ethoughts weekly- Issue 172

July 28, 2007

Punk cul-de-sac

My husband and I had a dinner date last night. I had Crème Brule for dessert, which is rare. I don’t know if Crème Brule is available in Schuylkill County where I reside. I picture inquiring about Crème Brule here in Schuylkill County, and a high school-aged waitress wondering out loud, “Is that Paris Hilton’s new friend, Creme Brule?”

After dinner and dessert, we made our way to the Berkshire Mall in Reading to stroll and peruse. This hasn’t happened since the 1990’s. For many years, shopping has been a mission-driven experience. Date nights are semi-rare events, and window-shopping is the luxury of those with time abundance. For us, it just isn’t ordinary anymore.

Tim kept mentioning facts about the iPhone. He thought I’d jump at the chance to see one in person, as if I’d want its autograph, or something. It’s a $500 phone. I know it’s a marvel. I’ve been to the website. I’ve seen the commercials. I want one, but salivating over one won’t be of any use to me. I turned him down, about eighteen times. Plus, I had to walk and work off the Brule. Paris would have approved.

Finally, out of an over abundance of curiosity, and at my request, Tim reluctantly joined me in a little store geared to punk teenagers. I always wondered where the kids who have 48 chains, and two hand cuffs, 12 zippers, and sharp pointy objects sticking out of their pants, shop. Finally I stumbled on to it. Tim was repulsed, but only at first. We found some funny novelty t-shirts, and he was won over. They also had a nice display of Vans sneakers. They had plenty of checkerboard-patterned shoes that threw us back to memories of the Eighties. The shoes cost $38 and were made in China, so that snapped us back to reality. And apparently Johnny Cash will always be cool. It makes Tim very happy to see Johnny shown in a positive light. Many of the products were thoroughly creepy though. I pray my daughter does not find this fashion style appealing, ever! The assortment of horrendous visual images, and odd body jewelry would make your head spin—spin and then pop off. Then, of course, 17 pierced, pointy, heavily zippered kids in black with dangling lip rings, eye liner, and ear buds, would take your picture, or video, with their iPhone, and put it on their myspace website, in 90 seconds.

After being amused and enlightened and horrified by browsing, like a floundering fish out of water, I saw in a breath of epiphany, “Here is an entire industry buzzing along at full speed for a fully fleshed out subculture. In our day, these punk types existed too. Their were plenty of them. But they created their own fashions, and made them unique, (unique in a way that matched all their friends, of course.) Now, it’s a market. The whole thing is completely branded. It’s utterly commercialized. It’s niche marketed directly to their overly hormonal, underly-creative and seemingly malnourished grey matter. And it works like a charm.

Suddenly I realized–– The world really has changed for kids. Even the punks have sold out! All these kids are trying to be anti-establishment all while they buy into preset, corporate, punk-teen targeting enterprises. The empire strikes back. They all can’t be so dense not to get this. It’s kind of sad. These poor tools. That’s why, to me, the weirdness of the place wasn’t as frightening as it was sort of pitiable. It was punk goes corporate, get daddy’s credit card, kind of scary, so that’s different. It's not as threatening. It's more supply side economics, and less Satanism then I expected. (Or maybe that makes it more Satanism, who knows!) But--Seriously, dudes! It’s suburbia-chic, not fringe, not renegade. Commerce is fascinating.

And life goes on. All in all, I’m really surprised "punk" still looks the same. It’s hasn’t really been revamped at all in thirty years. Not the most innovative bunch, these new consumers, these gadget savvy teens. Still, they will have to grow up, and get jobs, and cut their hair. They might not think so. They might rage against machines now, but they’ll phase out. Almost all of them will. All, but a few, will take out most of the piercing paraphernalia. My knickers aren’t really in a bunch about any of it. They're the nicest punks in years. It was an interesting date night. I’ll think of it as my little jaunt down Punk Cul-de-sac.

Lisa DeLay

©2007