Posted: 2008-02-26 12:18:21
I recently read an interesting pdf called "born to roll dissertation" which deals about the subculture of rollerblading. Unfortunately I don't remember where i saw it online and I miss the author and the sources cited. Maybe somebody read it as well and can help me out with the original source or the complete document with the appendix!
Cheers, ali
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Posted: 2008-02-26 14:37:25
no luck finding it... anyone else wanna give it a try?
Ali, any quotes from it you can remember to help the search?
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Posted: 2008-03-02 04:45:29
Let me see if i can find the summary of it.
I'll get back to you later today.
thanks for the help jeff!
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Posted: 2008-03-04 22:37:03
Search your browsing history, search your temp files, it must be found!
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Posted: 2008-03-06 02:59:40
Ok here's the conclusion that i copy and pasted!
Conclusion:
Subcultures are dead. Today subculture is really just an archetypal labeling
mechanism for the media. The culture industry (which is, essentially, all the media is;
an industry) has misappropriated and diminished ‘subculture’ into a marketing
appliance. Placed alongside other ideological corporate weaponry it is just another
way to sell toothbrushes. Assorted subcultures have been chewed up and spat out so
often that they are now just another regurgitated axiom in today’s clichéd hegemony.
Like a GI Joe model, attempts have been made to sell rollerblading as a ‘cool
subculture’ - including all the merchandised tie-ins of distinctive styles, rebellious
attitudes and salable insubordinate personalities - for today’s identity-searching youth
to adorn.
However real ‘subculturalists’ – the true jazz musicians, the true ravers and the true
rollerbladers – exist outside of this commercialism. Engaging in their own activities,
for their own self-gratifications, they are a testament to human nature and a testament
against post-industrial society.
This is the orthodox society where cultural space belongs to corporations;
impoverished roles are ordered by modern state bureaucracies; where angelus-like
labor is life; where objective desperation and anesthetized boredom are constructs of
passive interactivity; where neurotic powerlessness renders people helpless in their
free time2; where imagination is replaced by a relentless control mechanism and
creative productivity is slaughtered3; where identities are bought and traded like
masks4; where people are commodities and commodities are people; where excessive
consumerism dictates waist-lines (and lives); where dense heterogeneous populations
strangely result in de-collective seclusion5; where organized freedom is compulsory;
where ‘leisure’ becomes religion and voracious consumerism is the panacea to a
world of anxiety and insecurity6; where relief is the inhalation of tobacco, the
consumption of 48 units of alcohol, and a bout of mobile phone texting; where wars
are started for the sake of oil; and where traditional resources for social meaning,
membership, security and psychic certainty have lost their usefulness.7
Without wanting to sound like an anti-globalization manifesto, skaters are – in some
way or another – a reaction to this8. Defying the universal codes of morality imposed
by the promethean era9 skating is – to the youth that religiously do it – the unresolved
ideological response to this new hedonism of consumption. Skating is an intuitive
product of the anathematized hegemonic consensus. As ‘pre-linguistic jouissance’,
rollerblading is a ‘refusal of the metaphysical priorities of the mind, enabling the
1 Cory Casey – Daily Bread #29 may 1999
2 Schopenhauer, 2002
3 Adorno, 2001:192
4 Hall, 1992:277 – Modernity and Futures
5 Fischer, 1975
6 St. John, 2003
7 Willis, 1990
8 Williamson, 1986
9 Maffesoli, 1997:27
disruption of phallocentric authority.’10 Where resistance against society is – for the
most part – futile, skaters simply skate; blocking off reality and escaping into their
own worlds.
Rollerblading expresses the same dogmatic ideology as combat night-golf in Berlin;11
salvaging cultural space for young people, they contravene the governing boundaries
and norms of social geography. Searching for authenticity in an increasingly
inauthentic world, skaters - like graffitists and break-dancers - establish an identity
through their expressions. Rollerblades act like a conch (from ‘The Lord of the Flies’)
granting skaters a voice when no one will listen. Rewarding liberation and freedom,12
skaters gain what only they know they want and skate for themselves. ‘The ekstasis
realized within such deterritorialized spaces has potentiated the rupturing of the
possessive and puritan codes of modern individualism.’ 13 Every grind and every jump
is a form of ontological anarchy.14 Each stunt is temporarily out of the reaches of
controlling forces.15 These evasive ‘tactics’16 can be described as ‘symbolic
creativity’17 or ‘pseudo-activities.’18
Like the Romantic counter-cultures of the nineteenth century19, rollerbladers have the
desire for personal expression and liberation from the social and cultural constraints
that inhibit free expression. In an age where the most promising career prospect is
stacking shelves or serving burgers, youth revolt against the work ethic and embrace
bohemianism. Pursuing new experiences, alternative forms of expression and nonalienated
activity, skaters attempt to restore genuine human contact20. Creating
individual skate-colonies with their own language and styles, roaming the streets and
executing their performative urban aerobatics, skaters can be seen as the Dionysia21 of
modern times, diverting the world ‘from an instrument of isolation and
reduction…into an instrument for bringing people closer together.’22
Rollerblading is a form of self-development. Performing in-human death-defying
stunts spawns a cathartic emancipation within the skaters.23 Skating can be seen as a
way of finding one's self through the practices of aesthetic life. Just as Siddhartha
reached enlightenment through his own method of self-discipline, so too do
rollerbladers. ‘Individual goals may sometimes be only a space-filling moment to
10 Gilbert & Pearson, 1999: 65
11 Video: Victims Of Geography – Aubrey, Doug
12 All these are common themes taken from my interviews – See Appendix
13 St. John, 2003: 74
14 Bey, 1994
15 Williamson, 1986
16 Certeau, 1998 – Tactics = Multitude of minor moments and points of resistance in everyday life.
17 Willis, 1990 – Symbolic Creativity = Human symbols and meanings can also be an element and
quality of everyday actions: principles of beauty; qualities of living symbolic activities.
(see Performativity in Keep rolling, rolling, rolling…)
18 Adorno, 2001: 194 – Pseudo-activity = ‘Fictions and parodies of the same productivity which
society incessantly calls for but also holds in check’
19 Muggleton, 2000
20 Bey, 1999
21 Etymology: Latin, from Greek, from neuter plural of dionysios of Dionysus, from Dionysos
: ancient Greek festival observances held in seasonal cycles in honour of Dionysus; especially : such
observances marked by dramatic performances
22 Gaillot, 1999:19
23 See any of the interviews - Appendix
fulfil our desires and can be used as an escape from daily burden.’24 When it comes to
self-progression, skaters’ determined endeavour is unsurpassed. This is because of the
euphoric self-gratification one gains after accomplishing a trick.25
Much like the euphoria experienced on the clearance of a hefty deadline, or the
equivalent of David Beckham scoring the free kick that gained England entry into the
world cup finals, rollerblading is about emancipation. It is about the indomitable
anticipation that comes with personal ambition. Setting a goal, compulsively toiling to
attain it and the cathartic relief that ensues is the moment every skater rolls for. This is
not the subculture of rollerblading; this is the genuine rationalistic raw phenomenon
that is rolling.
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Posted: 2008-03-06 03:21:01
I found it! http://www.rollernews.com/an-essay-on-rollerblading_4175.html#comment-107354
If you want to read it as well. Unfortunately there is no author and no appendix which makes it for me little less interesting.
I do not completely agree with the authors argumentation but i think it's quiet an interesting read!
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Posted: 2008-03-12 22:19:38
wow, smart blader crew in da house...do they have their own company yet?
"Smart Bladers & Co."
Very well written, look forward to the rest of the tome.
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