The Saleability of Punk Subculture in Hanif Kureishi's "The Buddha of Suburbia" (PDF)

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2017 in the subject Didactics for the subject English - Literature, Works, grade: 2,0, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg (Anglistik und Amerikanistik), language: English, abstract: The Buddha of Suburbia is a novel set in London in the late 1970s. On the verge of hippie culture, popular discontent and disorientation lead to a more nihilistic and destructive approach of cultural identity, namely punk. More and more people start to dress themselves in black, ripped clothes, attempting to revolt against conformity and the machinery of consumerism. The narrative is centred around Karim Amir, an Indo-British teenager whose family is disintegrating due to the fading connection between his parents.

"His father's escape from this disaster is to become The Buddha of Suburbia, mouthing trite Indian spiritual sayings for desperate middle aged suburbian housewives and the like." It is due to the developing romance between his father and one of his hippie fellows, that Karim is eventually "introduced into the whirlwind of London punk and social life and then thoroughly swept along the tide, ultimately achieving a measure of personal success as all around him flounder in overindulgent self-indulgence."

Though beginning "with the left-overs of the hippie generation, the novel ends not even a year later; punk, however, has already been bitten, swallowed, and spat out." Consequently, The Buddha of Suburbia addresses two subcultures, the hippies and the punks. Even though both are viewed "as superfluous and too willing to sell their values for the consumption of mainstream society", they ironically end up becoming embodiments of popular entertainment. This development of a radical subculture embracing a marginalised position in society towards a mainstream culture, deserves to be investigated thoroughly.