This is a documentary on the history of punk that I just saw on tv. It was actually pretty informative, confirming a lot of the loose information I've been gathering on the movement lately from radio, as well as my impression that Henry Rollins is totally full of himself. Oh, and Jello Biafra: totally gay, right?
The end of the documentary turned into this weird sort of diatribe about how punk these days sucks, and kids these days are letting all the old rebels down with their complacency. I think the quote went something like: "In the seventies we were all anti-establishment; nowadays everyone wants to be a part of the establishment." Aptly put! I agree enthusiastically, though with some caveats and a backstory.
Recently, my brother had me read this article about Generation Y, which said that Y is predominantly characterized by our ambition, BUT ALSO that we're used to questioning authority. If you look at the history of the world, these two things should be antithetical (insolence tends to twart ambitions). They're not, because our role models growing up have been the Martin Luther Kings and the Albert Einsteins, and not so much, say, the FDRs or the Richelieus. So paradoxically, we have come to understand anti-establishment as a means to changing the world, ie GREATNESS. If we can't make a difference, we wonder if our rebellion isn't just our personal whims after all. And we know that the two overlap from experience, from our rebelling so goddamn regularly ("Do your homework"/"No I want to watch TV" = personal whim; "Learn piano"/"No I'm want to be a drummer in a rock band" = ?).
So there's that, an agenda-motivated attitude toward authority. Then there's the fact that for every John Lennon whom made it big being anti-establishment, there was that kid who sat behind you in school who never did his homework, and for no good reason either because these were the days before we had ideologies, and homework was simply the thing that everyone did. Today, that kid is a pizza delivery guy, and you see him at punk shows as the guy with the mohawk and the safety pins. And you think, Dudes, if this is anti-establishment, it's pretty lame...
To elaborate further on the particulars of the music industry and rebellion: long ago some rising rock star said to himself, "I could play the music I want in my garage, and my dog will listen to me. Or, I could suck it up, cooperate with a few corporate suits, reach a bigger audience and MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD." We all know how the music industry evolved, and I use this rock star guy as a metaphor. The archetype who chose the first path represents people, basically, like me, who refuse to sell out until one day they realize that their work is meaningful to precisely one person, themselves; and fuck that's lame! The archetype who chose the second path represents the dreamers who wanted to make a big, real impact by working the system from within, until the system turned them into the bloodsuckers they were trying to change in the first place; and essentially, they become a Part of the Problem, which is what I take Jim Jarmusch to mean when he said that we were all trying to be a part of the establishment instead of going against it.
So what is different about the world now that blunts the force of rebellion, when in the seventies it was so successful (supposedly)? My take on it is that the world is smaller and the stakes are higher. My brother and I were have a conversation the other day about how you could be considered among the wealthiest tenth of Americans, but this doesn't mean you'd be able to buy a house, even. It's hard to keep your dignity (and belief that you're right) when you're living in a cardboard box. And increasingly, rebellion means either living in a box (missing your chance at the big time), or living in a cave (no one gives two craps about you; like me, the humanities academic). Maybe in the seventies it was a young person's greatest fear that she'd end up with the house with the white picket fence, with the kids and a golden retriever; today, even that's looking more and more like an impossible, wistful, dream. Now, my fear is that I'll become a raving homeless person by the time I'm sixty-five, with no retirement savings (to say nothing of Social Security) and no family to care enough even to put me in an institution.
And there it is: the Precipice.
So even if some new movement in rock 'n' roll were to tell me to say "Fuck you" to the establishment - which, incidently, Generation Y knows how to do better than anyone else; see above - I would still have to think twice about it on account of the precipice. Even when I AM saying "Fuck you" to the establishment by living in my countercultural (ie, totally not important) cave known as academia, I'm still thinking about the Precipice. Who knows, maybe there are a jillion Johnny Rottens out there every day telling me about Polly's abortion, but with the surplus of information coming in thanks to today's technology, maybe I don't notice it anymore. Rebellion has dimmed to a dull roar; meanwhile the precipice comes up with some new scary thing each day.
To end with a bit more of a favorable response to Punk: Attitude: as ludicrous it is to conclude, as the documentary did, that today's punk is just Blink 182 = sucks, I do have to agree that 70s punk was glorious. Back in those days, they were able to say, "The world is fucked up and I'm pissed off." They didn't have any answers, but at least they correctly identified the problem. People of my generation, I think, are more like, "The world is fucked up, and how can I make it better?" That is the grand delusion! We can't make it better, at least not without kissing asses and joining the Problem. So, we might as well do our own thing, like the seventies punks. Not "own thing" in the sense like what I'm doing, which is looking for an alternate shelter of success, which still entails kissing (a different set of) asses and thus in no way threatens the establishment. No; if the world sucks, why don't we just deface it?
Oh yes, the Precipice, that's why. And the pizza-delivery guy. Our technology is broader and our drugs aren't as strong, so it's hard not to think about the big picture.
