Animal Prints

I did some research on the leopard print and its links to punk and here is what I found:

Banksy used an image of a leopard and a barcode -

http://belldininews.wordpress.com/2011/05/13/the-history-of-animal-print/
"The dangerous side of animal print appeared in the 1970′s. The Punk Rock movement brought about leopard print accents and torn cheetah print stockings. Rebellious music paired with the wild equals chic, sexy and dangerous."

I researched the psychology of animal prints, and discovered something interesting about how an animal print can link to fear. Especially as leopards are a type of wild cat that are considered dangerous, causing fear.
http://www.marketingfutures.com/2012/09/15/cougafication-the-psychology-behind-animal-print/
"Fear is, amongst other things, a form of arousal. One noteworthy research example is a famous study that was conducted (Dutton and Aaron) to show fear being ‘translated’ into sexual arousal.
The experiment had men walking across two bridges – one scary (arousing) bridge, and one normal (non-arousing) bridge – towards a young lady (experimenter) at the end who gave them a survey and her phone number to call her if they had any questions.
As expected, subjects committed the error of Misattribution of Arousal, with significantly more males calling the female after having encountered her on the scary bridge. They experienced general arousal (fear) and assigned a different cognitive label for that arousal, ie the attractiveness of the female they encountered at the time. Numerous other studies support these results defining various types of MoA. So, in this case, the perceived attractiveness of potential mates (‘mates’ in the Discovery Channel sense, not in the blokey aussie barbecue sense) was much more sexified during the experiment due to the increase in general arousal (fear) which was translated into perceived sexual interest. The relatively scary experience of the high bridge increased the appeal of the female for the males. The mind thinks “I was aroused when I saw that person so it must be that the person is attractive.”"

Here are some of the items of fashion that show leopard prints that relate to punk.

 

Vivienne Westwood opened the shop "SEX" at 430 King's Road which supported controversial punk clothing. It was totally different and obscene to other shops. Some of the clothing had animal prints on, sometimes worn to portray sexual feelings.

 

 

From my research, I have found that animal prints are again another example of the way that Punk's take a recognizable object and give it their own meaning. In this case, the leopard print is representative of the way Punk's were openly exploiting a print that linked strongly to sexual arousal (Vivienne Westwood's SEX clothes shop and psychological research into animal prints).
 I have changed the background of the barcode to a leopard print as it links to a more in-depth style of punk rather than tartan which is much more obvious.