TY - JOUR

T1 - Déjà vu Desperados

T2 - Embattled Survivor Imagery of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the Setting of Youth Rebellion America, c. 1967-1973

AU - Langkjær, Michael Alexander

N1 - Developed version of a paper '"Rock Military Style" icons of social tension: Embattled survivor imagery in Crosby, Stills, Nash &Young/Déjà vu (1970)' delivered at Images in Time: Flashing forward, backward, in front and behind photography in fashion, advertising and press, a conference held on 27-28 November 2009 at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik as part of the activities of the Wardrobe Network initiated by Associate Professor Lise Skov at the Copenhagen Business School (CBS). The paper was also delivered in an updated version 'Déjà Vu Desperados: Embattled survivor imagery of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young in the setting of youth rebellion America 1968-1972, at Fashion Thinking, an International conference discussing Fashion in Theory, History, and Practice, held 30 October to 1 November 2014 at the University of Southern Denmark in Kolding.

PY - 2015/9

Y1 - 2015/9

N2 - The romanticised Wild West costumed motif of the folk-rock band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSN&Y) on the cover of their Déjà vu LP album from 1970 evokes the American Civil War rebel and Wild West outlaw, along with the rifle-toting heroic frontier scout, the Spanish/Mexican vaquero, and the Native American. Three photographs, taken during a single Déjà vu photo seesion by the photographer Tom Gundelfinger O'Neal, have been line-drawn for the present article by the design technologist and illustrator Marianne Bloch Hansen to enable a close analysis of details of dress, weapons, props, and the shifting positions of band members. The costumed images are considered as artefacts with a view to revealing the motivating circumstances behind that which is seen in the photos. This is accomplished by considering the cover costumes and staging on three distinct levels: as a genre item, a performance, and a product. The focus is on a specific political, social and cultural space: America of the late 1960s-early 1970s youth rebellion. Contemporary editorials, interviews, articles, and advertisements in the music and politics biweekly Rolling Stone magazine are utilized as sources. The imagery raises intriguing questions about its underlying style prototypes and patterns of style influences, and whether the costuming of CSN&Y amounts to a pastiche of the sort originally suggested by Fredric Jameson in 'Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism' (1984). Whatever significance the Déjà vu album cover motif has as a source for fashion history depends on 'what,', 'how,' and 'why' questions asked by the historian. It is evident that the cover motif with its costumed and heavily armed 'outlaws' is a response to an America rent by social tensions contiguous with the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, fears of revolutionary violence and of notorious murders committed by the Charles Manson 'family' for example, while also suggesting an ironic sense of failure of the youth counterculture.

AB - The romanticised Wild West costumed motif of the folk-rock band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSN&Y) on the cover of their Déjà vu LP album from 1970 evokes the American Civil War rebel and Wild West outlaw, along with the rifle-toting heroic frontier scout, the Spanish/Mexican vaquero, and the Native American. Three photographs, taken during a single Déjà vu photo seesion by the photographer Tom Gundelfinger O'Neal, have been line-drawn for the present article by the design technologist and illustrator Marianne Bloch Hansen to enable a close analysis of details of dress, weapons, props, and the shifting positions of band members. The costumed images are considered as artefacts with a view to revealing the motivating circumstances behind that which is seen in the photos. This is accomplished by considering the cover costumes and staging on three distinct levels: as a genre item, a performance, and a product. The focus is on a specific political, social and cultural space: America of the late 1960s-early 1970s youth rebellion. Contemporary editorials, interviews, articles, and advertisements in the music and politics biweekly Rolling Stone magazine are utilized as sources. The imagery raises intriguing questions about its underlying style prototypes and patterns of style influences, and whether the costuming of CSN&Y amounts to a pastiche of the sort originally suggested by Fredric Jameson in 'Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism' (1984). Whatever significance the Déjà vu album cover motif has as a source for fashion history depends on 'what,', 'how,' and 'why' questions asked by the historian. It is evident that the cover motif with its costumed and heavily armed 'outlaws' is a response to an America rent by social tensions contiguous with the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, fears of revolutionary violence and of notorious murders committed by the Charles Manson 'family' for example, while also suggesting an ironic sense of failure of the youth counterculture.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - Fashion

KW - Rock groups

KW - Rock military style

KW - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSN&Y)

KW - Record album covers

KW - photography

KW - Pastiche

KW - American Civil War

KW - American Old West

KW - cinema and society

KW - Television

KW - Westerns

KW - western genren

KW - memory and history

KW - Civil Rights

KW - Vietnam War

KW - Rebellion

KW - Native American textiles

KW - Fashion

KW - Fashion and politics

KW - Fashion photography

KW - Rock groups

KW - Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSN&Y)

KW - Record album covers

KW - Phography and methodology

KW - historical sources

KW - Pastiche

KW - American Civil War

KW - American Culture

KW - American Old West

KW - cinema

KW - Television

KW - Westerns

KW - Collective visual memory

KW - Civil Rights

KW - Vietnam War

KW - Youth Rebellion

KW - Lost Cause (American South)

KW - Native American textiles and art

KW - The American West in Art

KW - Spanish/Mexican costume

KW - Vaqueros

KW - Gamblers

KW - Guns and gunleather

KW - Vintage photographs

KW - Willam 'Buffalo Bill' Cody

KW - James Butler 'Wild Bill' Hickok

KW - Authenticity

KW - Fredric Jameson

KW - Rock military style

M3 - Journal article

VL - 4

SP - 71

EP - 98

JO - Catwalk

JF - Catwalk

SN - 2045-2349

IS - 2

ER -