hi there!
Carol was talking about how Mod is prob one of the
most narrow sub-cultures, yeah you're truly spot on
there but like you say/reiterate that I personally come
from the futurist/individual side. In some ways Mod
is very retrogressive and totally against what it kinda
originally was, I'm sure all the original mods soon stopped
declaring themselves Mod when a lot of people started
jumping on the bandwagon after loads of people thought
they could exploit the original phenomon.
Just like the original Mods I kinda use Mod as a starting
ground and take what I want from it adding my own personal
vision, what Levi-strauss called Bricolage, Dick Hebdige
wrote a lot about this in a series of interesting essays
in the 1970s/80s. I like "the sharp lines...the cut clothes,
clean skin, the straight figure", I dig the [some] of
the music yet at the same time I find aspects totally repellent,
at the heart of Mod there are some enormous contradictions/
paradoxes (the desire to be different/individual against
the group kinda thing as shown in Quadrophenia) On one hand
Jimmy is quite a cool character, yet on the other he and
his mates are a right bunch of snivilling shits (re: their
racisim, and the way they all dump Jimmy)
Living in what is the year 2000 with no kinda apparently unique
subcultures, maybe there are and perhaps I just haven't got my
finger on the pulse but this is the era of postmodernity,
where everything is fractured and up for grabs, I feel that you
can take what you want from where you want AS LONG AS you have
a respect/knowledge about where it came from/what it means.
carol also talked about "being open minded to me might entail adventures and
willingness to go to south east asia, back pack through vietnam to cambodia,
sleeping on spider-infested floors of abandoned temples. at least here in
america my 'mod' friends will not find this very ideal and will probably
never in their lives take up such adventures". to me this is not very
open-minded or individual,
as it is almost the done thing with many 'young' people, this is
just another form of cultural tourism, "a cheap holiday in somebody else's
misery",
excuse my ramblings, its quite early in the morning and I'm pretty
well tired, I hope people get my drift and don't misunderstand me.
ANYWays, its interesting to hear all different opinions,
rob
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