Mediations and the Genesis of Style: Real Relations—behind everybody’s backs
Item
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Title
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Mediations and the Genesis of Style: Real Relations—behind everybody’s backs
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Description
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In short, the evolution of a style has consequences, both for the group, and for how the group will be seen, defined and ‘reacted to’ by others. Sub-cultural styles have become the principal way in which the mass media report or visualise ‘youth’. Judges, the police and social workers will use stereotypes based on appearance and dress to label groups and link them with certain characteristic kinds of behaviour. Aspects of dress, style and appearance therefore play a crucial role in group stigmatisation, and thus in the operation and escalation of social reaction. Though it is beyond our scope in this section, we must observe that such reactions generated among different groups, by the existence of an identifiable style, must have consequences for the group’s own position in relation to the style they have developed. Whether this intensifies their commitment towards greater group solidarity or develops that to a new level, or whether, finally, social reaction is successful in dissuading members so identified from their intentions, is an empirical question to be established more precisely. However, Jefferson’s comments on the Teds suggest that the public reaction to their original appropriation of the Edwardian Suit was instrumental in their developing their own distinctive accentuations and adaptions of the basic suit. He argues that the choice of uniform was initially, “an attempt to buy status (since the clothes were originally worn by upper-class dandies) which, being quickly aborted by a harsh social reaction...was followed by an attempt to create their own style...”
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Designer
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Hall, Stuart
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Date
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2003
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Source
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Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-war Britain
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Bibliographic Citation
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Hall, S. 2003. "Resistance through rituals: Youth subcultures in post-war Britain." Routledge. Page 183.
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