SATANISM

[Belacqua]

Most don't, some use it for shock others deface it, like Pantera always has a ruined confedrate flag in allot of album/shirt art. But like every community there is always gonna be that 1% that is racist/sexist/homophobic that no one in the communites like.

It's interesting to me that these days there is a kind of tension between the desire to shock the normies that exists along with sharing most of the normies's values. I think this is fairly new in US culture. 

So not that long ago tattoos were a sign of not belonging to the mainstream. They were a permanent commitment to not having a regular job, for example. Sailors and carnies were declaring their self-chosen exile from middle-class life. Now tattoos are so common that office workers under age 40 are very likely to have them.

Here in Japan, there are still public bathhouses that forbid anyone with a tattoo from entering. This is because for a very long time tattoos were only for the Yakuza, as a no-going-back commitment to a life of crime. This is changing a slowly -- due to US influence, more non-Yakuza people are getting tattoos here. Recently I saw a very non-threatening young lady on the street who had a full sleeve tattoo of the local baseball team. Since supporting the baseball team (the Hiroshima Carp) is about the most mainstream thing you can do, it was an interesting mix of symbolism. 

Then in the US there are biker gangs who dress scary but make a point of helping homeless kittens, and that kind of thing. I appreciate the wit in this -- they are intentionally contradicting expectations. 

The thing is that setting out to shock the normies has been an increasingly popular thing to do since French writers started talking about it in the 19th century. Épater la bourgeoisie (shock the middle class) has been a motto for so long that it's trickled down to every high school kid in America, even if they don't know its history. 

When it gets to the point that middle class people who share middle class values are trying to adopt the symbols of shocking the middle class, then I wonder if the symbols still mean much. Like if there's a rebel outsider who shares all the values and goals of the Obama administration, he's not much of a rebel. 

These days a middle class white kid whose parents pay for him to go to art school would be shunned and mocked if he didn't adopt the signs of rebellion. So you see the paradox here -- when social pressure from a peer group tells someone that it's only acceptable to be a rebel, then it's not much of a rebellion. 

Or maybe rebellion isn't the goal any more -- maybe it's another kind of conformity, to the values and goals of the groups which used to shock. I don't know.