Each new pop tribe is first feared,
then mocked and then commodified by the industry it seeks to undermine and by the culture it seeks to transcend.
In the mid 60s, Coach parties toured the Haight Asbury and viewed the Hippies and street people from behind plexiglass, as Exotics in an updating of the 19thC World Tour, condensed and relocated within US borders. Meanwhile the more affluent hippies were doing something comparable in Nepal or Afghanistan, although they did at least get off the bus and talk to people. The ones who stayed home would carry mirrors with which to return the gawps of those coach parties. In early 80s London, several postcard series appeared showing kids in mohawks and studs in front of the Commons or Guardsmen, flipping the bird; "Greetings from London." They were the new Pearly Kings. "Consider yourself part of the furniture"
As representations of these tribes become
more frequent they are reduced to basic signifiers. By now, Hippy is a
necklace and a pair of round specs, Punk is a circled A, Mod – or
the movie spin-off revival versh -a Spitfire decal on a parka. The complexities of Rave are reduced to a Smiley, or just the use of the word "Rave."
Each is launched intact, loaded with
private language and behaviour codes, but an often unclear demarcation; Early Ted
was rooted in a post war appropriation of Edwardian Brit finery, but owed a
share of its swagger to a pre-rock'n'roll America, through cinema depictions of riverboat gambler chic and the exaggerations of Zoot . Punk pillaged Fetishware and Rocker styles in a fusion of transgressive folk devilry. The more photogenic end of Brit Hippy and the Underground indicates a Pre-Raph tendency. Lace and velvet brushes against capes and Victorian militaria in search of Arcadia. Guinevere in Wonderland. Those round specs - Granny Glasses - hinted at the required hinterland of wisdom and unworldliness, preferable to the harder edge provided by the contemporary Harry Palmer Hornrim.* Only the
Modernists of the late 50s - tech-heads, ears wide open, in a constant and exhausting state of self-appraisal and re-invention - can be said to be entirely of their own time.
Once the tribe is in orbit, there is
a jettisoning of much of what got it up there in the first place. Its wit is diluted and coarsened; spokespeople
(men, usually) are promoted and invited to the top tables. Edge
doesn't stand a chance. It vanishes by design, through excessive
handling, through the very processes that aid each new cult's
ascendency to its tabloid demon high-waterline.
That unclear demarcation is now a given; we cheerfully loot the dressing up box, mixing and matching, punk rockers with flowers in our hair.
In a time when images float freely, and yet have greater weight and influence than actual experience, we read each other by means of references, allusions, and allusions to references.
And now of course, nothing goes away. What's in the dressing up box is also in the Retro shops, online and on what remains of the High Street. Retro is now itself an attitude of mind, rather than a step on the way to one.
You are what you adopt.
The contents of the Dressing Up box still reward attention; clues to lineage can be found, bits of arcane cultural salvage can be bolted together and cranked into life, and ridden to more explicit connections which are harder to commodify, and harder to appropriate.
The problem lies in who is doing the digging and what they do with what they find. The Underground, the Punks and the more idealistic of the Ravers were trying to build something. The best of them made their move outside the mainstream. They pulled up alongside it, and boarded. And if they didn't actually take the wheel, they had a positive influence on the direction of travel.
If history, in a post-truth world, can be reduced to images, floating unanchored in uncharted waters, then it can be appropriated and enlisted to any end, by people who really, really want to take the wheel.
* I know, because I have a pair of each.
