June 01, 2009

• This is really fascinating. What were these cards used for? I'm really intrigued by the way some of these cards dramatise scenarios of humiliation and violent control. If I had to guess, a lot of these things were put together by relatively young teenagers, people for whom the experience of lacking personal control are still central to their life. Also, the nicknames! Man am I glad I don't hang out with a group of people who use really silly or self-important nicknames when talking to one another! (seriously, some of the nicknames were charming... I just feel sorry for those people on the cards where everybody else is called 'bubbles' and 'crazyeyes' and they're just 'frank')
• So this is graphic design by minors pre-Internet? Also, pre-grammar/spelling/punctuation skills? ("Only a Bitch Wher'es Makeup" and "The Lance Up You'r Fagget Ass" for example). Very racist/homophobic and focused on drug use. What's with the KKK references? Meh. Is this "outsider" art or something?
• Interesting... When I was about 10 (we're talking about 1958), the kids in the neighborhood all watched "Have Gun, Will Travel"...without doubt the best show on tv at the time... We made up cards fashioned after Paladin's business card that featured a skull and said "Have Skull, Will Travel"... don't ask why, it was just cool... We were WAY ahead of this wimps in chi-town!
• Meh. Is this "outsider" art or something? I don't think it would qualify as 'outsider art', except perhaps in the loosest sense. But it is a very vivid look into, a sort of structured representation of, a particular subculture. Because all these different groups were producing essentially the same document, the differences between the documents give us an impression of the variation between the groups, while the continuous themes give us an idea of the overarching cultural trends which united them. Yes, I see the violence and prejudice reflected in these cards, but it didn't really appall me in the way that similar art might from other groups, because it was set against a backdrop of these stark images of grotesque and vengeful power. Powerful people don't make those kinds of images. Powerful people set their horrible violence against a bucolic backdrop or clothe it in a mantle of justice and necessity. These images struck me, very much, as the ravings of the chronically powerless. They're trying to be shocking and symbolically drawing out their power and revenge fantasies in a way that mirrors the impulse to create a gang of kids in the first place. They're calling upon, in an abstract sort of way, totems of the people in society they judge to be even more despised and downtrodden than themselves. And this kind of lashing out is, of course, deeply self-defeating because we, the adult viewer, know exactly what's going on. It's a very satisfying kind of bitter-sweet irony. These cards are also interesting because we know something of what became of these inner city gangs. As organised crime co-opted youth gangs, both binding them together and setting them against one another to control the drugs trade, these punky little kids would become much, much more dangerous and scary. So there's another layer of irony here, as these kids not only make themselves look small in their posturing, but also manage to look almost sweet and naive in comparison to their better armed and more genuinely murderous successors.
• Very insightful, Dreadnought. Gave me fresh eyes to take another look. "Have skull, will travel." I like this!