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- Volume 10, Issue 1, 2021
Punk & Post-Punk - Volume 10, Issue 1, 2021
Volume 10, Issue 1, 2021
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Putting the ‘punk’ back into pop-punk: Analysing presentations of deviance in pop-punk music
Authors: Justus Grebe and Robert A. WinklerWriting on pop-punk, the melodic branch of punk that rose to fame in the mid-to-late-1990s, usually centres on the pop aspect of the genre: its popularity, polished sound and commercialization. Defining punk as a culture of deviance, this article in contrast examines the punk aspect of pop-punk by analysing the ways deviance is presented in the music videos ‘All the Small Things’ by blink-182, ‘In Too Deep’ by Sum 41, and ‘Original Prankster’ by the Offspring, all released at the turn of the millennium. Understanding music videos as media advertising a song, an album and an artist and analysing the interplay of visuals, music and lyrics therein, we argue that blink-182 and Sum 41 present themselves as deviant by staging a notion of authenticity, ridiculing mainstream pop and appropriating the ‘prankster’ stereotype, while the Offspring take a more nuanced stance on the matter of pranking. Concluding, we attribute this difference to the generational gap between the bands and briefly identify the different waves of pop-punk.
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From scene films to scene videos: Communities documenting communities
More LessThe activity of local music scenes has at times been documented by members of those communities in films that differ from commercial audio-visual products in their mode of production, their aesthetics and the way they represent the reality of musical activities. The collaborative character of local scenes and the DIY ethos of many of them help shape these works, where artistic intentions and experimentation coexist with their use for self-learning or the construction of personal memories. This article identifies the features of these scene films, both in documentary and fiction, and explores how technological changes and the digital age have influenced them.
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Revisiting early punk cinema
More LessThis article outlines the main discussions around punk aesthetics and the culture of commodification, tracing the methods of punk's canonization back to the two early films that have been considered within the documentary genre and described as ‘transparent’ mainly due to their low-budget conditions: The Punk Rock Movie (Don Letts, 1978) and The Blank Generation (Amos Poe and Ivan Král, 1976). As this ‘punk cinema’ canon stems from a larger standardization of punk history, this article firstly presents the criticisms around the dominant narratives in the discourse around punk and the role of subjectivity in their writing. Drawing from deconstructive perspectives that give room to think about the relationship between punk and representation beyond the canon, I look at the ignored aspects of early punk cinema that involve a reliance on the cinematic referential codes of the heteronormative gaze, echoing the media sensationalism of the time. The Punk Rock Movie’s overlooked cinematic engagement with the media representations of punk and The Blank Generation’s approximation to cinema verité are both analysed in relation to how they textually engage with the ‘immediacy’ of the environment. In this analysis, the abundance of concert and archive footage comes across as an overriding effect in the reception of the two films. Expanding on Stacy Thompson’s adoption of Roland Barthes’s textual analysis in theorizing punk cinema, this article reconnects with what is actually ‘self-reflexive’ about these films as well as aiming to uncover how their overshadowing sense of transparency is constructed.
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‘A series of images against you and me’: Richey Edwards’ portrayal of the body in Journal For Plague Lovers
More Less‘It is at the level of the body that we proceed’ (David Foster Wallace, The Pale King). Although there has been critical analysis of Richey Edwards’ lyrics on the Manic Street Preachers 1994 post-punk album The Holy Bible, there has been little analysis of his final published lyrics from the folder that Edwards left prior to his disappearance, as used for the 2009 album Journal For Plague Lovers (JFPL). As Wodkte (2016) states in her chapter in Triptych: Three Studies of Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible, ‘JFPL uses the body and skin as texts of difficult knowledge and abjection’. Over the course of JFPL’s lyrics, the human form is dissected, distorted and eventually the physical envelope is ruptured. The narrative offered by each album track is considered in order to examine this. This article expands on the small number of previous analyses of Edwards’ lyrics in two ways: (1) it contrasts JFPL to Giacomo Botta’s (2009) model for understanding modes of artistic output (considering textscapes, soundscapes and landscapes); and (2) this article builds on applications of Greenblatt’s (1983) concept of ‘self-fashioning’ in relation to JFPL. The article concludes that in Edwards’ lyrics, a number of metaphors reconfigure the malleability of the physical body and expand the concept of how self-fashioning can be applied in relation to it.
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‘The strange brotherhood of the blue ship’: Albert Camus and Justin Sullivan’s philosophy of measure
By Joanna RośIn their texts, Albert Camus and Justin Sullivan describe how rebels who get carried away with their revolutionary zeal lose touch with the original basis of their rebellion. They emphasize that a failure to achieve measure results in excess and disproportion, destroying the fields of tension upon which human existence and rebellion depend. Through their spirit of moderation and their critique of the hubristic narratives of European modernity and postmodernity, they offer a constructive view of human nature, a positive vision of dialogical life in communion and the alternative utopian energy needed to reinvent a human sociopolitical order. This article presents a comparative analysis of Albert Camus’s philosophy and the ethos contained in Justin Sullivan’s lyrics. In doing so, it suggests that these two writers embrace a coherent tradition of ethical thinking informed by anarchist philosophy.
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Manifesting desire and anarchy as method: The problem of Inside Pussy Riot
By Aylwyn WalshMy aim is to consider how anarchy reads and resists punitive regimes in performance, particularly in ‘immersive performance’. Punk troupe Pussy Riot forms a starting point, via Riot Days in 2017–18, with a sustained consideration on Inside Pussy Riot at the Saatchi Gallery in 2017, produced by Les Enfants Terrible. I concentrate on claims for authenticity that seem to lend theatre and performance legitimacy in relation to social change, to critique theatrical work with claims to producing agency, legitimizing hope for social transformation that is predicated on an ‘empowered’ spectator-participant. In the wake of these concerns, questions that bleed through this material relate to the limits of participation in performance and how and whether representations serve to dismantle state institutions. I consider whether the force of replications of cells, yards or gulags enables or disintegrates any activist, anarchist potential in performance. I take a wide-ranging view of anarchism beyond political theory to consider anarchism modelled in performance terms. Building from the example of Pussy Riot, the article defines performance critique through desire and anarchism, ‘manifesting desire’ or ‘anarchy as method’.
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Stay punk!! Stay free!! Subcultural identity, resistance and Covid-19 in northern Japan
More LessPunks have been a feature of subcultural scenes in Japan since as early as 1977. One of the main hubs of punk and hardcore activity outside of Tokyo is Sapporo, where an eclectic mix of both domestic and international influences has informed the growth and maintenance of a broad and inclusive community. Here, ‘punk’ and ‘hardcore’, rather than being seen as different, are considered to be just two points on a wide spectrum of ‘punkness’. In a country often described as culturally conservative, northern Japan’s punk and hardcore subculturalists provide an opportunity to reassess ideas of subcultural resistance. Through their everyday practice of resistance, which is simultaneously spectacular, yet unrecognized as resistance, the punk community in Sapporo reject the ‘salaryman’, as a symbol of Japanese ‘national character’. This article comprises an ethnographic study of the punk and hardcore community in Sapporo, looks at what holds this eclectic community together and suggests the concept of ‘everyday resistance’ as a framework for further study. The current Covid-19 global crisis has brought unprecedented challenges – as it has to communities all over the world – but has provided an opportunity to see how a community’s everyday practice inform and shape responses to emergency situations.
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The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, Paul Gorman (2020)
More LessReview of: The Life and Times of Malcolm McLaren, Paul Gorman (2020)
London: Constable, 855 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-47212-109-7, h/bk, £25
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What Is Post-punk? Genre and Identity in Avant-garde Popular Music, 1977-82, Mimi Haddon (2020)
More LessReview of: What Is Post-punk? Genre and Identity in Avant-garde Popular Music, 1977-82, Mimi Haddon (2020)
Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 226 pp.,
ISBN 978-0-47212-655-2, h/bk, $70
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Too Old to Die Young: Paranoid Visions, Punk Rock, and Me, Peter Jones (2020)
More LessReview of: Too Old to Die Young: Paranoid Visions, Punk Rock, and Me, Peter Jones (2020)
Dublin: Rotator PM, 295 pp.,
ISBN 978-0-99554-751-3, p/bk, €22
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Punkgirldiaries Blogzine 2, Lene Cortina and Vim Renault (2020)
By Laura WayReview of: Punkgirldiaries Blogzine 2, Lene Cortina and Vim Renault (2020)
Leicester: Punkgirldiaries, 40 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-83802-451-2, p/bk, £10
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Killer Tunes and Screaming Bloody Murder in the Basement of Hell… and Other Stories, Cubesville (2020)
By Gregory BullReview of: Killer Tunes and Screaming Bloody Murder in the Basement of Hell… and Other Stories, Cubesville (2020)
Manchester: Cubesville Press, 124 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-83808-350-2, p/bk, £4.97
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Mala Hierba: El Surgimiento Del Punk En El Barrio Castilla, Medellín, Carlos Alberto David Bravo (2019)
More LessReview of: Mala Hierba: El Surgimiento Del Punk En El Barrio Castilla, Medellín, Carlos Alberto David Bravo (2019)
Bogotá: La Valija de Fuego, 382 pp.,
ISBN 978-9-58486-250-1, h/bk or p/bk, COL$42,000
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Shellshock Rock: Alternative Blasts from Northern Ireland 1977–1984, 3CD and DVD box set, Various Artists
By Russ BestleyReview of: Shellshock Rock: Alternative Blasts from Northern Ireland 1977–1984, 3CD and DVD box set, Various Artists
London: Cherry Red, £24.99
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