poseur outcasts? (poetry/rant)
Oct. 27th, 2002 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
godreamOde to The Stairs
o tiered refuge of the clique
of self-proclaimed outcasts
noble fortress besieged by freshmen
you cannot have it both ways
notes: "the stairs" is the hangout spot of the group this particular rant speaks of.
this particular bit of poetry is only a snippet and not really finished.
(considerations of a lunchtime family conversation)
So Zidane (the brother -- see "cast of characters" -- not the FFIX character) went to Hot Topic and bought a black shirt with the slogan "keep staring, I might do a trick". Lulu (and Rikku, and Squall -- but mostly Lulu) finds this extremely offensive.
I'll be the first to admit that Zidane is a mainstream kind of kid. Eavesdropping on a conversation of his after church with two of his female friends (I was bored, OK?), I learned that he's fairly well-known in school, he's thought of as a nice guy, maybe somewhat popular. Compare this to Lulu, who got caught with a self-pierced bellybutton immediately following this conversation, and who appears to work very hard to be punk or grunge or goth or whatever the current word for alternative cool is.
Lulu complained loudly that his is a shirt for "freaks". The parents wanted a definition, which she couldn't give, but I guess I know what she means. The people that other people stare at, thus the slogan. Zidane, not being freaky enough for her, is thus the ultimate evil, the "poseur", the popular wannabe outcast.
Is this striking anyone else as extremely silly?
It's again this whole bit where outcast/loser/outsider becomes a social ranking of its own. It seems so hypocritical: you're just your own popular group. In spite of what you think it seems to become increasingly evident that the outcasts are neither above nor below the popular kids they mock. They're parallel, with their own shallow fashion-slave mentality and their own set of outcasts to exclude. This is not to say they're all just angsty ditzes -- but almost certainly some are, and quite probably just as many are as the portion found in their less-angsty counterparts.
o tiered refuge of the clique
of self-proclaimed outcasts
noble fortress besieged by freshmen
you cannot have it both ways
notes: "the stairs" is the hangout spot of the group this particular rant speaks of.
this particular bit of poetry is only a snippet and not really finished.
(considerations of a lunchtime family conversation)
So Zidane (the brother -- see "cast of characters" -- not the FFIX character) went to Hot Topic and bought a black shirt with the slogan "keep staring, I might do a trick". Lulu (and Rikku, and Squall -- but mostly Lulu) finds this extremely offensive.
I'll be the first to admit that Zidane is a mainstream kind of kid. Eavesdropping on a conversation of his after church with two of his female friends (I was bored, OK?), I learned that he's fairly well-known in school, he's thought of as a nice guy, maybe somewhat popular. Compare this to Lulu, who got caught with a self-pierced bellybutton immediately following this conversation, and who appears to work very hard to be punk or grunge or goth or whatever the current word for alternative cool is.
Lulu complained loudly that his is a shirt for "freaks". The parents wanted a definition, which she couldn't give, but I guess I know what she means. The people that other people stare at, thus the slogan. Zidane, not being freaky enough for her, is thus the ultimate evil, the "poseur", the popular wannabe outcast.
Is this striking anyone else as extremely silly?
It's again this whole bit where outcast/loser/outsider becomes a social ranking of its own. It seems so hypocritical: you're just your own popular group. In spite of what you think it seems to become increasingly evident that the outcasts are neither above nor below the popular kids they mock. They're parallel, with their own shallow fashion-slave mentality and their own set of outcasts to exclude. This is not to say they're all just angsty ditzes -- but almost certainly some are, and quite probably just as many are as the portion found in their less-angsty counterparts.
