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Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory pp 57–78Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Punk Legends: Cultural Representation and Ostension

Part of the Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music book series (PSHSPM)

Abstract

This chapter analyzes two legendary images of punk that circulate prominently in popular media. Although the two images are mutually exclusive and only describe partial aspects of punk as a whole, their broad circulation and investment of audiences in either story have real-life consequences. The chapter therefore holds that researching the images of subcultures should be a central concern for subculture studies.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For example, see J. Davies, ‘The Future of “No Future”: Punk Rock and Postmodern Theory’, Journal of Popular Culture vol. 29 (1996) no. 4, 3–25.

  2. 2.

    A. Bennett, ‘Subcultures or Neo-Tribes? Rethinking the Relationship Between Youth, Style and Musical Taste’, Sociology vol. 33 (1999) no. 3, 599–617.

  3. 3.

    In the interest of informing future research, I emphasize scholarly truth claims in this discussion to understand how it plays a role in this process similar to more frequently criticized accounts from the media.

  4. 4.

    B. Ellis, Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults: Legends We Live (Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 2003), 167.

  5. 5.

    L. Dégh, Legend and Belief (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001).

  6. 6.

    J.H. Brunvand, The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends and their Meanings (New York: Norton, 1981).

  7. 7.

    Dégh, Legend and Belief.

  8. 8.

    W. Bascom, ‘The Forms of Folklore: Prose Narrative’, Journal of American Folklore, vol. 78 (1965) no. 307, 3–20. Outside of folklore, ‘myth’ has taken on a derogatory connotation as a definitively false fable. See D.E. Goldstein, S.A. Grider, and J.B. Thomas, Haunting Experiences: Ghosts in Contemporary Folklore (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2007).

  9. 9.

    L. Dégh and A. Vázsonyi, ‘Does the Word “Dog” Bite? Ostensive Action: A Means of Legend-Telling’, Journal of Folklore Research vol. 20 (1983) no. 1, 5–34.

  10. 10.

    Ibid.

  11. 11.

    J. Best and G. Horiuchi, ‘The Razor Blade in the Apple: The Social Construction of Urban Legends’, Social Problems vol. 32 (1985) no. 5, 488–499.

  12. 12.

    B. Ellis, ‘“Safe” Spooks: New Halloween Traditions in Response to Sadism Legends’ in J. Santino (ed.), Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994), 24–44.

  13. 13.

    Dégh and Vázsonyi, ‘Does the Word “Dog” Bite?’

  14. 14.

    L. McNeil and G. McCain, Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk (London: Grove Press, 1997).

  15. 15.

    R.D. Dixon and F.R. Ingram, ‘The Cultural Diffusion of Punk Rock in the United States’, Popular Music and Society vol. 6 (1979) no. 3, 210–218.

  16. 16.

    P. Lentini, ‘Punk’s Origins: Anglo-American Syncretism’, Journal of Intercultural Studies vol. 4 (2003) no. 2, 154–174.

  17. 17.

    Lentini, ‘Punk’s Origins’, 154.

  18. 18.

    L. Leblanc, Pretty in Punk: Girls’ Gender Resistance in a Boys’ Subculture (New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 2006), 35.

  19. 19.

    D. Clark, ‘The Death and Life of Punk, the Last Subculture’ in D. Muggleton and R. Weinzierl (eds.), The Post-Subcultures Reader (New York: Berg, 2003), 223–236.

  20. 20.

    P.541 in J. Savage, England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1992).

  21. 21.

    J. Pareles, ‘Critic’s Notebook: Is Punk Rock’s Obituary Premature?’, The New York Times, 24 April 1996.

  22. 22.

    Leblanc, Pretty in Punk, 33.

  23. 23.

    See for example M. Diehl, My So-Called Punk: Green Day, Fall Out Boy, The Distillers, Bad Religion. How Neo-Punk Stage-dived into the Mainstream (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2007).

  24. 24.

    See for example J.S. Debies-Carl, ‘Print is Dead: The Promise and Peril of Online Media for Subcultural Resistance’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography vol. 44 (2015) no. 6, 679–708. Indeed, an academic journal devoted exclusively to the study of punk—Punk & Post-Punk—was launched in 2012. See https://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=200/. (accessed 4 September 2018).

  25. 25.

    R. Sabin, ‘Introduction’ in R. Sabin (ed.), Punk Rock: So What? The Cultural Legacy of Punk (New York: Routledge, 1999), 1–13.

  26. 26.

    R.H. Tillman, ‘Punk Rock and the Construction of “Pseudo-Political” Movements’, Popular Music and Society vol. 7 (1980) no. 3, 165–175, 167.

  27. 27.

    A. Burr, ‘The Ideologies of Despair: A Symbolic Interpretation of Punks and Skinheads Usage of Barbiturates’, Social Science & Medicine vol. 19 (1984) no. 9, 929–38, 932.

  28. 28.

    S.W. Baron, ‘Resistance and its Consequences: The Street Culture of Punks’, Youth & Society vol. 21 (1989) no. 2, 207–237, 233.

  29. 29.

    Proletariat, ‘Options’, This is Boston not L.A., Modern Method Records MM 012 (studio album; 1982).

  30. 30.

    Dégh, Legend and Belief.

  31. 31.

    Sabin, ‘Introduction’, 1.

  32. 32.

    Burr, ‘The Ideologies of Despair’, 930.

  33. 33.

    D. Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge 1979), 26.

  34. 34.

    Baron, ‘Resistance and its Consequences’; K.J. Fox, ‘Real Punks and Pretenders: The Social Organization of a Counterculture’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography vol. 16 (1987) no. 3, 344–370.

  35. 35.

    Baron, ‘Resistance and its Consequences’, 215.

  36. 36.

    Fox, ‘Real Punks and Pretenders’, 354.

  37. 37.

    Baron, ‘Resistance and its Consequences’, 220.

  38. 38.

    C. Ranaghan and J.R. Breese, ‘Punks and Crusties: Analysis of the Squatter Community’, Sociological Imagination vol. 40 (2004) no. 1, 31–53.

  39. 39.

    Fox, ‘Real Punks and Pretenders’.

  40. 40.

    Ranaghan and Breese, ‘Punks and Crusties’, 42.

  41. 41.

    Burr, ‘The Ideologies of Despair’, 935.

  42. 42.

    H.G. Levine and S.H. Stumpf, ‘Statements of Fear Through Cultural Symbols: Punk Rock as Reflexive Subculture’, Youth & Society vol. 14 (1983) no. 4, 417–435, 423.

  43. 43.

    Lentini, ‘Punk’s Origins’, 166.

  44. 44.

    L.W. Kennedy and S.W. Baron, ‘Routine Activities and a Subculture of Violence: A Study of Violence on the Street’, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency vol. 30 (1993) no. 1, 88–112, 98–99.

  45. 45.

    Levine and Stumpf, ‘Statements of Fear Through Cultural Symbols’, 422.

  46. 46.

    Burr, ‘The Ideologies of Despair’, 935.

  47. 47.

    McNeil and McCain, Please Kill Me, 269.

  48. 48.

    C. O’Hara, The Philosophy of Punk: More than Noise! (San Francisco: AK Press, 1999), 42.

  49. 49.

    A. Cox (dir), Sid and Nancy (1986).

  50. 50.

    Whether this is actually what happened, appropriately, is itself hotly contested. See, for example, M. Brown, ‘After 30 years, a new take on Sid, Nancy and a punk rock mystery’, The Guardian, 19 January 2009, https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/jan/20/sid-vicious-film. [Accessed on 15 September 2017]. Meanwhile, it seems legends give rise to more legends. The Chelsea hotel, where Nancy’s death occurred, is now reputedly haunted by her ghost as well as that of Sid. See M. Montalvo, ‘Nancy’s Ghost?’, Love Kills, http://sidandnancylovekills.blogspot.com/2012/10/nancys-ghost.html. [Accessed on 15 September 2017].

  51. 51.

    K. Mattson, ‘Did Punk Matter? Analyzing the Practices of a Youth Subculture during the 1980s’, American Studies vol. 42 (2001) no. 1, 69–97, 70.

  52. 52.

    Kennedy and Baron, ‘Routine Activities and a Subculture of Violence’, 97.

  53. 53.

    Burr, ‘The Ideologies of Despair’, 929.

  54. 54.

    Ibid.

  55. 55.

    Staff, ‘L.A. Group Helping Parents of Punkers’, The Spokane Chronicle (28 April 1982), 29.

  56. 56.

    Davies, ‘The Future of “No Future”’.

  57. 57.

    McNeil and McCain, Please Kill Me, 318.

  58. 58.

    Hebdige, Subculture, 27.

  59. 59.

    D. Hinton, ‘In These Times’ (18 January 1978), as quoted in Tillman, ‘Punk Rock and the Construction of “Pseudo-Political” Movements’, 172.

  60. 60.

    Burr, ‘The Ideologies of Despair’, 937.

  61. 61.

    R. Moore, Anarchy in the United States of America: Capitalism, Postmodernity, and Punk Subculture Since the 1970s (Dissertation) (San Diego 2000), 87.

  62. 62.

    M. Kidel, ‘Punk Shop’, The New Statesman, (17 December 1976), as quoted in Levine and Stumpf, ‘Statements of Fear Through Cultural Symbols’, 422.

  63. 63.

    For example, C. O’Hara, The Philosophy of Punk.

  64. 64.

    A. Medhurst, ‘What did I get? Punk, Memory, and Autobiography’ in Sabin, Punk Rock: So What?, 219–231, 224.

  65. 65.

    Clark, ‘The Death and Life of Punk’, 233.

  66. 66.

    D. Clark, ‘The Raw and the Rotten: Punk Cuisine’, Ethnology vol. 43 (2004) no. 1, 19–31, 29.

  67. 67.

    J.S. Debies-Carl, Punk Rock and the Politics of Place: Building a Better Tomorrow (New York: Routledge 2014), 11.

  68. 68.

    O’Hara, The Philosophy of Punk, 27–8, 78.

  69. 69.

    Ranaghan and Breese, ‘Punks and Crusties’, 45.

  70. 70.

    Mattson, ‘Did Punk Matter?’, 75.

  71. 71.

    Lentini, ‘Punk’s Origins’, 156.

  72. 72.

    Davies, ‘The Future of “No Future”’, 22.

  73. 73.

    Moore, Anarchy in the United States of America, 18.

  74. 74.

    Leblanc, Pretty in Punk, 45.

  75. 75.

    Mattson, ‘Did Punk Matter?’, 72.

  76. 76.

    R. Moore, ‘Friends Don’t Let Friends Listen to Corporate Rock: Punk as a Field of Cultural Production’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography vol. 36 (2007) no. 4, 438–474, 439.

  77. 77.

    J.C. Goshert, ‘“Punk” after the Pistols: American Music, Economics, and Politics in the 1980s and 1990s’, Popular Music and Society vol. 24 (2000) no. 1, 85–106, 91.

  78. 78.

    Ibid, 89.

  79. 79.

    Quoted in O’Hara, The Philosophy of Punk, 18.

  80. 80.

    Quoted in Tillman, ‘Punk Rock and the Construction of “Pseudo-Political” Movements’, 167.

  81. 81.

    Leblanc, Pretty in Punk.

  82. 82.

    Goshert, ‘Punk after the Pistols’.

  83. 83.

    Mattson, ‘Did Punk Matter?’.

  84. 84.

    Clark, ‘The Raw and the Rotten’.

  85. 85.

    Mattson, ‘Did Punk Matter?’; Goshert, ‘Punk after the Pistols’.

  86. 86.

    M. Phillipov, ‘Haunted by the Spirit of ’77: Punk Studies and the Persistence of Politics’, Continuum: Journal of Media & Culture vol. 20 (2006) no. 3, 383–393, 386. It should be noted that Phillipov is herself critical of this perspective.

  87. 87.

    Dégh, Legend and Belief.

  88. 88.

    Dégh and Vázsonyi, ‘Does the Word “Dog” Bite?’

  89. 89.

    Levine and Stumpf, ‘Statements of Fear Through Cultural Symbols’.

  90. 90.

    S. Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers (St. Albans, UK: Paladin, 1973).

  91. 91.

    Quoted in D. McLellan, ‘Spikes and Studs: Tipping the Scales Against Heavy Metal, Punk’, The Los Angeles Times, 21 February 1985, http://articles.latimes.com/1985-02-21/news/vw-803_1_punk (accessed: 8 August 2017).

  92. 92.

    Clark, ‘The Death and Life of Punk’, 226.

  93. 93.

    Fox, ‘Real Punks and Pretenders’, 353.

  94. 94.

    Dégh, Legend and Belief.

  95. 95.

    Ellis, Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults.

  96. 96.

    Fox, ‘Real Punks and Pretenders’, 353.

  97. 97.

    Dégh and Vázsonyi, ‘Does the Word “Dog” Bite?’

  98. 98.

    Ellis, Aliens, Ghosts, and Cults.

  99. 99.

    Lentini, ‘Punk’s Origins’, 166.

  100. 100.

    McLellan, ‘Spikes’, no pagination.

  101. 101.

    J.L. Rosenbaum and L. Prinsky, ‘The Presumption of Influence: Recent Responses to Popular Music Subcultures’, Crime & Delinquency vol. 37 (1991) no. 4, 528–535.

  102. 102.

    R.B. Cialdini, Influence: Science and Practice (New York: Pearson 2009).

  103. 103.

    Quoted in Leblanc, Pretty in Punk, 58.

  104. 104.

    Lentini, ‘Punk’s Origins’.

  105. 105.

    Quoted in McNeil and McCain, Please Kill Me, 287.

  106. 106.

    Mattson, ‘Did Punk Matter?’, 88.

  107. 107.

    J. Stark, Punk ’77: An Insider’s Look at the San Francisco Rock n’ Roll Scene, 1977 (Re/Search Publications 2006).

  108. 108.

    Lentini,‘Punk’s Origins’.

  109. 109.

    Sabin, ‘Introduction’, 2.

  110. 110.

    Best and Horiuchi, ‘The Razor Blade in the Apple’.

  111. 111.

    J.S. Debies-Carl, ‘Are the Kids Alright? A Critique and Agenda for Taking Youth Cultures Seriously’, Social Science Information vol. 55 (2013) no. 1, 110–133.

  112. 112.

    Dégh and Vázsonyi, ‘Does the Word “Dog” Bite?’

  113. 113.

    Ellis, ‘“Safe” Spooks.’

  114. 114.

    Leblanc, Pretty in Punk, 46.

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  1. University of New Haven, West Haven, CT, USA

    Jeffrey S. Debies-Carl

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  1. Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Bart van der Steen

  2. Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Thierry P.F. Verburgh

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Debies-Carl, J.S. (2020). Punk Legends: Cultural Representation and Ostension. In: van der Steen, B., Verburgh, T. (eds) Researching Subcultures, Myth and Memory. Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41909-7_4

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