Punk in Drublic

Punk has always been an iconic musical art form that embodied the rebellious youth culture from the late 1970's English ghettos to the the present day city streets. In Dave Laing's article "Listening To Punk," Laing suggests that the Punk music genre is a subculture on its own, that the individuals how create punk music emphasize the message within the music by using less-than-pleasant musical tones with harsh vocals and screeching guitar riffs to ordain and subterranian values and ideologies of the punk movement of the time. In doing this, musicians are able to block out any "distractions" that could pull the listener away from the intentional meaning of the song. He states that if a listener is unable to understand or disagrees with the message being conveyed with the song, that an unintentional "gap" has been created because that is not the purpose of punk music.

By comparing punk music to popular contemporary music genres, Laing is able to separate the differences between the mainstream society and the punk subculture described through musical form. Since punk has it's own form of dress-code, hairstyle, lifestyle, values, as well as themes such as anarchy, death, violence, and public disorder, it is maintained as a response to much of what the punk music is conveying through the songs. It's shock value of vulgarity, swearing, screaming, and qualities opposite to that of other popular music. For some, the shock content found within a lot of punk music is blocked by some listeners; that "the shock defense', the inability to ' digest' shock content, produces trauma. For the audience of an artistic event, the trauma involves what Barthes calls a 'suspension of language, a blocking of meaning'." (Laing, 455)

It is at this point where a conflict has been created. If the shock value of punk music is too strong within the music, listeners will not listen and therefore not understand. If the listener does not understand, then that individual is exempt from the punk sub-culture of rock music. Even if the individual may like the idea of mohawks, studded jackets, combat boots, and tattoos but do not enjoy a lot of punk music, they become what society calls a "poser" and therefore damage or hurt the ideologies and values of punk music because they lose their meaning among the individuals who do not like punk music.

Much like the subculture groups of graffiti artists or skinheads, punks are usually comprised of youth who are misguided and unwanted. Rejected from the normal mainstream culture of society or refusing to conform with it, they turn to the aggressive, hooligan-style party rockers who are not just those kids who do what they want, who are overly aggressive, sniff glue, get drunk, and make fools of themselves; No, these kids are youth looking to share a common belief in the idea of a different society where they are in control and those who are part of the mainstream culture are ridiculed and destroyed. They do not exploit themselves or their individuality through paint, names, or by occupying spaces but instead by the distribution of music, concerts, punk parties, clubs, and more.

Punk is a deviant culture who explore their existence through music, dress, and lifestyle. Punk media has had a huge influence of the pertaining mainstream culture of different musical sub-genres namely punk-rock, ska, and Oi! Even though the punk subculture itself can be looked at as a parenting culture to the smaller sub-genres of punk era inspired music that in-turn became valued ideologies and themes that can be seen among subcultures of skaters, drug users, and other deviated youth groups, punk on its own is almost considered a mainstream sub-culture because of it's exploitation as a dangerous group of young deviants. Punk is not something meant to be feared, but embraced by the youth who feel unwanted, used, lost, and looking for an identity to be associated with. The punk sub-culture is almost like an army of rejected youth, youth who were once pressured to conform to the mainstream culture of society and refused. Their affiliation with one another poses itself as a larger embodying of the spirit of rejecting the mainstream culture that had rejected them. It is a parenting culture and a live one, it is more than just a style or a means of expression for the past 35 years, punk is a sub-culture that is here to stay.