Ask DB1: The 'Hawk
I am Jack’s Scrotal Anxiety writes in:
—-
Dear DB1,
Here’s a question that’s been bugging me ever since I started my path towards ‘bag enlightenment. Regarding the mohawk, where can a line be drawn between its heritage as a symbol of punk culture and its now common appearances as douchebag acoutrement?
Some of my dearest friends sport the ‘hawk, and they’re as far removed from douchebaggery as they come. I guess what I’m actually asking is this: if we let the scrotes reappropriate those symbols that some of us hold dear to our hearts, aren’t we just forfeiting to the ‘bags?
Thanks for your support in these dreadful times,
I Am Jack’s Scrotal Anxiety
—-
This is a complex problem, with no easy answer, IAJSA. Since the ‘Hawk was once the province of punk aesthetic, it has roots in authentic counter-culture resonance (unlike, say, the “Kissy Lips”).
That being said, the plethora of fauxhawk and gelled up mohawks on suburban choadwanks have rendered its display fully enrolled at Summer Camp Douche.
As Dick Hebdige notes in his seminal book Subculture: The Meaning of Style, the absorption and reappropriation of counter-culture as a product by the market system represents the exertion of power structure within larger systems of control. All market based societies must rebrand and repackage that which it cannot control. This is inevitable.
In other words, there is no going back. The mohawk is an addouchrement, no different than A/X and D&G.
But this is not to say it can’t be reclaimed. Only that, as with any subculture movement reappropriated by mainstream, extraction from the entanglement of historical forces will be difficult.
And boobies.
