Digital Young

Sorry, yeah, I know, I haven’t been writing for a loooooooong time. But I was really busy, so I will share some of my projects with you.

As a teaching assistant at Faculty of Letters, I have started an Anthropology Cercle with my students, and here is its blog: www.cerculmihaipop.wordpress.com.

As an organizer of Faculty events, I have done with my students a blog where we present the faculty & what they are doing as students: www.ublitere.srw.ro.

As a researcher, I have finished a major project: Consumption practices of coffee at young people. Romanian space. I cannot reveal you any conclusions or findings, as it is under author rights, so I am sorry at this point.

Still, as a researcher, another article that I wrote was published at: http://w3.aislf.univ-tlse2.fr/gtsc/DOCS_SOCIO/istambul/Actes_AISLF_GT13_Istambul_2008.pdf. It’s a communication that I had about Internet networks that appeared in Bucharest after 90’s.

And now, I have to write an article in English and submit it to an important anthropological review. To accomplish this, I need a native English speaker that would like to read an article about SMS trajectory in Romania & Belgium. So, anyone interested?

Jeans, just another object in our life, have different meanings in each space, time, context and moment. I only would like to point some important moments in how jeans were seen and appropriated in Romania.

1. Before 1989. Jeans were the absolute sign and mark of American democracy. They were, between communism, the symbol of a normality which was not Ours (Romanians’) and that we had to attend to it. People who had jeans were really rare and they entered in Romania through certain filieres. Just  Why? Because they were not commercialized in Romania, so those who had jeans meant that they had relatives abroad and received packages from them. So, we didn’t have a Jeans Generation in the 60’s or the 70’s:

To tell you a little joke. During communism, a well-known writer received a package with jeans from a friend who lived abroad. So, to escape from Securitate’s vigilance, he went out in Piata Universitatii (a symptomatic square, in Bucharest’s center) and started to shout: I got a pair of jeans from my friend!!!!! This doesn’t mean that receiving a pair of jeans made you an outlaw in the eyes of Securitate; just that it was pretty unusual.

2. Right after communism.

The good and sweet democracy came; and with it, people’s hunger to become and to be normal. When Revolution came, at the national television channel, appeared the Heroes of Revolution, politicians and intellectuals, who wore jeans and shirts. They entered in the national television headquarters and for the first time after communism, it was the first free emission. These well-known figures in Romania declared that Romania became a free and democratic country. And they wore, as I already said, jeans.

Romanians defined normality as they saw it and perceived it onTV, through American movies or series. And jeans already had a specific representation; the first type of jeans who entered in Romania were “Turkish jeans”. Bad quality, really cheap, they were brought by entrepreneurial Romanians. These persons represented the first “business men”. They had a small capital to invest, so, after the Revolution, they opened in their towns little shops where the consumer could buy absolutely anything, from glue to tampons, called by people boutiques. They were going to Turkey, to Istanbul, once a month, and they were bringing “merchandise” which they were selling in their little shops, called boutiques (from the French term, of course, but also reapprorpiated). I am really sorry not to have a picture of mine with those kind of jeans, but I will keep on trying. They looked something like this:

With a very thin texture, bad color, which almost disappeared after a first wash, mostly faded, bad model, these jeans became really famous in the 90’s in Romania. They were sold everywhere: small, medium, big shops. First of all, because they were cheap; the financial status of a family could not support to buy Levi’s or other branded jeans. Secondly, because they had the monopole on jeans market.

3. Turkish Jeans with model.

In the 97′, 98′, a new type of jeans appeared: stretch jeans. Red ones and black ones. Everyone had to have them. Girls had red stretched jeans, wearing them with long and large shirts, Nirvana style, and big boots. Rock was trendy. MTV started to emit in Romania in 1998. With it, all new and Western music, with its fashion, came into our houses. Jeans were there; rock style or, a little bit later, rap style. Either way, we had imitations; always Turkish “brands” who tried to adapt accordingly Western fashion.

When “real” jeans entered on our market, in a very shy manner, they were taken as fakes; in time, jeans got this stamp: cheap, fake, but this was what we could afford. More “normal” Turkish “brands” appeared, as Motor; jeans were of better quality and had a better variety of colors and models.

4. Jeans costume: jeans pants & jeans jacket.

90’s at adults brought a certain model of new and self-improved man: the man with jeans costume. The texture was of the same type: crappy, faded, thin. Pants were large and the jacket also. Men in mid 30’s were wearing in late 90’s jeans costume, with a shirt or a blouse on the neck. He was the model and the image of a dynamic man, with a serviette, either a journalist or a business man. If you have pictures of this kind of jeans, please send me some. I will also keep looking.

If you have any more input, don’t hesitate to write me any idea.

Now, what about these ones?

What kind of a message is this? And there’s a new communication function: stencils militate for something, they encode a bad practice that has to be changed. Again, the anonymity in which the “urban artist” wraps himself gives him the quality that the clown from royal court had in Medieval times or the musician of little towns (troubadours) had, and that is to represent the voice of the “people”, to militate for something that has be changed. In a very ironical way.

In this case it’s about re-invention and re-design of Self. Why this message in Bucharest or, largely, in Romania? It militates against boredom and uniformity. Of who? Of people, of minds, of attitudes. Therefore this message aims civic attitude; against acceptance without rationality. Or at least this is how I see it.

And here you have a stencil with only aesthetic function: