antipopper

It’s November 2005, and I still love the Sugababes — I think it’s something fundamental about the way I’m wired. (Their debut LP remains, for me, one of the greatest albums of this new century.) Lately, the closest I’ve come to physical violence was when someone in London dissmissively described the ’Babes as “rough as guts”, and “something the cat dragged in”. I’ve conferred with Camelia about this before, but What The Fuck is going on with the public articulation of class privilege in the UK at the moment? When this same person started sniggering about my fondness for Burberry because the latter has become a “chav” thing, and thus obviously verboten, I began having that wonderful subjunctive vision of Jack Black suddenly beating the fuck out of Tim Robbins in Stephen Frears’ otherwise dodgy High Fidelity.

Far be it for me to fuel any reactionary fantasy that Australian culture is somehow more egalitarian, but this obsession with “chavs” has a troubling uniqueness to it — it seems like a far more virulent racialisation of class than “Westie” or “bogan” is in Sydney or Melbourne. (And believe me, working for a youth advertising firm based in East Sydney will give you a bellyful of the latter.) The currency of the “chav” label in Britain makes me angry and nostalgic for that country’s postwar history of reappropriative working class style — as if these “gains” have all been turned back by a new offensive. But the current landscape also vaguely suggests that hegemony mightn’t be a particularly useful way of approaching these questions, if it ever was. The terrain on which counter-hegemony was to have been achieved seems less and less desirable as a surface for politics.

I’m not sure where this situation leaves those of us with an investment in projects that involve communities and cultural politics. (Speaking of which, I invite everyone to the Suburban Sista Soundz gig on 30 November at the Metro in Sydney, which will feature my favourites, Krystal and Karma. Girls who are “rough as guts”? These “chav-istas” will rip you to fucking shreds, you fucking fucker.) I suppose it’s about reconceiving community cultural development in terms of generating capacities and new spaces for circulation.

In any case, the next time someone helpfully advises me that my taste is “too chavvy”, I swear, there will be blood.

[ tags: chavs, class, hegemony, politics, pop, pop-culture, sugababes ]