Cultural Habit: Communication and Cultural Studies: PUNK: Chaos to Couture

The exhibition is made possible by Moda Operandi (name of the boutique which sells the couture line)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art promotes this exhibit’s attempt to “examine punk’s impact on high fashion from the movement’s birth in the 1970s through its continuing influence today” (MET Press Release, 2013). As a modus operandi for developing a habitus for the chic punk via its haute couture style, this exhibit deconstructs and commodifies this subculture.

This ‘text’ was criticized for its reduction and essentialism of punk culture and misrepresentation of the punk cultural codes, which grew out of a “quest for authenticity and independence from the culture industry, thus altogether renouncing the prevailing culture of media, image, and hypercommercialism” (Moore, 307).

It was also interesting to examine which symbols and signs were appropriated in this context. For example, where are the mohawks, chains, and men wearing makeup that is often seen in the media artifacts of the punk movement? Moore (2004) suggests that “postmodernity appropriates signs, symbols, and style for the purposes of shock and semiotic disruption” (307). However, by re-appropriating the signs, symbols and style perceived as essential to the punk movement, the rebellious nature of this ‘youth subculture’ is repositioned from its original dissonant stance stemming from experiences in a lack of power to that of the embodiment of a performance in the power of the elite.

And what should we make of the gendered thematic translation of what was a male initiated movement to a female audience directed expression of “creativity”. Barker (2012) describes the conditions under which the creative process are claimed under a “postmodern consumer capitalism where the binary divisions of inside-outside and authentic-manufactured collapse” (450). The exclusion of particular signs and symbols imply the pruning of the culture to suit a more simplified and tamer version of the ‘punk’ style. Which brings into question how creatively representative is the exhibit of punk? Is it essentialising or simulating punk for the sheer commodification of what it inspires in a capitalist consumption of style and symbolism? Ultimately, our consensus was, this has less to do with punk as a cultural study and more to do with high fashion and commercialism.