cid 6ac7a0bf2141e7a194a94aa521441245d2b497642adfccea1e5949ae2cd54a07 · original · via openalex
Title: THE MEANING OF MOD Authors: Dick Hebdige Venue: Routledge eBooks Year: 2002 Canonical: doi:10.4324/9780203224946-6 URL: https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203224946-6 Collector: openalex OA: false ABSTRACT Dick Hebdige Note: “The meaning of Mod” is the second extract from Dick Hebdige’s study of sub-cultural styles in the 1960’s. Here, in contrast with his piece on black culture (where the background is less familiar), Hebdige spends less time on a description of the ‘Mod’ style, and focusses instead on the modes of stylistic generation in Mod sub-culture. He examines the way objects and things were borrowed by the Mods from the world of consumer commodities, and their meaning transformed by the way they were reworked into a new stylistic ensemble. This involved expropriating the meanings given to things by the dominant consumer culture, and incorporating them in ways which expressed subcultural rather than dominant values. The study also suggests how the Mods raised consumption, the commodity, style itself to a new level-a sort of ‘fetishising’ of style, which produced the effect commonly described as ‘narcissistic’. This analysis gives empirical substance to the argument that sub-cultures live their relation to their real situation as an ‘imaginary’ relation.