Your analysis should draw on specific examples from EITHER Absolute Beginners OR Quadrophenia (the film).

1. from Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style

The emergence of a spectacular subculture is invariably accompanied by a wave of hysteria in the press. This hysteria is typically ambivalent: it fluctuates between dread and fascination, outrage and amusement. Shock and horror dominate the front page […] while, inside, the editorials positively bristle with ‘serious’ commentary and the centrespreads or supplements contain delirious accounts of the latest fads and rituals […] style in particular provokes a double response: it is alternatively celebrated (in the fashion page) and ridiculed or reviled (in those articles which define subculture as social problems) […]

As the subculture begins to strike its own eminently marketable pose, as its vocabulary (both visual and verbal) becomes more and more familiar, so the referential context to which it can be most conveniently assigned is made increasingly apparent. Eventually, the mods, the punks, the glitter rockers can be incorporated, brought back into line, located on the preferred ‘map of problematic social reality’ (Geertz 1964) at the point where boys in lipstick are ‘just kids dressing up’, where girls in rubber dresses are ‘daughters just like yours’ […] The media, as Stuart Hall has argued, not only record resistance, they  ‘situate it within the dominant framework of meanings’ and those young people who choose to inhabit a spectacular youth culture are simultaneously returned, as they are represented on TV and in the newspapers, to the place where common sense would have them fit (as ‘animals’ certainly, but also ‘in the family’ ‘out of work’, ‘up to date’, etc.) It is through this continual process of recuperation that the fractured order is repaired and the subculture incorporated as a diverting spectacle within the dominant mythology from which it in part emanates: as ‘folk devil’, as Other, as Enemy.

2. from Gary Clarke, ‘Defending Sky-Jumpers’

The fundamental problem with Cohenite [Phil Cohen] subcultural analysis is that it takes the card-carrying members of spectacular subcultures as its starting point and then teleologically works backward to uncover the class situation and detect the specific set of contradictions which produced corresponding styles. This could lead to the dangerous assumption that all those in a specific class location are members of the corresponding subculture and that all members of a subculture are in the same class location. A basic problem is that the elements of youth culture (music, dancing, clothes, etc.) which are discussed are not enjoyed only by the fully paid-up members of subcultures. If we reverse the methodological procedure adopted by the Centre and start with an analysis beginning with the social relations based around class, gender, and race (and age), rather than their stylistic products, we have to examine the whole range of options, modes of negotiation. Or ‘magical resolution’ (and the limitations of access and opportunity that exist) that are open to, and used by, working-class youth. Such an approach would require a break from the Centre’s paradigm of examining the ‘authentic’ subcultures in a synthetic moment of frozen historical time which results in an essentialist and noncontradictory picture. Any empirical analysis would reveal that subcultures are diffuse, diluted, and mongrelized in form.

3. from Albert K. Cohen, ‘A General Theory of Subcultures’

The continued serviceability and therefore the viability of a subcultural solution entails the emergence of a certain amount of group solidarity and heightened interaction among the participants in the subculture. It is only in interaction with those who share his values that the actor finds social validation for his beliefs and social rewards for his way of life, and the continued existence of the group and friendly intercourse with its members becomes valued for [the] actor. Furthermore, to the extent that the new subculture invites the hostility of outsiders – one of the costs of subcultural solutions – the members of the subcultural group are motivated to look to one another for those goods and services, those relationships of cooperation and exchange which they once enjoyed with the world outside the group and which have now been withdrawn. This accentuates still further the separateness of the group, the dependence of the members on the group and the richness and individuality of its subculture […]

Insofar as the new subculture represents a new status system by sanctioning behaviour tabooed or frowned upon by the larger society, the acquisition of status within the new group is accompanied by a loss of status outside the group. To the extent that the esteem of outsiders is a value to the members of the group, a new problem is engendered. To this problem the typical solution is to devalue the good will and respect of those whose good will and respect are forfeit anyway. The new subculture of the community of innovators comes to include hostile and contemptuous images of those groups whose enmity they have earned. Indeed, this repudiation of outsiders, necessary in order to protect oneself from feeling concerned about what they may think, may go so far as to make nonconformity with the expectations of the outsiders a positive criterion of status within the group.

• Note to writer: pick only one of the above 3 passages.
• Use Harvard style referencing
• This is a critical analysis, not an essay.

Here is some info about the module to help give you content

To introduce students to theories related to subcultures in cultural studies.
To introduce an understanding of the historical development of subcultures from the 1950s to the present.
To closely analyse selected examples of fiction and film that engage with and offer representations of subcultures.
To enhance students’ academic and research skills through targeted teaching practices and assessments.

Below is a list to some references from the course module which may be useful.

CORE READING

Set Texts:

• Ken Gelder (ed.) The Subcultures Reader, 2^nd edition (London and New York: Routledge, 2005).

• Colin MacInnes, Absolute Beginners (London: Allison & Busby: [1959] 2011). This novel is also included in Colin MacInnes, The London Trilogy (London: Allison and Busby, 2005).

• Quadrophenia, dir. by Franc Roddam, (Universal, 1979).

• The Who, Quadrophenia, Polydor, 1973.

• The Filth and the Fury, dir. by Julien Temple (London: Film Four, 2000).

• Gautam Malkani, Londonstani (London: Harper Perennial, 2007).

• Trainspotting, dir. by Danny Boyle (London: Film Four, 1996).

• Extracts from Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting (London: Vintage 1993).

The critical essays that you are required to read will be provided for you in a separate reading pack. You will need to collect this from the School Office and there will be a small charge to cover photocopying.

Please note: you should own, or have access to, and bring copies of set texts to lectures and seminars (except the films). Copies of the films are available in the library, but you might find it useful to get your own copies. We are aware that books and films are expensive, but it is important that you have access to the best, modern editions, with an accurate text, good notes, and a substantial introduction. Be aware that many cheaper editions are based on poor texts, with insufficient and inaccurate annotations.

Books can be purchased at the bookstore on campus, but also through the internet, often at a discount, and look for second-hand copies, which are an excellent way to save money.

SELECTED FURTHER READING

Subcultural Theory

In addition to the essays collected in Ken Gelder’s The Subcultures Reader, the following books and articles offer interesting insights into subcultural theory:

Derek Allcorn, ‘The Unnoticed Generation’, Universities and Left Review, 4, 1958, 54-58.

Andy Bennett, Popular Music and Youth Culture: Music, Identity and Place (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000).

Andy Bennett and Keith Kahn-Harris, After Subculture: Critical Studies in Contemporary Youth Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004).

Nick Bentley, ‘The Young Ones: A Reassessment of the British New Left’s Representation of Youth Subcultures’ in The European Journal of Cultural Studies, 8:1 (2005), 65-83.

Nick Bentley, ‘The New Elizabethans: The Representation of Youth Subcultures in 1950s British Fiction’, in Literature and History, 19 (1), 2010: 16-33.

Mike Brake, The Sociology of Youth Culture: Sex and Drugs and Rock’n’roll (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980)

Stanley Cohen has eloquently shown in Folk Devils and Moral Panics, 3rd Ed. (London and New York: Routledge [1972] 2002).

Greta Duncan and Roy Wilkie, ‘Glasgow Adolescents’, Universities and Left Review, 5 (1958), 24-25.

David Fowler, Youth Culture in Modern Britain.1920-c.1970 (Houndmills: Paqlgrave, 2007).

Ken Gelder and Sarah Thornton (eds) The Subcultures Reader (London: Routledge, 1997).

Ken Gelder, Subcultures: Cultural Histories and Social Practice (London and New York: Routledge, 2007).

Ken Gelder (ed.), Subcultures: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, Vols I-IV, (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2007)

1. Gilbert and E. Pearson, Discographies: Dance Music, Culture and the Politics of Sound (London: Routledge, 1999).

Paul Gilroy and Errol Lawrence, ‘Two-Tone Britain: White and Black Youth and the Politics of Ant-Racism’, in Multi-Racist Britain, ed. Philip Cohen and Harwant S. Bains (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), pp. 121-55.

1. Gore, ‘The Beat Goes On: Trance, Dance and Tribalism n Rave Culture’, in H. Thomas (ed.), Dance in the City, London: Macmillan Press, 1997).

Stuart Hall, ‘Politics of Adolescence?’, Universities and Left Review, 6 (1959), 2-4

Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson (eds) Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-war Britain (London: Hutchinson, [1975] 1976).

Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Routledge [1979] 1988).

Dick Hebdige, Hiding in the Light: On Images and Things (London: Routledge, 1988).

Paolo Hewitt (ed.), The Sharper Word: A Mod Anthology, Revised Ed. (London: Helter Skelter, 2009)

Paul Hodkinson, Goth, Identity, Style and Subculture (Oxford: Berg, 2002).

Paul Hodkinson and Wolfgang Diecke (eds),Youth Cultures: Scenes, Subcultures and Tribes (London: Routledge, 2007).

Rupa Huq, Beyond Subculture: Pop, Youth and Identity in a Postcolonial World (London: Routledge, 2006).

Chris Jenks, Subculture: The Fragmentation of the Social (London: Sage, 2005).

Peter Laurie, The Teenage Revolution: (London: Anthony Blond, 1965).

Kenneth Leech, Youthquake: The Growth of a Counter-Culture Through Two Decades (London: Sheldon Press, 1973).

1. Malbon, Clubbing: Dancing, Ecstasy and Vitality (London: Routledge, 1999).
2. McKay, Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance Since the Sixties (London: Verso, 1996).

Angela McRobbie, ‘Settling Accounts with Subcultures: A Feminist Critique’, in Screen Education, 34: 37-49.

Angela McRobbie, Zoot-Suits and Second-Hand Dresses: An Anthology of Fashion and Music (London: Macmillan, 1989).

Angela McRobbie, Feminism and Youth Culture: From Jackin to Just Seventeen (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991)

Angela McRobbie, ‘Shut up and Dance: Youth Culture and Changing Modes of Femininity’, Cultural Studies, 7 (3): 406-26.

David Muggleton, Inside Subcultures: The Postmodern Meaning of Style (Oxford: Berg, 2000).

David Muggleton and Rupert Weinzierl, The Post-subcultures Reader (Oxford: Berg, 2004).

1. Mungham and G. Pearson (eds), Working Class Youth Culture (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976).

Bill Osgerby, Youth in Britain since 1945 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998).

Paul Rock and Stanley Cohen, ‘The Teddy Boy’, in Vernon Bogdanor and Robert Skidelsky (eds), The Age of Affluence 1951-1964 (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1970), p. 314.

Steve Redhead, The End-of-the-Century-Party Youth and Pop Towards 2000, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990).

Steve Redhead (ed.), Unpopular Cultures: The Birth of Law and Popular Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993).

Steve Redhead, D Wynne and J. O’Connor (eds), The Clubcultures Reader: Readings in Popular Cultural Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).

T Rose (ed.), Microphone Fiends: Youth Music and Youth Culture (London: Routledge, 1994).

Sarah Thornton, Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital (Cambridge: Polity, 1995).

Alan Sinfield, ‘Making a Scene’, in Literature, Politics and Culture in Postwar Britain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), pp.152-81.

1. Patrick Williams, Subcultural Theory: traditions and Concepts (London: Polity Press, 2011)

Paul Willis, Profane Culture (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978).

Scott Wilson, Great Satan’s Rage: American Negativity and Rap / Metal in the Age of Supercapitalism (Manchester University Press, 2008).

Nathan Wiseman-Trowse, Performing Class in British Popular Music (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2008).

Literary, Film and Cultural Theory

Elaine Baldwin (et. al.), Introducing Cultural Studies (London: Prentice Hall, 2003)

Roland Barthes, Elements of Semiology (Atlantic Books [1964], 1967)

Catherine Belsey, Critical Practice (London: Routledge, 1979)

Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle, Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory,

3rd ed. (London: Prentice Hall, 2004)

David Bordwell & Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction, 5th edn (New York:

McGraw Hill, 1997)

Peter Brooker, A Glossary of Cultural Theory, (London: Arnold 2002)

Deborah Cartmell and Imelda Whelehan (eds) Adaptations: From Text to Screen, Screen to Text (London: Routledge, 1999)

Jonathan Culler, Saussure, (London: Fontana, 1976)

Simon During, The Cultural Studies Reader, (London: Routledge, 1993)

Terry Eagleton, The Idea of Culture, (Malden MA: Blackwell, 2000)

Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory 2nd Edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996)

John Fiske, Reading the Popular, (London: Routledge, 1989)

John Frow, Cultural Studies and Cultural Value (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995)

Lawrence Grossberg et al. (eds) Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1992)

Stuart Hall (ed.), Culture, Media, Language (London: Hutchinson, 1980)

Stuart Hall (ed.), Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage, 1997)

Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and Semiotics (London: Routledge, 1977)

Matt Hills, How To Do Things with Cultural Theory (London: Hodder Arnold, 2005)

Fred Inglis, Cultural Studies (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993)

Nick Lacey, Introduction to Film (London: Palgrave, 2005)

Brian Longhurst et. al. Introducing Cultural Studies (London: Prentice Hall, 2008)

Gerald Mast et. al. (eds) Film Theory and Criticism  (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1992)

Brian McFarlane, Novel to Film (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996)

Michael Payne (ed.), A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory (Oxford: Blackwell)

William H. Philips, Film: An Introduction 3rd ed. (London: Palgrave, 2005)

Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh, Modern Literary Theory 2nd Edition (London: Edward Arnold, 1992)

John Storey, Cultural Studies (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996)

John Storey, Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006)

Dominic Strinati, An Introduction to the Theories of Popular Culture (London:

Routledge, 1995)

Graeme Turner, British Cultural Studies, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1996)

Judith Williamson, Decoding Advertisements (London: Marion Boyars, 1978)

Colin MacInnes, Absolute Beginners

Nick Bentley, ‘Colin MacInnes: Subcultural Fictions’, in Radical Fictions: The English Novel in the 1950s (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2007), pp. 231-61.

Nick Bentley, ‘Cruel Britannia: Translating Englishness in Colin MacInnes’s City of Spades and Absolute Beginners’, Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate, 13:1-2 (2003-04), 149-69.

Harriet Blodgett, ‘City of Other Worlds: The London Novels of Colin MacInnes’, Critique: Studies in Modern Fiction, 18:1, 1976, 105-18.

Steven Connor, The English Novel in History 1950-1995 (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), pp. 89-94.

Alice Ferrebe, ‘A Teenage Ball’, in Masculinity in Male-Authored Fiction 1950-2000 (Houndmills, Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave, 2005), pp. 139-51.

Tony Gould, Inside Outsider: The Life and Times of Colin MacInnes (London: Allison and Busby, 1983).

Punk

Dylan Clarke, ‘The Death and Life of Punk, the Last Subculture’, in The Post-Subcultures Reader, pp. 223-38.

1. Laing, One Chord Wonders: Power and Meaning in Punk Rock (Milton Keynes and Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1985).
2. Sabin (ed.) Punk Rock: So What? The Cultural Legacy of Punk (London and New York: Routledge, 1999).

Jon Savage, England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock (London and Boston MA: Faber & Faber, 1991).

Quadrophenia

Richard Barnes. Mods! (London: Plexus, 2009)

David Nicholls, ‘Narrative Theory as an Analytical Tool in the Study of Popular Music Texts’, Music & Letters, (88:2), 200, 297-315.

Jon Savage, ‘I Don’t Wanna Be Like Everybody Else’, Sight and Sound (7:2), 1997, 16-17.

Dave van Staveren, Quadraphenia.net http://www.quadrophenia.net

Richard Weight, The Rise and Reign of British Youth Culture (Bodley Head, 2012)

Gautam Malkani, Londonstani

Nick Bentley, ‘Staring at the Rudeboys: The Representation of Youth Subcultures in Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani and John King’s Skinheads’, in Subcultures, Popular Music and Social Change, ed. The Subcultures Network (Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars, 2014), pp. 175-94.

Brandes, Blake, ‘“Our Lives Are Constructed with Symbols”: An Interview with Gautam Malkani’ Wasafiri: The Magazine of International Contemporary Writing, 27:4 [72], (2012), 17-18.

Sarah Brouillette, ‘The Creative Class and Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani’ Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 51:1, (2010), 1-17.

James Graham, ‘“This In’t Good Will Hunting”: Londonstani and the Market for London’s Multicultural Fictions’ Literary London: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Representation of London, 6:2, (2008), (no pagination). (Electronic publication).

Sara D Schotland, ‘Performing Identity: Text Speak in Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani’ Trickster: Rivista del Master in Studi Interculturali , 8, (2010), (no pagination). (Electronic publication).

Anna Tomczak, ‘In London’s ‘Desiland’: Hounslow as a Contested Space in Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani’, in Exploring Space: Spatial Notions in Cultural, Literary and Language Studies, ed. Andrzej Ciuk and Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska, (Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 432-440.

Trainspotting

Martin Bruggemeier and Horst W, Drescher, ‘A Subculture and Its Characterization in Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting’, Anglistik & Englischunterricht, (63), 2000, 135-50.

Karen Lury, ‘Here and Then: Space, Place and Nostalgia in British Youth Cinema of the 1990s’ in Murphy, Robert (ed. and introd.), British Cinema of the 90s (London, England: British Film Institute, 2000). pp. 100-08.

Leanne McRae, ‘Writing and Resistance: Trainspotting’, In-between: Essays and Studies in Literary Criticism, (13:2), 2004, 117-33.

Robert A Morace, Irvine Welsh (Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)

Jurgen Neubauer, ‘Critical Media Literacy and the Representation of Youth in Trainspotting’, Anglistik & Englischunterricht, (63), 2000, 151-69.

Bertold Schoene (ed) The Edinburgh Companion to Irvine Welsh (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).

Scott Stalcup, ‘Trainspotting, High Fidelity, and the Diction of Action, Studies in Popular Culture (30:2) 2008, 119-36.

Karina M Totah, ‘Trainspotting’s Playlist: A Compilation of Subcultural Struggles’, Bright Lights Film Journal, (44), 2004, (no pagination) (Electronic publication)