koganbot | Rules Of The Game #12: Jocks And Burnouts

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

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I'm intrigued by the claim that in later life people tend to revert back to high school cultural maps -- I know this is partly true for me, as I started to discuss on Tom's punk question, i.e. The Clash and Pink Floyd fit together for me in what I called there 'classic rock' but which I realise ought to be called 'approved bands amongst the big boys and their younger acolytes'. This might explain why for me 'indie' is associated with the failure of an oppositional position to remain oppositional. But I don't know if it's true for anyone else. I guess there is a strong cultural tendency to project this as a pattern -- all those high school reunion movies (in which the implied audience are those who have moved to the big city -- I know this is less of a class thing in the US than in the UK where moving away to the city is mainly via university and therefore mainly middle class) in which the question of returning is always what categories are we all in now?

obviously I'm partly intrigued by this claim because it is so central to F.Kogan thinking! Somewhere I have a 2000 word unsent email in which I DO start to look at my own school experiences in order to explain where I am now, but I think I'm a bit nervous of looking back too closely, since there are a lot of things I'm ashamed of, and I'm afraid that the black moods which enveloped me from c.13-30 will be resurrected rather than laid to rest by looking back.

Well, I think the reversion is more in people's musical thinking than in their actual lives, but I feel that high-school patterns may play a bigger role in bohemia - and I'm thinking as I'm typing, but I don't believe this was owing to immaturity but rather to bohemians still being oppositional and outsider in some senses, which is a role easier to play in high school and college because it's harder to get kicked out of high school and college than it is to get fired from a job. So in effect the bohemians are trying to keep the roles going even where the roles are not so easy, beyond the teenage bubble. Does that make sense?

Do bohemians attach more social stuff to music than, I don't know, the soccer mum who is listening to her children's choices in the car? That might explain a persistence of musical-class-thinking amongst the bohemians while it has evaporated elsewhere. (Although I guess if you went and actually ask someone about what they like, they would probably fall back on the kinds of patterns of explaining themselves in relation to the world which they had needed to develop at high school, so those patterns could be latent much more broadly.)

My friends fall into two categories: those who still listen to the same music they did at university, and don't really follow any new stuff, and don't really feel bad about this; and those who still keep up with trends, or feel they ought to be, if only to disapprove of or disparage them. The latter are closer to what people would call bohemian... I've always felt caught because I like to keep up, and have always been attracted to bohemia, but have always felt too square or straight to be part of bohemia... also I get bored of some aspects of it too easily.

but isn't being oppositional and outsider intrinsically immature? refusing to conform similar to refusing to grow up?

also, if you get the right sort of job (and i'm thinking UK public sector here) you can get away with a zillion times more stuff than at school without getting kicked out, especially in terms of dress (i suppose this goes back to the majority of uk schools having uniforms to age 16 though)

but isn't being oppositional and outsider intrinsically immature? refusing to conform similar to refusing to grow up?

Not intrinsically. My refusing to let various magazines change my prose without clearing the changes with me wasn't immature. My then making jokes about breaking someone's kneecap when they changed the prose anyway was immature (though the jokes were actually funny). My not changing my style to snarkwod when an anti-intellectual boob bought out the Village Voice wasn't immature. My then - after the Voice cut me loose* - spending seven months in fear and piling up more debt rather than looking for more outlets for my work was immature.

It really depends on what one is trying to oppose or remove oneself from, and how one does it. My friend Nathan - the one who dislikes "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)" and whose attitude towards what he calls the "establishment" is oppositional - hosts open mics, promotes shows, is setting up his own label to record local bands with the intention of giving them a fairer shake financially than they'd likely get from the biz.

*Don't mean to imply that I was asked to change my style, which I wasn't. And I don't know for sure why I was cut loose except I'm positive the music editor would have liked to keep me.

i'm kind of just teasing frank, certainly wasn't having a pop.

i guess i was thinking of yr rock & roll cliche "opposition". people "sticking it to The Man" by signing 8 alBUM deals, rage against the machine, and their ilk...

Oh, I didn't think you were taking a pop (since I've been known myself to heap scorn on posturing oppositional fellows) but I did wonder if you were serious so I gave a serious response. And to take that response further (and this is along the lines of what I said to Jack below), being oppositional - or "oppositional" - if you pull it off, does confer status in the eyes of the culture as a whole, including jocks and burnouts, since the culture values Oppositional Behavior if the behavior can be put into a Hero Story. In fact the culture is quick to market Oppositional Behavior. Which doesn't mean that the oppositional behavior can't be genuinely challenging.

taking a position for sake of discussion perhaps. semi-serious at least though. i wonder if it's the quickness to market oppositional behaviour that you point out, that makes me wary of it. that perhaps i've been stung too many times by what appear to be oppositional turning out to be another ad campaign or whatevs that perhaps quiet, non-confrontational (is this even possible?), getting-on-and-doing-it "oppositional" behaviour is the only interesting route left (but then we're back to the DIY Lonely Hearts Club, aren't we!!!)

Rules Of The Game #12: Jocks And Burnouts

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