“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated? Good night” —says Johnny Rotten in a thick working-class North London accent as he wraps up his last show with the Pistols. The Sex Pistols —the epitome of punk’s cultural myth. It’s not long before we all witness how punk dies, unannounced, with a shade of tragism. Or does it?
Chaos. Scandal. Loud rebellion. Punk emerged in the 1970’s London and New York in response to economic crisis, social stagnation and mainstream culture. British punk soon took a more political tone and confronted class conflict, representing youth frustration. It gave voice to anger and resistance and globalised rebellion. Punk also romanticised destruction, and slowly started to fall victim to it.
According to Hebdige, British cultural theorist, “The punk subculture… was constituted in a series of spectacular transformations of a whole range of commodities, values, common-sense attitudes… through these adapted forms, youth restated their opposition to dominant values.” Political anarchism, speedy noise, nihilism, rebellion and working-class realism were what punk subculture consisted of when it was born in a boutique on King’s Road, London, amidst the economic crisis in London. As Hebdige claims, “Clothed in chaos, they produced Noise in the calmly orchestrated Crisis of everyday life in the late 1970s —a noise which made (no)sense….” Punk rebelled against the system, commercial culture and the controlling regime. It hated governmental institutions, authorities, consumerism and capitalism. Pretty ironically, it lost the war —capitalism consumed punk. But did capitalism really kill it?
Early 1960’s London. The city feels restless. Art schools are everywhere, but they don’t feel institutional. In the hallways, students argue —some quote Marx, others mock them. Some pin a slogan on their jackets instead of writing an essay on paper. Art merges into politics, politics merge into fashion, fashion becomes a statement. A teacher and part-time fashion student, Vivienne Westwood, whose work later ended up on high-fashion runways, meets art student Malcolm McLaren, more obsessed with radical political ideas and provocative spectacle than classical forms of art. Their relationship soon becomes a collaboration. Westwood and McLaren fall in love and have a baby together —punk.
“The ‘creative destruction’ of the market is, in surprising ways, artistic in the most literal sense. It creates a plethora of innovative and high-quality creations in many different genres, styles, and media”, states Cowen, economist and cultural theorist. Punk was not born on King’s Road in London; it was manufactured by Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren. It was never an organic working-class rebellion. Every aspect of it —the attitude, the looks, the idea— was carefully engineered and sold to the masses. Westwood and McLaren family business at 430 King’s Road, a store mostly known as SEX, was a laboratory where punk was invented. It was put together with leather, fetish accessories, safety pins & razors and anti-authoritarian slogans. The rebellion, which represented the core value of the punk subculture, did not come from the streets; it was created in a boutique. Hebdige argues punk is “a series of spectacular transformations of commodities”. Westwood literally manufactured those commodities.
“I wanna be anarchy in the city” (Anarchy in the UK, Sex Pistols) —the anarchy in the Sex Pistols was also created by McLaren. He treated the band like a stylist treats a runway show— dressed it in scandals, rebellion and provocation. Sex Pistols were a living advertisement for the store and a performative project rather than a traditional rock band that formed naturally among the rebellious youth. Punk looked anti-commercial, but it was spread through mass media, it was sold, and instead of DIY (that was supposed to be one of the most significant values of the subculture), it depended on fashion markets. Punk was a business rather than a political statement.
Westwood & McLaren showed everyone that rebellion and protest could be manufactured, packaged and sold. And that did not weaken it, it amplified it and made it accessible. Cowen also states: “The world as a whole has a broader menu of choice… cross-cultural exchange expands the menu of choice, at least provided that trade and markets are allowed to flourish.” Here’s the good news: punk did not die. Instead, capitalism multiplied punk identities and expressions by making its aesthetic & values accessible to populations. Capitalism fuels cultural innovation and expands artistic choice. Commercialisation makes art evolve rather than die. Markets do not kill alt cultures; they multiply them. As noted by Cowen, “Individuals are liberated from the tyranny of place more than ever before… This represents one of the most significant increases in freedom in human history.” If punk was a tiny UK niche when it was created by a small and scandalous family business to advertise it, capitalism and trade spread punk globally as an ideology and subculture, rather than just an aesthetic or performance. You can now find people from Tokyo to Tbilisi to Buenos Aires listening to the Ramones & Minor Threat and even creating their own music, out of rebellion and protest, against the system. Cross-cultural mixing under capitalism produced new genres: Nu metal (Linkin Park, Korn), Pop-punk (Green Day, Blink-182); and punk found its home again in different countries all around the world: 2 Minutos (Argentina), Die Skeptiker (Germany), Accidente (Spain), The Geros (Japan)…
Punk had to expand globally in order to survive. A micro niche-scene in London or New York can not sustain itself economically. “There might be no ticket price for which total revenue will cover total fixed plus variable cost… a large relative to customers’ combined willingness to pay” – reports Caves, a specialist in cultural economics. The Sex Pistols existed in the first place because McLaren understood how the media worked. Just as Vivienne knew how to exploit the fashion system’s branding mechanisms. And punk spread globally because of major labels that could cover fixed costs that DIY culture could not. Punk wasn’t truly anti-capitalistic —it required capitalistic infrastructure to reach masses and to gain global cultural significance, in one word, to survive.
As outlined by Cowen, “Cross-cultural exchange brings value clashes… but it also supports innovation and creative human energies.” While punk is often romanticised as a spontaneous, anti-capitalistic working-class revolt, the subculture was manufactured to be sold to a niche group of people. It was destined to die, not because of commercialisation, but because it relied on shock and spectacle, was dressed in leather and scandals. These things would not remain honest once exposed to the mass market. Punk indeed died —but it was saved and transformed by capitalism. Capitalism gave rebirth to punk and punk rebelled against it —only to survive by returning to its father. The market did not erase it, it resurrected it. Punk spread, evolved, became accessible to millions that couldn’t witness its chaotic birth. So no, despite Rotten’s words, we haven’t been cheated. Because PUNK’S NOT DEAD anymore.
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