Punk and Neo-Tribal Body Art (Folk Art and Artists Series) - Softcover

Wojcik, Daniel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0878057366 ISBN 13: 9780878057368

Publisher: Univ Pr of Mississippi, 1995

Synopsis

Punk body adornment, the most notorious and celebrated of recent styles among youth, emerged in the mid-1970s and has persisted in varying forms to the present day. This book illustrates the confrontational aesthetic of punk style, and examines in detail the symbolic meanings and subversive aspects of punk body art. Like members of previous subcultures, denizens of the punk subculture have created a coherent and elaborate system of adornment calculated to horrify the general public. An aesthetic of shock, negation, and cultural pessimism is revealed not only through adornment, but through music, art, dance, fanzines, and dramatizations of violence. The symbolic inversions, ritual pollutions, and carnivalesque antics of the punk movement violate the conventions of daily life. The anti- commercial, do-it-yourself ethos of punks, with their emphasis on parody and gender confusion and an interest in the exotic and forbidden, further challenge dominant cultural values and ideologies.
Along with a history of punk, PUNK AND NEO-TRIBAL BODY ART surveys the distinctive styles that have been influenced by punk ethos and aesthetic (including grunge, Gothic, and riot grrrl), and then examines the commercialization of punk style and how some punks reacted by adopting "neo-tribal" forms of body art inspired by non-Western practices in an effort to create an oppositional identity. Special focus is given to post-punk artist Perry Farrell, former lead singer of Jane's Addiction and founder of the annual Lollapalooza music festivals. Emphasizing individual meanings and personal aesthetics, the book explores the subversive and transformative appeal of tattooing, piercing, and scarification among youth and the ways that these forms of body modification are used to articulate feelings of estrangement, mark memorable events, signify a rite of passage, and individualize the body in an aesthetically pleasing and symbolically powerful manner.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

The confrontational shock aesthetics and ritual meanings characteristic of body art practiced by punk rockers and neo-tribalists

About the Author

Daniel Wojcik is Associate Professor of English and Folklore at the University of Oregon, and the author of The End of the World As We Know It: Faith, Fatalism, and Apocalypse in America (New York University Press, 1997) and Punk and Neo-Tribal Body Art (University Press of Mississippi, 1995). He received his Ph.D. in Folklore and Mythology from UCLA and his areas of specialty include apocalyptic beliefs and millennialist movements, American popular culture, folklore, cultural history, subcultures, and tattooing and body art. He is currently working on a book about American culture at the end of the millennium.

About this edition

• Publisher: Univ Pr of Mississippi
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0878057366
• ISBN 13: 9780878057368
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 72