History of modern Western subcultures

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The 20th century saw the rise and fall of many

20th century

Fin de siècle

In the early part of the 20th century, subcultures were mostly informal groupings of like-minded individuals with the same views or lifestyle. The

World War I

After the

In the 1920s, American

The German nudist movement gained prominence in the 1920s, but was suppressed during the Nazi Gleichschaltung after Adolf Hitler came to power. Social nudism in the form of private clubs and campgrounds first appeared in the United States in the 1930s. In Canada, it first appeared in British Columbia about 1939 and in Ontario nine years later.

In the art world, Surrealism was attempting to shock the world with their games and bizarre behavior. The Surrealists were at one and the same time a serious art movement and a parody of other art forms and political movements. Surrealism had been developed by André Breton and others from the Dada movement. Based in several European countries, Surrealism was destined for trouble when the Nazis came to power. Subcultures and "degenerate art" were almost completely stamped out and replaced by the Hitler Youth.

In North America, the Great Depression caused widespread unemployment and poverty, and a consequent malaise among adolescents that found its expression in urban youth gangs—the so-called "dead end kids." The dead end kid phenomenon was fictionalized on the stage and screen where it became a popular image with which people could identify. Films featuring the Dead End Kids, East Side Kids, Little Tough Guys etc. were popular from the 1930s to the 1950s. The genre also found its expression in the kid gang comic book stories of Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, including the Boy Commandos and Newsboy Legion features.

The Dust Bowl disaster forced large numbers of rural Americans from Oklahoma and elsewhere to move their entire families to survive. They were labeled as "Okies" and treated poorly by the authorities in other states. Their refugee status was recorded in folk songs (including many by Woody Guthrie), as well as John Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath, and the film adaptation starring Henry Fonda.

1940s

Avant-garde artists like Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp and Marc Chagall fled Europe following the outbreak of World War II. These artists arrived in the United States, where a subculture of surrealism and avant-garde experimentation developed in New York City, becoming the new centre of the art world.

American fashion remained gangster orientated, with gangs gravitating around

The entry of the United States into World War II was heralded by new legislation making zoot suits illegal due to the extra cloth required. In June 1943, white American servicemen stationed in Los Angeles rampaged through Mexican American neighborhoods, attacking young people wearing the suits and often stripping them, in what has become known as the Zoot Suit Riots. The riots in Los Angeles were part of a nationwide phenomenon of urban disturbances arising out of wartime tensions exacerbating longstanding racial discrimination in America. The Zoot Suit Riots were unique in that the fashions of the largely Mexican American (and some white and African-American) victims made them the target of white servicemen stationed in the city, many of whom were from southern white towns.

In Europe,

In 1947, Jack Kerouac made an epic journey across America, which he would later describe in his novel, On the Road. In the same year, there was an incident involving a motorcycle gang at Hollister, California, and Harper's Magazine, published a story about it. In 1948, the Hells Angels formed in Fontana, California. The Hells Angels began as a motorcycle club looking for excitement in the dull times after the end of the war and became notorious as time passed. Motorcycle gangs in general began to hit the headlines. In 1953, the film, The Wild One, was released starring Marlon Brando.

1950s

The Existentialists had a profound influence upon subcultural development.

Jazz culture was transformed, by way of

From the 1950s onward society noticed an increase in street

British youth divided into factions. There were the modern jazz kids, the trad jazz kids, the rock and roll teenagers and the skiffle craze. Coffee bars were a meeting place for all the types of youth and the coolest ones were said to be in Soho, London.

In Britain, the political side of the Beat Generation was the

Teenage music and subculture was parodied in the 1957 play (and 1962 movie) The Music Man, particularly in the song "Ya Got Trouble".

In the United States and Australia, Hawaiian-influenced surfing was the new youth sport. A whole subculture grew around the sport and the associated parties, clothes, speech patterns and music. During the same time-frame skateboard riding developed as a parallel lifestyle to wave riding. Both forms of board riding continued throughout the remainder of the century and into the next. From these two sports young people learned to provide their own social structure within which they could display skills and excellence.

In the Congo Free State (now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo), a youth subculture known as the Bills flourished, taking Western movies and cowboys as their main influence.

In the Netherlands, two youth groups evolved in big cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht. One group, the Nozems, similar to the British Teds, and another called the Artistiekelingen, who can be compared to the bohemian artists of pre-world-war France. The Nozems spent their time listening to rock and roll music, driving motorcycles through town and picking up ladies while the Artistiekelingen would discuss philosophy, paint, draw and listen to jazz music.

1960s

In the 1960s, the beats (AKA

freaks.

The

far right politics, creating the white power skinhead

scene (despite the fact that the original 1960s skinheads were influenced by black culture).

Disco, which had begun in gay dance clubs, became a significant from about 1975 onward. In some sectors, particularly in the New York City area, where disco had seemingly "taken over" all aspects of youth life, an aggressive counter-disco movement was born. New York area rock radio stations such as WPLJ and WPIX encouraged their listeners to destroy disco records and embrace rock and roll. Musically and lyrically, punk rock was the intentional antithesis of the disco scene, the progressive rock genre and the hippie subculture. Early punks played aggressive, quick-paced three-chord rock and roll songs.

Within the decay of the hippie subculture, some of the remaining branches of bikers progressively turned in

leather culture

of late 1970s and formed a culture on separatism and orthodoxy against mainstream.

In 1976, a hit song "

new age travellers

.

Beginning around 1976, the

The Poison Girls. The Crass Records label was an independent operation, enabling bands with an extremely raw sound to put out records when the major labels might not have bothered with them. Crass also organised gigs around the country for themselves and other bands, and campaigned politically for the anti-nuclear movement

other causes.

Mods made a comeback in the late 1970s as a post-punk mod revival, inspired by The Jam and the British film Quadrophenia.

In 1979, Usenet was created as a medium of communication over the, still very primitive, Internet of the time. The Usenet and the Bulletin board system (BBS) subculture would become increasingly significant over the next few decades.

Also in 1979,

Rumble in the Jungle

. Wemba said:

The Sapeur cult promoted high standards of personal cleanliness, hygiene and smart dress, to a whole generation of youth across Zaire. When I say well-groomed, well-shaven, well-perfumed, it's a propriety that I am insisting on among the young. I don't care about their education, since education always comes first of all from the family.

1980s

Further information: Bristol underground scene, Golden age hip hop, and Second Summer of Love

At the beginning of the 1980s, some of the followers of punk rock became bored^[

time warp.^{[citation needed]} According to the music press at the time,^{[not specific enough to verify}

] the New Romantics identified themselves using a number of alternative terms including "Futurists" and "the cult with no name."

Other punk rock followers took the genre and culture further underground, where it evolved into a faster, harder genre coined as hardcore punk. Along with the hardcore scene came the straight edge subculture. Straight edge is a lifestyle that advocates abstinence in relation to tobacco, alcohol and recreational drug use (especially psychoactive and stimulant drug use), and for some people, in relation to promiscuous sexual behavior.

Other former punks searching for a new direction around 1979 eventually developed into the nucleus of what became the goth subculture. The goths are a subculture of dark dress and gloomy romanticism. Unlike the New Romantics, goth has lasted into the 21st century. In the UK, goth reached its popular peak in the late 1980s.

In American urban environments, a form of street culture using

DJing, graffiti art, and breakdancing. From the early to mid-1980s, poetry culture in a broader sense caught the same kind of energy as rap and so began the first of the poetry slams

. Poetry slamming became an irregular focus for the latest wave of poetry aficionados.

In 1985,

Peace Convoy. The resulting Battle of the Beanfield

was the largest mass civil arrest in English history.

Acid Jazz

and would continue to diversify into the 90s. Rave culture thrived from the mid-80s to the end of the century and beyond.

The Usenet and BBS subculture had developed a subculture which involved its own forms of etiquette and behaviour patterns both social and anti-social and the phenomena of

spamming, flaming etc. The computer subculture was also influenced by fictional subcultures in cyberpunk

literature.

1990s

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (October 2011)

The term

global capitalism. The anti-globalisation protest movement was accompanied by the fair trade

movement.

21st century

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (October 2011)

"The 2010s has seen the rise of subcultures that exist largely or entirely online, as divergent as vaporwave, ASMR, UK drill, and makeup tutorials, but all of them nesting within huge platforms like YouTube or Bandcamp. Something like audio blogs or DIY radio, podcasts have become the focus of new communities. And the slow collapse of a centralising and synchronised common culture has opened up the space for a profusion of micro-scenes, each running on its own timeline. In this flourishing post-geographical world of "local" cultures not tied to location, small is bountiful and significance doesn’t need to be universal to matter."

- Simon Reynolds, [4]

Named in relation to Generation X,

Post Hardcore genre of hardcore punk, changed over the years becoming more mainstream, following the commercial success in early '2000s. The contemporary hipster became prominent in the 2010s. On March 20, 2014, Alexis Petridis, a journalist for the British newspaper The Guardian, claimed that subcultures were rapidly declining, with only Emos and metalheads having any visual significance.^[6]

Throughout the mid to late 2010s, subcultures splintered and merged due to the widespread accessibility of the internet and social media platforms. Many 2010s subcultures drew from previously existing groups - the popular 'e-girl' subculture is seen as a modern spin on mid-2000s scene fashion.[7] As part of their retrospective series on the 2010s, Dazed magazine described the impact of technology on subcultures; "But [the internet] also gave us more; it gave us dozens upon dozens of scenes and movements, only recognisable to the highly trained eye. And the rules became less rigid: you could dress one way, and listen to totally different music."^[8] Modern subcultures include e-girls, Koreaboos, art hoes, hypebeasts, Instagram baddies, soft boys, skaters, and revivals of 1970s-1990s subcultures such as hippies, goths, punks, and grunge.^[9][10][11]

See also

• History of sexuality
• Music history
• Post-industrial society
• Sexuality and gender identity-based cultures
• Subculture & List of subcultures
• Far-right subcultures

References

1. ISBN 141271009X
   .
2. ^ CBC Radio Dispatches, "Revellers and Elegant People", February 10, 2011
3. ^ Emdin, Christopher (Nov 3, 2013). "Pursuing the Pedagogical Potential of the Pillars of Hip-Hop through Sciencemindedness". The International Journal of Critical Pedagogy. 4.
4. ^ "'Streaming has killed the mainstream': the decade that broke popular culture". The Guardian. 28 December 2019. Retrieved 19 October 2020.
5. ^ "Inside the clash of the teen subcultures". smh.com.au. 30 March 2008. Retrieved 22 March 2015.
6. ^ Petridis, Alexis (March 20, 2014). "Youth subcultures: Where Are They Now?". The Guardian. Retrieved September 11, 2014.
7. ^ "E-girls and boys' style is the antidote to the homogenised IG aesthetic". Dazed. 15 July 2019. Retrieved 19 October 2020.
8. ^ "Take our quiz: What weird 2010s subculture were you?". Dazed. 20 December 2019. Retrieved 19 October 2020.
9. ^ "The Most Notable Subcultures of the 2010s". MODA. Retrieved 19 October 2020.
10. ^ "THE TEN MOST INFLUENTIAL SUBCULTURES OF THE DECADE". High Snobiety. Retrieved 19 October 2020.
11. ^ "The iconic subcultures that shaped the 2010s". Hashtag Legend. January 2020. Retrieved 19 October 2020.

Further reading

• This is the Beat Generation by James Campbell
• We are the people our parents warned us against by
  Nicholas Von Hoffman
• Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga by Hunter S. Thompson
• The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
• Mod: A Very British Phenomenon, Rawlings, Terry (2000). London: Omnibus Press.
  ISBN 0-7119-6813-6
  .
• Mods!, Barnes, Richard (1979). London: Eel Pie Publishing Ltd.
  ISBN 0-85965-173-8
  .
• Spirit of '69 - A Skinhead Bible, Marshall, George (1991). Dunoon, Scotland: S.T. Publishing.
  ISBN 1-898927-10-3
  .
• Cante, Richard C. (March 2009). Gay Men and the Forms of Contemporary US Culture. London: Ashgate Publishing.
  ISBN 978-0-7546-7230-2
  .