Ruth Adams

The Englishness of English Punk: Sex Pistols, Subcultures, and Nostalgia

This article considers the Englishness of English Punk, or, more specifically, the Englishness of the Sex Pistols and the cultural productions associated with them. It will consider whether the challenge that they posed to conventional, Establishment, consensus notions of Englishness has merely been recuperated as an entertaining diversion within a broader hegemonic nationalist history or whether this challenge has had a more fundamental impact. It will argue that the Pistols facilitated a reframing and a re‐imagining of English culture and left a legacy, which has been drawn upon by a number of subsequent art and music subcultures.

Idol Curiosity: Andy Warhol and the Art of Secular Iconography

Abstract This article examines issues at the intersections of race, gender, sexuality and celebrity in contemporary society. Taking Andy Warhol and Marilyn Monroe as its focus, it considers the fate of the modern-day icon. In particular, it assesses the importance of whiteness and blondness in the construction of Western iconography, and the influence of Warhols Catholic faith upon his work.

“Home Sweet Home, That’s Where I Come From, Where I Got My Knowledge of the Road and the Flow From” (Kano, “Home Sweet Home”): Grime Music as an Expression of Identity in Postcolonial London

Abstract This paper examines how grime music and the grime scene function as a vehicle for expressions of identity – individual, local, national, and transnational – for some young people growing up in the multicultural, postcolonial context of the UK capital in the twenty-first century. Grime is electronic music, often with rap-style vocals, which emerged from London around the turn of the millennium, and which offers insights into the experiences of a section of, predominantly black, working-class urban youth. The stories grime tells paint a vivid picture, not just of individual lives in particular communities, but also of the larger canvas of a global, multicultural city in perpetual transformation, and the resulting changes in cultural and socio-linguistic practices.