The Meanie Club – Gendered violence and post-punk narratives of love in Miss Farkku-Suomi by Kauko Röyhkä and Dorfpunks by Rocko Schamoni

This article examines love, relationships, intimacy and gendered violence in fictionalized punk biographies by authors and post-punk recording artists Kauko Röyhkä and Rocko Schamoni. Punk rock’s DIY aesthetic emphasizes self-fashioning and shock value. Where mainstream impression management, in the sense of Goffman’s micro-sociology, aims at hiding one’s ‘stigma’ in the presentation of the self, punk makes the individual’s ‘stigma’ the main feature of self-fashioning. This attitude is at odds with the ways in which the lover, in particular the Barthesian wretched lover, seeks to appear as attractive to the object of their affection. Miss Farkku-Suomi (‘Miss Denim Finland’, 2003) and Dorfpunks (‘Village Punks’, 2004) tell similar stories of transgressive self-fashioning leading to a re-instatement of hegemonic masculinity and heteronormative love narratives. This article contextualizes these findings regarding male punk writing by comparing them to the autobiography of female punk musician and writer Viv Albertine.