bloggedy blog: the personal weblog of a music lover and aging punk wannabe

:: Tuesday, January 20, 2004 ::

The Skinny on the mohawk
Andrew Jones's musings on the mohawk haircut (or the "mohican," as the Brits called it in the early days of punk) reminded me of Jon Savage's description of the hair style in his excellent but Sex Pistols-centric history of the early days of punk, England's Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond. While Andrew rightly points out that "The mohawk is no longer offensive or radical" and that it is "Just another cool haircut," a historical perspective might help us understand just why the mohawk is so cool. As Savage writes in England's Dreaming:
The mohican has had a long journey from its native American beginnings. Indian stories by authors like Karl May, Buffalo Bill and Edward Sylvester Ellis were already a staple of boys' literature by the last quater of the nineteenth century, around the time that the last homelands were disappearing in the US. In these action tales, Indians were the underdog: vicious, exotic and savage -- the perfect role model for teenage malcontents and all those who felt put upon. Indian trappings became popular among delinquents in 1890s London, 1900s Paris and 1930s Berlin, and of these, the mohical was the ultimate. It still is.

As Travis Bickle boils over with rage in Martin Scorsese's 1976 Taxi Driver, his transition into a killing machine is symbolised by a brutal mohican: an idea that was not lost on the emerging punk movement -- which shared much of the film's incandescent disgust. The shape of a strip of freshly shorn scalp, the mohical means war, pure and simple. There is a famous Robert Capa photograph of US paratroopers in Northern France, March 1945, with their hair cut 'mohawk style for luck and esprit de corps' for their next day's jump over the Rhine into Germany. Clearly, like any potent symbol, this can work in several ways.

For the record: I never had a mohawk haircut. My head is weirdly shaped, due to a lumpy birthmark on the back left portion of my head. My head looks better with hair than without. And even if I thought I would look good in a mohawk, I doubt I'd wear one. Or a mullet, for that matter.

:: Andrew 10:12 + ::
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