Anarchy, Pop and Violence: Punk Rock Subculture and the Rhetoric of Class, 1976-78

Abstract

The punk subculture and its music helped change the way people talked about social stratification in Britain in the late-1970s. Punk reintroduced working-class and youth values of rebellion into British culture, exposing the wider public to the privations of youth in the economic climate of the era. Punk values were promoted through rhetoric both old and new - for example, with the repeated use of words like 'anarchy', 'pop' and 'violence'. Other texts included political affiliations, connections to older art movements, fashion and attitude. These texts acquired attention through the outrageous songs and actions of bands like the Sex Pistols, which were covered widely in the tabloid and music presses. But the subculture's efforts to protest the professionalisation of British society were doomed to failure because the musicians involved could not help becoming professionalised themselves. Young people came to appreciate less iconoclastic versions of punk, especially 'new wave' music. Thus the punk subculture, for all its rhetoric, ultimately failed to create a 'revolution' in British culture.