Punk: A Loose Definition

You're walking down the street in Big City, U.S.A. after a delightful evening out on the town.  The street lamps are flickering, everyone over thirty is going to bed, and the real nightlife is just creeping out of the woodwork.  As you stroll along the sidewalk, you notice a group of hooligans in studded leather jackets, myriad creatively shaved heads, and more piercings than Xerxes from The 300.

"What do you mean I can't go see Green Day?!"

You pull your coat tighter around yourself and silently pray that they don't come near.  You cringe as they throw beer bottles at walls and talk about angst and how their dad's are totally corporate tools and will never understand them.  This is not the true punk of 2012.

You're doing it wrong.

To be sure, these people exist, but they are stupid.  These children are looking to a lost past to define themselves, imitating the style of yesteryear's Punk Rock, rather than the substance behind it.  When you type "punk" into google images, these are the only people that show up.  Skinheads, hardcore dancers, emo munchkins, and suburban rebel wannabes own the word punk, and I, personally, find this fact an affront to humanity.

Pictured: Not punk.

Modern culture is aggressively self-aware, self-referencing, and self-deprecating, and thus it is constantly mixing and bubbling in that melting pot we call society.  Punk, as a staple of Western culture, spills out everywhere, from the riots in Tunisia and Occupy Wall Street to Robert Rodriguez movies or break dancers or Wikileaks.

Punk comes in all shapes and sizes.

But this is still all very vague.  You're itching for a good ol' fashioned list of the qualities of punk, I can tell, and I'm only too happy to oblige:

1. Punk is proactive.  Punk is always doing something or on its way to go do something.  Punk never rests or pauses or lays back, punk is in constant motion.  The moment you cease to be growing or changing is the moment you cease to be punk.

Cat, what are you doing? You can't be a punk if you want to sit on the couch like that.  Silly cat.

That's not to say that a punk can never rest or stop or think, but in the moments in which he stops, a punk is no longer a punk, he becomes a mere mortal once more.  It's the curse and the blessing of constant motion.

2. Punk is transient.  Because of the constant activity required to maintain a punk lifestyle, it's impossible for punk to survive in a consistent form.  That's what this blog is for, to find punk in any and all forms that may have existed since 1966 when the Fugs released their first album.

3.  Punk is against something.  If there's no conflict, it's not punk, end of story.

4. Punk isn't comfortable.  Punk comes from the poor, the oppressed, the wronged, the alone, and the outraged.  Punk is art, and if there's no strong emotion behind it then it is simply wrong.

5. Punk doesn't follow any rules.  I can blog the night away, but the individuality inherent in punk culture is what makes it both so hard to completely pin down, and so damn interesting.  The minute I make a rule trying to define punk, there'll be a punk out there who wants nothing more than to break my rule.  That's just punk.

Big Man on Campus: Banksy

Ever since some dude first scrawled a picture of a cow on the wall of his man-cave, art has been one of the most important characteristics separating us humans from beasts.  In the last hundred or so years, the definition of the word "art" has become increasingly vague and unstable.  Expressionism and Cubism were hated, then tolerated, then loved, and Dadaism and Surrealism followed a similar course.  Eventually the intellectuals noticed the pattern and began appreciating and encouraging new art forms, encouraging rapid expansion of what can be called art.  In the present day, each person has a different idea of what is and isn't modern art.  Sometimes the looseness of the word encourages artists to trend toward the silly.

Not everybody can be Picasso.

Fortunately, it can also trend toward the philosophically potent and the legitimately awesome.  One of the coolest mediums to gain momentum in recent years is street art.  Street art refers to any form of visual art that is displayed in a public place (i.e. the streets), and the most widespread and influential form of street art is spray painted graffiti.  One of the premier street artists today calls himself Banksy and he is really really cool.

He also draws pictures of people peeing on walls

Banksy is the pseudonym of an unknown British artist, film director, and activist who is at the forefront of street art activism.  He's left his mark on countless major cities, from London to Jerusalem to New Orleans, (even visiting several major museums)  frequently conveying a political message or idea, and always dripping with his own distinct style.  He's been active since the early 90's and has received a lot of publicity, both for his work and the mystery surrounding his identity.  Even throughout his Academy Award-nominated documentary, Exit Through the Gift Shop, he remains completely anonymous.  He denies the claims that he is British citizen Robin Gunningham, retaining the shroud that protects his identity both from overzealous fans and from the numerous government officials who have labeled his work illegal vandalism.

Best hide and go seek player ever!

As an artist, his anonymity has allowed him to directly criticize everyone from the U.S. government to the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict without jeopardizing his life or his objectivity.  He has leaped to world wide renown, pulling in as much as a million bucks at a time for his art, and propagating his philosophy and redefining art to the point that graffiti may soon be protected as art by rule of law.  This man went from a vandal constantly evading the cops to a respected artist.  He disagreed with the state of society, and society disagreed with him; but he won.  Through excellence, intrigue, and creativity, Banksy led an artistic revolution that has drawn thousands into the conversation about what defines art, and all without revealing his real identity.  His unique accomplishments and awesome attitude have earned him the title of today's Big Man on Campus.