UK THROUGH MY EYES: THE DARK SIDE OF BRITAIN OR WHY THE ENGLISH STYLE BECAME SO CONCEPTUAL...
Is the UK really such a positive country with only nobility, pride and classic culture, as our English teachers treat it, or there is also another side of a medal? So I decided to investigate the most scandalous artifacts and people from history and culture of Great Britain and to think over them a little…
To begin with I can't but mention that Great Britain is really Great, the country which means soooooooo… much for me. My father is Chernobyl liquidator so I was lucky to get into Chernobyl Children Lifeline charity program.
Thanks to this I visited the UK for the first time when I was 10 and till my 17th I went there every second summer to stay with the family for some holidays. So it took an important part of my childhood and in forming me as a person. Actually it was my first serious "Abroad experience"! I met really nice people, admired wonderful picturesque Bristol, which Hagrit and Harry Potter were flying though by motorcycle in the Joanne Rowling’s first book. (The thing is that she was born in Bristol so she decided to mention this city in her book.)
Of course, I will never forget incredible view of Gothic churches in Wales and Kents Cavern, where it is popular to celebrate weddings now, and lots of other places which we visited with excursions. There was also a very sad moment when Princess Diana died - that day we bought the newspaper with her best photos and we glued them into our scrub-books.
And London! The first time here I was at the age of 17 and it became mine-executed dream. Famous sights from the school textbooks suddenly appeared in front of me and it seemed that it was my disappearing chance to touch them and to feel this moment!
The UK for me is a country penetrated by majesty, a little prudish and always independent position. It always kept me at arm's length, so I could feel impossible to short this distance - so much respect to the Kingdom witch is proud to save the traditions and the history, whose queen are getting more and more charm with her years and is an example how to behave and present oneself!
But is the UK really such a positive country with only nobility, pride and classic culture, as I treat it, or there is also another side of a medal?
So I decided to investigate the most scandalous artifacts and people from history and culture of Great Britain and to think over them a little… I began my investigation of "dark side" of Britain from a situation after the Second World War when the whole world changed and the current position of Great Britain strongly provoked a number of motions in political and social life of English society. While conservatives and labourists were sorting out their relations in the parliament, some social minority got the street power and started ruling and creating their own culture and fashion, which is such an important art component that always shows a cut of time.
The first street bullies who differed with aggressive behavior, appeared in post-war years (1950th) - they were called teddy-boys. The term "teddy-boy" appeared in 1953 as designation of young people from the working class, aspiring to imitate "golden youth" and taking after the fashion of Edward VII (that why term "teddy" comes). The typical shape of their cloths included "trousers pipes", a frock coat with double collar and a tie in style of westerns.
Actually they were inspired by a traditional English suit that is well-known all over the world as a work of tailors from Savile Row Street. By the way, Piccadilly (the best-known street of London) is also connected with the tailor. Robert Baker who made his money solving fashionable lacy collars "piccadill", in 1612 built here a house. After sometime it was called Piccadilly hall and some time later the street also got the same name. In the second half of the XVII century this place was built up with magnificent houses by famous aristocrats and grandees.
By the beginning of the 60th the subculture of teddy-boys were replaced by "mods" (after modernism). Their distinctive features were special attention to appearance (first they preferred only fitted Italian suits and then British brands were originally popular) and loving different music (from jazz, rhythm-and-blues, soul to a rock'n'roll and ska). Later the subculture of skinheads appeared from the most radical mods.
Click to viewPerhaps, the most famous English bastards - The Sex Pistoles, who promoted strongly critical relation to society and policy (in opposition to pacific hippies with their "Make love not war! "), who were the reflection of radical social moods and the whole era of big part of cultural life of Britain about 1960-1980. The word "punk" before emergence of a punk rock was used as a curse. Depending on a context it could mean "geek" or "villain", in all other cases it was used as emotional obscene expression. In a street slang it was a word for a prostitute (data from William Shakespeare's play "Measure for Measure"). Sex Pistols became an embodiment of punk subculture and initiator of so-called "punk revolution" in Great Britain. The creativity and ideology of Sex Pistols inspired a huge number of later representatives of all rock directions. The group is considered to be one of the most influential collectives of the 1970th years.
Sid Vicious, a member of Sex Pistols, was born in London in the family of John Ritchie (he worked as a security guard at Buckingham Palace) and Ann, a woman who was hippy-follower, many years of consuming drugs. Jah Wobble (a childhood friend of Sid’s and a member of The Public Image Limited), recalled that Ann sometimes gave a dose of heroin instead of a dinner to her son… For a long time Sid lived with squatters (people who are fond of illegal "borrowing" unsettled houses - now it became fashionable to make an accommodation for young people in this style), most of them were punk those days in London. Thanks to this fact Sid Vicious actually went into punk culture.
Approximately at the same time Sid got to shop "Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die" (soon renamed into "SEX") at Kings Road where he got acquainted with his future band and Vivienne Westwood. See liked him very much, but then became a wife of Malcolm McLaren, the manager of The Sex Pistols. So Vivienne Westwood and her new husband Malcolm McLaren began developing clothes in punk-style for the band together.
Punk meant using unusual elements (bicycle and chains, collars as accessories etc.). Using some of traditional elements (for example, a checkered fabric) made this cloths even more shocking. Vivienne Westwood is considered to be a founder of punk-style in fashion and she is one of the most original designer and scandalous person nowadays. As a matter of fact, her career began with teaching!
Another well-known Englishman is a musician David Bowie, who was the first one who brought androgyny into a fashion with the help of his glam-rock androgenic character Ziggy Stardust.
It was an invented character and a central figure of his conceptual album "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars". The single "Starman" became a hit and entered into the main music-charts of the UK. According to an album plot, in five years before Earth will be finally destroyed (because of a global drowning and numerous accidents), Ziggy with the friends from Mars creates a rock group to save the world and to educate people by means of a rock'n'roll. Ziggy becomes a star and forgets his true friends (his bands-mates), then he becomes an alcoholic and drug-addicted. In the end (song "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide") he is killed by his bands-mates.
In 2002 in BBC research "100 greatest British" David Bowie took the 29th place.
But if we speak about music, I can’t but mention two main British competitors for world leadership. Of course, the fist one is The Beatles (appeared in 1960) whose not only songs, but even covers of albums won the prize "Grammy" for the best graphic work! On poll which has been carried out among the British music fans and also according to opinion of the Rolling Stone magazine the cover "Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band" wins the first place among covers of musical albums ever!
It was created by artist Peter Blake and photographer Michael Cooper. Authors of the idea were designer Robert Fraser and Paul McCartney. The cover represents colorful composition from cardboard figures of various famous people (some of them are Marlene Dietrich, Carl Gustav Jung, Diana Dors, James Dean, Bob Dylan, Issy Bonn, Marilyn Monroe, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde, Marlon Brando, Stan Laurel, controversial comedian Lenny Bruce and Stewart Sutcliffe, the former bass guitarist of The Beatles). The musicians themselves (their wax figures from Madame Tussaud museum) are in the center. There are also a drum with title "Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band", beds (or graves) with the name "Beatles" laid out from flowers, several more various subjects: candlestick, the TV, two stone figures, a figurine of the Snow White, a figure of the Indian goddess of Lakshmi, a hookah, a garden gnome, a doll with “Welcome the Rolling Stones” on it’s sweater, etc. Musicians’ suits are similar to a military uniform. They were developed by designer Manuel Kuevas and sewed from atlas of bright colors. "Uniform" is decorated by some awards: the British Empire medal at McCartney’s and Harrison’s, the coat of arms of Great Britain at Lennon’s and the badge of police of the Province of Ontario at McCartney’s.
The second legend competitor is The Rolling Stones. The band was formed in 1962 and according to the plan of the manager should become "rebellious" alternative of The Beatles. In 1969 during the American tour the band was advertized as "the greatest rock'n'roll group in the world" and (due to Allmusic research) it has managed to keep this status to this day! Influence of The Rolling Stones on formation and development of rock music can't be overestimated. And not only on music, but also in art and graphic, image and mass-media and it became a high-grade artistic artifact. For example, there is no such a person in the XX century, who has never seen this logo:
The image of bright red lips and tongue, which has become The Rolling Stones emblem, was not created by Andy Warhol as lots of people think (because the first emergence of this logo was on a cover of album "Sticky Fingers" in 1971 that was issued by Warhol) but was created by less-known designer John Pash in 1970.
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Thus, having analyzed English society and cultural fuel only of a little period of 50th - 80th, I can already make a certain conclusion that The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a country of contrasts where traditional "proper" tourist side meets the seditious innovative, progressive side. The UK makes interesting, saturated, contradictory history and on a row with the USA and some other countries of Western Europe, founded modern art and has huge influence on current cultural trends and our life in XXI century!