I look at this clip from “Quadrophenia” (1979) and I wonder where all the pride has gone. Here (1965 London), we have what may be the coolest subculture ever in history, predating today’s hipsters by a good 40 years with every thread the smart sweatervest and every hair the clever cut, doing the dirty work of discovering the Stones so that you could “discover” them in Dad’s vinyl or in older sister’s iTunes decades later.
But what’s most striking is the chant. “We are the mods! We are the mods! We are the we are the we are the mods!” When was the last time you identified with a social group where you were amped up enough to sing a song about being one of the them? Remember “Grease”? I wasn’t alive in the 50’s but I’m for damn sure those Scorpions had Mom sewing the name of the gang in the back of that leather jacket, flicking cigarette ash at her head with every stray stitch. I know this for a fact because I saw it in Grease.
Even as recently as the 1980s (fact check -ed.), it was integral to LA gang culture to identify oneself with a primary color. The non-verbal nature of this rallying call of membership probably had more than anything to do with keeping a low profile to stay out of the grips of the law. Were LAPD not an issue, we could easily have seen bands of original gangsters banding shoulder-to-shoulder cheering “We are the bloods, we are the bloods, we are the we are the we are the bloods!” before getting off to beat the shit out of some rockers, or whatever the bloods were fighting against in the 1980s. I’m pretty sure it was rockers.
The only group that comes to mind that maintains any sort of vocal pride these days (without being affiliated with a sports team or a cabin at summer camp) is the Nerds. It seems like we (I’m wearing the colors of this gang) are unafraid in this social climate to loudly call ourselves what we are. And you know what? That makes us cool. Because if it weren’t for the Nerds, there’d be no YouTube and no Quadrophenia clip and thus no original mods, and worse yet, i’d probably have to join a gang called the Beards and no one’s really afraid of the Beards.
20-Nov-2007 at 1:11 pm
Well even the word “hipster” is dubious and by no means new… Kerouac used it in On the Road to denote “college kids” and “coffee shop faggots”. The hippies (source: my dad) used that term for Kerouac and his ilk (the Beatniks, throwing in the requisite irony). Now it’s a term used to describe someone as fashionable and trendy; wearing clothes explicitly created for and sold to that subculture (if you will) in today’s consumer oriented society.
But is it really “today’s” society that’s consumer oriented? Hunter S. Thompson goes on and on about the commodification of hippies not four years after the movement started…
And now the nerds, the geeks (but not the dorks). Are they really wearing explicit and primary colors? Is there a pride to be found in their ostracism, as was the case for the original greasers, gangbangers and artists, or are they merely yuppies, repackaged and dressed-up for the Oughts?
20-Nov-2007 at 2:24 pm
NoFX’s ‘the brews’ ;)