Article 2

Matula, Theodore. “Pow! To the People: The Make-up’s Reorganization of Punk Rhetoric.”Popular Music and Society 30.1 (2007). Accessed 8 May 2011

Theodore Matula talks about Punk Rock in the 1990’s and how it started to become more commercialized.  More and more people started to get into punk and during this time many bands became successful.  Therefore Matula describes this as a downside due to the hyper-commercializing and mainstreaming of punk.  Overall, the main focus of this article was how the band, The Make-up, reorganized the Punk rhetoric.  Matula also explains how they used social implications of the genres that they were influenced by to alter the punk sound and the idea of what the punk musical truth might be.  Matula uses Barry Brummetts’ definition of rhetoric, which is when something influences how social meanings are created, maintained or opposed.  Amongst all this, the question of authenticity comes in, to decide whether or not the Make-up keep their punk identity, or whether they start to move away and towards the gospel or funk identity, to become mainstream.  This relates to Ryan Moore’s article on cultures of authenticity, but not so much deconstruction.  In regards to the cultures of authenticity in relation to the Make-up, they are in a way authentic due to the dominating fast punk sound and with the gospel and funk influences, they created something individual and therefore retained their authenticity.  In relation to Chapter One of Malott and Pena’s, Punk Rockers Revolution The Make-up confirm that Punk was a social movement, as they could be considered to be a band that is a part of a new smaller subculture that emerged out of Punk Rock.  This also made way for more subcultures to emerge and punk to be used as an influence in many more genres to be formed in the following years.