From Style Wars to Turf Wars?

"I aint no perfect man i'm tryna do the best I can with what it is I have..." Mos Def 'Umi Says'

If Naked City captured New York at the moment preceding urban renewal then Style Wars surely depicts the city at the moment before gentrification enveloped many neighbourhoods in the 1980s and the city became almost a succession of bland districts with a uniform aesthetic formed from that noxious coalescence of Starbucks, French bistros and twee florists.

There is something about the spirit of the kids in this documentary that is infectious. It is also revealing of the role that urban cultures play in the making or production of the city. There is also a degree of nostalgia when viewing the decaying, yet colourful streets and subways of NYC in the 1970s. We simply don't get to see the city in this way nowadays.

The origins of hip-hop as portrayed in the film also demonstrate the cultural potentials inscribed within urban living. The incredible energy and creativity of the youth of the ‘seven mile world’ of the South Bronx perhaps serves as a defence of the urban against its detractors. Could any other dwelling arrangement produce equally pulsating expressive cultural forms?

Of course, NYC in the mid-70s was no urban utopia. The city was bankrupt, public services were being withdrawn or downsized and many of the failings of urban renewal- especially the public housing projects and racial segregation- were becoming apparent. In some ways the graffiti movement represents the 'return of the repressed'- the original slum dwellers, African Americans and Puerto Ricans; all those groups confined to the city margins by Robert Moses' urban renewal programmes. As E.P. Thompson reminds us culture is always a response or to a shared set of constraints- an articulation of identity based upon common experiences. The subway graffiti writers- through the processes of ‘getting up’, 'bombing' and going 'all city'- were staking their claim on the city, making names for themselves and very literally making a mark on a city hell bent on ignoring them (see the story about the Freedom Train). Crucially the writers were anything but passive victims of oppressive forces; they were engaged daily (and nightly!) in producing their city. Graffiti is evidence of the active presence of marginalized groups in the city. The city isn't just something that is produced around them.

It is difficult to imagine a new sub-culture with as much vitality as hip-hop emerging from NYC today. Yes, there is pastiche, nostalgia, hyped musical trends and so on and of course there is still hip-hop. Yet this is vastly different to the sounds that first emanated from the South Bronx. Contemporary hip-hop- from the mid-1990s onwards is more likely to depict the brutal, aggressive and sexually violent streets of the deteriorating and ever more alienated projects, a shift in emphasis that perhaps reflects Wacquant’s suggestion that the communal ghettos of the past have become hyper-ghettos characterized by fear, violence and mutual hatred. Compare for example (and rather selectively) Grandmaster Flash’s ‘The Message’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdtcwtIxO4s&feature=PlayList&p=4D3CC987B375F879&index=3) with Mobb Deep’s bleak ‘Survival of the fittest’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf_dsmUHnTw&feature=related). Both speak of life on the harsh streets of NYC yet the latter portrays a world completely devoid of positivity or urbanity. Of course, both are examples of expressive culture produced under constraints, yet it appears that constraints have hardened, the divides between neighbourhoods- or territories- are more fiercely defended and that hope has all but disappeared.

The point is also that while life in the projects and ghettos becomes even more constricting, many ordinary working class neighbourhoods- possible escape routes- have gentrified, their original residents replaced by the middle classes. Gentrifiers like graffiti though- the gentrifier’s habitus is predisposed towards endorsing authentic ‘street art’- since it reflects well upon their self-consciously liberal ethic. The aesthetic of gentrification celebrates local colour and diversity, yet when these elements threaten to overwhelm or compromise the ‘order’ and ‘security’ that gentrifiers also value any polluting elements are purged. Graffiti is only welcomed in its place- hanging in galleries or homes and on specially commissioned pieces. Here, graffiti becomes art (traditionally conceived)- it is stripped of its original subcultural significance and removed from the endeavour, risk and energy that characterises true subway graffiti.

More in the next couple of days…