sXe
The eighties much like the sixties and seventies posed many varied youth subcultures as a result of many transitions and changes in society. The youth were looked upon as misunderstood and with their "you will never understand" attitude they began to rely more on each other and their cultures. sXe (straight edge) came about in the early eighties when the punk scene was a great topic of controversy. As a subculture they held great angst against everyone and everything and were highlighted for their abusive tendencies. One man, Ian Mac Kay, decided that for himself on a personal level this was not working. He saw that there was nothing rebellious in drinking and taking drugs, as it was already mainstream and the only thing it would achieve was a means to an end. He told it like he saw it and sparked a counter culture to all other subcultures. The straight edge school, which sprang from Mac Kay, took his words seriously and a cult like "philosophy" was born. The aim of the game was to regain as much personal control over your own life by forfeiting drugs, alcohol and casual sex. They sought personal development away from dependant lifestyles, which were much aplenty in the punk scene of the eighties. Their motto became "don'
My conclusion comes to this; even though sXe tried to divide itself from society and other subcultures it failed, its quite impossible to achieve this in my opinion. At the end of the 'revolution' as Baudrillard will agree there is no original anymore, postmodernism consists of copies and cultural repetition. Taking the sXe scene, after my research I see it as partly punk (ethics) with the incorporation of puritan values to make themselves different. I must make allowances for those who have not forgot the 'roots' and who do contend for self-development and a healthy mind and body. Yet to me this is just another fad that lost the run of itself, it is the youth, once again, trying to rebel with little or no real thought or attention to what they become. There is a definite collapse of certainty and destination, as a lot of us do tend to live in a hyperreality. "Knowledge is always doomed to arrive too late on the scene of experience"
Some common words found in the essay are:
Mac Kay, John Story, Jean-Francois Lyotards, Postmodernist Culture, Earth Crisis, Whannel Audience, , Andrew Huyssen, Contradictions Capitalism, Warhols Campbell's, sxe scene, straight edge, campbell's soup cans, lyotard postmodernism, soup cans, sxe culture, mac kay, campbell's soup, punk scene, counter culture, 'anything goes',
Approximate Word count = 1560
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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