Justin, Hebdige

It's interesting to find parallels between Hebdige's discussion of subculture and the theories we've already studied. Ideas like the architecture of schools as implicit ideological assumptions is obviously relatable to Jenck's essay on the new rules of postmodernism. The three readings we had for ideology seemed to build upon the basic idea of semiotics and structuralism that came from de Saussure. They took the essential parts of communication, and then built up the ideas of context and subject. Hebdige's discussion of the subculture's style as part of this context may have broadened exponentially since this was written. He focuses mainly on the punk and hippie subcultures here. By now, those cultures have their own subcultures. Culture as a whole appears to be breaking down into more and more subcultures, and at times mixing two seemingly opposite cultures to form new ones. The language of youth develops as terms are borrowed that express different ideologies. A mainstream style of the youth today is can be seen as a mixture of the revolutionary culture of the last 5 decades. Kids will wear long hair, seemingly borrowed from hippie culture, as well skater clothes and shoes developed over a long period of time from surf and punk culture and their subcultures including skating and hard rock. You'll find them wearing big headphones and sagging their pants, which is borrowed from a part of black culture that signifies something more than just style.
Ultimately, the overall style of youth today (and the discussion has to be about youth, as these styles can only be expressed during times of leisure, as Hebdige says) is borrowed from everywhere in order to adjust to the mainstream. If you aren't everything all at one time, you are something else; unique maybe. I guess it goes along well with Jencks' disharmonius harmony. Things don't necessarily go together, but now, in a way, they fit.