothing more than a phase, might be a sign of the anxiety felt by those who like their subjectivities neat and clean; in a word, authentic. Early subculture theory out of Birmingham's Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) was fond of finding homology; i.e., how a group's appearance, practices, and values all fit together in a way that reflect each other to give an ordered meaning to the identity (see Hebdige 113–14). The punk preppy rejects this by disrupting the unity on both sides, such that homology becomes blurry as the tastes and values cannot be definitely fixed. Hence the act of bricolage that decontextualizes/denaturalizes the symbolic meaning of objects becomes doubled in this case. Punk preppies manipulate the codes to create their own authenticity, and it is singular for each one because the rules of identification have not been written for it. Hebdige details how punks apply a guerilla semiotics upon common objects, commodities, and national symbols to recontextualize them as a counterhegemonic statement (17). Mixing signifiers to undermine their prior meaning is also utterly applicable to the punk preppy. The icons of preppiness may not be given a total working over (indeed, they may be left at home when entering the punk environment) but they no longer define the subject in an unproblematic way. The outward symbols do not tell the whole story, unless they are mixed which is more easily decoded by the center as trouble in paradise. Fred Davis urges us to consider that while counterculture antifashion often originates with working-class, ethnic, socially deviant, and other more or less disadvantaged and disenfranchised groups in society … the antifashion affront of wayward middle-class youth carries with it more cultural point and poignancy than that issuing from other quarters. (It smacks more of subversion from within than opposition from without.) (184) Therefore we can read the punk preppy's refusal of totalized participation in the subculture as a potentially similar denial of the dominant culture's party-line on work, family, capitalism, patriotism, you name it. Being within the system does not entail uncritical acceptance of it. Some decide to reject outright the natal environment (which they had no choice in), some comfortably slide into affluent social slots with a fond remembrance of their "wild years," but others place themselves somewhere between the two poles of tradition and dissent (although punk is now a genre with its own repeated gestures, i.e., traditions). There can be no guarantees, no set pattern that determines how the contact with punk will change the person—we are dealing with hybridity and that is always an amorphous state of possibility. Like the musical rebellion itself, these are symbolic gestures, ways to have a voice, and to make sense of them we need to think through multiplicity. Increasing the number and kind of voices constituting a society's ideological catalog helps undermine foundationalist discourses by weakening binaries. The diversity created by permitting the different versions to exist simultaneously and equally contests dominant power by preventing any one narrative from being privileged. To disperse enunciative possibiliti
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