Response to class discussion...?

I know this was said in class, er at least I think it was..., but I really think that much of the punk subculture is arbitrary. At one minute it is cool to wear safety pins in your ears, wear plaid pants, and listen to some noise making band that resembles a New Year's party filled with drunk people playing with noise makers (hence the noise making). It is like giving a xylophone to an infant and having them bang away at it. I am somewhat convinced that if you recorded this behavior/event/phenomenon then the records would sell to counter culture weirdos. Now, that being said, I am not meaning to single out the punk subculture as the ONLY arbitrary subculture. In fact, as I understand it, most humans in general are fickle, whimsical creatures. At one minute their favorite ice cream is chocolate, they are listening to Coldplay, watching their favorite movie (American Psycho). Come Tuesday everything has changed. Their favorite ice cream is Cherry Garcia, their favorite band is Black Eyed Peas, and their favorite movie is Juno. Fickle. FICKLE! I myself am fickle. I fully admit this. How could I live with myself if I claimed that humans are fickle and not admit to it!?

P.S.
The flavors/movies/music I refer to in this little rant are completely arbitrary as to fit with my theme of randomness and abritraryness. I wonder if I can use that term anymore. ARBITRARY!!!!!!!!!!

Well... Ya. People do change their minds alot. Especially when it comes to trivial things such as their favorite ice cream.

On a more serious note. What??

The whole idea is to understand the subcultural phenomenon on a deeper level. How and why do subcultures arise. What contributes to their growth and continued existence. What ideas lend themselves to being adopted by subcultures and what motivates people to subscribe to these ideas. Why are music/ideas/fashion adopted and just as quickly thrown out by subcultures. Those are just some questions off the top of my head.

Anything that is to complex to understand at first sight will appear to be arbitrary. Or random. or whatever. To stop right there and just chalk it up to a entirely supposed "random, whimsical, (fickle?) nature of humanity in general" .... is... at the very least completely opposed to the spirit of true understanding in the first place.

Or at least thats my take on things. [sarcasm] Of course you could be on to something, after all, those damn counter culture wierdos probably couldnt even tell whether you recorded the infant xylophone solo or the drunken new years party. It all sounds the same to them anyway. [/sarcasm]

Wait, so (Heath) are you arguing that certain subcultures are arbitrary and others are not? Or are you saying that all subcultures are arbitrarily constructed?

I don't think that subcultures are arbitrarily constructed, but they are arbitrarily defined. Going along with this argument, we never answered in class (professor *ahem*) where the line is drawn between a subculture and a fandom, or even if there is a difference.

But as far as systems operate, you can't correlate a social science like P-Culture Studies into a neat mathematical equation because there are too many variables and subvariables to take into account, but mostly because the Math Department and English Department hate each other. Damn, yo.

I was just stating that it seems like in most subcultures there is an arbitrary list of qualifiers that fits certain things into that particular subculture. I mean we even discussed what ska music is and one of the qualifiers is the speed or tempo of the music. So there are some Cake songs that are slow but still have every other part of the ska qualifiers and this has called into question their ska-ness(?). I was really pointing out that the reason it seems subculture guidelines are random is because people are random. There will always be THAT group of folks that want to do something a little differently.

I see exactly what you're getting at. I would definitely say there is a sort of "lets be different for the sake of being different" attitude that seems predominate in some cases. Though certainly Id say it goes farther than that.

And after I posted it occured to me that I could have sounded confrontationalish. I was just disagreeing for the hell of it really. Its good to see it wasnt taken the wrong way.[/img]

U were disagreeing just to disagree. Haha, case in point.