There is a definite seriousness to the
human skull. Bound by mortality, death’s head has long been the
mark we associate with secret societies, toxic substances and black-flagged
pirate ships serving most commonly as a warning to those who fear putting
their lives at risk. Dangerous and
horrific, this image certainly doesn’t seem like an obvious icon
for fashionable living. Which is why it’s surprising that these
days it would be almost impossible to troll through any Hipsters
Guide to Inner City Bars and not tally more than a few skull sightings.
Not only does this mark turn up on t-shirts, trucker hats, and must-have
designer toys, but also in galleries and record shops. So what’s
the deal? Is the human skull still the same signifier it once was, or
has its appearance alongside a history of alienated youth culture placed
it in the running for some kind of image makeover?
It’s not hard to see why teenagers twigged at the potential of
skull iconography all those years ago. According to subculture mythology
the skull is a symbol of defiance. Death defiance, initially, though
as the popularity of the skull image started to spread amongst teenagers
during the early 80s it became, for parent culture, a symbol of nightmarish
youth: teen violence, drug abuse, sexual promiscuity and other behaviors
expressed as self-defeating.
Resisting the radically conservative strictures that were taking shape,
certain youth movements set about to borrow strategies from kindred post-war
subcultures, extending their earlier parodies of delinquency in order
to exaggerate new parental anxieties. As was the case with Goths who,
right from the start, flaunted images of skulls and other apocalyptic
icons in an attempt to exaggerate both their love of death and western
culture’s fear of mortality. Easy pickings, our society has never
really had a grip on death’s finality and at this point was getting
a kick out of oversimplifying social values as a play-off between good
and evil (i.e. Danielson: good v. Skeleton Goons: evil). Even if a closer
look at Goth culture exposes more accurately what James Hannaham describes
as “a society that aligned itself with death because life was substandard,” authoritarian
conservatives failed to see that Goth kids with skull necklaces didn’t
necessarily want to kill themselves or others (having later copped the
blame for the Littleton massacre). As such a Goth’s use of the
skull icon plays into and against a timeless appeal of fear, which, even
at this point, was underpinning the concerns of mainstream culture. In
particular the fear of things out of our control like Cold War paranoia
and the absolute certainty of AIDS, or fast forward to more recent times,
millennial shut downs and the uncertainty of biological warfare. Even
if Goth kids demystified the great unknown by championing the skull image,
western culture was still not ready to hear we weren’t going to
be victorious over death. Too self-defeating and of course too melancholy
for the middle of the road paying public, well, too melancholy until
Heavy Metal broke through sporting spandex and some MTV savvy adolescent
theatrics.
Although both share a similar attraction to the polarities of lightness
and darkness, the aggressive nature of Heavy Metal is distinctly different
to the way in which Goth culture constructs images of death. That said,
while actively more contentious, the skull toting style of Heavy
Metal that
most of us remember is in no way threatening or as charged with class
warfare as say Punk (excusing maybe Black Sabbath). In fact, at its peak
Heavy Metal was pop and was able to perfectly recast the great equalizer,
death,
in all together a much brighter light. Taking the lead with loud guitars,
theatrical make-up, and narratives surrounding adolescent male sexual
fantasies, Heavy Metal created a merchandise empire out of badges, t-shirts,
flags, and promo videos that consistently displayed the popular skull-garnished
mascots of each band. Though not unique to Heavy Metal (skater-punks
had the mo-hawked skull of The Exploited, while previously hardcore punks
had the Fiend icon of The Misfits), in introducing these figures
of death to a greater audience Metal heads were able to render the skull “public
property and profitable merchandise” (Hebdige). At an astounding
rate the fantasy worlds of Heavy Metal took over the pop charts, allowing
every willing rock band (i.e. Poison) a way to easily align their music
with Heavy Metal culture simply by dressing the part.
However, by the tail end of the 1980s this style-over-substance was
starting to wear a bit thin. Even pop validates its kingdom with
a notion of authenticity
every now and then, and so once Grunge hit, proclaiming itself a culture
of losers, there seemed little if any room for Heavy Metal’s adrenaline
pumping theatrics.
In 1991 the fantasy worlds of Metal culture were abandoned. Interestingly
enough though, by then all the cult elements—dissent, angst, and
misunderstanding—were firmly attached to skull iconography and
it was only going be a matter of time before culture-preneurs muscled
in to tout their predilection for death’s head.
Cue 2 years of ODing on Seattle apathy, 3 years spent dressed in flower-decorated
Paul Smith shirts, fresh-faced rapt in reverie, and a further 3 years
displaying star tattoos while engaging in fleeting obsessions with various
retro music styles. By the time we emerged around 98‚ we had been
happy and sad a few times over, and then came the designer brand backlash.
From early on it was clear that the cult of customization and the increased
popularity of thrift store shopping had the potential to push the individual
further than they’d been for a while. We started taking back (just
like the pirates), we distanced ourselves from the natural order of a
conservative western world (as Goths had once done), we and even ushered
in a new school of male fashion designer totally aware of the cultural
significance of adolescence (maybe a bit more considered than Heavy Metal
but, yeah, you get the gist). Then, here's the thing: skull iconography
was everywhere; everyone from the Raf boys to Avril Lavigne fans were
rocking a skull. While at one point the skull was a symbol of death,
a generation removed, the skull had now given rise to some romantic notion
of immortality. Eighties adolescence had been re-made conceptually (well,
occasionally aesthetically) in the streets, magazine stands, nightclubs,
and galleries of the world.
The symbolism was perfect. Street artist Kaws borrowed ads from bus
shelters, personalized them with his trademark skull and crossbones,
and then put
them back. Australian born artist Ricky Swallow, whose installations
examine themes of evolution and scientific exploration, chose the skull
icon as one of a few key objects drawn from our recent memory of popular
culture. Curator Wayne Tunnicliffe describes Swallow’s approach
as having “used everyday items often juxtaposed with a human skull
to represent the pointlessness of attachment to material things.” A
notion seen clearly in both his multi-colored Mac skulls set in resin
Man Protypes (2001) and more recently in the aptly titled Everything
is nothing (2003), a wood carving of a grinning human skull cloaked in
an Adidas hoodie.
One of the greatest challenges facing adolescence has always been, “Are
we being taken seriously?” Whether our sustained interest in the
cultural capital of death’s head is merely another commerce driven
co-opt of youth culture or a genuine chance to express an inner pirate
is yet to be seen. The timing definitely seems right though, especially
with our newly tuned “cultural assumptions about human vulnerability” (Frank
Furedi). If nothing else, donning an image of a skull infers that the
wearer has made some effort to overcome our imposed culture of fear.
Laughing in the face of death or, as it may be, with the face of death
emblazed upon your chest.
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