The
syllabus states that the aim of the Popular Culture unit is to "assist
students to become critically aware of the nature of popular culture
and of the forces influencing it so that they can be active and informed
agents in evaluating and shaping their own ways of life..." In
other words, it should be relevant to the lives of students, and that
is the greatest justification for selecting it as one of the HSC depth
studies.
The
syllabus also requires a specific case study approach to the required
subject matter, and so I'd like to look at Grunge as an example of
a case study examined through the seven headings the syllabus gives
us for Popular Culture. Obviously this is merely an approach which
can be applied to whichever case study you are studying. The important
thing in terms of exam preparation, is that whatever your case study,
you can apply it to all seven aspects of the syllabus, because that
is where the questions will come from. That's why I'll follow those
seven points in this article.
1)
The nature of popular culture
This
is undoubtedly the section which has caused the most grief to teachers
and students alike. Take comfort from the fact that it is impossible
to derive a universally accepted definition of popular culture. The
experts don't agree on what it is, so HSC markers are certainly not
expecting you to suddenly have all the answers. Rather, concentrate
on trying to show that you understand the nature of it through explaining
why your case study is popular culture.
There
are probably a few key points to consider. I believe that access is
vital in allowing popular culture to develop. Access is what permits
something (Mr Bean and The Three Tenors are excellent examples) to
move from cult status to being icons of popular culture. For Grunge,
it moved from being a local cult sound in Seattle through national
to international success, because more and more people had access
to its products. The changeable nature of popular culture is also
important, and its icons, as John Fiske has suggested, may mean different
things to different people. Thus Kurt Cobain was an icon of Grunge
popular culture who could be equally recognised by a 15 year old,
a 30 year old and a 45 year old, but he would mean different things
to each of them. The very term "Grunge" can have a variety
of meanings, and it is a worthwhile exercise asking people of varying
ages and backgrounds what they understand by the term.
It's
important not to get too hung up trying to discover the ultimate pithy
definition of popular culture. Examiners will be much more impressed
by the student who can show why their case study is popular culture
than the one who simply recites a sentence from a text book. As you
study or revise your case study, keep asking yourself the question
"why is this popular culture?"
2)
The creation of popular culture
Its been
well documented that the subculture known as "Grunge" started
in Seattle. To most teenagers it started when Nirvana released "Nevermind"
in September, 1991. That single record release was undoubtedly the
key event in moving Grunge from subculture to popular culture. To
study Grunge as a case study for the creation of popular culture though,
requires a bit more historical perspective.As Spin magazine proclaimed
in December, 1992, "Seattle...it's currently to the rock world
what Bethlehem was to Christianity". Seattle in the north western
United States is rightly regarded as the launching pad of Grunge,
but why? The journey from the local scene in Seattle in the mid 80's,
through Nirvana's national number one with Nevermind in 1991, to the
global success of Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden et al is a classic
example of the emergence and subsequent exploitation of popular culture.
According
to those who were there, Seattle in the early 80s was a fairly isolated
place culturally. Major bands often didn't bother adding Seattle to
their west coast American tours, and the live scene was awash with
derivative bands doing their best to sound like someone else. It wasn't
an environment which seemed immediately conducive to an explosion
of original musical vitality. Yet environment seems to be a key concept
in explaining the 1985-95 decade.
The physical
environment is one of great beauty, with trees and water in abundance.
It has consistently been voted the most livable city in America, for
what its worth. It does, however, rain a lot. An awful lot. As a result,
in the words of pioneering local record producer Jack Endino, "when
the weather's crappy you don't feel like going outside, you go into
a basement and make a lot of noise to take out your frustration."
The psychological environment is also important. Seattle is the major
city of Washington State, the furthermost corner of the contiguous
United States, the last stop before Canada or the Pacific Ocean. For
many Americans it is the symbolic end of the line in the journey of
westward expansion which is so integral to the way Americans perceive
themselves. Art Chantry, graphic designer who was a key figure in
the early grunge scene pointed out in "Hype", "the
north west is weird. It's the flying saucer capital of the US, serial
killer capital of the US, the Manson family used to vacation here."
From this environment emerged a music scene of real vitality.
It's
easy to see the musical ancestry of British punk in the Seattle music
of the mid eighties. It was a style which had never been popular in
mainstream America, but had obviously found a niche in the youth of
the isolated north west. Bands formed, playing gigs they arranged
themselves, to an audience that Kim Thayil of Soundgarden pointed
out, was "usually just other bands". It was a friendly,
incestuous scene powered by an everchanging collection of bands playing
for the main reason, fun, an escape from an America dominated by the
socially barren policies of Ronald Reagan. It's the classic local
scene, thriving completely independently of any corporate power structure.
Local
photographer Charles Petersen, who chronicled the emerging scene with
his camera summed it up best in "Hype", "we were all
so f...... bored out of our heads it was get drunk, fall down and
throw your body around. And all the bands that came through Seattle
at that time said Seattle had the most exciting live scene, and they
loved to play here because the audience would get drunk and go nuts."
It was
this excitement which was the pinnacle of the local element of Grunge's
emergence as mainstream popular culture. Along with the excitement
of a self produced local live scene came the local entrepreneurs.
Small, independent record companies sprung up sealing deals with friends
on a handshake to produce a vinyl record of the six months they may
have been together. Fanzines were the other great explosion of subcultural
access, as those who couldn't play in bands showed their allegiance
to their chosen favourites by producing cheap, enthusiastic magazines
which helped glue the scene together.
The first
step towards a national level of success came with the emergence of
Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavit, who founded their own label Sub
Pop. Unlike their contemporaries in Seattle, they had a grander vision
which spread beyond the north west. They were unashamed admirers of
the 80s Motown approach to having "hit factory". After starting
with the simple desire to get Soundgarden onto vinyl, they soon proved
themselves masters of self promotion.
In November
1988 came one of their masterstrokes. They established a "Sub
Pop Singles Club" producing strictly limited editions of singles
from local bands, released monthly. It started with
1 000
copies of the then totally unknown Nirvana's "Love Buzz/Big Cheese".
It stimulated an artificial demand by creating an aura of desirability
because the releases were so limited. As other local bands like Green
River, Mudhoney, Tad and Soundgarden found themselves on Sub Pop singles,
the idea of a "Seattle Sound" clearly emerged as an ideal
marketing tool.
The key
event in Sub pop's elevation of the Seattle scene to national and
global recognition came in 1989 when British journalist Andy Catlin
was brought over to Seattle. Poneman and Pavit took him to a Mudhoney
show, introduced him around and loaded him up with Sub pop singles.
The result was a major story in Britain's influential Melody Maker
on March 11, 1989, headed "Seattle, Rock City". The emergence
of a Grunge popular culture was now underway as Americans clamoured
to know what was happening in this remote outpost of their own country.
Art Chantry
described the next few months as "an explosion of subculture",
while local journalist Dawn Anderson saw everything "suddenly
buzzing with activity". Many locals felt it was a short term
fixation fuelled by the national media, and Anderson remembered that
"about 1990 we thought good, it's over". Even Sub Pop were
falling on hard times, with Poneman and Pavit creating a now legendary
T shirt in 1991 which proclaimed "WHICH PART OF 'WE HAVE NO MONEY'
DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?"
Then
in September 1991 they released Nirvana's second album, "Nevermind".
Nirvana were still a small scale local act, mainly recognised for
emerging from the mind numbingly boring small red-necked logging town
of Aberdeen. Local record promoter Susie Tennant remembered that "the
record came out in the fall. The video, I remember when I first saw
it I thought this is so cool, but there's no way MTV will play this,
and when they started going with it, it reached millions of kids instantly".
The song
MTV had placed on high rotation was "Smells Like Teen Spirit".
It became the anthem of a generation, and gave the mainstream media
a focus point to categorise that generation with. Kurt Cobain suddenly
found himself not only the financial saviour of Sub Pop, but more
disturbingly for one who's psyche was so fragile, the spokesman of
a generation. As he said in his last major interview (US Rolling Stone
issue 674, Jan 27, 1994), "Everyone has focused on that song
so much. The reason it gets a big reaction is people have seen it
on MTV a million times. It's been pounded into their brains."
Thus in the rock world of the 1990s, the key to national and global
success was high rotation on MTV. In the age of satellite TV that
was enough to guarantee a global profile. "Nevermind" knocked
Michael Jackson's "Dangerous" off the top of the American
album charts, Nirvana toured Australia as part of the Big Day Out,
and Grunge was now a global popular culture. The merciless exploitation
was about thirty seconds behind. As Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam explained,
"when commerce is involved, everything changes".
3)
The consumers of popular culture
Once
Nirvana arrived on the global scene, teenagers everywhere became the
potential consumers for the explosion which followed. The Seattle
bands were proud of their ordinariness. Van Conner from Screaming
Trees summed up the attitude of the Seattle bands to their image better
than anyone in "Hype", "We were the guys in high school
who got beat up-we couldn't even get to talk to the pretty girl-we're
nerds god damn it!".
It was
an image millions of teenagers could identify with. "Smells Like
Teen Spirit" with its "Here we are now, entertain us"
became described as "the slacker's anthem". It was the time
of George Bush and over a decade of conservative Republican administrations
in the US. In Britain youth had suffered under the "profits before
people" social policies of the hideous Margaret Thatcher, and
in Australia young people hadn't really rated under a Hawke government
which had costed up to entrepreneurs like Skase and Bond. Once mainstream
America cottoned on to Grunge, the market for consumer exploitation
just opened up. Conrad Uno, owner of PopLlama Records, summed up what
was going on in "Hype". "Rolling Stone called, they
were doing a fashion spread on what the indies were wearing. I said
I wasn't what they wanted, but I had a fellow here, Scott McCoy from
Young Fresh Fellows, who was just what they were looking for. They
came and interviewed Scott briefly, and then got out these clothes
and made him put them on....They got him to take of f his flannel
shirt and wear their flannel shirt. The caption below said 'flannel
shirt:$85". When muzak versions of"Smells Like Teen Spirit"
started appearing as background in shopping malls and lifts, the corporatisation
of Grunge popular culture was complete. Vanity Fair magazine did a
"Grunge fashion spread, and it appeared on the runway of 7th
Avenue New York fashion shows. Chain stores advertised grunge wear
for children and grown ups. The consumers had moved on from being
simply the kids who related to the music to those who simply wanted
to be with it.
4)
The interactive process between individuals and aspects of popular
culture
At the
local level, interaction with the Grunge scene was limited to gigs
in local halls and clubs, record releases on small, local labels,
and the production and consumption of fanzines. There were plenty
of opportunities in Seattle and nearby cities such as Tacoma and Olympia,
but as Kurt Cobain's life in Aberdeen showed, by the time you were
that far out, individuals started to feel pretty isolated from the
excitement of the "Seattle scene."
As Grunge
emerged as a legitimate popular culture, complete with heroes, paraphernalia
and a mythology created by those in Seattle for consumption by the
mass media, interaction came much easier. As stated earlier, Grunge
fashion turned up everywhere from fashionable New York catwalks to
the humble K Mart or target store. Pearl Jam and Soundgarden joined
Nirvana as major league chart successes, and Kurt Cobain and Eddie
Vedder started appearing on T shirts. Geffen Records brought Nirvana's
contract off Sub Pop, Alice in Chains ended up with Columbia and Pearl
Jam signed with Epic. There was a feeding frenzy as the major labels
descended upon Seattle looking for the "next Nirvana".
Major
labels meant international promotion, and in the MTV age, the Seattle
sound and associated cultural attachments soon became an international
phenomenon. For Australian kids, JJJ, now a national youth network,
and Rage, another national show, enabled you to see and hear what
all the fuss overseas was about. Whether you lived in Gosford, Grafton
or Geelong, you knew how you were supposed to look and act.
5)
Control of popular culture by groups, institutions and organisations
You could
probably argue that once Sub Pop emerged on the Seattle recording
scene with their vision of international success, and a willingness
to hype their label shamelessly, control of Grunge as a popular culture
had begun. Until then, it had been a purely local scene. Small labels
like PopLlama, Estrus and K Records were there for local bands. In
Jack Endino's words, "nobody was too worried about success, because
this was Seattle, not LA, nobody was going to come up here and sign
us".
Once
mainstream success was achieved, control of Grunge was gone from local
hands. National magazines like Rolling Stone, Cream and Circus, and
international magazines like Q in Britain and Juice in Australia championed
the "new sound". The major successes like Nirvana, Pearl
Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden were in demand around the world,
and it was no longer possible to see them on a Wednesday night thrashing
it out in a small hall in Seattle.
Of course
in the America Reagan and Bush had tried to create, any movement which
allowed youth a voice and identity of their own had to be mistrusted.
Conservative pressure groups such as the Parent Music Resource Centre
(PMRC) and national Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) condemned the
new music.
They
needn't have worried, as the commercialisation of Grunge exhibited
a control all of its own. In "Hype", Kim Thayil of Soundgarden
makes the point that, "that's what makes pop culture so significant
to all the little consumers out there-they have no interest in history
or economics...they're interested more in gossip and the nature of
celebrity". As Kurt Cobain found out, Grunge became trivialised
as it became popular culture. The mass media hounded Cobain and Courtney
Love, trying to work out just what sort of baby they could possibly
raise. The media assassination of Cobain and Love as parents showed
where the control of Grunge now lay. Not in the music, but the perceived
celebrity status of its purveyors.
6)
Different perceptions of popular culture
This
has been inherent in much of what I have said today. Once "Nevermind"
topped the charts and opened up the commercial floodgates, perceptions
of "Grunge" varied widely. To those who had grown up with
it in Seattle it was something which had once been special. For a
generation of teenagers world-wide, it was a voice of recognition.
Massive international sales figures can never be explained away purely
in terms of hype. Cobain and Vedder in particular, mean a lot to many,
many people. They certainly never sought recognition as spokespeople
for a generation, but the fact remains that many young people recognise
something of themselves in the Iyrics of Nirvana and Pearl Jam.
The reaction
to Kurt Cobain's death reveals differing generational perceptions
of Grunge. For many of the older journalists covering the story, Cobain
was simply the latest in an illustrious line which included Jimi Hendrix
(also a Seattle native), Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin. It was a view
which gave no integrity to Cobain's life, music or career. Kathy Bail
discusses this issue very clearly in an article called "Boomer
Fogeys" in The Independent Monthly, November, 1994. P 38-9.
Grunge
also showed how easily perceptions can be created. "Hype"
documents the way the members of the Seattle scene just made things
up as they were bombarded by the mainstream media. The classic example
was when the New York Times rang Sub Pop to get some inside scoop
on "Grunge". Employee Megan Jasper just started creating
a whole series of words which were allegedly the Grunge translation
of common terms. It was a total fabrication, yet was given national
prominence in a highly respected and prestigious national paper.
7)
The contribution of popular culture to social change
Has Grunge
changed the world? Even if it has helped its followers make sense
of themselves and their world, it has contributed to social change.
Eddie Vedder stated in "Hype" that "it would be a tragedy
if the Seattle scene gets to the top and doesn't do anything with
it". So how much have the Seattle musicians been able to contribute
to social change?
Certainly
Vedder and Pearl Jam have done their best to live up to their ideals.
Their long standing battle with the ticket selling monopolies in the
United States has endeavoured to create a genuine alternative way
of promoting and presenting music to its fans. Pearl Jam's last Australian
tour was characterised by ticket prices around a third that of other
major acts like U2, Madonna and Michael Jackson.
Kurt
Cobain's very public rejection of the Axl Rose school of rock manipulation
and machismo also did a lot to enlighten his audience. Never comfortable
with the trappings of success, Cobain did an enormous amount to challenge
male rock stereotypes. As Phil Sutcliffe wrote in Q Magazine No 93,
June 1994 (P 74), "although party politics didn't engage him,
sexual politics did. In interviews and song Iyrics, he espoused feminism
and opposed homophobia." Cobain's relatively brief musical legacy
is summed by David Fricke in Rolling Stone No 683, June 1994 (Australian
edition), "Never mind all that standard issue babble about Generation
X. There was nothing blank about the way Cobain articulated his broken
dreams and wrapped up his discontent and, by extension, that of his
audience, in roughshod song. When the shit hit the fans, they knew
it for what it was -the truth".
That
was probably Kurt Cobain's lasting legacy, the ability to sing honestly
about his own life. While doing that he connected with a generation
who were also struggling to make sense of it all, the divorced parents,
the low self esteem, the lack of employment prospects, and a government
which seemed totally disinterested in considering the needs, dreams
or aspirations of young people. It's probably too early yet to really
ascertain the full contribution of Grunge to social change. Certainly
the genuine outpouring of grief at Kurt Cobain's death indicated that
he was as important to his generation as Presley and Lennon had been
to theirs. The final image of thousands at the Seattle vigil commemorating
his life, and the ever present TV cameras devouring every moment of
private anguish to package into two minute bites to send across the
world was probably a fitting summary of Grunge as a popular culture.
As Jack Endino said, "symbolically, it (Cobain's death) represented
the death of something".
And where
is it heading? The last word goes to Seattle record producer Steve
Fisk, "there'll be no shortage of disaffected youth in America
over the next 50 years, so there'll be some great rock'n'roll coming
down the line".
Conclusion
This
is not meant to be a definitive history of Grunge music or culture.
Hopefully it will help you get the idea of Popular Culture into some
sort of perspective. Grunge is simple one of an infinite number of
case studies. I would've liked to have time to compare the rise and
fall of Grunge with the formation of early rock'n'roll, or particularly
with the rise of The Beatles and the "Liverpool sound".
That is something you could do. Also worth exploring is the rise of
the local grunge scene. Silverchair are another text book example
of the rise from local to national to global, and as "Freak"
shows, have been able to rise above the local jibes which were content
to write them off as "Nirvana in Pyjamas".
For
further information:
The video
"Hype" is essential viewing. Much of this article is based
on the comments found there. I have mentioned some magazine articles
which may be useful. The Internet is now an interesting source of
opinions and ideas, but be careful - many articles are unsourced and
uncredited.
