Cultural Studies : THE CULTURE OF PUNK IN THE MODERN ERA

DISCUSSION

1. The Origins of Punk

   1. History of Punk

The emergenced of punk firstly appear in London, England in 1980s. On its first year, punk was disturbed by a group of people name skinhead. But then they seemed to walk together since they found similarities on their spirit. However, the term Punk might be related to the one of the genre of music which was appeared in 1970s. It also determined the ideology of life including social or political aspects. Punk had been raised as the reaction of increasing violence, crime caused by unemployed people, degradation of moral, low economic, and the bad politics of government. It was the way they choose to tease the role of government by songs. The songs were simple but deeply in meaning because sometimes it contains rude words with fast beat and stab.

Not a few people take a negative view of Punk. It has been proven from the incident happened in England that many people called punk as glue sniffer and destroyer. It happened because people tried to use glue with a bad smell to replace the beer they canceled to buy. Most of punk also break their own image by playing around the street and committed crime. In spite of the bad created by punk they also well-known of their fashion and style to behave in front of people. The characteristics of their performance is Mohawk hair style like Indians or feather cut with light color, boots, spike and chain, leather jacket, tight jeans, old and faded clothes. Appeared from low classes youth who anti-social, anti-establishment, destroyer, criminal, drunker and many others. That is why, most of people thought that they are proper to be called as Punkers.

We also determine the word punk as a movement against politics and government. It was created by teenagers to show their independent way to value life from the words “we can do it ourselves”. The way they encounter problems seen on the songs they had make which is mostly talk about the desperation of government, politics, economic, environment, social, even religion problems.

2. Life Style and Ideology of Punk

Punk categorized as a part of art. Their life style and the way to think something are not really different with the pioneer of punk, William Godwin, Pierre Joseph Proudhon, and Mikhail Bakunin. The pioneer performed a strange performance, provoked the viewers directly, blurred the gap between art idealism and real life, showed really bad performance from low quality, and of course anti-establishment. At that time, they believed that a great performance must be accompanied by great ideas.

Punk then developed as a reaction from low class music community to the high class music community such as The Beatles, Rolling Stone, and Elvis Presley. Punk’s music sounds like the scream from protester of the wild world. The lyrics mostly talk about anger, frustrated, bored of low, low education, labor, jobless, blaming government as a figure who dominated the society. Therefore, punk was claimed as a bad community to which television never ask them to perform their music and there is no any other company who like to have a business with them.

2. Punk in Indonesia

From the jargon “we can do it ourselves”, Indonesians developed punk in almost every big city in Indonesia, such as Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, Yogyakarta, and Malang. First of all, Indonesians built small record industry and any other distribution store. They made their own labels and distributed it. Then, this kind of activities grew and became a small shop called distro. CD or cassette is not the only one thing they sell in distro, but then they also tried to produce t-shirt, accessories, book, magazine, poster, body piercing, and tattoo. All goods are sold in low prices and produced only in small numbers. It is truly adapted from the ideology of punk that distro as a way for punkers against the characteristics of teenagers to follow Levi's, Adidas, Nike, Calvin Klein, and many other branded things.

Today, punkers become dominated by street man and child. However, it was really bad things since even adults, young and children are joined together to drink, committed crime, and many other bad things. It was obvious that the term punk in Indonesia is far away from the origin of punk. Maybe, firstly they adapted positive things from the origins of punk as they built distro which is shown their good creativities and also to decrease the number of consumptive behavior. But then, it was wrongly adapted by them (street man and child) as a reaction of the ideology of freedom from punk. Actually, they successfully show how bad they are but from the quotation given by Malcolm McLaren from Punk and History “…you could look bad – not just be bad.” We may show up our opinion and our willingness without showing the badness if we want people listen and understand us.

3. The Songs of Punk

   1. Superman Is Dead (SID) – Jika Kami Bersama

Jika kami bersama nyalakan tanda bahaya
jika kami berpesta hening akan terpecah
tak perlu berpura-pura memang begini adanya
dan kami di sini akan terus bernyanyi

dan jika kami bersama nyalakan tanda bahaya
musik akan menghentak, anda akan tersentak
dan kami tahu anda bosan dijejali rasa yang sama

(ini lagunya, are you ready)

lepaskan semua belenggu yang melingkari hidupmu

berdiri tegak menantang di sana di garis depan
aku berteriak lantang untuk jiwa yang hilang
untuk mereka yang selalu tersingkirkan

ketika tiada beban lagi untuk berlari

ketika tiada orang yang akan peduli

aku dan dia selalu menunggumu di siniangkat sekali lagi

dan kami di sini akan terus bernyanyi
dan kami tahu anda bosan dijejali rasa yang sama
kami adalah kamu, muda, beda dan berbahaya

dan kami di sini akan terus bernyanyi

Analyze of the song of SID:

If the punkers are together, many people feel afraid because they think that punkers will make a crash or a trouble for the environment. In the real situation, the punkers do not want to limit their life by obeying the rules. By listening to the music of SID (as the punk musician), the lyrics of Jika Kami bersama shows that punkers do not want to have limitation, they were bored with joining the rules, they always do what the want to do and always say what they think and what they want to say. The Punkers’ styles are different with others and the way of making ideology also have differences with others. The punk’s music has the uniqueness by having more rocked genre and will make the listeners are not relax by listening to the music. The punkers are always open-minded and always think the logically. They usually do not care with others. The society still thinks that punkers are still strange and always do the trouble. Because of it, not many people want to have punk’s friends.

4. The Movie: Punk In Love

That story tells about four young malangese punkers. Their act represents and shows how the life of punk is. From that story we can catch some points of punkers:

1. They are anarchies and independent. They won’t be a follower of the government’s rule or society’s rule because they think that government is full of foolish and liar. Even they don’t believe with God because they think God is unfair. The poor people are poorer and the rich people are richer. They are anti-established and anti-social. Hence, they make their own rules based on their view.

2. They are naughty. They do what they like without care whether their behavior disturb people or not. The most important is they can life whatever the condition. They get everything with their way without care it is good or wrong way. They also drink alcohol and marijuana. Hence, many people who hate and cant stand with them.

3. They are dirty. They never clean their body, their clothes are dirty and untidy, their food is unhealthy and they sleep wherever they are.

4. They have good solidarity in friendship. They are very closed in every condition. Where there is someone is sad or happy, they are too. They also help each other with their best effort.we can see when mojo almost die because of infection on his left feet. They bring them in hospital till they kidnap the doctor.

5. They have no useful activity. Their daily activity just sit around doing nothing in the corner and just pass their life in simple way, seems like they take it easy about their future.

6. The have uniqe style. Their hair is Mohawk or cut like feathercut with colourful on it, use boot shoes, spike, chain, leather jacket, tight jeans trouser, tattoo, earring, and use black pencil under eyes.

7. Their languages are dirty and impolite. They accustomed to use the lowest Javanese level like “jancok”, “raimu” etc.

Based on that film, we can know how bad their behavior is but behind that we also know that they have heart and love. Their friendship is everything even thought it broke the rules. That is the positive point of punk.

5. References

Chris Barker. Cultural Studies: Teori dan Praktik. 2004. Bantul: Kreasi Wacana Offset.

Jurnal oleh Iim Mulyana tanggal 22 Juli 2008

Chapter 7 “Punk and History” by Malcolm McLaren