Students of Marxist cultural theory looking for proof of the steely resilience of late capitalism should keep their eyes and ears open in the coming months. The system’s relative health can be seen in how smoothly and deftly it commodifies and co-opts its old foe punk rock for a summer of anniversaries and revivals.
When punk erupted like a raging pimple on the face of mid-1970s Britain, it engendered fear and contempt in mainstream society on a scale that now seems almost comical. Following a couple of ripe expletives uttered by the Sex Pistols on a regional television news programme in 1976, tabloid headlines shrilled dementedly of national collapse. A 46-year-old lorry driver in the suburbs kicked his TV screen in and Bernard Brook-Partridge, a Conservative member of the Greater London Council, opined that “most of these groups would be vastly improved by sudden death”.
In Derby, the Sex Pistols were summoned to perform in the town hall before a panel of portly aldermen self-appointed to judge the group’s suitability for being set before the youth of the East Midlands. They were rejected with maximum civic bumptiousness.