counterculture

Gurlesque: Poetics of the Bizarre, Ugly, and Feminine

June 17, 2024

It’s exaggeration and mockery that goes beyond sarcasm, specifically posed on the feminine. It tells the story of the ugly and morbid sometimes with a hint of wit. It may sound fictitious but at the same time exposes what has shaped reality. It expresses what the “truth” could not capture. It is poetry, parody, tragedy, agony, anguish, and irony; all combined to shock conventions and empower the marginalized. It is called Gurlesque.

Mocking and Celebrating the Female

She looks like the Sunday comics She thinks she's Brenda Starr Her nose job is real atomic All she needs is an old knife scar

Who remembers this punkish pop late 70’s song from Blondie? It tells a girl vs. girl tongue-in-cheek story, you know, like when the popular girls in school compete against each other. The ref goes like this:

Yeah, she's so dull, come on rip her to shreds She's so dull, come on rip her to shreds

And that is the title of the song, “Rip Her to Shreds”. It’s a comical take on how women mock each other in rivalry. The next verse goes on to describe this reality in a parody fashion:

Oh, you know her, “Miss Groupie Supreme” Yeah, you know her, “Vera Vogue” on parade Red eye shadow! Green mascara! Yuck! She's too much

In a BBC interview, Deborah Harry, the lead singer of Blondie and who also co-wrote this song with band member, Chris Stein, said that the song was actually about what gossip columns do to people’s lives.

This suggests that the song is a reflection of how the media portray women and influence the readers’ perception about women. The song reflects this reality through exaggeration of the female experience and by depicting it in its extreme. What you get is a tune that is tastefully sarcastic, funny and fun at the same time. Even more fun as Debbie sang it with an in-your-face feminine tone, and when performed live, with a badass grrrl attitude that was not yet popular in the 1970s. Thus, ironically, this narrative of female stereotyping which demeans women has brought the female experience from the margins to the center.

Now fast forward to the 80’s, an era where female solo artists, bands, and band leaders were slowly emerging. An anthem of female celebration had hit the charts in 1984—a cover song, “Girls Just Want To Have Fun”, sung by a quirky red Mohawk female vocalist, Cyndi Lauper, which was released a year earlier. This was timely as this was when pop videos were the music industry’s new trend and youths were glued to MTV, thus amplifying the song’s message to youngsters through visualization. The storyline of the song’s video centers around Cyndi walking home under the morning light in last night’s gown and telling her parents that “girls just wanna have fun”.

I come home in the morning light my mother says when you gonna live your life right Oh mother dear we're not the fortunate ones And girls they want to have fun Oh girls just want to have fun

And in another verse of the song:

Some boys take a beautiful girl and hide her away from the rest of the world I want to be the one to walk in the sun....

Afterwards in the video, Cyndi and her female friends come together in one frame, singing “girls just wanna have fun” and later they are marching and dancing in the streets with male onlookers, some even joining them, creating the narrative that women as a collective are changing values.

The song does not explicitly talk about discrimination or equal rights or anything else as such, but just the simple message that women, like men, are entitled to enjoy their lives (have fun). The video illustrates this in a comical and parody manner just as the way the singer presents herself in a comical, playful female—sometimes self-mockery—image, quite different to the typical sexualized female representation promoted by the music industry.

Interestingly, the song was originally penned by male songwriters Robert Hazard and Lolly Vegas and was intentionally written from a male perspective. Cyndi changed parts of the lyrics and the sound, shifting the narrative and turning it into a female empowerment anthem.

The 90s: Gurelsque and Grunge

Fast forward again, now to the 90s. This era not only saw the emergence of more female musicians, but also a different way of representing women through music and fashion. In pop culture, women wearing leather and jeans or unisex attire had been typically associated with female autonomy and independence. In contrast, the 90s popularized babydoll-like dresses that had begun resurfacing in the 80s.

Babydoll dresses were typically associated with femininity, but the 90s had given them a whole new meaning in expressing female sexuality. Not only because the skimpy babydoll attire was worn with masculine boots, but because the new babydoll mixed the pure with the profane, vulnerability with empowerment, and the virgin with the whore. Not surprisingly this babydoll version of the 90s was subsequently known as the “kinderwhore dress”, which was made fashionable by female rock musicians, particularly in the grunge scene.

... the new babydoll mixed the pure with the profane, vulnerability with empowerment, and the virgin with the whore.

During the same time, a new poetics had emerged—the Gurelsque—which was employed by majorly female writers and poets who used parody and mockery to describe the female experience. This form of poetry and writing disrupts traditional values about the feminine by transforming femininity in its extreme into subversiveness that challenges the power structures. This decade also saw the birth of Third Wave Feminism which principles (such as diversity, inclusiveness, and intersectionality), resonate with Gurlesque aesthetics. Gurlesque was initially used to describe a form of poetics, but it has then been expanded to other forms of arts such as music, although probably unintentionally by the songwriters as Gurlesque was a term initially created by scholars.

Gurlesque (later also known as New Grrly Poetics) was first coined by American feminist poets and scholars Arielle Greenberg and Lara Glenum to describe a new female poetics that emerged in the turn of the millennium. However, there are earlier writers commonly associated with Gurlesque, such as Sylvia Path and Gertude Stein. Moreover, Gurlesque is influenced by other forms of arts which arose further back in history.

... Gurlesque ... challenges what is considered normal or natural in relation to society’s norms on gender and femininity by using mockery and ridicule ...

The word Gurlesque derives from girl culture, burlesque, and grotesque. Burlesque (Italian—burla: joke, ridicule, mockery) is a musical and theatrical parody popular in early 17th century Europe. Initially, grotesque is a term used in literature and drama to describe something strange or unusual, but generally it describes something comical, ugly, distorted, bizarre, or shockingly and disturbingly inappropriate. Combine these with girl culture, then you get Gurlesque—an artistic expression which challenges what is considered normal or natural in relation to society’s norms on gender and femininity by using mockery and ridicule, and by transforming these norms into a different feminine culture that may appear bizarre, ugly, and disturbingly unacceptable to society.

In the 90s, Gurlesque was attributed to female solo artists or bands led by female musicians, particularly in grunge, a genre which emerged on the onset of the 90s. Hole, the grunge band led by main songwriter Courtney Love, and particularly their album “Live Through This” (1994), is regarded as displaying Gurlesque features in its compositions, such as lyrical expressions of morbidness. The songs in this album, which almost all were co-written with lead guitarist and band co-founder, Eric Erlandson, are generally considered to represent feminist themes—the experiences of unjust women endure in society through female objectification, sexual violence, motherhood, and personal relationships. These themes are in line with Third Wave Feminism that rose in the same decade.

Live Through This album cover (Wikipedia)

The cover of the “Live Through This” album is a good example of what would be called Gurlesque art by those who use the term. The cover shows a woman with a blondish feathered haircut wearing a beauty queen crown. Her smudged eye make-up almost running down her cheeks due to tears of joy, her wide gaping smile and her arms tightly embracing a bouquet all display a sense of eerie exaggeration, mockery, and ugliness. It’s a parody of what it means to be beautiful in a male-dominated society—the tragedy of being female. The album cover is now an icon of the grunge decade and of Hole as one of the best grunge bands. The iconic cover and the album’s songs are also celebrated for their feminist symbolism and as the legacy of an era.

Gurlesque: Challenging Power through Subversiveness

Gurlesque was a term used in the 90s by feminist scholars, arising from their observation of the arts and literature during this decade that employed the use of girl culture, burlesque, and grotesque to describe the female experience. Nonetheless, the essence of Gurlesque can be found earlier in the works of a few (song)writers, poets, and artists. Gurlesque serves as an awakening and resistance as it transforms femininity into a form of subversiveness that challenges the power structures which oppress women as a social class.

Gurlesque continues to find its relevance in the 2000s, where a number of poets are associated with this form of poetry. You can check out some of their works published in the book, Gurlesque: the new grrly, grotesque, burlesque poetics (Lara Glenum and Arielle Greenberg, eds.).

-Some Thoughts from the Cappuccino Girl- (2024)

#music #subculture #gender #women #counterculture

Top image: Courtney Love in a babydoll dress performing with her band, Hole (Pinterest)

Sources

Cooper, Sabrina (2019) 'The Story Behind Hole’s Iconic Live Through This Album Cover.' AnOthermag.com. https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/11646/the-story-behind-hole-s-iconic-live-through-this-album-cover-ellen-von-unwerth. Accessed June 15 2024.

Oliva, Melanie (2016) 'What Is Gurlesque Poetry? A third wave of feminism, sexuality, and femininity revisited.' The Odyssey Online. https://www.theodysseyonline.com/gurlesque-poetry. Accessed 1 May 2024.

Volpert, Megan (2024) 'The enduring feminist legacy of Hole: 30 years later, must we still “Live Through This”?' Salon.com. https://www.salon.com/2024/04/11/hole-live-through-this-courtney-love/. Accessed 23 April 2024.

Videos

Cyndi Lauper YouTube Channel (2009) Girls Just Want To Have Fun (Official Video). https://youtu.be/PIb6AZdTr-A?si=KQIzN6OcWs4FwpXT. Accessed 17 June 2024.

Warmer Music Videos YouTube Channel (2016) Blondie – Rip Her To Shreds (Live). https://youtu.be/b18RIMN5NBg?si=eJpk4FsZ-wlBk7KM. Accessed 17 June 2024.

Goth—in Literature, Rock, and Subculture

August 20, 2023

Dark, gloomy, with a dash of horror. That is how Goth literature is mostly described. Looking back, Goth gave the stage to medieval women writers challenging the norms of the day. Centuries later, Goth grew into a subculture in the music genre, the fashion world, and as a way of life that represents nonconformity. This element of nonconformity in Goth, often romanticized as being dark feminine energy, has continued to evolve to this day in pop culture, in clubs, in the life lived by today’s Goth generation.

As a literary genre, Goth came out of the post-Romanticism era in medieval England. Some say it is a subgenre of Dark Romanticism. Classic Goth features dark romance with a damsel in distress in a remote, gloomy castle in the mountains, waiting to be rescued.

If we take a look at what, or rather who, the term Goth referred to, we will see that it referred to a Germanic tribe which were responsible for the fall of Western Rome. The ancient Goths, called the barbarians by the Romans, invaded Rome and weakened Roman culture. Their kingdoms rose after the demise of the Western Roman Empire. The two branches of the tribe, the Visigoth and Ostrogoth, where its people were believed to have originated from Scandinavia, paved the way for the rise of medieval Europe while spreading Goth culture. The term Goth was then generally used to describe a style of medieval architecture that was popular in the 12th to 16th centuries. The castles typically featured masonry pointed arches and stained-glass windows—the epitome of Goth architecture.

So how did this medieval genre with its signature chivalry trope turn into a subculture of rebellion and nonconformity?

The medieval setting in literature characterized by remote castles, mystery, and terror with romantic overtones were known as Goth because of its association with medieval architectural type of settings. The first novel to be called gothic was one given such name by the author himself. Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto, published in 1764 was the first gothic novel, where he used the subtitle, “A Gothic Story.” He used the term to describe something barbarous and medieval. Other novels following this style of dark and medieval setting with the damsel in distress trope have since been labeled Gothic.

So how did this medieval genre with its signature chivalry trope turn into a subculture of rebellion and nonconformity?

Although it is one of the most classic forms of patriarchy in literature, Goth in fact gave rise to women writers and more women readers. The genre emerged at a time when women’s literacy in England was on the rise as well as the educated middle-class. Women began to write and more were reading. Ann Radcliffe is considered to be the first Goth female writer; her first novel, The Castles of Athlin and Dubnayne (1789), was written anonymously. Then she rose to fame and fortune with four more novels during her lifetime. This was an important moment in history as it was around the time Mary Wollstonecraft published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). Although Radcliffe's writing still leaned towards the patriarchal values of the time, over the years, Goth evolved as more women authors began to create less traditional female characters and thus began the conversation of patriarchal oppression and social change.

Radcliffe herself bore the label of being anti-Catholic because her novel The Italian (1797) portrayed elements of Catholicism negatively. Later female Goth authors, such as Louisa May Alcott, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, and Mary Shelley would challenge gender roles and raise issues concerning subjugation, class, and female autonomy through their female characters.

Siouxsie Sioux (Pinterest)

Centuries later, in the music scene, Goth rock became a genre that embraces this attitude of dark fearlessness. This genre is marked by its poetic lyrics that romanticize darkness with themes of nihilism, sadness, pain, and death presented by haunting vocals, heavy basslines, and distorted melodies with an ambience of gloom. Well, of course this is a generalized description, however, the dark music and style of Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Cocteau Twins are often used as typical examples of Goth music and fashion, whether the bands like it or not.

Gothic rock emerged during the post-Punk era in late 70s Britain with Joy Division and Bauhaus considered as pioneers. The genre flourished throughout the 80s, and then further evolved in the 90s and 2000s. To go with the music, Gothic fashion reflected the dark mood with its trademark black attire, dark hair and makeup, and often androgynous appearance. However, dark eye makeup aside, Nico (German singer-songwriter, once of the Velvet Underground) with her proto-Goth sound is the godmother of Goth rock.

Women found their voice through Goth literature in 18th century England and women authors used it as a means to express critique of the society they lived in. Because of the famous Gothic women writers and their nonconforming narratives, Goth is associated with women’s equality and modern-day feminism. Fans of Gothic novels will find a somewhat wide range of this literature penned by female authors today.

Interestingly, centuries after the emergence of female-penned classic Goth literature, out of Goth rock emerged a new female image of feminine rebellion and empowerment. Earlier, the punk era saw more women playing in bands. However, during post-Punk, we saw the rise of a few female icons in Goth rock, like Siouxsie herself, and they were definitely no damsel in distress.

Goth is not just a literary or music genre or even fashion trend.

Fashion-wise, Goth faded in the 90s but like the cycle of fashion that repeats itself, Goth has re-emerged—sometimes called Neo-Goth for ditching the black dress code—but still maintains the dark feminine energy that fuels Goth-girl power. Examples are in today’s popular TV series, such as Wednesday, or Goth clubs in different parts of the world.

Goth is not just a literary or music genre or even fashion trend, although it may be for some. Goth actually represents a way of life that is, according to its followers, founded on equality and values outside established norms. Today’s Goth generation tries to live a life of freethinking and sexual freedom founded on a gender egalitarianism which was considered lacking in previous subcultures. Although today’s Goth subculture is post-feminist, it nevertheless faces the struggle of achieving inclusivity and ousting heterosexist norms. The revolution goes on!

-Some Thoughts from the Cappuccino Girl- (2023)

#Goth #Gothrock #Gothfashion #music #feminism #gender #subculture #counterculture #literature

You might be interested to read: Who Were the Mods? Modernism and Paris After the War Check out my other blog, Some Thoughts from the Cappuccino Girl for topics on gender and history.

Top Image: Rob Oo (Wikimedia)

Sources:

Darya (2018) ‘What the Hell Is Goth Music? Brief History of Goth Rock.’ Miss Mephistopheles. https://missmephistopheles.wordpress.com/2018/07/20/where-the-hell-did-goth-music-come-from-and-what-the-hell-is-it-the-history-of-goth-rock/ (Accessed 19 July 2023).

Jarus, Owen (2022) livescience.com. https://www.livescience.com/45948-ancient-goths.html (Accessed 19 July 2023).

Ledoux, Ellen (n.d.) ‘The Female Gothic: From the Second-Wave to Post-Feminism.’ Atmostfear Entertainment. https://www.atmostfear-entertainment.com/literature/books/female-gothic-second-wave-post-feminism/ (Accessed 20 August 2023).

Wilkins, Amy C. (2004) '“So Full of Myself as a Chick”: Goth Women, Sexual Independence, and Gender.' Gender and Society, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 328–349. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4149405 (Accessed 19 August 2023).

The Rise and Fall of the Rockers and the Mods

February 13, 2022

(Republished)

Speeding down the road on her pale blue Triumph 21, Jane turns and stops to join the other bikers at the side of the road. Mick, her boyfriend, is waiting for her. They are part of the Rockers, one of Britain’s youth subculture of the 1960s. They are all going to Clacton to spend Easter weekend at the seaside. It turned out to be a day they would never forget.

Fifty-six years later, Jane recalls what had happened that Easter weekend in 1964. “By the time we arrived at the seaside, Mods had crowded the beach.”

This was the beginning of the infamous ‘Battle of Pier Gap’. The clash between two youth groups, the Rockers and the Mods, would make history on this beach. By the end of the day at Clacton, arrests were made on both sides.

Mary, who was also present at Clacton that day, left the scene on her Vespa after her fellow Mods, boyfriend Jimmy and cousin John, had been arrested. The next morning, she woke up to a media frenzy which shook the country. The papers reported about a youth gang fight on the beach, describing it as the moral decadence of Britain’s future generation. Mary realized that the whole thing was blown out of proportion.

The overwhelming press coverage had turned the Rockers and the Mods into the image of Britain’s ruthless teens. As Mary remembers it, “Some of the things that the papers said happened were true, but most weren’t.”

The Mods were a new breed of British youngsters that emerged after the Rockers during the 1960s. They ditched the loud motorbike, heavy leather jacket, denim, and boots—the ‘50s-rooted culture that the Rockers worshipped—for scooters and continental style attire. Mods danced in R&B and Jazz clubs, while Rockers listened to American ‘50s Rock and Roll. They may have not liked each other, but any clashes were, as Jane described, “harmless compared to England’s backstreet gang fights.”

The series of ‘60’s seaside battles (in Margate, Brighton, Hastings, Bournemouth, and Clacton) were isolated events, each causing minor damage. The media turned the events into something more perhaps because they needed “news” to write about after Britain had rose from its war-torn state. For Jane, this did the damage. She resented the fact that, “[their] Rebellion against the system was shifted to a gang war problem.”

Nevertheless, aside from the intention of creating a media sensation, the papers may have been expressing, albeit in a rather exaggerated manner, what at that time appeared frightening to the older, wartime generation: A new generation of teens who are independent and have spending power, and with the military draft abolished, have no responsibility to the country.

The Rockers and Mods were working teens, better educated and some were making more money than their parents. They were able to purchase motorbikes and buy better clothes than their parents. When it came to clothes, the Mod had a distinctive taste, but with a philosophy to go with it.

“It was about individuality,” former Mod, Mary explained, “We didn’t want to be part of the masses, we wanted to be a different working class.” For Mary who is a week shy of her 72nd birthday, the Mods were a symbol of rebellion against the old way of doing things.

Unsurprisingly, the industries welcomed the consumerism of the new generation. The Rockers’ love for big motorbikes resulted in the boom of Britain’s motorcycle industry and the Mods’ love for clothes benefited the fashion industry. Wide media coverage took the Mod look from the streets to the stores. But by this time, for the original Mods, this meant the end of it.

The media and the industries undeniably contributed to the fall of the Rockers and the Mods ‘60s subcultures. “We started from the streets, Mods were underground. It was about freedom. When everybody started dressing the way we did, it was over for me,” Mary, explained. She couldn’t have said it any better.

-Some Thoughts from the Cappuccino Girl- (2022)

Note:

Mary and Jane are loosely based on real people; Mick, Jimmy, and John are fictitious.

This article has been published on YouMe.social and TheTundra.com in 2020.

You might be interested to read about Britpop: https://feministpassion.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-not-so-hip-britpop.html

Or read Who Were the Mods?: https://wordsmith.social/cappuccinogirl/who-were-the-mods

#rockers #mods #history #fashion #UK #popculture #Britain #subculture #counterculture #music

Mrs. Robinson, Countercultures, and Politics

December 12, 2021

“Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me.” That is one of the most famous lines from Hollywood’s classic, The Graduate (1967). Through Benjamin’s (Dustin Hoffman) relationship with Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft)—a young fresh graduate with a bored middle-aged, middle-class housewife turned seductress—the movie tells a story of a noteworthy period in American history.

Following the postwar economic boom and increase in population, in the 1950s young middle-class couples moved from the overcrowded cities to new housing areas in the suburbs. These homes, equipped with new efficient home appliances, particularly in their kitchen design, were dubbed the “typical American house”. In 1959, Nixon once tried to enlighten Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev about the dishwashers directly installed in these houses. Nixon claims, “In America, we like to make life easier for women.”

It was during this Cold War period that the ideal white middle-class American family consisting of children, a male breadwinner and housewife was part of a political propaganda. In the US Cold War propaganda abroad, gender ideology played an important role to establish capitalism’s success over communism through the image of the Western middle-class, breadwinner-housewife nuclear family.

In fact, in the 1950s, the term middle-class Americans was more of a political term rather than an economic term, as political scholars have pointed out. The term was used to refer to an American identity associated with a set of values, a specific lifestyle, taste, and culture. This was marked by the rise of a consumer culture and a culture of conformity. It was against this setting that counterculture movements began to emerge.

The counterculture movements criticized the establishment, class divisions, education, gender norms, as well as the family and marriage institutions. The movements' dissatisfaction with American society is reflected in The Graduate through Ben’s journey to leave his dull privileged-life and break free from society’s conventions.

The story line reflected the hypocrisy of the privileged life in the comfortable suburban homes, which confined women to domesticity. In her research published in her book The Feminine Mystique (1963), Betty Friedan revealed that behind the doors of many seemingly happy suburban homes, lived an unhappy educated housewife who was discontent with domestic life. As much as the counterculture movements, such as the Beat and hippie movements, appear to offer a kind of sexual revolution—women—as disclosed in Beat women’s memoirs, remained as sexual objects and domestic creatures.

It was not only traditional values that encouraged women to primary be domestic beings, but it was also the politics of the day. For example, political issues surrounding childcare in the US had a significant contribution to the domesticity of women. During the Second World War, women were mobilized to work due to the urgent need of fulfilling war production. To encourage and enable women to join the workforce, the government provided quality federal-funded daycare. When the war ended and women were expected to return home to make way for male employment, the daycare initiative ended, despite considerable opposition from many women.

When the need for federal-funded collective childcare was raised again in the 1960s and ‘70s, it continued to face objection, in part, because the Cold War foes use such a system, so it was deemed incompatible with American values. Nixon vetoed the Comprehensive Child Development Act of 1971 arguing that it would “commit the vast moral authority of the National Government to the side of communal approaches to child rearing over against the family-centered approach.” Thus, childcare was and is still treated as an issue for individual families—particularly the women—to cope with, rather than an economic investment that will empower women and their families. Not surprisingly, to date, the US has no adequate childcare infrastructure intact, a problem which has been further exacerbated by the pandemic.

However, as with the politics of the Cold War era, male-dominated countercultures which emerged at the time too did not want to deal with any issues that might disrupt the gender power structure too much at their inconvenience. In terms of gender equality, changes were slow. As we see, after Mrs. Robinson’s liaison with Ben, she comes back to the comfort of her suburban home, behind the doors of the domesticity that define her.

-Some Thoughts from the Cappuccino Girl- (2021)

#ColdWar #counterculture #US #childcare #WorldWar2 #gender #history #literature #films #cinema #class

More on The Graduate https://feministpassion.blogspot.com/2021/11/the-graduate-and-middleman.html More on US wartime childcare https://feministpassion.blogspot.com/2021/09/war-politics-and-childcare-in-us.html More on countercultures https://feministpassion.blogspot.com/2017/07/flapper-queens-beats-mods-and-punk.html

Sources

Dratch, Howard (1974). The Politics of Child Care in the 1940s. Science & Society, 38(2): 167–204. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40401779 (Accessed 25 July 2021).

Friedan, Betty (1973) ‘Up from the Kitchen Floor.’ NY Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1973/03/04/archives/up-from-the-kitchen-floor-kitchen-floor.html (Accessed August 22, 2020).

Krasner, Barbara (2014) ‘The Nuclear Family and Cold War Culture of the 1950s.’ Academia. https://www.academia.edu/9926751/The_Nuclear_Family_and_Cold_War_Culture_of_the_1950s (Accessed December 21, 2019).

Maragou, Helena (2015) Lawrence R. Samuel, The American Middle Class: A Cultural History. Review https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/10458 (Accessed 14 November 2021).

Punch, David A. (2018) The Graduate: Symbolism in Film. https://medium.com/@DavidA.Punch/the-graduate-symbolism-in-film-a549ef9882c0 (Accessed 21 November 2021).

The Kitchen Debate-transcript 24 July 959 Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev U.S. Embassy, Moscow, Soviet Union. https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/1959-07-24.pdf (Accessed August 16, 2020).

Modernism and Paris After the War

October 9, 2021

The moral devastation experienced by the US after the Great War led the country to the quest of achieving a new stability. This was sought through regaining economic strength and retaining traditional values. It was during this aftermath that many American modernist writers, in search of a safe haven, emigrated to Europe. Many settled in Paris, finding the freedom that could release them from the disillusionment caused by the war.

For many years Paris was home to American modernist writers, poets, and artists during an era of postwar recovery and prefascist political power. These writers were then known as “the Lost Generation”—those who due to the war had lost their faith in the government, God, and the American dream.

Even with the economic and social independence that American women gained in the roaring '20s, the literary and art scene still offered less freedom to women. This led many American female writers and artists to join the emigration to France in the 1920s and '30s. Among these women were Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Solita Solano, and Thelma Wood, just to name a few. However, “the Lost Generation”, a term first coined by Stein, remained associated mainly with male writers, such as Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald—the major heroes of this generation.

In the 1920s and 30s, Paris had inspired women modernist writers and artists as the city gave them freedom to live an alternative lifestyle to that of the conservative postwar American society. These Parisian women, who led the unmarried, bohemian, and bisexual lifestyle, were later dubbed the “Left Bank women writers”, as they famously resided in this part of Paris. Their work and lifestyle quickly became a subculture within the male dominated literary and art community of American modernists.

The Left Bank women writers were less acknowledged in modernist literature than their male peers. They were eventually recognized but labeled as “women writers” or “lesbian writers”. Some writers find this separate category of recognition as derogatory. Barnes, who is well-known for her classic novel, Nightwood (1936) which was influenced by her relationship with Wood, once said, “I hate women writers!” and wanted to disassociate her work from this label. The category had emerged owing to the absence of white heterosexual male bias (albeit still predominantly white) in the works of Left Bank women writers. Despite this, arguably, the category may have kept the work of Left Bank women writers at the margins of the modernist literary movement.

The male comrades of the Lost Generation emerged from a state of cultural changes and turbulent times. Even though breaking with traditional literary conventions, they were often criticized for preserving a predominantly masculine culture; thus, contributing to modernism’s marginalization of women.

Photo: Solita Solano and Djuna Barnes in a Paris cafe around 1922 (Maurice Brange)

-Some Thoughts from the Cappuccino Girl- (2021)

#literature #Worldwar1 #womenwriters #lostgeneration #history #US #Paris #gender #women #subculture #counterculture

If you are interested in this topic, you might like to read: Unsung Women Writers of the Postwar Era https://feministpassion.blogspot.com/2019/03/unsung-women-writers-of-postwar-era.html

Who Were the Mods?

September 17, 2021

Music and fashion in our pop culture eventually become a regular part of our life because we hear, wear, or see them every day. We tend to forget that some pop cultures first started out as a subculture or even a counterculture. In fact, if we look back in history many trends were actually a response to the social, political, and economic environment. Many of course started as a youth lifestyle characterized by the music and fashion youths strongly identified with.

During the 50’s in the UK, a new urban youth culture called the mod (from the word modern, because the youths were into modern jazz) began to emerge. Like other social or cultural changes that have happened in the past, coffee houses were also an important part of the mod social setting. The mods would cruise around the city at night on their scooters and hang out in coffee houses where they listened to jazz and ska out of a jukebox—popular music genres of postwar Britain.

The mods had a distinct style and were very fashion conscious. Influenced by French and Italian art films, these youngsters wore tight suits and pointed shoes. The mods came from urban working-class communities who, because of better economic conditions and job opportunities after the Second World War, were able to live a somewhat consumptive lifestyle of fashion and staying out at night. Buying clothes was an important part of the mod lifestyle, where mods spent most of their wage.

Mod women popularized androgynous fashion by wearing masculine leather jackets as they rode their scooters through the night. Women were quite visible in the mod culture. As working women, their economic independence allowed them to adopt the mod lifestyle.

At a glance, the mod lifestyle may appear to have no political relevance, but it was a political statement in itself: a rebellion against the conventional postwar English life of hard work and conformity. The youths felt that the values their parents held did not get them anywhere better.

In the swinging 60s, the mod style became a trend in London’s center of fashion, Carnaby Street, and overnight the fashion industry launched Twiggy as a mod fashion icon. Likewise in the music scene, mod was the buzzword and new rock bands, such as The Who and The Small Faces, identified as mods. David Bowie also sported the Mod look. Once a counterculture, mod became commercialized and turned into pop culture.

The mods later evolved into the skinheads. These original skinheads had reggae and ska on their jukebox playlist, and were a mixed-ethnic group of working class youngsters; quite different from what would be commonly associated with the skinheads of today.

Fashion and music associated with mods experienced a series of revivals, especially in the ‘80s. Rather than being too fashion conscious, the mods of this era took a lot more interest in political issues. Such is the case with bands like The Jam and The Style Council who sported the mod look.

Nice to see that mod-influenced fashion is still present today, although unrelated to what mod had stood for and only reminiscence of the rebellion the counterculture once inspired.

-Some Thoughts from the Cappuccino Girl- (2019)

You might be interested to read: The Rise and Fall of the Rockers and the Mods https://wordsmith.social/cappuccinogirl/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-rockers-and-the-mods

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