By Michelle Cruz Gonzales
Razorcake
September 8th, 2020

1984: Past, Present, Future
In
1984, the actual 1984, I saw the band Reagan Youth at the Democratic
Convention held that year in San Francisco with my friend, and
soon-to-be bandmate, Nicole Lopez. I was fourteen, clad in black and
flannel, with freshly chopped hair. Nicole’s mom drove us three hours
from our small town in the California foothills to San Francisco just so
we could see the bands and take part in the protest. A protest site was
designated in the empty lot at Mission and Howard across from the
Moscone Center, which back then (pre-multi-million dollar buildings on
every square foot of empty space) was simply a large slab of concrete
that took up the entire city block. It was there amongst a sea of
leather jackets, mohawks, ripped jeans, and undercover cops cleverly
disguised in jean jackets and protest buttons that Reagan Youth played
with the Dead Kennedys, MDC, and the Dicks.
Given the
ominousness of the year 1984 and the draconian policies put in place by
the outgoing president whose policies had further marginalized the lives
of many (especially youth from low-income families) there was a lot to
protest. Sort of unknown on the West Coast, Reagan Youth played early in
the day, drew an enthusiastic crowd of white, brown, and black punk
kids with their energy and aptness of a band with their name playing the
Rock Against Reagan tour. Dave Insurgent, who for some reason had
hippie-punk, white-boy dreadlocks, stood at the edge of the stage,
leaned into the crowd and incited our ire. Frustrated about class
hierarchies, Reagan Youth drew the lyrics for the song “Brave New World”
straight from the book of the same name by Aldous Huxley. Many English
punk bands wrote anti-Thatcher songs during the same time period, songs
that also referenced dystopian texts, or the dystopian nature of the
Reagan/Thatcher era that was punctuated with military escalation and
pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps style welfare reform.
Growing up Xicana in a small, predominately white town in California, I
felt much like a dystopian protagonist: trapped in a world that denied
me my individuality. A spiky-haired, black eye-liner, ruffled Mexican
rick-rack-skirt-wearing teen, I noticed many punk kids came from broken
homes, had parents who were addicts, or lived in boring go-nowhere
suburbs. We hated polo shirts and boat shoes. We hated high school,
sports, and anything else that felt like a popularity contest or that
only served to distract us from the fact that we faced a very uncertain
future amid the Cold War and threats of nuclear destruction. We were
depressed. Our lives, as we were living them, didn’t fit. While many
adults tried to make us feel like it was us, like we weren’t right, like
we were messed up, like we were the problem, we had enough sense to
know there was more to our dissatisfaction, our anger about social
control and feelings of alienation. Angry punk rock songs and angsty
literature were good outlets for these feelings. The Subhumans song “Big
Brother” is a perfect illustration: “Here we are in the new age/There’s
a scanner in the toilet/To watch you take a bath/And there’s a picture
of Hiroshima/To make sure you never laugh.”
In my teen years, it
was political punk rock that helped me cope with feelings of
estrangement, traumatophobia, and dying of radiation poisoning. When
punk rock wasn’t enough, I turned to dystopian fiction, a literary genre
seemingly designed for punk rockers and teens who drew mushroom clouds
on their binders. Dark in tone and topic, dystopian literature
definitely wears all black.
Like punk rock, dystopian
literature is urban, gritty, and grayscale, and like many punk rock
bands, dystopian literature makes important critiques of society.
Dystopian literature sneers satirically at inequality, hierarchical
divisions, and autocratic rulers—punk rock often does the same. And
probably for these reasons, many punk bands reference dystopian novels
in their songs. Like Subhumans, Dead Kennedys reference 1984 in
their song “California Über Alles,” an anti-Governor Jerry Brown song, a
song that shouts down yuppies taking over the state and making kids
meditate in school: “Close your eyes, can’t happen here/Big Bro on a
white horse is near.”
The majority of the Dead Kennedys lyrics
are satirical, and satire is a device/genre that makes extra close
examination of meaning especially important. Unlike what many of my
students often initially think, author Jonathan Swift is not being
literal when he proposes we turn to cannibalism and eat babies to help
the poor. And satire is partially responsible for my early confusion
about the song “California Über Alles.” Even at the age of fifteen when I
blasted it in my room and pumped my fist in the air, or when I saw the
Dead Kennedys at the Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco, I’d wonder why
pick on a liberal Democrat? Why pick on Jerry Brown? Looking at these
lyrics now, I, of course, realize why. First off, 1984 author
George Orwell would say all people in power should be questioned and
scrutinized. Secondly, if you look closely at what Jello Biafra, singer
and lyricist of the Dead Kennedys was critiquing, you see yuppies. Look
again at all the lyrics, and you’ll see gentrification in the song’s
references to jogging, organic food, and “zen fascists.” Biafra’s fears
of a “cool, hip” (read expensive) California have come true, especially
in the hyper-gentrified, and now exclusive, San Francisco where the Dead
Kennedys were based. Go see it for yourself if you can afford the trek.
Take a hard look at tent cities, where people priced out of apartments
now live, all that they own in the world lining freeway off-ramps, set
amongst a backdrop of towering glass buildings and ten-dollar tacos.
Political punk rock has always been an urgent critique of immediate
concerns, a sort of real-time social critique in song, while dystopian
novels are cautionary tales. Yet, the themes addressed by the two are
often the same: squashed individuality under the pressure of societal
norms, corporate control of our lives, and subtle and overt forms of
propaganda used by democratic nations that should know better. The band,
Set It Straight from Redding, Calif. (active 2004 -2007) addresses some
of these themes in the song “Self-Deprogramming.” It was written prior
to Gary Shtenyngart’s modern dystopia, Super Sad True Love Story,
a novel about the dangers of group think and a nation obsessed with
mobile devices, youth, and hotness ratings. The novel, published in
2010, and the song have a lot in common, “Super latte charged electrons,
androids with no face/ But only those who subconsciously want to live
their lives spoon fed/ subordinated, placid, incarcerated, succumb to
the machine.” Like Shytngart’s Super Sad True Love Story, this
song criticizes modern-day forms of brainwashing via slick technology
and the allure of power. Its references to lattes and androids are
familiar dystopian fears regarding loss of individuality and a loss of
humanity. It’s a loss of humanity we sadly participate in via our
robotic obsession with digital technology that often does the thinking
for us.
Robots, surveillance via mobile devices, and other futuristic dystopias, almost seem quaint compared to what is happening now.
A Dystopian Bait and Switch
Of course, robots, surveillance via mobile devices, and other futuristic dystopias, almost seem quaint compared to what is happening now. In the post-smart phone 2000s, while we were busy worrying about digital technology spying on us, replacing humans, and stealing our jobs, what many thought were archaic forms of xenophobia, misogyny, and gender terrorism roiled hot and ready to explode, and an old-school totalitarian was making his move. Now trapped in a dystopian landscape of our own, Donald Trump used his celebrity, wealth, and privilege to invoke ages-old rapist-terrorist-nativist-racist fear mongering and won the election and the culture wars with help from the outdated and systematically racist electoral college. As president of the United States, he continues to animate mobilize a surprisingly large base of people and sow unnatural distrust of the media. He has also attempted to rewrite history as it happens and our perception of it—a major feature of Orwell’s totalitarian regime in 1984.
What many thought were archaic forms of xenophobia, misogyny, and gender terrorism roiled hot and ready to explode. An old-school totalitarian was making his move.
Some unclear about the purpose of the genre believe dystopian novels have, in some ways, foretold the future, but dystopian novels, like many punk songs, are really meant to be critiques of folly in our current societies. Still, one person’s dystopia is another’s utopia. For those swayed by promises of walls, Muslim bans, mass deportations, and nativists’ vision of America (not to a mention a threat of a reversal of a woman’s right to choose and transgender rights) we have entered what the party leader, O’Brien, in 1984 called the golden country: a place where everything seems fine, everyone looks like you, acts like you, believes what you believe, a place where no one is a threat or a challenge to the status quo and where those who disagree are silenced. But we are not fine. So many of us have become reacquainted with our inner angsty teenager or our inner dystopian protagonist. We will re-read 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, Herland, We, Parable of the Sower, and we will pump our fists in the air to our favorite punk songs, but that’s not all we’ll do. No, that is not all.
Michelle Cruz Gonzales played drums and wrote lyrics for three bands during the 1980s and 1990s: Bitch Fight, Spitboy, and Instant Girl. Her writing has been published in anthologies, literary journals, and Hip Mama magazine. Michelle teaches English and creative writing at Las Positas College, and lives with her husband, son, and their three Mexican dogs in Oakland, California.