"Chav - the Musical"

IdleRich

IdleRich
"it’s the cheek at being poor (and flaunting it)"
Surely "cheek at not being poor"?
By which I mean, it's the annoyance at someone buying burberry or whatever but being the wrong kind of person who isn't supposed to (be able to afford to) wear it, lacking the taste of their betters.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
But it's fake Burberry rather than real Burberry, isn't it? And cheap 9ct gold from Argos rather than actual nice jewelry? So it's poor-trying-to-look-rich, or people without much money flaunting what money they have.
An inevitable consequence of working-class people often being the people most susceptible to aspirational advertising and consumeris culture - just look at the horrific levels of credit-card debt people get themselves in by buying shit out of catalogues.
 

swears

preppy-kei
Bad taste is bad taste. Early 80s skinheads and rudeboys looked great, so there is no excuse. I think the people who look worst are often those middle class young professionals with a bit of money, when they buy loads of really stupid looking designer clothes.
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
What's really weird to me about this whole "chav" thing is that from what I can tell over here (and correct me if I'm wrong--i find this pretty fascinating but confusing), most of the behaviors and such that distinguish a "chav" from other people is that they do things that in the U.S. are generally considered "black" behavior or the product of "black" taste; they live in housing projects in urban areas on welfare, they wear sports suits and gaudy fake "bling", they listen to r&b and hip-hop, they wear gigantic hoodies, get nylon manicures and t-shirts with their boyfriend's name airbrushed on, etc.

I can't help but think that in the U.S. if you made fun of these same things you'd be thought of as a racist who has an irrational hatred/dislike of anything black people do or enjoy.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"But it's fake Burberry rather than real Burberry, isn't it?"
Not necessarily. I thought that the real kiss of death for Burberry was the picture of that woman from Eastenders (whose name I still can't remember) clad head to toe in it along with her baby and its buggy.
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
But it's fake Burberry rather than real Burberry, isn't it?

No, that's the thing--in the U.S., "chav" types (inner city projects dwellers) are often wearing real Burberry, you know, bought with drug money or whatnot. There are tons of luxury brands (Burberry, Hennessey, Polo, etc.) that are LIVID that their brands have been hijacked by the "have-nots." I've read lots of press releases where their PR people talk about how much money it's costing them to fight that "hip-hop" image the media has started giving them. It's one of the things I think hip-hop is really good at, it's like semiotic terrorism.
 

swears

preppy-kei
Dunno, the ones by me listen to whiter than white hardcore techno, talk in very strong UK regional accents and wear Lacoste tracksuits, not a big hip hop label as far as I'm aware. Aren't there white people on welfare and in housing projects in the states? White trash and all that? I think the reason chav wiggas get mocked is that they try to do "black" and get it wrong.
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
Sure, having a go at people just for being poor is a pretty shitty way of getting a laugh. But why are they uneducated? Because it's 'sad' and 'gay' to do well at school. Although of course it's no-one's fault if they arrive at school and that attitude is already the norm in the school culture, and so round it goes, the people guilty of propagating and sustaining that culture being the very people who are its victims...

Edit: yep, you're spot on swears, it is if nothing else a remarkably cliched and unoriginal idea.

Did you ever think that some people say it's "sad" or "gay" to do well in school as a defense mechanism? Because they're not very intelligent, and they know it, so they know that if they do try, they will fail?
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
Dunno, the ones by me listen to whiter than white hardcore techno, talk in very strong UK regional accents and wear Lacoste tracksuits, not a big hip hop label as far as I'm aware. Aren't there white people on welfare and in housing projects in the states? White trash and all that? I think the reason chav wiggas get mocked is that they try to do "black" and get it wrong.

There are white trash people in the states, but mostly they live trailor parks (that's the stereotype, of course) in rural areas, not in housing projects in the inner city. They also wear completely different clothes and are into mostly metal and a lot of 80s sleaze rock rather than hip-hop. Although in the deep south I wouldn't be surprised if there has been some cross pollination in rural areas between hip-hop types and metal types.
 

swears

preppy-kei
I remember reading somewhere that grime kids in London use the term chav to describe unstylish home counties types not hip to the latest urban fashions, same sort of meaning as "hillbilly".
 

bun-u

Trumpet Police
Dunno, the ones by me listen to whiter than white hardcore techno, talk in very strong UK regional accents and wear Lacoste tracksuits, not a big hip hop label as far as I'm aware. Aren't there white people on welfare and in housing projects in the states? White trash and all that? I think the reason chav wiggas get mocked is that they try to do "black" and get it wrong.


I've heard grime/garage music referred to as 'chav music' on several occasions.

When someone at my work told a 'funny' about how an interviewee going for a junior position was asked 'what was the main thing they would like to achieve in the next 12 months' and anwering 'making it to Aiya Napa' it had everyone rolling around laughing screaming 'what a chav' (of course if he'd said South America instead of Aiya Napa it would've been fine)
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"No, that's the thing--in the U.S., "chav" types (inner city projects dwellers) are often wearing real Burberry, you know, bought with drug money or whatnot."
That's what I meant really. Or else just bought from money that most people would consider should have been spent on other necessities.
Footballers are another group where a lot of them would be considered "rich chavs".
 

swears

preppy-kei
I think that's more of a southern thing, scallies aren't really associated with urban music up here.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
But it's precisely because so many people see the equation poor=chav (and use it as such as a term of vilification), that it's such a noxious term.
Yeah - I grew up with the term and the way it gets used has become a lot more offensive. I think partly it's the way it's moved from people in playgrounds and common rooms describing people they know to people in universities and offices describing people they see out of their car window. They don't seem to have noticed (or choose to ignore) any of the subtleties that you see from close up experience - that chavs are in fact human and can have redeeming features or that a lot of chavs are kids from nice backgrounds who've just become part of the culture.

Also, I think the power politics of it are different - I'm more comfortable with a kids at school calling people chavs if the chavs are liable to call them faggots and heave half bricks at them. Hard kids aren't such an oppressed minority at school.
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
Is there any conscious linking of "chav" culture to American hip-hop culture, then? By British people, I mean.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Yeah - I grew up with the term and the way it gets used has become a lot more offensive. I think partly it's the way it's moved from people in playgrounds and common rooms describing people they know to people in universities and offices describing people they see out of their car window. They don't seem to have noticed (or choose to ignore) any of the subtleties that you see from close up experience - that chavs are in fact human and can have redeeming features or that a lot of chavs are kids from nice backgrounds who've just become part of the culture.

Also, I think the power politics of it are different - I'm more comfortable with a kids at school calling people chavs if the chavs are liable to call them faggots and heave half bricks at them. Hard kids aren't such an oppressed minority at school.

Couldn't have put it better myself. When I was growing up in Kent (the etymology of the term is that it comes from 'Chatham', so I've been told), it was occasionally used, but nothing compared to the media buzzword it's become in the past 3/4 years.

Yep, all about power politics in my view. The reason 'chav' is less acceptable (when used as an all-purpose beating stick) than vilifying someone as a trustafarian, is similar to the reason why 'honky'/'cracker'/similar terms are not as offensive as 'nigger'. (obv the two cases are v different, but I think the reasoning is broadly the same)
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Is there any conscious linking of "chav" culture to American hip-hop culture, then? By British people, I mean.
Phrases like "wannabe gangster" come up a lot - I think many people view it as a bad imitation of hip hop culture. For instance, part of the point of Ali G as a character isn't that he's a white guy sending up black gangstas, he's a white guy sending up white kids from the suburbs who pretend they're black kids from the Bronx...
 
N

nomadologist

Guest
Phrases like "wannabe gangster" come up a lot - I think many people view it as a bad imitation of hip hop culture. For instance, part of the point of Ali G as a character isn't that he's a white guy sending up black gangstas, he's a white guy sending up white kids from the suburbs who pretend they're black kids from the Bronx...

Right, that's exactly what I got from the "west side massive" Ali G from Stains character. I just didn't know if "chavs" in general were seen that way...
 

tate

Brown Sugar
fwiw, friends who've lived for extended periods of time in both the UK and US have repeatedly told me that there is simply no exact equivalent for the "chav" style/phenomenon/culture/whatever in the US (no value judgment intended in that, just an anthropological observation). Similarities, shades of overlap, sure, but no examples of a one-to-one correspondence, certainly not the same as inner city "black" culture, etc etc, or so I've been told ...
 
Top