Is Anarchy Passé?

[Melisande]

Melisande, I like the quote too (although I'd never read it before), but does it relate to "anarchy" or "punk"? Isn't it a description, without the need for taxonomy or labelling, of the virtue of being true to yourself, of allowing your individuality to be expressed? I suppose that's what you means by talking about the fight against internal opposition....... But I don't see the need to, or really the sense in which we can, call this anarchy. One man's free expression is another's G8 rioter. That's the problem with trying to find a box for things........... You can't really blame people for the confusion: the Sex Pistols are as punk as they come, but they sang about being anarchists! Maybe labelling is passe........

He he, I stuck the quote in knowing it was off-topic . As for anarchy, I was just relating Multitude's Aragon quote about anarchy with what Mellow said about punk by going way back to their deepest motivations...like you say, I think that same urge can be manifest differently. (Maybe I went too far back for relevance.) Yeah, labelling *ourselves* may be passe...but insofar as people are identifying themselves with separate groups, I guess we still do have to identify and discuss them as such...

By the way...I love your spot-on bits of insight on this discussion!

 

[Melisande]

Multitudes, I'm glad you love her quotes too. How can the Dance not haunt us, it's Life itself...

the world is a stage after all...a runway for some...

 

[mellowdrama]

Considering how all over the place the original NYT article is, it's no wonder that this thread has derailed in the manner it has, i.e. the semantics of the word "anarchy". It's called "Anarchy Is in the Eye Of the Beholder", and somehow posits that anarchy=skull socks, while tying in Ralph Lauren vs. a polo club lawsuit, Watanabe's collection, (also Nina Ricci's, Chloe's, and Celine's, and some asides about JPG, Pellat-Finet, etc.). The article is full of loaded language & makes broad assumptions about many, many topics, fashion-related and not.

This could be that the editor whittled it down to the point of flippancy, in which case I can't fault the author. But, really, statements like "We're already vive-ing la revolution" and the sheer boredom the author presents to his topic...well, I don't want to say, "If you can't say something nice..." but at least, if you're going to be critically digusted with the state of fashion, be more emphatically disgusted, don't presume your reader holds the same biases as you do, and don't try to compare and contrast five or six collections with a quick sentence or two each.

All that said, this thread going off-course into realms of desire, labelling, conformity, non-conformity, and "what is punk?" actually has proved to be a better read than the original subject matter. I've seen plenty of threads which don't go much beyond "Eww, gross" in the level of their thoughtfulness of response. That this has become tangential, well, the NYT article was begging for it. You can't throw a loaded term like "anarchy" right in the title of something and not expect a sh*tstorm to erupt.

 

[faust]

/\ besides, if the thread is about anarchy, it is its duty to go off topic in all directions!

 

[nqth]

^ Exactly, Faust. It's anarchy in fashion. One can use whatever symbol to express whatever and give every possible meaning. Who cares:-D