The Mods

The Mods

Subculture: The Mods. A subculture which originated in London in the late 1950s.

Mode of Transport: Scooter

Fashion: Tailor made suit

One of their main elements which distinguished them from others was fashion which was tailor made suits. This new dress sense was believed to be a break away from the Teddy Boys and and to emulate the more stylish Italian, French and, latterly, American fashions. 

The original and enduring mod style is a slim-fitting dark coloured suit, worn with a lighter coloured shirt and thin, dark tie, along with a pair of dark shoes. Of course this is a style that can be worn by many a person walking along the street but the beauty is in the details. Mods usually prefer a two-tonic coloured suit, made of a light material and fronted by three buttons (with the bottom button being left undone). The jacket has a breast pocket which can be adorned with a handkerchief in a variety of styles. The shirt is usually a button down with the most popular make being the ‘Ben Sherman’ incorporating a small button at the back of the collar. This style was reciprocated by mods of the early 80’s with the only modification being that the trousers had became narrower and were often short enough to show the dreaded white socks that were initially popular at the time.

Music: African American Soul, Jamiacan Ska, British Beat Music and R&B. Below is an example of Jamaican Ska, enjoy. 

 

The Mods in the Media. 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/forty-years-ago-pictures-of-mods-and-rockers-shocked-polite-society-but-were-they-staged-by-the-press-558818.html

The link below shows another article about the Mods and how they caused troubles. From these we can conclude that their norms and values are different to wider society. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/18/newsid_2511000/2511245.stm

Glam Rockers

Presentation1 from mabz94

Hippies

B-Boys

Hippies

The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The hippies did not pick that name for themselves: it was given to them by Michael Fallon, a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner, in a 1965 story about the new bohemian lifestyle that was developing in the city's Haight-Ashbury district (named for two streets that converge there also called the Haight). Fallon got the name by shortening Norman Mailer's term hipster, and he applied it to the second generation of beatniks who had moved into the Haight from nearby North Beach. This new generation of drop-outs was more optimistic than the beatniks, however, more prone to talk about love, more flamboyant. Hippies created their own communities, listened to psychedelic rock, embraced the sexual revolution, and some used drugs such as cannabis, LSD, and magic mushrooms to explore altered states of consciousness. In the summer of 1965 the hippies were few in number but were well on their way to creating a small, thriving society a counterculture. By June 1966 some fifteen thousand had moved into the Haight. That was the year that the largest generation of Americans ever the baby boomers reached ages eighteen through twenty. They were typically middle class, white citizens from predominantly white countries They initially promoted peace and 'love-making'. Believed in the idea of 'free love' which meant that anyone could have sex with anyone and they also encouraged orgy's.
 

In January 1967, the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco popularized hippie culture, leading to the legendary Summer of Love on the West Coast of the United States, and the 1969 Woodstock Festival on the East Coast. Hippies in Mexico, known as jipitecas, formed La Onda and gathered at Avándaro, while in New Zealand, nomadic housetruckers practiced alternative lifestyles and promoted sustainable energy at Nambassa. In the United Kingdom, mobile "peace convoys" of New age travellers made summer pilgrimages to free music festivals at Stonehenge. In Australia hippies gathered at Nimbin for the 1973 Aquarius Festival and the annual Cannabis Law Reform Rally or MardiGrass. "Piedra Roja Festival", a major hippie event in Chile, was held in 1970.

Hippie fashions and values had a major effect on culture, influencing popular music, television, film, literature, and the arts. A traditional Hippy image would consist of denim and tie-dye clothing, beaded tops and long hair which they explained as being 'Ethnic' and clearly defy what was conventional at the time. Artists that were commonly associated with Hippies were 'The Beatles' and 'Jimi Hendrix'. Hippies were always enthusiastic to questions society however not to the extreme attacks that the Punks later displayed. Since the 1960s, many aspects of hippie culture have been assimilated by mainstream society. The religious and cultural diversity espoused by the hippies has gained widespread acceptance, and Eastern philosophy and spiritual concepts have reached a larger audience. The hippie legacy can be observed in contemporary culture in myriad forms, including health food, music festivals, contemporary sexual mores, and even the cyberspace revolution.

The climax of the hippie movement was the Summer of Love, also called the Gathering of Tribes for the Human Be-In, in 1967. Tens of thousands of mostly homeless young people came to the Haight over a period of a few months. The atmosphere actually was not very loving: the sidewalks were too crowded for anyone to get anywhere; the drug scene had become seedier and more dangerous; police were cracking down more aggressively on the neighborhood; and racial tensions, as was the case over the rest of the nation, threatened to explode into violence. Still, hippies were making a big impression on the popular imagination, thanks to hit songs such as the Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love" and Scott Kendricks's "San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" and movies such as The Love-ins. Even car commercials had worked groovy into their vocabulary. Realizing that their dream had gone sour, the citizens of the Haight held a Death of Hippie service in October of that year, marching down Haight Street at sunrise with a cardboard coffin. It was time to fan out from San Francisco, they felt, taking the pure hippie message to the rest of the country.

Hippies in the media-

These are two articles written in the 60's describing the actions of the hippies and teh events tehy went to. It also give us an insight of how the public and mainsteam society reacted to them and the way they behaved.

The B-Boys

Skinheads

Skinheads originated in London in the 1960s, as the subculture of working class youths got more popular, Skinheads started to move to different cities in the England. Most people believe the Skinheads to be a racist group of youths however the first Skinheads were greatly influenced by a Jamaican group called "The Rude Boys" and The Mods, the Skinheads were either far-right or far-left. They often had cropped/shaven hair.

Style 
The skinheads were usually known for their unique clothing and hairstyles, many of which were cropped and shaven, not to the scalp but cut very short. Male skinheads normally had a side-parting cut into their hair, some had various types of sideburns, not often this was seen.

Female Skinheads had haircuts called 'feather-cuts' this was where the back was cut short, they had a fringe and curly bits of hair hanging from the side.

Many Skinheads wore long or short-sleeves shirts which were buttoned up to the top, they mostly wore the same brands of clothing, these included Ben Sherman and Fred Perry. Skinheads mostly wore army style trousers or Levi jeans.







In the Media 
A British drama film named 'This Is England' is a film based on young Skinheads in 1983, it focuses on their sub-culture which is from the west-indies as they often listened to reggae and soul. The film is based on a 12 year old boy who joins a group of Skinheads.

The mods

Teddy Boys

Youth Subculture - Hippies

The hippie subculture was a youth movement that rejected the mores of mainstream American life and originated in the mid-1960s. Hippies believed that middle-class society was dominated by materialism and repression, and as they felt rejected by the majority of society, they created their own minor communities. 

Style

Many hippies adhered to long hair and casual or unconventional dress favouring psychedelic colours. They also wore sandals and beads, and rimless granny glasses were very popular amongst the hippies. Men often grew beards and women often wore long, flowing granny dresses.

Philosophy

Hippies were against violence and they advocated peace and love, adopting a popular phrase "Make love, not war". They opposed the restrictions and repressions they saw in the middle-class society, and therefore promoted tolerance and openness as an alternative. They commonly looked for spiritual guidance and many hippies used hallucinogenic drugs, particularly marijuana ans LSD, in order to explore the altered states of consciousness.

Music

Hippies listened to psychedelic rock and folk. Popular singers amongst the hippie community were Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. 

Hippies in the media

During the 1960s, hippies were often portrayed as drugged-out, free-loving, filthy anarchists. Nowadays because of the internet and digital inclusion, the hippies are allowed to show their voice, therefore the representation of the hippies in the media is divided.

Negative portrayal

This is an article in 'The Telegraph' in which the writer's attitude towards hippies is not very positive. He portrays hippies views as 'dangerous' in the title, and refers to the hippies as if they were intellectually inferior throughout the article. 

In this article published in The Atlantic, hippies are portrayed as filthy, unpleasant, drug addicts, sexual liberation, controversial and a social threat.

The cover of 'the weekly Standard' portrays hippies as drugged-out.

The Other Side

"If you compared the percentage of hippies who smoked dope (marijuana, hashish) then with the percentage of teens & 20s who smoke dope now… you’d laugh.  The numbers in the late 1960s were miniscule, by comparison." Published by a hippie: http://hippieviews.com/media-portrayal-of-hippies

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/9369142.stm

This article published in the BBC news portrays hippies as peace makers, who positively influence people to be peaceful and advocate love.

A book portraying hippies as people who intelligently changed the face of modern physics.

An article published in a hippie website, portraying hippies as courageous protestants against the vietnam war.

Teddy Boys