Volume 6, Issue 1: Spring 2010
Special Issue: Motorcycle--Beschleunigung und Rebellion?
Retro Meets Rat, or the Vespa Legacy in the Hands of Young People
Klaus Neumann-Braun (trans. Angela Oakeshott)
Street
Culture 2day: Lads, Rat Grease Monkeys and Retro Grease Monkeys
The scooter is a feature of
urban landscapes around the world. The English-speaking West is no exception. Those who ride scooters, however, are hardly uniform in
their dress, cultural and ideological outlook, choice of machine, or how they
treat it once it’s purchased. Like
other communities that arise from a focus on a technological device, scooterists identify themselves by simultaneously
identifying with other scooter riders and distinguishing themselves within the
larger group. Lads, Rat Grease
Monkeys, and Retro Grease Monkeys are among the sub-groups scooter riders have
to choose from.
City scooters are part of
the lad social set without which the young urbanite could barely survive in
today’s cities. The scooter-riding lad can find his way though the heaviest of
traffic. He doesn’t have to worry about traffic jams or finding a parking place,
for he drives a Vespa, whose latest models come
equipped with engines from the Low Emission Advanced Engine Range (official
abbreviation L.E.Ad.E.R.). The Rat Grease Monkeys are
quite different. Their pleasure is the Best Rat (Bike and Low Rider) Scooter
Competitions and their motto is: back to the essentials. They transform their
machines into bizarre creations which—if one should happen to see one of them
at a crossroads somewhere—make one think of military equipment or
cyberspace vehicles à la Mad Max.
This almost unlimited and
virtually insatiable pleasure in transforming their vehicles is certainly not
shared by the Retro Grease Monkeys. Quite the opposite: they devote themselves
to restoring and caring for their original old scooters. Vintage and newer
models are lovingly maintained and—depending on the interests of the
owners—they sometimes complete the picture by dressing in copies of the
fashions of the time. In Japan, Adidas has recently launched a new fashion
range, which is being marketed in cooperation with Vespa.
And Oasis’s Liam Gallagher has a new collection that is clearly influenced by
the (film) scooter world of Quadrophenia. Scooters are a cult and those who ride them
continue to be trend-leaders.
Using the example of the continuing cult around
the worldwide scooter classic, the Vespa, the
following paper will discuss both the curious dynamics of acceleration and
deceleration and of the fashions of both the mainstream and the rebellious. As
we shall see, the creators of the original Vespa were
committed to modernisation, a drive that started after World War II and
progressed in leaps and bounds because of the transnational increase in
mobility. What is widely accepted must necessarily also affect sections and
groups of a particular society and nation. The English youth subculture of the
Sixties is an excellent example: young people rebelled with their Vespas against the authoritarianism of the older
generation. They got on their
scooters and quite literally escaped from those in power to have fun together
away from it all. Since then the Mod style has returned repeatedly. The present
retro-movement, with its fondness for restoring vintage and newer classic
scooters, is—not without a certain degree of criticism of present-day
culture—committed to the slowing down of today’s thoroughly accelerated
society, and it makes the striking point that in today’s cities the slow(er) vintage machines can even
be an advantage where mobility is concerned (one can simply overtake the queue
of traffic). Simultaneous unsimultaneity—a
modern phenomenon in which social progress and regress join in a paradoxical
display of contrasting social signifiers—seems to pay interesting
dividends.
The Birth of the Vespa Cult
The Vespa (in English: wasp) cult began in
post-war Europe. In 1945, the Piaggio Air Works in
Pisa and Pontedera were badly destroyed. They sought
a fresh start with a new product, the motor scooter: a two-wheeled light
vehicle for everyone. Although there was already a predecessor in the shape of
the Welbike scooter, which the Allied troops had used
in World War II, the Welbike machine was less than
convincing aesthetically. Then in 1945 an engineer, Carradino d’Ascanio, developed under the code name “Paperino” (Donald Duck) the original Vespa,
the Moto Piaggio MP6, whose lines have continued to
influence the appearance of all successive models. On hearing the sputtering
sound of the engine, the company engineer Enrico Piaggio is said to have remarked, “Ecco, la vespa!” and from this moment this was
to be its name (Kubisch).
Counter to what is
generally supposed, the scooter is not a natural development from a vehicle
already in existence (Shattuck/Peterson), that is, a variant along the path
from the bicycle to the motorcycle (Dodge; Alford and Ferriss). Instead, the Vespa went its own, new way: in postwar Europe the scooter was an intermediate stage along the route to owning a car.
As people saw it at the time, the Vespa stood for
“mobilisation” in peacetime. If someone could not afford a car, he switched to
a scooter. One was mobile, one could wear one’s ordinary clothes (women a
skirt, priests a cassock) and one did not have to wrap oneself up in the “thick
skin” of protective clothing that motorcyclists wore. One travelled from place
to place in a “modern” and fashionable manner. From the beginning Piaggio employed successful—one could call them
prototypical—advertising campaigns to introduce new products and
cultivate its brand image.
Mobility
– Brand – Fashion
From the start the Vespa had a certain “Vespa flair,” with the promotional emphasis placed on
different cultural aspects according to the needs of the relevant target group.
For female customers the slogan was “Women are mobilizing,” which alluded to
the fact that the-until-then male privilege of mechanized mobility was now
being eliminated. Advertisements showed women self-assuredly driving a scooter,
on their way to freedom and adventure, or on the numerous errands—such as
shopping—involved in the everyday business of running a family. A second
message shaped a special Vespa Romanticism on a scale
ranging from togetherness to a certain eroticism. In
1960 the film La Dolce Vita, in which
Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg fall head over
heels in love on—and with—a Vespa, the
humble yet fashionable machine achieved cult status. Piaggio quite obviously mastered the balancing act between freedom for the individual
and usefulness for the family. Piaggio was also ahead
of its time in backing the activities of Vespa clubs.
They generously supported the “Vespisti” and their
numerous club activities, such as driving skills tests (off-road), group
rallies, long-haul trips (which were naturally also tests of reliability),
competitions and records. It was a veritable stroke of genius to make film
stars and racing drivers (!) honorary chairpersons of the clubs. It could be
said that these strategies anticipated such marketing instruments as
communities and viral marketing, with which we are so familiar today.
Finally, Vespa advertising promised (eternal) youth, simultaneously
echoing the spirit of the various different ages. In the 1980s the Vespa became
equivalent to the “just do it” symbol where (social!) mobility, leisure and
adventure were concerned. In the
age of the internet the Vespa appeals to our glocal sensibilities. “Travel local – think global” goes the slogan and we
see—in the style of the famous Benetton campaigns—what might be
termed an international young couple holding hands beside a red Vespa. Thus the Vespisti world
was relatively multifaceted, promising mobility for everyone! Riding a scooter could embody any
number of cultural signifiers: the romance of couples riding together, the
freedom to travel in the open air on holidays and to entertainment venues, the
opportunity to emulate film and grand prix stars who also rode Vespas, and a general association with youthfulness and
being fashionable.
Contours
of a Life Cycle
When we look back, we see
that the manufacturers achieved something unique. They created the image of a
scooter that “can do” more than all the others: the Vespa as something that turns everyone’s head. In the course of the company’s history,
the Vespa has become the embodiment of the scooter
per se, so that in Europe “Vespa” has changed from
being a make and has become a generic concept. However, the journey has been a
long one: in Western Europe the scooter had variable fortunes, both economic
and cultural. The scooter
experienced a boom from 1950 until the mid-60s, a slump from around 1963 (when
car sales boomed), and a comeback from the 1990s onwards in the various guises
of city runabout, city scooter, fun and cult vehicle—the retro-variant
belonging to the latter—emphasizing the mania of collecting, as well as a
return to traditional engineering values.
For Piaggio/Vespa the scooter nowadays represents the “most authentic form of urban life.” The
company philosophy states: “The fact that the Vespa is always modern and never nostalgic makes it a living myth, or better, a cult
object. It expresses its own personality and embodies a ‘timeless style’ which, although it is constantly changing its ‘face,’
nevertheless never betrays its own essence.” Is there a better way of phrasing
the aim of selling the Vespa not simply as a means of
transport but as an ideology?
Mid-
to Late-Twentieth-Century Youth Subcultures: The Mods of the 1960s and 1980s
Modern society is
characterised by a high degree of acceleration, which must be seen in
connection with ever-increasing mobilisation. This mobilisation in turn
provides human beings with important opportunities to become autonomous.
Particularly in specifically authoritarian relationships between the
generations, a certain amount of rebellion is essential if the younger
generation is to find its own way (constructing its identity through
difference). Adolescent obstinacy and resistance can show themselves in various
ways, in the shape of the snotty kid, for instance, or in the form of fury and
rage.
The Mods—from
the English modernist—were
members of a youth subculture in England in the 1960s. They came from
working-class backgrounds and were quite distinct synchronically from the
Rocker youth subcultures and diachronically from the Teddy Boys (a machismo
cult). The Mod movement was characterised by a cool, reserved and clean
aesthetic: their Edwardian suits were the modernist variant of an Italian style
of dress, their preferred labels Fred Perry or Ben Sherman. They avoided Rocker
gear and cultivated a somewhat narrow, fuddy-duddy elegance. Their motto was
“Appearances are everything.” Today, the item of clothing they are most famous
for is the parka (Jenß). The subculture had four
different variants: the distinguished camp style of the art students, the
ordinary Mod, the boys on scooters, and the hard-boiled Mods (who later became identified as skinheads).
The scooter boys rode Vespas (no English scooters for them). The machines were
maintained, accessorised or converted into custom-built machines. On the
weekends, the whole clique, sometimes consisting of 50 to 100 Mods, drove out of the city. The standard destination was
Brighton on the south coast, where they met up at the Electric Ballroom. There
were numerous violent clashes between them and their main enemies, the Rockers.
On Mondays, it was back to work for the “stylish hooligans,” as they were
called at the time, and to longing for the next weekend in the Electric
Ballroom. The word “speed” characterises the Mod’s lifestyle: they loved speed,
in its physical sense, and the drug speed (amphetamines, specifically Drynamil, which they nicknamed Purple Hearts, or Blues).
Both sorts of speed helped the young men on their scooters forget their
relatively poor work situation (poor education, low status jobs) for the space
of a weekend and to escape, as it were, to the ballroom and the department
store. At the time the Mods represented teenagers
with strong consumerist tendencies, and this coincided with the producers´
interest in a widespread marketing of the style. The way they dressed was a
clear signal that working class children could afford to dress in good,
expensive, fashionable clothes (Barnes, Cohen, “Modculture.com,” “The
Scene”). Mobility, acceleration
and speed enabled these young men to drive away, to escape from the everyday
routine of family and work, from their parents and their superiors, to their
leisure-time world of sex, drugs, rhythm and blues, and fights—an early
form of rebellious pleasure politics.
From the end of the 1970s
until the mid-1980s there was a revival. In 1979 the pop group The Who’s film Quadrophenia appeared, a retro media-production of the Mod subculture in the British
Hollywood style. If we look at this 1980s Mod revival from the point of view of
the scooter aesthetic, the overriding impression is (almost) a parody of the
original. The Vespas are—as they always
were—constantly being tuned and retuned, as if they were Harley-Davidsons,
albeit still with the style and charm of the good old Vespa,
on which the old Mods, who have got on a bit by now,
go off in packs on their trips. The rebellion released its teenagers and twenty-somethings. The commercial marketing of Mod style
has gained the upper hand; a subculture has become simply a collection of young
people who wear particular fashions in an event culture (Schulze).
Youth
Culture Today: The Retro Grease Monkeys
The word retro (retro craze, retro style, retro
look, retro design) describes a fashion based on the styles of the past (Guffey). In America, the term “vintage” is used. The motto
is to live—aesthetically speaking—life as a quotation, within a
quotation that consisting of quotations. The rediscovery of the retro/vintage
phenomenon contradicts everything the throw-away society represents. In the USA,
television series such as Mad Men set
a stylish, aesthetic example. Classic styles—worn and presented in a
dignified way—dominate. Since 2000, thanks to celebrity culture and the
media circus, the popularity of vintage fashions has surged. No consumer can
react with the speed with which the Internet provides pictures of the new collections.
And in an era when designers only recycle the fashions of previous eras anyway,
people willingly do without the rehash and buy the originals from the start,
especially as these carry with them a guarantee of quality and exclusivity.
At present the 1980s are
experiencing a comeback. And when we talk about this period, we once again have
to refer to the fashion aesthetic and with it the young scooter riders. These
young men are not living in revolt against their elders (reliving the
generation gap epitomized by James Dean, who the director Elia Kazan said was furious at all the fathers in the world), but in the cult world
of the Retro Grease Monkeys. And this could not possibly be called a revolt but
rather—if at all—a quiet (!) rebellion against the anti-spirit of
the age, in which only the new, the fast, the noisy and the superficial count
and the old must be disposed of. An old Vespa, on the
other hand, is a simply constructed machine that the owner himself can easily
and inexpensively maintain. Unlike modern competing products, which mainly have
plastic parts, with the good old Vespa, metal bears
the (financial) load. These metal parts can be repaired repeatedly and, if
necessary, even be rebuilt, so that the financial outlay is reasonable and
within the limits of a young person’s limited budget. Via the Internet, Vespa owners can communicate with other Vespa owners (communities), who can and will often provide support. Trips are
organised where the important thing is not making or breaking speed records,
but enjoying a ride together in a manageable-sized group. What Vespa owners have in common is not class (formerly the
working class), but a shared interest: an interest in a cultish means of
transport, linked with the idea of having something good and original, and of
doing things with others. Just as the slow food movement contrasts its concept
of consciously eating and enjoying regional food against the consumption of
fast food, so Vespa Retro Grease Monkeys represent a concept of mobility that
likewise supports a high quality product (Vespa)
which encourages people to drive slowly and which the owner him/herself can
service. The Retro Grease Monkeys meet in small garages that have survived the
decades unchanged. The old mechanic has left and made way for young people who
do not want to change anything but carry on the old tradition.
If one wanted to take this
idea to extremes, one could say that since the industrial revolution our
society has had change forced on it. Technical developments and the expansion
of the routes of transport and communication (rivers, the road and railway
networks, the digital highway) are key features. But this process is still
incomplete. On the contrary: with the rapid developments in digitalisation at
the beginning of the twenty-first century, the digital highway network has
expanded even further. Media communication has become radically fast
(acceleration), flexible (mobility), differentiated (the parallel use of media
in crossover patterns and functions), interactive (participation) and glocal. Thus,
everyday life (as far as the use of the media is concerned) has, both for the
individual and for society, become more complex than ever before, and one could
with good reason maintain that we now live in a society, media-influenced
throughout as it is, which makes excessive demands on its members. The
positions people take on these social conditions take many different forms.
Some accept and go along with these changes; others stubbornly oppose and rebel
against them in protest. Particularly interesting, however, are the ways in
which progression and regression join, cross and blend: advances in technology,
such as the Internet, are used as the technical and engineering legacies of an
earlier age, which in so-called retro-cultures charismatize into cult objects. An enlightening symbol of this simultaneous unsimultaneity could be seen in the media-literate
web-teenagers and web-twenty-somethings, who see
their love for the old Vespa scooters of the 1960s
and 70s as their individual contribution to the deceleration of our high-speed
society (Rosa). So the yesterday inherent in today is becoming the idea
underlying developments which aim to improve tomorrow, which is likewise
inherent in today.
The
Modern Vespa: On Junk Rats and "White People"
Unlike his retro counterpart, the Rat Grease Monkeys approach the rat bike or rat scooter (known simply as “the rat” or “Ratte” in German) with a quite different philosophy. Ratbikes are motorcycles or scooters which have been converted in weird and wonderful ways and/or which their owners simply drive and do not spend a lot of time cleaning. There are three different types: decorated bikes (machines which have been accessorised with all sorts of extras), survival bikes (bikes that have been converted to resemble military and survival vehicles, as seen in the film Mad Max), and Bikes in Use (BIU) (whose pragmatic owners drive the bikes without getting involved in any kind of spit and polish sessions. Their motto is: a bike is there to be ridden, not to be cleaned).
The decorated and survival
bikes are particularly interesting. They are all without exception unique:
painted matte black, they have been accessorised sometimes in the most bizarre
fashion with all sorts of useful but sometimes also absurd items. (The websites www.ratbike.org and www.modernvespa.com/forum/topic20886.html provide insights into the rat aesthetic.) Such works of fantasy spring from a
fundamentalist, sometimes eccentric pragmatism (some have, for instance,
electric handlebar heating and a tube to the heat exchanger in the exhaust or
exhaust casing so that warm air can heat the rider’s clothing) along with an
anarchistic underground attitude. “Rat bikes are no-nonsense but fun!” the
forums say. The Rat Grease Monkeys do not come from a particular social class
(classic youth subcultures of the second half of the twentieth century) or have
specific values such as the preservation and cultivation of tradition(s)
(vintage and classics cult). Instead, the Rat Grease Monkeys are—in social terms—individuals
acting in accordance with their own personal interests, playing, as it were,
their own card. They gain social hold via the web and communities (peer review)
and via the entertainment media, where they can see films such as Mad Max. Ultimately, who owns a rat bike
or rat scooter loves it and endows it with its own personality. It depends, as a rule, on an
individual’s own preferences and on the contingencies of life. Some may be
fascinated by the full-throated sound of a big engine (motorcycle), others by
the feeling of freedom it gives you when you can simply jump on an armchair on
wheels (scooter) in your ordinary clothes and drive.
This feeling of freedom is
also shared by ordinary middle-class people, who meet in forums, such as "stuffwhitepeoplelike",
which considers itself “a guide to the unique taste of millions.” The topic of
post 126—in predictably politically correct fashion—is the
advantages of driving a Vespa (practical, popular,
environmentally friendly). The comments speak for themselves: there are Vespa dealer ads, and the “millions of white people”
discuss whether a smart and snappy electric car isn’t more attractive than a
scooter. The only person to be ahead of the pack is the young urbanite. He can
overtake all those four-wheeled runabouts. He is a L.E.Ad.E.R. and can go where he
wants. Goodbye underground, hello competition culture (Neckel),
where a scooter allows someone in a business suit to get there first. Full
steam ahead to a society where all that counts is success.
While the scooter is often
treated as a singular phenomenon, something for the youthful and energy
conscious, we have seen that even as practical a vehicle as the scooter can
engender varied social responses and posturing among its owners. Rather than a practical transportation
device, the scooter becomes a focus around which groups can engage in
self-definition. The scooter
allows for a visual display of the rider’s values. Lads, Rat Grease Monkeys, and Retro Grease Monkeys exemplify
the sometimes startling and always entertaining ways in which a transportation
device can be absorbed, modified and reimagined in
urban culture.
Works Cited
Alford Steven E. and
Suzanne Ferriss. Motorcycle. London: Reaktion, 2008.
Barnes, Richard. Mods! London: Plexus, 1991.
Cohen, Stanley. Folk Devils and Moral Panic: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. London: Routledge, 2002.
Dodge, Pryor. Faszination
Fahrrad: Geschichte, Technik, Entwicklung. Bielefeld: Delius Klasing, 2001.
Guffey,
Elizabeth E. Retro: The Culture of
Revival. London: Reaktion, 2006.
Jenß, Heike. Sixties Dress Only: Mode
und Konsum in der Retro-Szene der Mods. Frankfurt/M: Campus, 2007.
Kubisch, Lutz-Ulrich. Vespa mi’ amore:
Alle Motorroller seit 1946. Geschichte – Technik – Nostalgie. Stuttgart: Motorbuch, 2004.
“Modculture.com.” www.modculture.co.uk
Neckel, Sighard. Flucht nach
vorn: Die Erfolgskultur der Marktgesellschaft. Frankfurt/M: Campus, 2008.
Rosa, Hartmut. Beschleunigung: Die Veränderung der Zeitstrukturen in der Moderne. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 2005.
“The Scene: International ModZine.” www.thescene.de
Schulze, Gerhard. Die Erlebnisgesellschaft: Kultursoziologie der Gegenwart. Frankfurt/M: Campus, 2005.
Shattuck, Colin and Eric
Peterson. Scooters: Red Eyes, Whitewalls,
and Blue Smoke. Denver: Speck Pr., 2005.
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