Sixties mods embraced hyperartificiality while rockers posed as natural rebels

Evidence

Mods in the Sixties were very different from how they appear in the designer cappuccino froth of Eighties soul-cialist retro-mythologisation. It was the rockers who appealed to the “authentic” and the “natural’: their rebellion posed as a Rousseauistic resistance to civilisation and mass (produced) culture. The mods, on the other hand, embraced the hyperartificial: for them, Nuttall wrote, “alienation had become something of a deliberate stance”. Nobility was not innate for mods: rather, it was something to be attained, through a ruthless de-naturalisation of the body via decoration and chemical alteration. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 843

Categorization

• XREF: The mods-as-attained-nobility through ‘ruthless de-naturalisation of the body’ feeds the artifice-over-authenticity position defended across ch12, 14, 16 (brand names, ritual, glam) and ch56. — connects to: Glam differed from sixties rock in its parodic embrace of status signs — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 238; Mods’ style-aspiration sought everyday aestheticization, not bourgeois advancement — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1352

Broader Connections

• Mods’ style-aspiration sought everyday aestheticization, not bourgeois advancement #complicates (0.75) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1352