Rules Of The Game #12: Jocks And Burnouts

[koganbot]

My latest column, where I try to justify my nonstandard use of the word "class."

The Rules Of The Game #12: Jocks and Burnouts

I'm curious if you think the social map that Eckert provides and the social dynamic that I identify (the basic form being "jocks vs. burnouts" [w/ different category names in different times and places], but there being an unsettled effect when a third group, the "freaks," appears in strength) have anything to do with the situation at the high school you went to. If not, what was the social map? Also what sort of map(s) would you apply to situations you've been in after high school?

Oh yeah, and here's another chance for you to help me figure out what the hell it is I'm trying to say about Elvis.

EDIT: Here are links to all but three of my other Rules Of The Game columns (LVW's search results for "Rules of the Game"). Links for the other three (which for some reason didn't get "Rules Of The Game" in their titles), are here: #4, #5, and #8.

UPDATE: I've got all the links here now:

http://koganbot.livejournal.com/179531.html

Comments

[koganbot]

I'd say they were like the burnouts in tending to shun school activities, but they might show up in the drama club (less likely after 1970 because a change in who was advising the drama club made it more mainstream) and they'd show up in political activities somewhat - not student council, but antiwar and other forms of activism. I think more to the point is that to some extent they didn't avoid classroom participation as much (some would discuss/argue with the teacher rather than simply cut class or stay silent or be disruptive) and that they were likely to take a certain amount of intellectualism and artsy-fartsiness into their off-campus lives.

What was your school social map like (Sinker actually wrote up his for Why Music Sucks)? And were there refusal groups; that is, not just people who tended to shy away from school activities - misfits and loners and grinds will do that - but who had active social lives with each other but took those activities either off campus or at least underground, away from adult eyes. Sort of an anti-school-spirit contingent. (Malcolm McClaren and his gang in if.... might be an example; also Stalky and Co. in Kipling's Stalky and Co., though they had a relatively benign relationship with authority.)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I can't promise to write it up today, but I will try and write up my school social map before the next column comes out (i.e. before I go on holiday) - I guess the crucial factor is that there is no sustained 'off-campus' at a boarding school.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

malcolm mclaren's appearance in if.... is fleeting at best!

[koganbot]

Ha! Well, all them macs look the same to me! (I wonder what Lindsay Anderson would have made of McLaren; or did make of him, come to think of it, since Anderson surely would have been aware of the Sex Pistols, if not of the dance version of Madame Butterfly.)

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

I was thinking about doing this too -- it would be interesting to see if we came up with the same map. I remember for example that NME-reading indie-ish tastes linked one in to a network of like-minded individuals which included both jocks and burnouts. Physical manifestation of this = trekking across campus to borrow cassettes rather than taping stuff of the guy in the study space next to you. But that some bands crossed rapidly out of this class, and that there were a lot of tribal house tastes. e.g. lots of hip-hop in one house, but not in another.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This has reminded me of the "social map of a greek island in tourist season" thing I wrote last holiday and then totally forgot about and never posted! Must dig up that notebook