A Reflection on the Sociopolitical Influence of Punk Rock & Reservoir Dogs
I recently came across a paper I wrote in college that I think still accurately describes the underlying root of my passion for social and political change. I’m going to share it here:
I often ponder upon the many things that have influenced my development of a sense of “self” — namely the opinions and ideals that comprise my belief system and perspective on the world. I wonder about what all of these experiences are, and how they contributed to my perception of reality. It may be impossible to track them all, but there are definitely some I remember distinctly as having an impact. In particular, a piece of popular culture and how it banded together my group of friends as we developed a unifying sense of political and social ideologies — or better yet, our own lens through which we viewed the world.
It was eighth grade year, and there were six of us: myself, Saxon, Steven (better known as Steev-Oh), Nick, and identical twins Ashton and Anthony. We liked to consider ourselves mature for our ages — I’m not sure if that was actually true or not. I do know that we were influenced by a culture that was not common of those around us, and led us down a very different path in terms of how we viewed the world, society, media, government, war, and social change. We were “punk”, driven by the words of the Sex Pistols, The Ramones, and Bad Religion, and influenced by a Marxist political ideology.
We were pissed off, and we were going to make a stand.
There was a resounding call to arms from 1960’s counterculture and social anarchism that empowered us to defend certain ideals — these included race relations, feminism, and sexuality. These ideals were exacerbated by our anti-capitalist, anti-war, and anti-establishment sentiments. Punk rock as we knew it was the catalyst for these ideologies.
According the words of Greg Graffin, the lead singer and songwriter for the punk band Bad Religion, “The name Bad Religion is a provocative one. The most important thing to acknowledge is that we use the word “Religion” as a metaphor for any prescriptive, codified system that restricts one’s freedom and behavior…and we think this is bad. At first this might seem like we are suggesting anarchy, but that is not really our goal. We do believe in moral behavior, we just don’t think that the traditional religions are the only place that we learn our morals… Many things can be bad religions, such as economic systems, political systems, penal systems, basically anything that people blindly subscribe to without understanding or caring about it’s implications”. In so many ways his words led us down the path of our perceived righteousness; our goal was not purely to disrupt, but to do so with a purpose.
This was our subculture.
A particular piece of popular culture that drove our movement is a movie by a director named Quentin Tarantino called “Reservoir Dogs”. The movie involves a jewelry heist gone awry, and the bloody outcomes of those involved. The main characters are six men with pseudo-names, all of which are colors (e.g. Mr. Pink, Mr. Blonde, Mr. Orange…). Each of our friend group picked a character and often went by that name. I was Mr. Blonde of course, for reasons so obvious to me at the time, and so unknown to me now.
The movie itself doesn’t claim any strong connection to our principles, and yet for us it seemed to solidify them in our minds. For some reason it resonated the political and social struggles that we grasped so tightly onto, tied together our loose concepts of the world, and helped construct a platform for our discontent.
Our attire was straight out of the New York City streets in the late 70’s; we had spiked mohawks of varying colors and lengths, torn clothing, band patches, and our dress embodied a scene. We had a mission to disrupt the authoritarian power of our world, and particularly of our school. My undertaking was to provoke from within and to spread that seed of rebellion.
The beginnings were small. I started with book reports in my middle school English class where we had to present our summaries aloud. Needless to say, my class was not as enthused about my interpretation of the Communist Manifesto as I was. I then shifted to essays instructing us to write about our interests; despite the common themes of pop music, celebrities and new technology, I decided that writing about the Abu Grhaib prison abuse scandal was more relevant.
My aim was more than effectively enraging my teachers, it was to perhaps infect the minds of fellow classmates with this seed of rebellion I carried — so that they might break away from the pack following one after another blindly, and make a difference.
As it neared the end of the year, it came to be one of our least favorite occasions in school tradition: the formal dance. In our minds, this was just another way to perpetuate a sense of materialism and competition between the elite and lower classes. The most expensive and elaborate dresses and suits were regarded as essential to being accepted, and if you couldn’t afford to dress well, you just pretended in hopes of going unnoticed. This was outrageous to us, and so we developed a plan.
True to our love of the great Tarantino and as an act of dissonance, we dressed up as our characters from Reservoir Dogs and crashed the dance. As if we walked out of the movie screen, we all had on white button ups, skinny black ties, faded black pants, and whatever semblance of a suit jacket an eighth grade punk can muster up. Most importantly, we wore that seed of rebellion in our hearts. It was our first school dance god-damn-it, and they were going to remember us.
As I now am on the cusp of my college graduation, with every intention of entering into the world of politics, it is possible that the eighth grade me would consider myself a sellout — and perhaps that is true. By all accounts I have become the “man” I have so often fought against.
I have in most respects fallen in line, accepted my place in American society and culture, and given in to the constructs of the so-called American dream. I have bought into the ideas of becoming overwhelmingly in debt in order to receive the most expensive piece of paper that I may ever own, which gives no guarantee of a better life, but might conceivably make the world look at me as though I matter.
My argument is this: I still carry that seed within me, and like far reaching branches, I expand that discontent into an arena that I might be able to incite change.
The ideas set forth by the minds of Greg Graffin, Karl Marx, and Quentin Tarantino affect me in different but equally powerful ways than they did in my youth. My relationship with them matures as I do. I seek to conform outwardly and dissent from within, creating an undercurrent of political and social change.
This is my rebellion.
That band of my closest friends in middle school, in all of our experiences and triumphs and shortcomings, allowed us to shape into the people we are today. Despite our relatively different backgrounds, we were bound together by our respective ideologies. And whether it was in large or insignificant way, it helped bring our small worlds into a larger scope.
