What is Punk

Iggy Pop, is sometimes considered as the original punk. He was a member of the Stooges and famous for composing a mixture of pop, hard rock, jazz and blues. He was strongly influential on the punk subculture which began to emerge in the UK and USA during the mid 1970s.

Punk was described by Jon Savage as the punk movement as a bricolage of almost every previous youth culture in the Western World since the Second World War. It is influenced by the music, fashion, philosophical, political and artistic movements that were unusual to how the normal society would use these influences.

Punk was, and still is, about expressing anger against the government. This was mainly done by working classes, as they were sometimes unhappy with their political positions. Those in upper classes were not affected as much and so did not understand the feelings that were felt by the lower classes. This was because they had the money and education and ability to press their opinions in the more politically acceptable way. Working classes struggled to break out of their position and this led to their wanting to rebel. In all of history, there is never a government or a leading establishment that has pleased everyone's needs, this is simply impossible. As a result, groups will stand up and act out against their government, either by protest, war or more recently, by creating subcultures that are against higher authorities.

A modern day example of this is chavs, they are a common subculture in England, often associated with crimes and anti social behaviour and living less financially stable lives. They, as other subcultures do and have done, use symbolism in the way that they dress, the food they eat, the music they listen to etc. For example, chavs adopted the tracksuit, Burberry prints and gold jewellery ("bling"). This is done in other subcultures, the goth is known for wearing black, the hippy for having long hair etc.

Punk was an aggressive movement, controversial to the hippy movement. The hippy's focused more on world peace, where as punks wanted a fight, they wanted to attack and scare people. This is implied by their spiked hair, their rough clothes, safety pins (the DIY, bricolage feature of punk), the anarchy symbol, the fishnet stockings and other clothing and symbols. What they wore acted as a middle finger stuck up at the government, the symbolism was aggressive and threatening.

The Sex Pistols "God Save the Queen", rips up the British higher classes, it uses the name of the British national anthem to verbally protest against upper British society. This is just one of many examples of the punk rock bands shouting against England.

I have researched a lot into punk rock and other similar subcultures to help me with making my magazine for coursework. It will help me to evaluate and explain my choices of certain Punk features, also allowing me to state where they originated from.