Analysis of
British Post-war Youth Subculture and Punk Cinema Based on CCCS
Introduction
Punk cinema is a subculture movie genre. Like other subcultures, it is considered weird, controversial, non-mainstream, and meets the special needs of niche groups. At the same time, the development of punk cinema follows changes of mainstream film, always wandering between fusion and deviation of Hollywood: on the one hand, punk cinema plays a role of pioneer of all the time, and has inseparable relations with avant-garde, experimental, underground art movement and youth subculture movement; On the other hand, commercial capital looms over its entire production chain (Thompson,2004). punk cinema was revealed at a specific historical period, identified and labeled, which once controlled the public's attention. Since the 21st century, it has become everywhere. It has become a powerful industry like blockbuster movies. So does this mean that the commercial operation of capital has incorporated subcultural resistance? I don't think it's possible to look at this problem with simple binary legislation.
Today, Media consumption mode become fragmentized, miniaturized, individualized. The distinctions between class, race, region and even the intergenerational gradually blurred, Debate of "high eyebrow" and "low eyebrow" gradually replace by a new class "no eyebrow". The boundary between mainstream culture and subculture is increasingly digesting. The "postmodern supermarket", as Bill Osgerby puts it, may best describe this fact. In the era of subculture, punk cinema has been a symbol of diversity popular taste, not only that, but it also became a particular marketing and promotional strategies, produce huge economic efficiency, and even changing the mainstream film production and distribution pattern.
This dissertation aims precisely to examine how incorporation and excorporation of subculture are reflected in development of punk cinema. The main research questions which will be addressed are: whether the Punk Cinema could be regarded as the ritual resistance to ‘anti-genre’? Or the ‘new genre’ wavering between the self construction and ‘being incorporated’? what is the development direction of punk cinema with the opportunity and challenge brought by Internet and new media? What is the destiny of subculture, incorporation or excorporation?
There are many studies has been devoted to the area of subculture, especially British post-war youth culture and American youth culture in field of sociology, cultural studies and psychology. However, comparatively studies seldom consider the relation of these subculture to cinema. A few exceptions worth mentioning can be studies of Marchetti, Gina. F(1982) and Stacy Thompson(2004). Marchetti, Gina. F classified films into three categories with a punk culture: commercial films, documentaries as well as avant-garde films. Her analysis on the influence of British culture and American on punk film are significant in considering early stage of punk cinema. Stacy Thompson analyzed DIY film Rude Boy and commercial studio film Fight Club by acknowledging a broader definition of punk cinema. Nevertheless, there is still a need for researching relationship between youth subculture and punk cinema. After all, along with the development of Internet and new media, there has been a huge change in the way films are produced and spread. Youth subculture present in punk cinema within more diverse ways.
Begin with definition of youth subculture, this research will firstly explain what is youth culture and why subculture is regarded as “abnormal fracture”. In and effort to explore the relationship between subculture and film, I will analyze the cultural connotations revealed by the film art. In particular, I will discuss independent films’ identity as media spokesmen of subculture. Then there will be theoretical framework from two aspects. One is CCCS Subcultural Studies, the other is Punk cinemas studies. Both aspects I will give them a generalization of scholars’ opinions and their limitations. Literature review of CCCS Subcultural Studies can be roughly classified into three categories: The first category is the readers, mainly the collected papers of cultural research including subculture. The second category is works of cultural studies. At the same time of making a comprehensive discourse of the cultural studies, these works have also reviewed the subcultural studies. Another category of works on subcultural theory is about Hall's research. And Literature review of Punk cinemas will mainly focus on academic works from Marchetti, Gina F(1982) and Stacy Thompson(2004) as I mentioned before. Methodological Approaches I plan to adopt is text analysis. Target text will mainly be subculture discussion in CCCS publications, dissertation about punk cinema and punk cinema itself. I will conduct it in five parts: A Subcultural Investigation of Punk Cinema Based on CCCS; New Changes of the Subculture and Punk Cinema; Text Analysis: Cross-media Narration of The Blair Witch Project; Incorporation of Subculture; Subculture Capital and Excorporation. Finally, a conclusion will be given to sum up the research achievement I acquired and the insufficient I need to remedy.
Background information
1. Definition of youth subculture
In post-war Britain, groups of young people are united on the basis of class origins, with working-class and middle-class youngsters forming their distinctive groups. Young people in the same group often share their beliefs, values and attitudes. Members of a particular group will often signal their membership through a distinctive and symbolic use of style, which consists of clothing, music- called the symbols (Smith,1976).
As far as the elements and features of a culture are concerned, the group formed by the young people can be called a culture. Young people often find ways to express themselves, which are different to the generally accepted culture of their community, and the various methods by which they express themselves and associate are known as youth culture (Jo,2016).
Youth culture, in sociology, also refers to the collective cultural practices of groups of young people, and such practices set these groups apart from the dominant or “mainstream” society. Because the beliefs and values of young people are not the mere repetition of their parents and are hard to be understood by the parental society, youth culture is a subculture.
Subculture, also known as the small culture, collective culture or side culture, refers to the unique beliefs, values and life habits of the secondary group of a certain cultural group and those non-mainstream, local cultural phenomena that are opposite to the main culture (Yinger, 1960). It is a branch of the whole culture. It means the unique culture in various regions and groups due to various social and natural factors. In addition, it refers to the unique concept and way of life of a region or a group under the main cultural or comprehensive cultural background. A kind of subculture not only contains the values and concepts interlinked to the main culture, but also has its own unique values and ideas (Torode and Hebdige,1981). And these values scatter among the dominant cultures. The subculture is a relative concept, a secondary culture of the general culture.
The innate “holiness and inviolability” (Torode and Hebdige,1981) of the "mainstream culture” language is closely related to the concept of social order. Under such cultural orientation, there may be many taboos. The "transparency" of those established, acceptable and non-mainstream fracture discourse is also guaranteed. Then the appealing subculture convey the prohibited contents in the forbidden form, so it tends to be defined as “abnormality” significantly(Greener and Hollands, 2006). However, the subculture is not a "privilege", but represents that the scattered fragments of society have been pieced together (Greener and Hollands, 2006). It shows the "elements" which have strong sense of place and exist in some social groups but are not accepted by common people. These elements gain emotional resonance in “signifying practices” (Terpstra, 2006).
The subculture was once regarded as "noise" in the development process(Greener and Hollands, 2006). Contrary to the "sound" in the established traditional ideology, it "disturbs” the regulated order of the reproduction of real events and phenomena in the media(Greener and Hollands, 2006). Because of this, we should not neglect and underestimate its unique autonomy and independence and the signifying power of the subculture with strong resistance and fracture.
2. The subcultural connotations revealed by the film art
The film art is a kind of cultural behavior. The mass media with culture dissemination as its duty has become an essential representative social constitution for the cultural hegemony of various countries in the world. As the media that bears and spreads elite culture and popular culture in the current mass media audio-visual media, the film art is still the core form and power of cultural communication.
Throughout the current society, the premise of the absolute discourse control power of the media is that the media itself is one of the core powers of the culture. Civilization has conflicts and the culture has misreading to a certain extent. As a universal language, the audio and video language records the representative symbols that constantly appear in the development process of a nation and a country(B,T,1991). And it controls and freely expresses the discourse power and cultural consciousness of national culture.
Through the “cutting and recombination” of different “elements” in the social system, the film art further conveys and reflects the relationship between human and society and people’s reflection on themselves through signifying practices. The film artists explicitly or implicitly convey their “subterranean value” and potential targets through the special and vivid collage technique, montage(Jo, 2016). Sometimes, these goals are disruptive. Regardless how strange" or “disharmonious” these expressions are, they express and record the common vocabulary in the current social situation with a widely used vocabulary(Jo, 2016).
The metaphor of he audio-visual language is appropriate for subculture members and their opponents. As a spectacle existence, it represents the holistic syndrome of contemporary problems successfully. For subculture, it explains why the subculture has the ability to attract new member and cause the anger and even rage of some another people. The appearance of subculture in the movies makes some people feel moral panic, such as the appearance of punk after the World War II (Gina F, 1982). When we watch a movie, we must be put into the context. If we separate them, it will cause the destruction on the cohesion of the film structure (Jo, 2016). For the critics with deconstruction view, whether the art expression or entertainment or commercial media all has a close relationship with the destruction of inappropriate codes and the construction of new codes. In other words, the aesthetic expression refers to the communication of the ideas that have not been previously described, nuance and complexity(Thompson, 2004). Once the aesthetic system is generally understood as a standard, art works will tend to go beyond this standard, explore and modify the standard that they are using.
The development of the film is driven by the repeated "times" and "wave", so the development process is a continuous self-examination and innovation process. With the rapid change of audio-visual technology, the advent and popularization of DV, films has developed towards the direction of "private image". But compared to the people watching movies, the filmmakers are becoming less(Thompson, 2004). They are basically in a system. Most of these people once accepted professional training in film and they have higher literacy and far more professional knowledge than ordinary people. These people gradually form a group and they exchange their experience and ideas with the use of the jargon of the group.
However, independent films appear in the diversified environment. The filmmakers can pay attention to the world that they want to focus on, watch the group system that they want to describe and infuse these thinking, doubts, expectations or complete or broken self-consciousness into their works. So a so-called “inner circulation” system is formed: these works can only be understood and accepted by a small fixed social group (Young, 1985). They watch the group sensitively for a long term, so they are familiar with the vocabulary in the system. They use the “mysterious” symbols one by one to exchange and enjoy the secret pleasure.
With the expansion of new social space in the late 1990s, more "strangers" joined the system and a more diverse new system was born. Those so-called "strangers" are the people with different habitual thinking(Young, 1985). They have their own benefits, requirements, interests and ideas. They were no longer a small piece of a cloth, but a fully independent individual. They came from different fields and groups, they also obtained more right to speak and release space. And they converted the myth and confusion for the whole society into a kind of "solemn symbol" and launched them through a kind of "unconventional" and “arbitrary” changing pattern (Bergesen, 2016). Some new vocabulary appeared in the public view, such as independent films, underground movies, cult, avant-garde art movies, etc. When these works entered the market, unsurprisingly, they suffered from cold reception and even strong opposition just like all new forces (Bergesen, 2016). The subcultural symbols revealed in these works had never appeared in front of the public in the past, so their appearance naturally caused the resentment and complaints of some conventional mainstream cultural groups and these people often revealed a strong moral tone. “It seems that the society often experiences periodic moral panic”. But due to the "rampage" and "horrible" characteristics, it caused the vibration of the whole social system in the field of public cultural awareness (Bergesen, 2016). The works poke at the sensitive points of the established moral model lightly or heavily like a chicken feather.
The main characteristics of ‘mainstream culture’ is a putative natural tendency and a tendency that uses ‘normalization’ to replace the historical form. It always tends to transforms the reality of the world into a world image and the image behaves as the thing that constructed by the obvious laws of natural order. The film group on behalf of the independent film uses the mass communication means to emphasize the sense of presence of subculture group in the form of popular art, keenly interprets the social and cultural phenomenon, consciously builds new ideology or expands the inherent ideology of the social system. It communicates and transmits a different social order, so as to deny the so-called "obvious law of natural order" (Bergesen, 2016). through subverting some traditional usages, it creatively changes the original position and context, and strives for the due discourse power.
Theoretical Framework
1. CCCS Subcultural Studies
From the collected English research materials nowadays, there is no published research monograph on the Birmingham youth subculture theory at home and abroad. The relevant research is mainly scattered in the anthology introduction and cultural research works on subcultures and cultural studies. Due to the different starting point, the introduction and commentary on Birmingham subcultural theories in these writings have particular emphasis. These works can be roughly classified into three categories:
The first category is the readers, mainly the collected papers of cultural research including subculture. The anthologies of Storley's What is Culture Research, Cultural Theory And Popular Culture Reading, Grossberg 's Cultural Studies and During’s Cultural Studies Reader contain a number of classic papers including the Birmingham subcultural studies, and some also short evaluations. The most comprehensive reading of the subculture selections is Subcultural Reader collaborated by Kane Gilde and Sarah Thornton, which provides invaluable information on many Birmingham subcultural theories, and makes a general introduction and criticism on the subcultural research and Birmingham school youth subculture research in the introduction and the preface of each chapter. Due to the restrictions of the selection, this kind of works may have us understand many relevant works of youth subcultures, while the focus is the panorama macro presentation of relevant themes, without elaborated discourse on the characteristics of Birmingham's subculture theory.
The second category is works of cultural studies. At the same time of making a comprehensive discourse of the cultural studies, these works have also reviewed the subcultural studies. The historical development and profile of "subcultural studies" have been explored in Chris.
Barker's Cultural Studies: Theory and Practice and Elaine Baldwin's Introduction to Cultural Studies. As a member of the British cultural studies, Turner has a clear comment on the development of Birmingham cultural studies in British Cultural Studies: An Introduction. In Storey's An Introduction to Cultural Theory and Popular Culture, the focus is the relationship between youth subculture and consumption culture, and the introduction mainly lies in Hebdige and the symbolic analysis of subculture styles. In Post-War British Cultural Marxism, Dworkin studied the rise of the British New Left and cultural studies as well as the profile of adolescent subculture research, made a detailed discussion of topics including the tradition of cultural Marxism in Britain, the crisis of the Communist Party of Great Britain and Marxism study,
As well as the role of British historians in the study of Marxism, and made a more comprehensive revelation on the background of the subculture theory of the Birmingham School. This kind of works has provided us the historical and cultural contexts of the subculture theory of the Birmingham School, conducted the necessary review on its ideological resources, and meanwhile made a certain reflection on its subculture theory.
Another category of works on subcultural theory is about Hall's research. Since 1996, there have been increasing more researches on the key position for cultural studies overseas – also the master soul of the teenage subcultural theory of the Birmingham School – Hall, and complete collected papers by Hall, Hall's study collection and the works in tribute to Hall have occurred subsequently. There has been four consecutive academic commentary of Hall. Hall’s critical biography has enabled us to gain a deeper understanding of the change in Hall's ideological tracks, and provided many valuable research results for the study of the youth subcultural theory of the Birmingham School.
Certain important issues on the subcultural theory of the Birmingham School have been blank both at home and abroad, significant scopes including the resistance and incorporation of subcultural styles have not been clearly collated and got the convincing interpretation. Subcultural styles and class factors have not been considered together. Another example, people tend to focus only on the "resistance theory" from the subcultural theory of the Birmingham School, but ignore that there is equally excellent "incorporation theory" of subcultural styles of the Birmingham School beside the "resistance theory" ,such as Clark's Style and Hebdige’s Subculture: the Meaning of Style, and more importantly, theories of "resistance" and "incorporation" are all obtained through the meticulous interpretation of "style". This point fails to draw enough attention in the current studies. Meanwhile, the foreign research has also been far from the timely and full assessment, sorting and reflection.
2. Punk Cinema Studies
My research got inspiration from Gina Marchetti's studies on the relationship between film and punk that glitter youth subcultures .She put forward the theory that subcultures in film serve as ‘deviancy’ to reaffirm the dominant culture’s ‘normalcy’, which is valuable for future studies about the relationship between subculture and the mainstream (Marchetti, 1982). Three categories of punk film: commercial films, documentaries as well as avant-garde films were firstly be classified by her in her work. Her analysis on the influence of British culture and American on punk film are significant in considering early stage of punk cinema. However, her research stops in 1982, implying that punk movies were taken into consideration after this year., Thompson’s work discusses various forms of punk cinema compared with Marchetti’s work (Tompson, 2004).
More important Thompson tried to supplant the conventional definition of ‘punk cinema’ and argued that movies like Natural Born Killers which adopt sophisticated technology and produced with a processional camera crew with sufficient budget are not supposed to be not be disqualified to excluded from the punk movie genre (Thompson, 2004). The fast pace, elements of violence and irony of this movie seem to share similarities with hundreds of punk songs (Thompson, 2004). Thompson firstly analyzed DIY film Rude Boy with low budget and subsequently interrogates Fight Club by acknowledging a broader definition (David Fincher, 1999). He defines this as commercial film rejecting the Hollywood aesthetic but radically capitulates to it. Michael Kitson also provide a similar consideration that auteur movies led by Jim Jarmusch (Stranger Than Paradise, 1982) as well as Alex Cox (Sid and Nancy, 1986, and Straight to Hell, 1987) also reflect youth power and individual freedom that the punk attempts to offered. Thompson and Kitson’s studies both analyzed both punk narrative film and new punk cinema, which assists me to focus on more perspectives in punk cinemas.
Methodological approaches
The aim of this research is to determine the relationship between British post-war youth subculture and punk cinema. To this end, I based my research on textual analysis of subculture theories of CCCS, punk cinema academic works and punk movie itself.
As one of the important research methods of the Birmingham school, the textual analysis is filled with the rational light of "criticism" and "battle". It Is different from other criticism school, such as the Frankfurt school, political economy school, which focus on macro environment’s influence on micro media operation, and analysis still stays on the simple basis of " The economic base determines superstructure.". The textual analysis of the medium is more like a kind of micro and refinement perspective; it focuses on a variety of media texts themselves (Schrøder, 2007). With integrated use of linguistics, philosophy, political science, literature, textual analysis is committed to revealing the internal power struggle of texts themselves. Because the text is usually a "social construction", hides various social norms and paradigm with "natural appearance"(Schrøder,2007). Textual analysis also reflects a process of "deconstruction", that is jump out of the framework in the text, then question and inquiry. It aims at exploring construction, production and operation of the text, and ultimately determine the various meaning of the text (Cabalin, 2013).
Ideological analysis, discourse analysis and reappearance are three important methods of media textual analysis, independently but closely related. Three methods all stressed we should go beyond various signifiers of text, reveal signified behind the symbol representation (Cabalin, 2013). I will mix use these methods to discuss subculture and punk cinema text contains a different class, gender, species, age, social groups. Among them, ideological analysis can be said to be the most basic and core theory of media textual analysis. I will use it to explain why ‘Punk Style’ was reconsidered as the ‘resistance code’ for the hegemony of capitalism. From it, it can be drawn the reason why Birmingham School adopt methodology which is locating the youth sub-culture in classes, structures and culture. Discourse analysis focus on the basic elements constitute the text, it put the discourse in history, present social cultural and political context. It takes discourse as a kind of externalization of "ideology". And reproduction is more focused on angle and model of how the world shown in the text and the group image. These two methods are used in analyzing new changes of the subculture and punk cinema and cross-media narration of The Blair Witch Project
Due to the impossibility of accessing to most of authors of academic work and producer of punk cinema, my analysis has a risk to fall into my personal point of view because the second understanding of these works are based on my limited experience and knowledge. Nevertheless, I hope objective interpretation of these works can be present by having a comprehensive reference to the opinions of different scholars.
Analysis and Discussion
1. A subcultural investigation of punk cinema based on CCCS
Compared to the art forms as paintings and music, cinema, as ‘the 7th Art’ inevitably generate close relevance to the ‘non-art’ domains as economy and the society, therefore entering the discussion domain of ‘cultural researches’ with the non-personal nature and complicatedness. While under the illustrations from Frankfurt School to the Birmingham School, then to the post-modern theorists as Fredric Jameson, etc., the tension between the elites/public in the depth/flat properties under the view of cultural researches have introduced many classic illustrations as the films are the history symptom and the representations of concepts. Even though the Birmingham School hasn’t laid its focuses on the domain of cinema, their analysis on the ‘sub-culture’, especially the relevant discussions over the ‘Punk Culture’ become the significant basis for the descendents to categorize the Derek Jarman Films and the No-wave Films into the ‘Punk Cinema’. While the traditional theories routine of the Birmingham School were increasingly questioned by the ‘Houxue’ Consciousness and the reference to the concept of ‘Punk Cinema’ only involves the reconsideration for its current form. This becomes a question urging the cinema scholars and cultural scholars to participate in. And from it, we could probe into the dynamic identity and unique value of cinema in the text and context, in the production and acceptance.
1.1 The Punk Cinema as ‘Genre/Anti-genre’: The Theoretical Explanation from Birmingham School to ‘Post-Birmingham’
Punk Cinema, as a symbol of ‘Anti-feudalism’ and ‘Anti-genre’, was used to point out a batch of films expressing the anti-authority and anti-mainstream consciousness tendency with unique techniques in the descriptions of a series of pioneering films of UK and USA in the 1970’s and 1980’s. From it, there generated a number of relevant comments locating their eyesight on ‘sub-culture style’. The common point of them lies in that they hold that: as Punk Cinema maintains a correspondent identifiability on the layer of theme and form, it becomes a ‘categorization’ of ‘Sub-culture Cinema’. With the changes of context since 1970’s and 1980’s, no matter in the domains of film production and consumption, or in the academic context of cinema researches and cultural researches, the Punk Cinema has displayed a not so clear line between Genre and Anti-genre, and the arguments and transfer of the correspondent understanding form is well presented as: the view transfer, arguments and reflections from the Birmingham School to ‘Post-Birmingham’.
The Punk Music Trend, which was originated from the rock music in garage and developed in the ‘Punk Movement’ in the UK, with its non-professional and collage production means and musical style, distinguishes itself from the Arena Rock, the rock music form which was turning professional and systematical and turning its back on the audiences and the social reality (Simonelli, 2002). While the ‘British-style Punk’ emerged in the mid and late 1970’s was used for a tradition-subversive ‘vocalization’ form to disturb the reality by the bands as Sex Pistol, therefore forming the rhythms, lyrics and on-site performance styles with an increasing anti-skills and anti-authority tendency. Therefore, it is the aesthetic aggressiveness and social criticalness represented by the ‘British-style Punk Music’, making it in integration with the ‘Anti-art Features’ as Punk Clothing, etc., which was understood by the Birmingham School, with the representative of Dick Hebdige, as the ‘Resistance through ritual’ by the youth culture for the ‘Britain’s Decline’ in the 1970’s. In Birmingham School’s analysis for the ‘Sub-culture of Punk’, it is not difficult to discover the explanation logic as structuralism and the Gramsci Hegemony Theory in it. Hebdige pointed that the elements as the clothing, magazines and music, etc. of the punk sub-culture makes sense only they are combined together (Torode and Hebdige, 1981). As one of the result of it, the misappropriation and collage of daily commodities, the national logos as the image of the queen and gender symbols as the cosmetics, the ‘transparency’ meaning of single item and the ‘common sense’ of ideological form it refers to are ‘disturbed’ and ‘frustrated’(MOORE, 2004). Punk not only made direct responses to the job-lost issue which was getting serious, the moral standards in transition, the poverty issue and economic sluggish, but also represented the phenomena called as ‘Britain Decline’ in a dramatic way(Jefferson, 1973). ‘Punk Style’, therefore, was reconsidered as the ‘resistance code’ for the hegemony of capitalism. From it, it can be drawn the leading methodology of the Birmingham School, that is, ‘to locate the youth sub-culture in classes, structures and culture’. And the ‘Anti-genre’ meaning tendency of the ‘Punk Cinema’ emerges in this ‘classic’ explanation mode.
Therefore, the ‘punk style’ understood and defined by the Birmingham School is the primary combination between the structuralism which is expressed in the form of rock music and cinema in the sense of ‘Anti-genre’ meaning. In the Night Lunch (1975) and The Blank Generation by Amos Poe, the live show of the punk player becomes the target for which the film probes into and presents, which is the common identical feature of the ‘punk cinema’ in the early period. In the meantime of showing again the punk group and their behaviors to manifest their ‘foreign’ nature, these films have shown the ‘Anti-genre’ and ‘Anti-commerce’ style tendency on the aesthetics and shooting levels. With the means for documentary and the shot application of camera intruding into the dancing scene, the films reject the fiction and fantasy of the plot films, and get rid of the creation of ‘objective perspective’ of the documentaries. The lines between the shooter and the roles in the films are broken, and the gap between the producers and the consumers are filled, from which the ‘anti-commerce’ feature of these low-budget independent films is manifested. And in the film The Punk Rock Movie (1978), the foundation layer for the ‘Punk Cinema’ of the UK, Don Letts, the director who as the fan of punk and one with no shooting experience for a film took the camera himself, to finish this ‘DIY’ film randomly made up by a number of bands’ live shows—with the aesthetic feature of non-narrative and no-skilled ‘anti-genre’ style.
Robert Allen once pointed out that, for over two thousand years, the genre ‘has become a basic principle in the world of literature, which is as necessary as scientists categorizing the plants’ (Allen, 2013). While films, as the ‘seventh art’ shown in the 20th century, its ‘Literary Discourse’ has deeply presented where the impression lies in a society of commodities production and consumption society. Jameson holds that, the literary types of the old pre-capitalism were like the aesthetical ‘contract’ between the cultural producer and some class or public of the same nature, and their vitality. From this fact, the relations between arts and the public are still as a social mechanism and a specific social and interpersonal relation in this or that way, while with ‘arts’ becoming another branch of the commodity production, there emerges another ‘powerful’ ‘literary discourse’ in the public cultural domain. But different from the ‘traditional literary types’, ‘the literary forms and marks of the public culture should be specially understood as the misappropriation and replacement for the old structure, and use them into the repeated context of different natures. The broken or continuous ‘public’ of the public culture should view the same things repeatedly, therefore the literary types structures and marks are urgently needed’, and the ‘public’ confronted by the artists are becoming a virtual ‘public couldn’t be found’ （Jameson, 1990）. As a result, the ‘genre’ not only acts as an ‘aesthetical contract’ between groups, but transferred into the ‘repeated’ mechanism in the consumption society. It is in this sense that the commercial films of Hollywood, with the narrative routine and the duplicating production of story forms, become the typical feature for the ‘genre’ system construction in the public culture (Bywater & Sobchack,1989). From this, we can draw that, to define the ‘Punk Cinema’ on the dimension of Spirit of Punk, then the ‘anti-genre’, apparently, should be the meaning of anarchy in the spirit of punk. Under the influence of the cultural movements as Situationist International, etc., the consumerism feature in the ‘Spectacle Society’—the industrial and aesthetical system of the ‘genre films’ of Hollywood, become the play-imitation and deconstruction target by the punk movement and its ‘trash aesthetics’. Compared with the sub-culture forms as the ‘skinheads’, punk doesn’t entrust and present its pursuits to the ‘landscape’ type and political style some concept and standpoint, instead, it even stresses the destruction and mixing natures of it on the aesthetical style level, therefore making outstanding the ‘anti-genre’ tendency with the characteristics of ‘imagination taking the control’, which is connected to the contextualism. However, just as the cultural and film scholars as Hebdige and Nicholas Rombes pointed out, the punk sub-culture takes confusions with its mark no matter at which time, which was realized through its internal orderliness. The tensions between confusion and order, between fighting and commercialization, between negation and creation are still existing in the core arguments for the punk cinema (Rombes, 2005). From this, it can be drawn that, in the context of ‘Post Birmingham’, whether the Punk Cinema could be regarded as the resistance to ‘anti-genre’ through ritual? Or the ‘new genre’ wavering between the self construction and ‘being incorporated’? These have become the key issue that couldn’t be figured out by the ‘classic Birmingham mode’. While regarding the punk cinema as a dynamic construction within the production and acceptation history field but not the concepts presetting with not the simplified and non-historical ‘punk spirits’ are helpful to help people to reach the effective recognition for the ‘punk cinema’ in the current sense instead of making obscure judgment or rush deconstruction.
1.2 The ‘DIY’ Aesthetics under the ‘Pseudo Modernism’ Context
As the decisive element composing the ‘anti-genre’ style of the punk cinema, the aesthetics features formed under the leadership of DIY Ethic are usually regarded as the film researchers as the significant basis to analyze and use the concept of ‘punk cinema’. As one of the scholars who initiated to write specialized paper to carry out discussions over the ‘punk cinema’, J. Hoberman (2013) hold that out of the response to the ‘no-wave’ punk music in New York, the paper image shot by the ‘no-wave’ filmers use 8mm film, namely the super-8 film, together with music, claims the Anyone-can-do-it aesthetic ideas. Looking from the DIY consciousness of the ‘no-wave’ filmers, the elites posture hidden behind the ‘genre cinema’ and ‘new wave’ of ‘mechanical duplication’ is the ‘exclusive’ aesthetical construction making the films mysterious and layered. While the Jubliee (1978) by Derrick Jarman, with the no-decorated DIY ‘setting’ style for sex and violence, is distinguished from other art cinema of Jarman, becoming ‘the first punk cinema’ universally recognized by the comments circle.
Different from the illustration mode of ‘resistance in ritual’, the relevant researches of ‘Post Birmingham’ usually put the ‘DIY aesthetics’ of punk sub-culture under the theoretical background of post-modernism. Among them, J. Davies and Ryan Moore hold the most representative illustrations. Davies holds that, the closeness of punk and post-modernism theory is presented in two aspects, that is, the consciousness for the community’s problematizing and its recuperation (Davies, 1996). Moore also points out that the punk style, to a great extent, is the borrowing for the post-modernism’s skills as juxtaposition, pastiche and self-reflexive irony, etc (Moore 2004). While if regarding the ‘DIY Aesthetics’ as the feature strategies of the ‘post-modernism’, then whether the ‘anti-genre’ tendency of the ‘DIY’ be drowned in the ‘style supermarket’ of the post modernism culture will involve the existence ‘identity’ and ‘legality’ issues of the punk cinema under the current context.
In Jameson’s post-modernism cultural illustration from the deconstructuralism perspective, under the impact of globalization capital logic, the strength of materialization penetrate into the mark itself, separating the signifier from the signified. ‘What we have left is the aimless game with pure symbols, for which we call post-modernism’ （Jameson, 1991）. Based on it, Jameson illustrated the combination of ‘vintage decoration and punk’ in the ‘new cinema’ of post modernism（Jameson, 1991）. The ‘punk style’ of the 1970’s and 1980’s, that is , the hand-hold camera and non-linear narrative, etc., together with the features of the pioneering texts written by Godall in the 1960’s, which include jumper connection and self reference, etc. have been utilized to the ‘post-punk’ colored films as American Beauty (1999) and Requiem for a Dream (2000), etc. The former one mixes with the self-reflexive first person voice over, interspersion of surreal scenes and other “anti-mainstream” techniques, as well as the classic Hollywood themes of nostalgia and sentiment about “utopia fall” of families in pre-consumer society. The latter more clearly reflects the marriage between “punk” and other “offbeat” styles and “traditions”, such as ideographic tactics of melodramas and categorized closed narrative, etc. Not only the conflict between punk and nostalgia is broken, but also punk gradually becomes one of the signifiers of “nostalgia”.
According to the post-modern theorist Alan Kirby, the existing cultural production can no longer be explained with the concept and logic of post-modernism. It was closer to a “pseudo modernist” operation. “Post-modernism regards contemporary culture as a ‘spectacle’. Individuals face it helplessly. But the issue about reality in it has been problematized, too. So it attaches great importance to TV or film screen. But its successor, which I refer to as pseudo-modernism, regards induvial actions as necessary conditions for cultural products”. When it comes to films in the “pseudo-modernism” period, Kirby stressed that they no longer replaced or questioned “real” “spectacle/anti- spectacle” images, but “implicitly defined reality as nothing but egos “interacting” with text at the very moment”. Gladiator (2000) and other high-budget films used special effects to create a “false” effect as if in “computer games”. The Blair Witch Project (1999) and other low-budget movies, however, “bring the audience an illusion of engagement”, using an “inornate” documentary style (Alan, 2006). If we consider “pseudo-modernism” as a contemporary context that current “DIY aesthetics” are faced with, it is not hard to understand the possibility that “DIY” might “become invalid” as an “anti-genre” production strategy. Therefore, in this case, if discussions related to DIY esthetics only focus on “genre” and “theme”, it is easy to jump to a simple conclusion that punk has been “fully incorporated”. Hence, it is a worthwhile ground-breaking research path to try to reveal the industrial and cultural operation how “DIY” itself becomes “categorized” and “spectacular” in present situation and explore the possibility to produce “a new punk movie”, through a case study of the specific “encoding” process of texts. In the eyes of Stacy Thompson, in the current context, “punk movies” still retained their “sub-culture identity” and “anti-genre” significance. To distinguish “DIY” from “pseudo-DIY”, it was necessary to break the gap between aesthetics and economy and regard “punk movies” as the aesthetic encoding of a specific production mode. Based on this understanding, Thompson compared two films, Fight Club (1999) and Rude Boy (1980). The former used the “punk theme” of “anti-consumerism” to attract a large number of teenagers to “watch” repeatedly. The visual effects in this film further inspired the audience’s “sense of engagement” as characters in the film. Compared with the former, Rude Boy not only explicitly “foregrounded” the shooting process at the level of aesthetics. More importantly, “DIY aesthetics” in this film didn’t use the manipulation of the producer, special effect companies or advertisers, etc. as the “background”. Instead, it achieves the unity of “foreground” and “background” by means of completely independent production. Therefore, the fundamental difference between them is the former is still a variant of “genre” produced by the Hollywood industrial system, while the latter implements the common “anti-genre” strategy of “DIY aesthetics” at the level of economy, technology and text narrative. Thompson’s study not only illustrates the existence form and “resistance strategy” of “anti-genre DIY” in the current film culture, but also points out the “new” incorporation and domination it is up against. It provides a useful inspiration for researchers, who are restricted by classic Birmingham perspective, to gain an insight into the present production of “punk movies”.
1.3 Punk “Cults” as “Writable Texts”
In the sub-culture concept of the Birmingham School, the formation of sub-culture “genre” has a close and immediate relationship with the audience’s flexible “decoding” of existing text. In this process, the “dominated” group creates a resisting sub-culture genre, by borrowing and restructuring the existing “central” and “marginal” cultural representations. While the acceptance of sub-culture text by the audience is on the one hand embodied in the identification and re-creation of resisters, and on the other hand in the “demonization” and “incorporation” of mainstream culture, authority and sub-culture. However, as far as “Post-Subculture School” and other “Post-Birmingham” theorists are concerned, when analyzing the acceptance of contemporary sub-culture by the audience, the Birmingham theory is too inclined to associate “sub-culture genre” with “resistant decoding” naturally and divide mainstream and marginal audience diametrically. The researcher’s perspective also needs a new adjustment.
The emergence of cult cinema in film critics is generally considered as the result of the public discussion about “ritualized” film-watching triggered by The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) in the 1980s. Thereafter, Casablanca: Cult Movies and Intertextual Collage by Umberto Eco, which considered “intertextual” as the textual feature of cult movies can be called as a pioneering work of “cult” research (Eco,1985). Today, people’s perception of “cult movies” generally covers two trains of thought, i.e., the specificity of audience and subversiveness of aesthetics. Comparing the concept of “cult” formed by the tension between the two with “DIY ethics” of “punk movies”— the interpretability open to audience and “trash aesthetics” of “recycle and abuse”, we can easily find the “similarity” between “cult” and “punk”. This is also highlighted in the “cult” of “punk movies” and “punk elements” in “the birth of cult”. To take Strange Days (1995) directed by Kathryn Bigelow for example, although this film was a commercial product originating from the mainstream industry and focusing on cinema distribution, it suffered a defeat at box office. Nevertheless, the dystopian and cyberpunk ideas and interests in it attracted a “minority” of cult supporters and made it “cult”. Meanwhile, this genre film from mainstream system gradually has the rich elements of “punk” in the process of dissemination.
From the Frankfurt School’s critical theory about cultural industry, the operating mechanism of Hollywood mainstream films, as typical products of cultural industry, is to regard audience as pure commodity consumers and “restrain their subjective creativity”. It is in this sense that the key difference between “punk movies” and “mainstream films” is exactly the difference between “writable text” and “readable text”. It is with the openness and “writability” manifested by their “response-inviting structure” that “punk movies” truly become an anti-genre “sub-culture type”. Those films identified, intervened and rewritten by sub-culture groups also become so-called “cults” as opposed to “classic films”. Using a similar method of “encoding and decoding”, Repo Man (1984) and A Clockwork Orange, etc. become “punk cults”. However, when “punk movies” enter the “genre supermarket” of post-modern culture and get incorporated into its “reproduction” system, the “resistant decoding” in Birmingham theory is no longer a necessary condition for the genesis of “punk genre”. Meanwhile, “punk movies” produced by “mainstream cultural industry” also blur the boundary between mainstream and marginal audience, for example, Pulp Fiction (1994), etc. directed by Quentin Tarantino. Therefore, as mentioned above, in the contemporary context, “punk movies” defined at the level of production should be considered as an “encoding” process that covers the “background” of economy and the “foreground” of narrative. From the acceptance of text, it is necessary to distinguish “reproduced” “pseudo-punk movies” from “writable” “punk genre”, return the “decision-making power” on “cult status” to sub-culture groups as the audience and further perceive “punk movies” as a “formation process” that occurs in dynamic historical experience. Such a way of interpretation can make more “ratified” and “rewritten” “cult movies” enter the scope of discussion of “punk movies” and promote people to gain a deeper understanding and explication of the existence form and cultural implications of existing “anti-genre” films.
