In Thursday’s class we did not get to the closing slides of the Hebdige powerpoint of all the different kinds of body art which I think we should have. I just thought of that because of an experience I had on Saturday. I was in a Five Guys restaurant having lunch and while I was eating I saw this girl walk in and everyone else dining there looked at her. It was probably because this high-school aged girl had a huge black Mohawk over a foot in height. I had thought to myself how ironic that was considering our class all about subcultures from Thursday. People were looking more at her hair than the picture of Ozzy Osbourne biting the head off of a bat on her black t-shirt.
Our class on postmodernism has showed us what our era or generation is really about, individuality, imagination and expression. The Mohawk was once considered original but now it considered by many to be cliché and very mainstream. This hairstyle is so “mass-produced” so that it doesn’t represent its founding subculture, of Native-Americans, but now is represented in a variety of subcultures such as rock/punk music, extreme sports, anarchists, wrestling, expressive arts and many more.
Volosinov argues that sign is the arena of the class struggle. Is a Mohawk a sign in that sense? Since none of the subcultures previously mentioned are associated with a certain class, I don’t think the Mohawk is a sign of the arena of class struggle. I think the Mercedes-Benz vs. GM example does a better job at that. If anything, the Mohawk represents youthful generations as compared to socioeconomic class.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Good post. Looks like you had an aha click moment at five guys.
-Starfish
Post a Comment