Just a few weeks back I went to see Morrissey perform at the Manchester Arena. Anyone fortunate enough to go to a Moz gig will have been treated to the sight of thousands of young bed-sit dwelling, bequiffed teens, or middle aged Moz-ites in the streets surrounding the venue. Most of these people will be wearing a Morrissey/Smiths shirt; maybe one of the t-shirts with tour dates on, an album cover, or any other bizarre piece of merchandise up for sale.
However, while walking through these scenes, one such fan caught my eye. A girl, probably around twenty and wearing a Smiths t-shirt was sat in McDonalds eating Chicken McNuggets. Now, this may not mean much to people who don't know much about The Smiths, but Morrissey is a well known vegetarian, with strong views on animal welfare. So much so that he actually wrote a song and album with The Smiths entitled Meat Is Murder. I was shocked to see that as this girl ate her chicken, she was wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the aforementioned Meat Is Murder album cover.
Now as a vegetarian myself, I don't enforce my views on others, it is completely a personal choice. I'm not making the point of whether or not you have to be a vegetarian to own that particular t-shirt. I just cannot understand what possesses someone to choose an item of clothing with a deeply charged political message on it, and not actually believe in what it means- in fact, demonstrate the opposite view. I'm only using this example to demonstrate precisely what I mean, in the respect that nobody particularly seems to care about the messages their clothes give off.I don't do fashion. Not a dedicated follower of it by any stretch of the imagination. Don't get me wrong, I do like to buy decent clothes, and I try to dress presentably in clothes I feel comfortable in, but I'm not the type to dash out and purchase a pair of shoes or jeans because they are this season's look. I'd like to think I dress 'normally.' But by my reckoning, clothes are designed to be a statement to the world about what you are, and they should say a lot about you. With the Meat Is Murder t-shirt, I do actually own that very t-shirt because I guess it reflects my own beliefs not only on animals welfare, but the fact that it is my favourite record. Again, I don't want to seem like I'm making the vegetarianism the issue, it's more the lack of awareness of the clothes- surely someone who enjoys eating meat cannot fully agree with that t-shirt they are wearing?
This leads me on to the point of this article. I find the whole culture of putting iconic images and people onto t-shirts frankly baffling. The Primark generation we live in have managed to somehow make it that people wear t-shirts with iconic imagery on that people genuinely have no idea about. Can you remember when Che Guevara was a political hero and not a fashion accessory? The amount of people with Che shirts on is so strange, not just because they are probably bought buy people with no idea who he actually is, but because there are so many of them. Fashion is supposed to be about individualism and expressionism, but by buying these t-shirts to be individual, you are in fact conforming with the thousands of other people who also are being 'individual.'
This article may come across as a rant, but it's more about me questioning how people think. I was speaking to someone a few weeks back who was wearing a shirt with the iconic picture of Keith Richards smoking on the front. I happened to say I loved The Rolling Stones. They asked me why I was telling them this. After I told him that he had a scale photo of the guitarist from the band on their chest, they said "Oh right, didn't know that." I died inside a little. Even Rapper Plan B got into trouble when he wore a shirt to a photo shoot recently with Neo-Nazi connotations. This, along with the numerous bankers who rock around town in their "Hey Ho Let's Go" Ramones shirts makes me question at what point iconography became a commodity. The Athena type posters of Abbey Road etc that live in most student houses are another sign of how post-modernism seems to have overtaken actual meaning, as images now go beyond just the visual connotations. The Abbey Road shot is to me, one of the best images ever captured, but because of it's over-use, it has completely lost it's meaning- a sort of bricolage, if you will. It seems the only products with any meaning are the ridiculously unfunny mysoginistic t-shirts that idiots tend to wear, unfortunately.
It does seem to be a product of recent times, simply people being told what to wear, because Primark or Urban Outfitters proclaims it to be cool. I think this goes hand in hand with the music side of things, where opinion leaders such as the NME dictate what people listen to not because they actually enjoy it, but because it is 'cool' and 'individual,' when the individuality is lost by conforming with everyone else. Music, clothing, television and all other forms of pop-culture have been comodified so that nothing is unique anymore, or has a strong meaning that people believe in.
Still, it's August, so at least all these individuals can congregate together and be completely unique in Leeds and Reading with 75,000 other 'unique' people.
My next post will be positive...honest!
