Digital Young

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.

Talking in a previous post about stencils and explaining three stencils which are drawn on a wall in the old center of Bucharest, I thought to show you three more. These ones are everywhere on the street and made me thinking which is the difference between graffiti and stencils.

At their origins, both graffiti & stencils appeared with the same function: rebellion, an act of opposition face to a majority system or a majority perception. Both forms were practiced by minority, even marginal social categories. This powerful social function survived until today, but its purpose and object of “irony” are changed.

Where is the aesthetic function coming from? Stencils and the technique which is practiced to make them have their own historicity: even from prehistorical times, stencils have been done on cave walls. “A stencil is a template used to draw or paint identical letters, symbols, shapes, or patterns every time it is used. Stencil technique in visual art is also referred to as pochoir. Stencils are formed by removing sections from template material in the form of text or an image. This creates what is essentially a physical negative. The template can then be used to create impressions of the stenciled image, by applying pigment on the surface of the template and through the removed sections, leaving a reproduction of the stencil on the underlying surface. Aerosol or painting stencils must remain contiguous after the image is removed, in order for the template to remain functional. Sections of the remaining template which are isolated inside removed parts of the image are called islands. All islands must be connected to other parts of the template with bridges, or additional sections of narrow template material which are not removed.” (source: Wikipedia).

I don’t think I can be even clearer than that. They said it pretty well. After cave walls, stencils transgressed to books, to typographic support, and became book illustrations. Because their inscription on this type of support, aesthetic function was consolidated.

Stencil graffiti is the type that I would like to talk about. I think it encrypts the voice of a specific space, the cultural representations. I mean, you go in Barcelona and you will find certain texts and messages on walls that you, as a tourist, don’t understand at all. The same thing with the previous stencil. You might think: what’s up with Chuck Norris and why is he so important for people to put his name on a wall?

So, here’s the first characteristic of a stencil: it communicates irony. And this irony refers to characters that are well embedded in life of that space. For instance, for those who don’t know, after the Revolution (you know, it’s that revolution against communism after which Ceausescu was killed and no longer Romania’s president), a fast and really scary democratization started. Things from foreign country came to ours; from USA, first came crappy action movies whose heroes were (in this order): Jean-Claude Van Damme (Yes, mussels in Brussels), Arnold Schwarzenegger and, of course, Chuck Norris. A young generation grew up with these movies, seeing them to a VCR.

After these debut years, these movies were all over Romanian commercial channels; PRO TV is well known for its success in buying these crappy movies. Of course, the public changed; they didn’t have anymore the hungry youngsters for everything that came from Western countries, but youngsters with knowledge and critical spirit, able to differentiate what was good and what was not. So, Chuck Norris became the funny character representing this movie genre.

I was this weekend at my husband’s parental house. I found the family photo album. The two parents and the two children, a family portrait in these pictures. I want to talk about two radical changes that modernity and technology brought: first, the way of stocking photos; second, the personalization of photos.

The first phenomenon is global, only that in Romania, the process of changing has been slower. I talk about passing from physical photos, on a paper support, to a virtual one, on an electronic device (computer, cell phone etc). As you can see, pictures were from paper. You all remember this. But what stroke me was that my grand-parents keep pictures in a plastic little bag, which became brown or yellow due the time passing, and my parents kept pictures in the family album. There are two different ways of stocking memories unscripted on a piece of paper. Now, even the way that pictures look like obviously evolved in time. In the 20 or 30s of last century, when my grand parents were young, pictures had a brown-white color specificity. In the time of my parents, it was black and white. Colorful pictures appeared lately. Polaroid was a picture format too modern and very few people had this kind of object, mostly those who were living abroad and came to see their relatives during holidays.

So, this is an example for the first type of pictures that I talked about.

Black and white picture.

And Polaroid…

Maybe you will say that your family saw the same evolution in photography. In Romania, it was a little bit slowed down. And the way to stock pictures…

Yesterday…

My grand-parents’ style of stocking photos.

Today…

I think that the question is what mental changes cause the new technology? At which level can we talk about changes? It is true that something has been lost: the touch of pictures, the sensation of the paper. And still, this is the very essential transformation that new digital era imposes, if we talk about writing or taking pictures. Another change might be that having a photo camera about everywhere, we do not take anymore pictures where people had to pose, as in an old movie. Another one might be that stocking pictures on your computer, they can be moved really easy: on a cd, on a usb etc. These are maybe the functional advantages of the new media. But how are we today different of our parents or grand parents? Is there something that we can talk about? I would title a possible research From plastic bag to Photo camera. I would just mention one transformation: photos become something that can be changed easily, transformed, you can do whatever you want with them. They lost some characteristics as physical object, they are not so static and passive anymore. Maybe that’s why our parents sticked them in a family album, on a page. Because pictures were something static, passive, also formal, serious. I think that this is what they lost by transgressing on a new media.

Now, let’s talk about generation pictures. My childhood, until I was 9 years old, I spent it under communism. Being a child, I was not touched by lack of food or lack of heat. I thought that was normality, enjoying my childhood. During communism, there were very few people having their own photo camera. Therefore, the majority of people, when they wanted to make pictures in order to have family memories, they were going to a photo studio in town. For example…

The occasions to take pictures were when a child was born and all the family was reunited, or, more specific, important moments in their child’s evolution as a primary school student. Communism had implemented a specific school culture: when children were in kindergarden, pre-school system, they were made soimii patriei (country’s falcons), meaning that they acquired a new status, recognized by the school, parents and by the State. The investiture was made through a formal and serious celebration, with parents, relatives, teachers, principals. Children were also getting a new uniform: blue skirts or pants, orange shirts, blue ties and blue little hats. In primary school cycle, there were two sub-stages: 1st – 5th class, 5th – 8th class. When passing from 4th to 5th class, the child was passing from a system with a single teacher to a system with more teachers, each science with its own teacher. This new stage in a student life was also marked with a whole ritual; we became pionieri, in an approximate translation, pioneers. Our uniform changed; girls had dark blue dresses and, underneath, white shirts, and boys had a dark blue costume (pants and jacket). Something like this:

This was the investiture ceremony uniform; our daily uniform was a different one:

Another important event in a student life was the Santa Claus communist version celebration. All the class prepared a little show, where students were singing songs, reciting poems. After that, each student came to Santa, recited another poem and received a gift. Now, I said that communist version of Santa Claus was a different one from Western reality; we had Mos Gerila, which meant, in an approximate translation, Old Man Freezingly. Here’s a picture from this ritual:

And… same scene, another town, another family, another child, this time, me

And another ceremonial marked through pictures: 8th March, International Woman’s Day. In our country, it took another shape: Mother’s Day. And there were made special cards, with a little poem and child’s picture in the left part of this card. Here’s a sample:

Same scenes, but other families and other children. All our generation lived the same moments and the same events. We are the generation with the same presents received from our parents (a little piano, puppets), the generation who had the same objects, events, uniforms. And still, we were pretty different. These pictures lacked improvisation, capturing the moment, and most important, personalization. When I see now my colleagues’ childhood pictures, they have the same colors, represent the same events and scenes.

I truly think that things that I talked about here could be a perfect subject for an anthropology research. There are so many ideas and social, cultural transformations that could constitute for a student in anthropology a perfect field. Well, I am expecting for your suggestions or proposals.