Saturday July 5, 2008

Acceptance of subcultures reflects a mature society

THE BANGSAR BOY
By NIKI CHEONG

A FEW years ago, I visited this small place in England called Camden Town. It is located about 30 minutes away from central London by the tube, or the London Underground.

While it is essentially a district on its own – like most other areas outside the city centre of London – it was an area like I’ve never seen before. Just walking down the street, I was captivated – there were people dressed in gothic clothing, fancy dress and eye-catching clothing as well as with piercings, tattoos and who knows what other form of body mutilation.

The best part is, nobody (well, other than some tourist – and myself) flinched. It was as normal, as normal can be. I knew that Camden had an interesting history, it is known most for its crowded markets (the flea type, not wet) and has been closely associated with the punk and goth subcultures.

Once I got over my initial (sub) culture shock, however, I was in awe. I had immediately fallen in love with Camden, as it is more frequently referred as, and to this day, it remains one of my favourite places in the world.

I love how individualism is the order of the day, and how each and every resident (and visitors) to the area embrace diversity.

When I left secondary school and enrolled into a college, I decided to stamp my individuality by getting my ear pierced. I kept the earring for a while until a medical condition forced me to remove it. I am prone to keloids, a scar caused by overgrowth of tissues at the area where a “wound” has healed. It is for this reason that I cannot get a tattoo either, although I would really love one around my ankle.

Anyway, lots of people reacted to my pierced ear. Dad was not too happy about it, although mum was cool with it. I got many reactions from people; a lecturer actually said to me, “Oh, you’re not a good boy anymore”.

A family friend was more blunt – “You have pierced yourself, which means you’ve given your body up. You are now a slave.”

Woah, it was a bit extreme I thought but well, he could believe whatever he wanted to.

As for me, it was a stamp of freedom. Gone were the days when I had to wear school uniforms and polish my white school shoes. I was, naively speaking, an adult and I was my own person.

It was just one earring, and I wasn't the first guy on earth to have it done. Still I rode out the negative comments and people eventually got used to it (or tired of convincing me to stop wearing my earring).

I had actually forgotten about all this until last weekend, when I attended the KLue Urbanscapes 2008, an all-day arts festival held at the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (KLpac) in Sentul, Kuala Lumpur.

The people there were probably not as conspicuous as the ones I met at Camden but it was nice to see such a diverse range of people in one place celebrating one thing – art.

There were rockers, punks and goths among the average Joes in their T-shirts and jeans. I’m not sure if anyone reacted to them, but for me, I thought it was great.

Like at Camden, acceptance of such subcultures (usually, and wrongly in my humble opinion, labelled with a negative tag) does reflect a mature society.

I know that KL is not new to such subcultures – there are those we so smugly sometimes refer to as the Ah Beng and Ah Lians (surely they don’t think there’s anything weird with their dressing), and we have the rockers and punks in their skinny jeans and leather jackets and even the gothics.

At college, there was this bunch of girls who had a million and one (okay, maybe 20-25) piercing all over each of their faces. Of late, too, the Japanese Harajuku trend has seeped into Malaysians, and cosplay, where participants dress up in their favourite heroes and movie/gaming characters at events, is really big now.

To see all these people come together, like at Urbanscapes, for me was exciting because it showed not only diversity but also acceptance and love.

And as mushy as it may sound, in times like this all over the world, we could all do with a little bit more love.