I don't know if there's actually a connection between the two... but perhaps I should give you the full story first.
I had these two students last semester who were (and still are) Punk Rock Girls. Now unlike in the States, where at least half of teens belong to some sort of "alternative lifestyle" and "punks" are pretty common.... they're pretty rare in Russia, especially for girls. For females in Russia, there is a lot of pressure to be hyper-feminine and incredibly prissy-pretty all the time. Women who dress "unusually" (such as punks) are often considered outcasts. (When I had these girls in my class, they were shunned by the other students, who often talked trash about them.) These girls are in G's class this semester, and they invited the two of us to go to a concert of their favorite Russian punk groups this evening.
I mentioned this to L, and she seems to think it's a horrible idea, that the concert will be full of fascists who will try to kill us. (No physical harm!) Actually what she said was, "These punk concerts usually attract skinheads, so you really don't want to go there." Great. Our punk rock girls will be here in about 20 minutes to escort us to the concert.... I promised L that if there were skinheads we'd cut out.
She also emailed me some links about fascists in St. Petersburg, which I thought I'd share:
Alright, time to go rock. No physical harm.
1 comment:
Good luck. If Russian skinheads are interested in Punk Rock, that certainly takes Punk rather far from its !!!Anarchy!!! roots.
I thought skinheads would be into ... Rammstein or something. Or Motorhead.
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