Handout: Youth subcultures

Key quotations from Cohen, "Subcultural Conflict and Working-Class Community"

... the latent function of subculture is this: to express and resolve, albeit 'magically', the contradictions which remain hidden or unresolved in the parent culture (p. 57)

... mods, parkas, skinheads, crombies, all represent, in their different ways, an attempt to retrieve some of the socially cohesive elements destroyed in their parent culture, and to combine these with elements selected from other class fractions, symbolizing one or other of the options confronting it (p. 57)

... subculture cannot break out of the contradiction derived from the parent culture; it merely transcribes its terms at a microsocial level and inscribes them in an imaginary set of relations. (p. 59)

[delinquency is a form of non-verbal] communication about a situation of contradiction in which the 'delinquent' is trapped but whose complexity is excommunicated from his perceptions by virtue of the restricted linguistic code which working-class culture makes available (p. 61)

Quotations from Westlake, “Thom Gunn’s ‘Black Jackets’: An Interpretation”

These knights on motorcycles are the complete opposite of the knights of chivalry. Far from upholding the classical virtues they are, it is implied, petty criminals. They are quite incapable of defending the weak, since they are unable to come to terms with the world themselves. This is not really their fault, since they are born to lose, whereas their medieval counterparts regarded themselves as called upon to win.

The members of the group meet together to carry out certain functions, such as drinking beer and telling jokes. It is a closed society, and nobody may take part who has not been properly initiated. The adherents of this religion wear special clothes and meet in a special place to hold their ‘services’ … In an age and a society where most people have rejected the established and sophisticated religions it is very easy to say that religion has been rejected altogether. Thom Gunn shows in this poem that there is, however, a fundamental need for religion which must be satisfied.

Source: J.H.J. Westlake, “ Thom Gunn’s ‘Black Jackets’: An Interpretation,” Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht 5, Englishes Seminar der Universität Kiel, 1972, p. 244.