{"id":16815,"date":"2016-12-01T14:11:34","date_gmt":"2016-12-01T19:11:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/?p=16815"},"modified":"2018-08-09T17:08:30","modified_gmt":"2018-08-09T21:08:30","slug":"only-noise-punk-rock-patrimony-pyrotechnics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.audiofemme.com\/only-noise-punk-rock-patrimony-pyrotechnics\/","title":{"rendered":"ONLY NOISE: Punk Rock, Patrimony, & Pyrotechnics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"queen\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Pardon me for mumbling. I simply haven\u2019t released my *facepalm.*<\/p>\n

In the past few months I\u2019ve been following allegations that multimillionaire Joe Corr\u00e9 \u2013 spawn of fashion designer Vivienne Westwood and late Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren \u2013 would set fire to roughly $6,000,000 worth of punk memorabilia<\/a>. That\u2019s right. Six. Million. Dollars worth. Or five million pounds worth, if you\u2019re across the pond.<\/p>\n

Corr\u00e9\u2019s pyro-maniacal threat was sparked in response to Punk London<\/a>, an admittedly cheesy, year-long cultural celebration of punk\u2019s history supported by the likes of former London mayor Boris Johnson, The Heritage Lottery Fund, and other emblems of – as Corr\u00e9 stated in an interview – \u201cthe establishment.\u201d Whatever that means. (Does it mean white, multimillionaire males, perhaps?)<\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t sure if Corr\u00e9<\/a>, who is also the founder of exorbitant lingerie brand Agent Provocateur, would follow through with the burning. It was doubtless a publicity stunt, but would the match be struck? Apparently so. While we were still trippin\u2019 on tryptophan this past Saturday, Corr\u00e9, who hired a PR firm promote the event<\/a>, took to the River Thames with Westwood in tow and burned the artifacts on a boat; complete with flaming effigies of David Cameron, Theresa May, etc. Flames engulfed everything from rare Sex Pistols recordings, punk-era merchandise, and clothing that belonged to Corr\u00e9\u2019s famous parents. The date, November 26th<\/sup>, marked the 40th<\/sup> anniversary of the Sex Pistols single \u201cAnarchy in the UK,\u201d which is super hilarious because I imagine Corr\u00e9 must <\/em>have had to get a permit to set fire to things on a boat in the fucking Thames river. Or maybe he just paid the relatively small fine of 5,000 pounds to get out of trouble<\/a>. That must be chump-change for a man with millions of pounds to actually burn.<\/p>\n

\"Joe<\/a><\/p>\n

Corr\u00e9\u2019s actions and statements are all so conflicting, hypocritical and ironic, it is difficult to know where to begin untangling such a knot; almost as difficult as figuring out how to get the hell out of an Agent Provocateur \u201cplaysuit<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where do I begin?<\/p>\n

The first problem with Corr\u00e9\u2019s \u201cthesis\u201d is one of timeliness. To say, as he told The Guardian<\/em><\/a>, that \u201cthe establishment\u201d has \u201cprivatised, packaged and castrated\u201d punk, and that the movement has become a \u201cMcDonald\u2019s brand \u2026 owned by the state, establishment and corporations,\u201d is wildly funny to me. Because: no shit. Is it really news to anyone over the age of 12 that punk has been commodified like every other branch of subculture that has ever existed? Where was Corr\u00e9 with his torch in 1988 when the first Hot Topic was opened? Where was he in 1992, when mum Vivienne Westwood accepted her Damehood from The Queen of England<\/a>, or again in 2006 when she accepted another such honor from the Prince of Wales? Corr\u00e9 has stated that one of his issues with the Punk London affair was its affiliation with the Queen, but I don\u2019t see him setting fire to his mom\u2019s $100 t-shirt<\/a>s over her <\/em>affiliation.<\/p>\n

Another problem is Corr\u00e9\u2019s warped notion that punk was ever anything philosophically aspirational to begin with. Politico-punk didn\u2019t surface until long after punk was officially declared dead, long after the nihilistic first wave in the \u201870s petered out, which had nothing to do with providing answers for lost youth. And as someone who believed in the \u201cethos of punk\u201d so much that I had an entire cigarette burned into my left wrist because I found it \u201csymbolic\u201d \u2013 that is still hard for me to say a decade later.<\/p>\n

Punk is music, sprung from boredom and disenchantment with a previous era. It is a reaction, a notch in history\u2019s belt that is perpetually replaced by the next one. Jerry Lee Lewis. Dylan. The Stooges. Wu-Tang Clan. Nirvana. They all disrupted a previous form, but no one ever wrote a manifesto. To think that punk ever existed in a vacuum safe from historical cause-and-effect is beyond na\u00efve.<\/p>\n

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\"LONDON,<\/a>
Photo by John Phillips\/Getty Images<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

The fact that Corr\u00e9 chose the 40th<\/sup> birthday of \u201cAnarchy in the UK,\u201d is doubly hilarious because he seems to forget that the Sex Pistols were a marketing tool\u2026an entirely fabricated band \u2013 fabricated, by his dad.<\/p>\n

Corr\u00e9\u2019s remark that punk is now a \u201cMcDonald\u2019s brand\u201d is undercut by the fact that the Sex Pistols were, from day one, a McLaren brand. The late manager and former owner of SEX \u2013 the clothing store that first began co-opting punk culture \u2013 was entirely divisive when putting together Rotten, Vicious, and co. In Gillian McCain and Legs McNeil\u2019s famed punk oral history Please Kill Me<\/em>, McLaren explains his motives for the Pistols:<\/p>\n

\u201cRichard Hell was a definite, hundred percent inspiration, and, in fact, I remember telling the Sex Pistols, \u2018Write a song like \u2018Blank Generation,\u2019 but write your own bloody version,\u2019 and their own version was \u2018Pretty Vacant.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI just thought Richard Hell was incredible. Again, I was sold another fashion victim\u2019s idea.\u201d \u201cHe was this wonderful, bored, drained, scarred, dirty guy with a torn T-shirt. I don\u2019t think there was a safety pin there, though there may have been, but it was certainly a torn and ripped T-shirt. And this look, this image of this guy, this spiky hair, everything about it \u2013 there was no question that I\u2019d take it back to London. By being inspired by it, I was going to imitate and transform it into something more English.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Perhaps hypocrisy is all Corr\u00e9 knows, given the conflicted business legacies of his parents, both of whom have profited heavily on punk. Vivienne Westwood\u2019s fashion empire is wholly at odds with her \u201cactivism.\u201d I noticed this especially when I interned at her Battersea studio in the summer of 2013, straight out of college.<\/p>\n

Interning is regrettably unavoidable in the fashion industry, and companies often depend on the free labor they exploit. This is certainly the case at Vivienne Westwood Gold Label, where unpaid interns trace and draft patterns, cut fabric, sew samples, run errands, create technical sketches, and perform numerous other invaluable jobs. I once made a tulle skirt as tall as me with something like 30 meters of fabric. It took about two weeks. The studio was littered with plastic buttons, which we sometimes had to make, emblazoned with slogans like \u201cClimate Revolution\u201d and \u201cGlobal Warming;\u201d the unsustainable material of the buttons themselves completely betraying such phrases.<\/p>\n

\"Vivienne-Westwood-LFW-The-Joye-2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I wasn\u2019t the only person to notice the hypocrisy of a high-end fashion brand hiding behind faux ethics. In 2013 a sustainable fashion publication called Eluxe Magazine<\/em><\/a>, which claimed after one of Westwood\u2019s fashion shows that:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sheer number of outfits (there were literally dozens of looks) and obviously petroleum-based materials shown on the runway seem to have already violated both her \u2018cut out plastic whenever possible\u2019 and \u2018quality vs quantity\u2019 points, proving that the Vivienne Westwood label is not eco-friendly.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has also been mentioned that despite Westwood constantly urging consumers to \u201cbuy less,\u201d her company produces nine full fashion collections per year. The hypocrisy is rife.<\/p>\n

But I digress. More infuriating than Corr\u00e9\u2019s blatant hypocrisy is his cynicism. His arrogance. His flagrant assholery.<\/p>\n

To torch five million pounds worth of anything, even, say, toilet brushes, is an insult to all of those who cannot afford such pointless, teenage acts of \u201crebellion.\u201d Corr\u00e9\u2019s actions reflect his superior economic status. It reminds me of one of my favorite fashion history facts:<\/p>\n

Prior to the French Revolution, it was en vogue amongst high court and the aristocracy to powder one\u2019s skin and hair to a shade of ghost white. We\u2019ve all seen the rococo paintings, but do you know what they used as powder?<\/p>\n

Flour<\/a>. They used food, while hoards of peasants were starving to death. But what did Marie Antoinette care? She <\/em>had plenty of cake. And Corr\u00e9 has plenty of money.<\/p>\n

And he didn\u2019t torch toilet brushes. He set fire to cultural artifacts \u2013 to patrimony. I feel like there was a group of people in the 1940s who used to burn items of artistic heritage, like, maybe books<\/a>? I just<\/em> can\u2019t remember what they were called\u2026<\/p>\n

Outside of all of these issues, the saddest thing to me about Corr\u00e9\u2019s bonfire is he could have done something constructive with his inherited, entirely un-earned wealth. There have been numerous suggestions, including the request that he sell the lot and donate the proceeds to charity, to which Corr\u00e9 replied that \u201cthe job of the state is now taken up by the charity sector. We have charities where people are earning \u00a3250,000 a year to sit on the board, these things are becoming corporations in their own right.\u201d What a convenient response.<\/p>\n

My personal suggestion to the pompous Corr\u00e9, the punk heir and lord of overpriced panties, would have been to donate the materials to a non-profit, anti-capitalist organization such as The Archive of Contemporary Music<\/a> (ARC) in Tribeca. The ARC\u2019s sole purpose is to preserve our audible culture, and all media related to it, for the sake of posterity and education. Highbrow, lowbrow \u2013 it is all worth preserving regardless, because its very existence teaches us about ourselves as creative beings.<\/p>\n

But as destruction is the opposite of creation, perhaps Corr\u00e9 can\u2019t wrap his head around that.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n