OUGD501: Design Context - Subculture and Style Lecture Notes

Definition of subculture:

• In sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a group of people with a  culture (whether distinct or hidden) which differentiates then from the large culture to which they belong. 

Dogtown and Z boys (2001)

• Documentary directed by a skateboarder
• Tells a story of a group of skaters
• Narrated by Sean Penn
• The history of skating

Skater Peggy Oki

• The dress was not much different between boys and girls
• Jeans and long sleeve shirts covered the body - offering protection
• Long hair was fashionable for girls and boys

Ian Borden 'Performing the City'

• Urban street skating is more 'political' than 1970's skatboarding's use of found terrains: street skating generates new uses that at once work within (in time and space) and negate the original ones.
• Seduction by consumerism

South bank closure threat to skaters

• The space is wanting to be re-developed to turn into shops and restaurants
• Petition being put in place which is holding back the development
• There has been a proposal for another space to be made which can be used for skaters
• The Independent wrote a report about it - very negative

Henry Edwards

• Spokesman for the Long Live Southbank campaign
• He speaks for the skaters
• Whatever is built is not going to be used

Lords of Dogtown (2005)

• Skateboarders do not so much temporally escape from the routinzed world of school family and social conventions as replace it with a whole new way of life. (Borden 2011)

The Graffitt Subculture - Nancy McDonald

• Here on the street real life and the issues which may divide and influence it, are put on pause. On this liminal terrain you are not back, white rich or poor. 
• You can escape your identity as a graffiti artists except if you are a female

Angela McRobbie and Jenny Garber

• Girl subcultures may have become more invisible because the very term 'subculture' has acquied such strong masculine overtones (1977)

Motorbike girl

• Brigitter Bardot 1960's
• Suggest sexual deviance
• Fantasy

Hells Angels

• Girls ride as a passenger 
• girls did not enter into competition
• They were the girlfriend of…