Mods’ style-aspiration sought everyday aestheticization, not bourgeois advancement

Evidence

But mod was a complex phenomenon, as much about the failure to achieve the glamour of black America as it was about the aspiration towards possessing it. The mods might have loved Miles and Motown but when they made music it sounded like the Who and the Jam — rock born with a plastic spoon in its mouth, stuck in a monochromatic England skulking in the shadows cast by the USA’s Pop Art consumer dreams. The mods worked in office jobs, in semi-skilled occupations and in department stores, longing for a luxury far above their station. But their ambitions weren’t to climb the social ladder of bourgeois respectability — they prefigured instead a world in which style exploded far beyond the narrow calculations of business, and everyday life could become a work of art. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1352

Categorization

• DEFINE: Definitions of ‘mod’ as a complex, contradictory phenomenon — longing that fails to reach black-American glamour yet refuses bourgeois respectability.
• XREF: connects to: Sixties mods embraced hyperartificiality while rockers posed as natural rebels — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 843; Aesthetic style becomes a commodity attribute that aestheticizes everyday life. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 61; Bourgeois ascendancy turned novelty from by-product into an end pursued for its own sake — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 61 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Aesthetic style becomes a commodity attribute that aestheticizes everyday life. #expands (0.82) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 61
• Bourgeois ascendancy turned novelty from by-product into an end pursued for its own sake #complicates (0.75) — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 61
• The aestheticized self belongs historically to bourgeois private life #complicates (0.75) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 213
• Rising demand for designer fashion expressed longing for formality in a rationalized world #qualifies (0.72) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 403