Subculture and Film - Lecture 5

Dogtown and Z-Boys is a 2001 documentary film directed by Stacy Peralta. Using a mix of film the Zephyr skateboard team shot in the 1970s by Craig Stecyk and more recent interviews, the documentary tells the story of a group of California teenage surfer/skateboarders and their influence on the history of skateboarding (and to a lesser extent surfing) culture. The film is narrated by Sean Penn.

Financed by Vans as Peralta had a deal with them.

A history of the emergence skate culture in the 1970’s- from nerdy kids passtime to subcultural.

Borden argues that the performance of street skating gives the body something to do other than passively stare at advertising surfaces; the movement and action creates an interest in other aspects of the city and in the skaters own physical presence- of being in the city, rather than being walked through it by the architecture etc.

In the quote above he refers to an altered sense of time experienced in skating as  the physical experience is cut up into moves and runs. Rather than the city carrying the body along at it’s own pace whichis dictated by commerce.

The film demonstrates the skills of the Yamakasi, a group of traceurs who battle against injustice in the Paris ghetto. They use parkour to steal from the rich in order to pay off medical bills for a kid injured copying their techniques.

the Yamakasi group deny the differences and say: "parkour, l'art du deplacement, free running, the art of movement... they are all the same thing. They are all movement and they all came from the same place, the same nine guys originally. The only thing that differs is each individual's way of moving".

a documentary first broadcast by Channel 4 about parkour and free running in September 2003, directed by Mike Christie and produced by Optomen Television. It later spawned a sequel, Jump Britain that first aired in January 2005. Both feature documentaries were directed by Mike Christie.

Jump London followed three French traceurs, Sébastien Foucan, Jérôme Ben Aoues, and Johann Vigroux, as they run around many of London's most famous landmarks, including Royal Albert Hall, Shakespeare's Globe Theater, HMS Belfast, and many others.

Your graffiti speaks for you, you are not bound by your identity,

‘a freak can be a king.: you could be four foot tall with four eyes, buck teeth and a lump but if you rocked lines and produced fresh cars, you were king. “Prime” Graphotism, Magazine 3

Mc Robbie and Garber note that The fashion was neat tidy and unthreatening therefore fitted into the school home work routine without attracting attention..

A girl could be a ‘face ‘ without being attached to a boy. Quadrophenia

Short hair, thin frame and unisex nature of the culture meant that attention from cultural commentators begins

Brook clinics make the Pill available in 1964- swinging london

More about belonging to a group identity than individual expression.

Depicts tensions between mods and rockers in 1965 in London and Brighton Bank holiday weekend.

Everything goes wrong for Phil Daniels character Dave when his mum throws hiim out when she finds amphetimeines in the house, the girl he likes finds someone else etc.

The film culminates in the elusive character ‘Face’ played by Sting who drives off the cliff edge, signifying the end of the illusions of youth for Dave.

Feminist authors point out that traditional sex roles prevailed in the hippy subculture eg: earth mother, pre raphaelite mystic, etc.

Similar culture now gone mainstream in the contemporary festival circuit as a right of passage.

an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band. At the height of her career she was known as The Queen of Rock and Roll as well as The Queen of Psychedelic Soul. Rolling Stone magazine ranked Joplin number 46 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time in 2004,[1] and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.

Overdose of herioin and alcohol in 1970 . Joplin is used a s figure who represents a warning against overindulgence in subculture.

However Mc Robbie and Garber point out that this remains the decade in which feminism is born.

I would like to suggest the Riot Grrl movement as a genuine feminine/feminist subculture in that it is lead, formed and used by women.

Third wave feminism

Riot grrrl bands often address issues such as rape, domestic abuse, sexuality, racism, and female empowerment.

Bikini Kill Joan Jett and Bikini Kill's Kathleen Hanna on stage and angry in 1994. Photograph: Ebet Roberts/Redferns

Team Dresch 1994 for Rolling Stone  representing the LGBT community

Donna Dresch was creator of her own fanzine Chainsaw and, in addition to contributing to other zines such as Outpunk and J.D.s, she contributed to and was featured on the cover of issue five of Homocore and appeared in the girl-gang film The Yo-Yo Gang by G.B. Jones.

The neighborhood was one of the most diverse in the nation comprising a population with roughly equal proportions of black, Hispanic, and white residents, along with populations of Vietnamese, Laotians, Indians, and Koreans.[1]

On Sunday evening, May 5, 1991, following a Cinco de Mayo street celebration, in nearby Adams Morgan, Angela Jewell, a rookie Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Department police officer[2] tried to arrest a Salvadorean man for disorderly conduct in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood. Witnesses disputed whether the drunken man came at her with a hunting knife, but the result was that she shot and wounded the man in the chest.

On going issues of police victimisation of the hispanic community.

In addition to a music scene and genre, riot grrrl is also a subculture; zines, the DIY ethic, art, political action, and activism are part of the movement.[2] Riot grrrls are known to hold meetings, start chapters, and support and organize women in music.[3]

During the early 1990s the Seattle/Olympia Washington area had a sophisticated Do it yourself infrastructure.[4] Young women involved in underground music scenes took advantage of this to articulate their feminist thoughts and desires through creating punk-rock fanzines and forming garage bands. The political model of collage-based, photocopied handbills and booklets was already used by the punk movement as a way to activate underground music, leftist politics and alternative (to mainstream) sub-cultures. Many women found that while they identified with a larger, music-oriented subculture, they often had little to no voice in their local scenes, so they took it upon themselves to represent their own interests by making their own fanzines, music and art.