Communist symbolism was a harsher American taboo than gayness or drugs by 1975

Evidence

Later in the decade, the battle over the “Old” left played out again, this time in the rapidly expanding field of consumer culture. This took place in a tiny corner of rock and roll, between two early punk bands managed by the same man. Malcolm McLaren, a British art school impresario influenced by the avant-garde (and the legacy of May 1968 in Paris), knew that he wanted his first group, the New York Dolls, to shock audiences. They already had a reputation for performing in drag, but he wanted to go further. So for a 1975 tour, he dressed them in red jumpsuits (designed by his partner, Vivienne Westwood) and had them perform in front of a big, Communist, hammer-and-sickle flag. This was too much. Guitarist Sylvain Sylvain reflected on the reaction: “In America you can be gay, you can be a drug addict but you cannot be a Communist,” he said. “It kamikazed our whole thing. We’d crossed the line one too many times.” The New York Dolls had become his “prototype of testing public reaction.” — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 101

Categorization

• CANDY: A vivid, quotable anecdote about punk’s communist flag gambit backfiring — good light conversational material.
• SHARE: Send to anyone into 70s punk history or fashion design — the Westwood-designed red jumpsuits detail.
• XREF: connects to: Noughties culture gatekeepers were more censorious than the Seventies except on sex — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 296; Public art absorbed taboo content in a successive widening of transgressions through the sixties — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 642

Broader Connections

• Noughties culture gatekeepers were more censorious than the Seventies except on sex #complicates (0.72) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 296
• Public art absorbed taboo content in a successive widening of transgressions through the sixties #qualifies (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 642