3.5b Thinking about Subcultures
Early on, writers on subcultures discovered that youth were particularly innovative borrowers from their "parent culture," ascribing new meanings and uses to pre-existing symbols, words, and fashions. The British punks, for example, took the swastika not as a sign of "Aryan superiority" but as a rejection of their parents' values and lifestyles: they chose this particular symbol because they were children of the generation which had defended Great Britain against the Nazis. The Goths constructed their subculture through borrowings from Victorian horror literature. Within a subculture, symbols, gestures, words, or fashions serve a double purpose: on the one hand, they signal the connections between those inside the community, allowing them a way to recognize each other and to express their shared values and meanings; on the other hand, they distinguish the members of a subculture from the general population.
At first glance, it is easy to see their passionate response to American popular culture but one needs to look more closely to see the ways that those influences have been reabsorbed back into more distinctly Japanese cultural practices. For one thing, this is a highly hierarchical culture with many rituals designed to insure discipline within the rank and file as well as respect for the most esteemed members. In this case, the leader of the pack is the only one allowed to wear a red jacket – an insignia of rank based on the red jacket which James Dean wore in Rebel Without a Cause. In their cultural mythology, the only person more powerful than Elvis is Jimmy Dean.
For another, there is the gender segregation of the group. The participants are overwhelmingly but not exclusively male. So, what does in mean in a society like Japan which has a strong tradition of gender segregation that there are women who dress in Elvis drag and dance with all of these muscular guys in the park. How might the fantasies provided by American popular culture allow them to escape constraints on gender performance in their own country?
All of this is to say that some of what distinguishes this group as a subculture (their dance style, clothing, rituals, "swagger") is visible in the video; much of what links them together is less clear on the surface and has to do with the language they use, the identities they construct, the rituals they perform, and the values they express through these spectacular performances. Why, for example, do they return regularly to this same location, which is where, by some accounts, members of this subculture have gathered for several decades?
Subcultures are elective in the sense that their members choose to participate, often opting out of other identities available to them by virtue of their birthright; increasingly, these elective cultural identities crisscross other notions of racial, ethnic, or religious heritage. For many young people, choosing to embrace a subculture signals a move towards greater autonomy from their parents, though participation in subcultures may also become the source of intense conflict between youth and adults. Some recent work on subcultures has argued that the term may have outlived its usefulness in so far as it is defined in opposition to "mainstream culture” (Bennett & Kahn-Harris 2004) They argue that as the mainstream has fragmented, breaking down to a series of niches and subcultures, there may no longer be a center against which these new cultural communities define themselves. Becoming a member of a subculture may have less to do with breaking with parent culture and more to do with finding a group within which one feels "at home." Street gangs represent one such "tribal affiliation," one way of forging a community which is more powerful than its individual members, though in doing so, the gang members also often are pushed outside of the law and often outside the family.
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