Culture War, What Culture War?
There was Pads and OC and me. And there was Cellhead, Chim Chim, and then there was Charlie Cheese's brother, Rats Ass. And his guys, Johnny No-Style, Boots Magner, and then there was Joe who was John Cavakook's brother, and you had Sketch, and Mark-O, and Jones Poor, who got that nickname because he said he had no money. Like, "Gimme a smoke-uler. I’m poor right now."
Running the streets of College Greens and Rancho Cordova, for us to live any other way was nuts. To us those goody-good people who listened to Journey and got good grades, who took mom’s car to school everyday and worried about the football team were dead. They were suckers.
But, in the 1980s, those suckers ran things. They not only had the law on their side, they were the law, especially in Sacramento, the political center of California, where Mr. Wilson and the other adults tried to script our lives so that we’d become quietly trapped, middle-of-the-road drones, slaves to a paycheck and narcotized by commercial pap and fake rebellion.
They called us criminals, drug addicts, and perverts, and, yeah, we were a little bit of those things, but our real passion was freedom and what we used to express and expand that freedom was punk rock, the squares’ ennemi du people, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Over the weekend, Politico published a classic piece of bubble-reporting dubbed “Are Republicans losing the culture wars?”, an article which assumes that we are in a two-sided war over culture. Politico focuses on the continued electoral failure of right-wing, loud-mouth, busybodies “Moms for Liberty” [sic]. The article states that even though the “Moms” have had some success lobbying reactionary politicians – see Florida Governor Ron DeSantis – to ban book and legislating against personal liberty, the group can’t them and their allies elected to school boards or other local offices.
Politico frames the “Moms” electoral failure as Republicans losing the “Culture War,” when, really, these Christian authoritarians never made it to the cultural battlefield. They might be somewhat successful in restricting drag shows through legislation, but they cannot stop the advancing popularity of drag or the mass acceptance of queer people and queer rights. They have no impact limiting the influence of queer culture on the mainstream. If anything, their reactionary overkill only increases interest in and commitment to what they are trying to ban. This scenario is not new.
John Waters’ movie Hairspray (1988) is a very good fictionalized history lesson on the “Cultural War” of the 1950s and early 1960s over rock & roll, which was really just America’s latest battle over race and rights. In Hairspray, “chubby” teen Tracy Turnblad (Rikki Lake) wants to be a dancer on The Corny Collins Show, a local TV dance show that is segregated by race. Put off by the show’s racial policy and falling for Black teen dancer Seaweed Stubbs, Tracy tries to integrate the show. She is fought by a small group of meddling bigots and Christian reactionaries.
While Waters’ story is made-up, it is based on real events, fights that happened in his hometown of Baltimore and across the U.S. in the early days of rock & roll. White conservative America’s reaction to early rock & roll and the race-mixing that went with it was heavy-handed, harsh, and even violent. Cops were sent to break up rock & roll shows. Censors were tasked with harassing radio stations. Business associations leaned on major record labels to restrict or end their involvement with rock & roll. Legislators passed laws reinforcing racial segregation, with the hopes of killing the rock & roll “fad.”
But as with right’s current war against cultural freedom (or just plain freedom), the forces that tried to snuff out rock & roll didn’t just fail, they served as a very impactful advertisement to young people and outcasts for the new music. No question that the laws conservatives used to fight 1950/60s youth culture had a legal impact, but, as history has shown, culturally they were little more than a nuisance. As the cliché goes, the heart wants what the heart wants, and if the heart wants rock & roll or drag or punk rock or hip hop or race mixing or same sex marriages or trans acceptance, the heart is going to get what it wants.
When Pads and OC and me found punk rock nobody was going to stop us from listening to it. So what, if Sacramento radio pretty much banned punk from the airwaves; we’ll climb onto the roof with an antenna made of coat hangers so that we can pick up KDVS and the rebroadcast of “Maximum Rocknroll.” The city and cops can try to shut down punk shows by leaning on hall owners, fucking around with the law, and using cops to harass people; Stewart Katz and others will stay one step beyond the law and loopholes and new spaces to bring the noise.
The media can create moral panic around punk, giving aggies, jocks, and longhairs an excuse to attack us, but the genius of the skateboard is that it can be used for both transportation and a weapon, and we will use it. After we send our enemies fleeing, Tracker logos imprinted on their domes, will reminded them of our persistence by spray painting the walls.
That was back in 1980, ’81, and ’82. It’s now 2024 and punk rock is not only here, it is a very influential part of mainstream culture. The Democrats’ 2024 nomination for vice president is a huge fan of 1980s’ punk stalwarts Hüsker Dü and the Replacements. There’s a photo floating around of a teenage Doug Emhoff – Dem nominee for president’s husband – holding up a copy of The Clash’s Give Them Enough Rope, with a maniacal smile on his face.
On other side of the “culture war,” Donald Trump “dances” to “YMCA,” “DJ’s” Lee Greenwood, and “rocks” the January 6 Prison Choir. My obvious prejudices aside, Hüsker Dü vs. the Village People, The Replacement vs. Lee Greenwood, The Clash vs. the January 6 Prison Choir - those aren’t wars or battles or even dust-ups. Trump’s musical soldiers are easy target practice for the punkeroos.
Just because a cultural shift or movement creates a backlash does not mean that we are in a Cultural War. Small pressure groups can pester cultural movements through politics and the law; however, as we’ve seen throughout history, the bigots and censors can’t stop what people want or need – whether its loud, obnoxious music or cuddling with whomever they please.
So, Politico, Republicans haven’t lost the “Cultural War.” They’ve never really engaged in one. Yes, they’ve attacked progress, but their attacks have left us with little more than a few bruises and some annoying obstacles. We will move forward and we will fight to move forward, just as Pads and OC and me did when we were young.