Another Response of Gary's Response to Dymo Tapes

Response of Gary's Response to Dymo Tapes

Gary highlights the kitsch transition of the use of dymo tapes from industrial use to hard wearing punk labels to inappropriate type on fuzzy greetings cards.  There are many parallels of this concept but one in particular that I always think about is the transition of the messages perceived through wearing of Doc Marten boots.

Doc Marten boots originate from a doctor in world war two.  He had injured his foot and came up with a more comfortable alternative to his army boot.  However by the early 1970s Doc Martens had been adopted by a youth subculture known as skinheads.  Whilst skinheads range from left to right concerning politcal views, they are not well known for being apolitical and have a massive association with racially motivated violence.  Other associations include an obvios skinhead, reggae and ska music and ofcourse the doc marten boots.  

Nowadays, being associated to racially motivated violence isn't on every bodies wish list, yet recently an injection of doc martens has occurred in todays retail splurging world and it seems everybody has a bit of skinhead fever.  Is this because of the ignorance of the violent association that the shoes bring or is it just because we like doc maten boots?  Like the dymo tape it could be argued that there was always a use before the main media involved association of a product was made.  That is to say that if the dymo tape was used as practical industrial labels, surely there is nothing wrong with going back to basics and using them as labels once more.  Revival is acceptable only before it becomes inappropriate revival. With the doc marten boots, perhaps it is infact a good thing that the retail market has grabebd onto the doc marten boots and they are being used for what they were made for, practical comfort.  

It is only when this is pushed too far that it becomes worthy of analytical torment.  Placing industrial label tape on a happy clappy card is bound to cause the kitsch word to pop out.  Much like when we see some flowery doc martens on the red carpet or peaches/apples/pears Geldof stomping down the street with a smug expression do we question how we got to this point and how very inappropriate it all is.

skinheads