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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"But in a contrary motion, the freaks provide a motive for the preps and the burnouts to absorb freak characteristics -- which is how bohemian ideas get pulled into the mainstream, and why freak groups periodically disappear."

This is a central point in Leland's History of Hip book but seems to run into a paradox. If the mainstream is continuously, progressively absorbing the miscegnating, individualistic, detached, experimenting spirit of hipdom (or bohemian freakdom)won't that eventually nullify this kind of opposition altogether? Or, I mean, there will always be haircut social markers like "eating acid" or "synthesizers" but, following this line of thinking, won't bohemia eventually run out of "ideas" to give to the mainstream?

My first thought ab your Elvis comment is how he is an example of a vector between those "deep" and "cultural" class distinctions. But I'm sure I'm only channeling indistinctly Marcus's take in Mystery Train.

Well, to my mind bohemia ran out of ideas in about 1970 (i.e., about the time I started liking the freaks more but being less intimidated by them). But that last sentence is just me being glib. My piece doesn't ask or answer the question "So where does bohemia come from?" My snap answer would be "A combination of two places: (1) from the mainstream of culture itself, with the freaks et al. acting out various ideals and trying to bridge tensions and countertensions that the mainstream itself supplies, (2) the critical insights of various marginals." The thing about bohemians is that at some point after high-school graduation they need funding. So money has to get to the mainstreamers who've stepped sideways and to the bohemianized marginals, which means they've got to be pleasing someone with their ideas and antics, either patrons or a significant audience.

That's entirely off the top of my head, and I'm just talking, but I believe it would be wrong to think of the freaks themselves generating ideas without any input from the culture as a whole.

Sounds sensible enough. Something ab the conlcusion of Leland's book rubs me the wrong way. Or maybe it just makes me sad b/c I think, really, this story of miscegnation in America represents the end of a certain stand of cultural history that has meant a lot to me-- meant a lot to be b/f I had any sense of its history. BTW, the jock and burnout arrangement works for me, when I was going to high school, especially, but also since I've been working in high schools for the last ten years. Only now it's "preps" and "alt-rockers," where I'm currently teaching, and it was "preps" and "gangstas" or, as I preferred to call them, "thugamuffins," where I taught my first six years. Really, I'm not sure ab the labels but the central idea of two polarized status groups with a whole bunch of inbetweeners rings true. And I especially recognize this feature where few openly identify, or perhaps even privately think of themselves, as a jock/prep or burnout/gangsta, but tend to identify others this way based on whether they're "into" school or "opposed," or at least assuming an anti pose, to school. In some ways it's the kids that are there to get good grades versus the kids there to party. When, really, most, the vast majority, want both, of course. Okay, gotta go. School starts next week.

Rules Of The Game #12: Jocks And Burnouts

what if the "freaks" are all out?

Re: what if the "freaks" are all out?

Re: what if the "freaks" are all out?