Ben Parks: Proposal for an Essay on SLC Punk

What shapes, changes and leads people from believing in anarchy as the only possible form of human life to Harvard Law. SLC Punk not only explores such a notion, but takes on the rock and roll journey from punk to lawyer in the matter of a couple hours. The story starts out with our hero Stevo, blue haired, young and angry. Recently graduating from college with his best friend and roommate Heroin Bob, who hates needles and that's why he got the name. In fact, Heroin Bob only smokes and drinks, nothing else, not even aspirin. Now how punk rock is that?! Or is it? The movie explores that question, and that's what I want to explore further through an analysis of punk culture from it's roots in the 70s, to flourishing in the 80s, and continuing to have a strong hold on today's youth culture. I was especially inspired by the questions posed by Stevo in his rant on punk culture and posers from the film:

"Posers were people who looked like punks but they did it for fashion. And they were fools, they'd say "anarchy in the UK." What the fuck's that? Anarchy in the UK. What good is that to those of us in Utah, America? It was a Sex Pistols thing. They were British, they were allowed to go on about Anarchy in the UK. You don't live your life by lyrics."

What always got me about people in punk culture glamourizing the Sex Pistols as some great band that got punk rock started, or one of the few, was that they no less trite or put together than any recent boy band. "McLaren also claimed that he wanted the Sex Pistols to be 'the new Bay City Rollers.'" They were put together, their looks were based on a mix of several popular bands of the time also (Wikipedia). Nothing against their music, it was rebelous as hell for the time, but their look was no less trite than so-called "posers" either. In an interview the film maker, James Merendino has this to say about "posers":

"There really is no such thing as a poseur, and at the same time, that's all there is. We're all poseurs in that we're all full of it, in one way or another. The something that we are is, for the most part, the something we're pretending to be. We all have to pretend a little to be ourselves and when we move on and become something else, we tend to look back and laugh at how phony we were. The trick, I think is to never take yourself too seriously and always look at who you are with a sense of irony. I think kids today are especially good at that."

As humans we are always trying to one-up ourselves on the other guy. Someone being a poser, or as has become the phrase in the hardcore community is that someone is "fashion-core", and this is the way that it is done now. In the end, it's the journey through those rebelious teenage years that makes you who you are as an adult. In Stevo's case he went from a young man who told his parents "I love you guys, don't get me wrong. But for the first time in my life I'm eighteen and I can say fuuuuck youuu." to sitting on a park bench, all of his spikes and color shaved off and sitting on a park bench at the end of film when he determines "that when all of it was said and done, I was nothing but a god damn trendy ass poser." It's the journey, and the culture that I want to explore further. In fact, I'm actually thinking about making my own film about counter-cultural-ism and how it affects our youth culture.
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Duncombe, Stephen, ed. Cultural Resistance Reader. NY: Verso, 2002.

"SLC Punk - Interview". Sony Pictures. 11/6/05.

SLC Punk. James Merendino. DVD. Columbia Tristar, 1999.

Sex Pistols - Wikipedia. Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia. 11/6/05.