dress codes play a prominent part. Like others (e.g. Cohen, 1980) he draws
attention to the exaggerated proletarianism of skinhead culture: the Doc
Marten boots, jeans and braces, button-down shirts and shaved heads
forming a caricature of the norms of working-class clothing. The xenopho-
bic chauvinism of the skinhead stereotype is an extreme version of a more
‘mainstream’ working-class stereotype. Punks, on the other hand, con-
structed themselves according to a different visual code:
Conventional ideas of prettiness were jettisoned along with the tradi-
tional feminine lore of cosmetics. Contrary to the advice of every
woman’s magazine, make-up for both boys and girls was worn to be
seen. Faces became abstract portraits: sharply observed and meticu-
lously studied portraits in alienation. Hair was obviously dyed (hay
yellow, jet black, or bright orange with tufts of green or bleached in
question marks), and T-shirts and trousers told the story of their own
construction with multiple zips and outside seams clearly displayed.
Similarly, fragments of school uniform (white bri-nylon shirts, school
ties) were symbolically defiled (the shirts covered in graffiti, or fake
blood; the ties left undone) and juxtaposed against leather drains or
shocking pink mohair tops. The perverse and the abnormal were
valued intrinsically. (Hebdige, 1979: 107)
If skinhead culture mocked the mainstream by taking some of its more
reactionary elements to an extreme and aggressively championing them,
then punk culture outraged the mainstream by taking its norms and
trashing them. For Hebdige, however, part of the value of punk culture was
that, by systematically debunking the mainstream norms, by giving
intrinsic value to ‘the perverse and abnormal’, punk usefully demonstrated
that mainstream values were themselves not ‘natural’, but rather the con-
struction of a particular bourgeois culture. Punk style can be interpreted as
an act of political subversion which challenged bourgeois ideology. How
far punk succeeded in this aim is open to question. Youth subcultures are
endlessly reinventing themselves, partly in response to corporate culture’s
commodification of its more commercially exploitable aspects. Punk
moved fairly rapidly from the streets to the catwalks of high fashion, and,
in music, from independent to multinational record labels.
The style adopted by characters in images, then, is a potent resource for
telling the world which cultural group the character affiliates to. It may be
the same group that the viewer affiliates to, it may be a group that chal-
lenges the viewer, or it may be a group that the viewer aspires to be a
member of, whether overtly or secretly. Advertisements are particularly
adept at using the styles of the characters represented to target particular
client groups, and an analysis of the fashions and styles of advertisements
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Intercultural Approaches to ELT
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can be revealing about cultural norms at any given time. It is no accident
that the girl in the UK Labour Party image wears a red T-shirt – it is the tra-
ditional colour of socialism – but it is reinvested with new meaning by the
slogan imprinted on it: ‘Britain Just Got Better’, referring both to the then-
recent 1997 election victory, and to a popular song, ‘Things Can Only Get
Better’, adopted as an anthem during that election campaign. New Labour
sought to repackage its traditional values in a populist fashion. The right-
wing Brazilian politician, Paulo Maluf, on the other hand, is represented in
his billboard in suit and tie against a conservative blue background – the
campaign portrays him as a traditional and trustworthy figure of authority
(Figure 7.3). The Highland soldier in Figure 7.5 wears a kilt, a mode of dress
that changed its signification in the 18th century, when this print was
made. Before the Jacobite uprisings of 1715 and 1745, the kilted Highlander
was generally considered a distant barbarian by the rest of Britain,
including southern, or lowland, Scotland. After 1745, and the defeat of the
Jacobites, the kilt was banned in Scotland for a long spell. It was only legally
worn by soldiers serving in the British army, and so it began to be associ-
ated with the military. The kilt also began to symbolise the passing of a way
of life, and was valued by those who saw it as a token of a more ‘primitive’
or ‘natural’ mode of existence. Today it has become a national icon, and it is
now fashionable even for lowland Scots to wear the kilt at times of celebra-
tion, such as weddings and graduations.
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