Are there still such things as subcultures? Some sociologists say not; that the Internet has shepherded us all into uniquely individual cultural corners, making the term meaningless.
But the ‘subcultures’ which American stand-up comedian Moshe Kasher has lived through are unlikely to go anywhere soon. His new book, Subculture Vulture, is an absorbing, eclectic, hilarious look at what his beloved scenes mean not only to him, but to the world.
To Kasher, the term can carry its usual underground sense. It can refer to support groups or the culture around his career. He even applies it to the communities he was born into which society pins as non-mainstream.
Kasher writes about how his relationship with each group has changed over the years with empathy and nuance, never falling into tribalism or evangelism. Take the opening chapter, ‘AA’. As Kasher, who attended his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting as a 15-year-old, guides us through the group’s famous twelve steps, his personal testimony captures both the nagging, bottomless agony of addiction and the work he did to get out with a sparkling coating of humour.
Pledging commitment to a higher power lifted Kasher, a lifelong theist, out of his addictions, but the lingering legacy of AA’s Christian origins made him uncomfortable and led him to drift away. This duality gives him a deep respect for secular scepticism about the group, while acknowledging that it turned his life around.
Counterintuitively enough, the hedonistic world of ‘Raves’ had a similar effect on the young Kasher, curing him of a youth of gang crime and aggressive misogyny. He recalls discovering San Francisco’s Cyberfest ’95 while only a few months sober, chronicling the natural highs of that first joyous experience in infectious detail. To one troubled teenager, the American rave scene’s Screamadelica-level philosophy of ‘peace, love, unity, respect’ held as much worth as the twelve steps.
Kasher shares some terrific stories from his own days as a rave promoter, becoming an after-dark ecstasy dealer for a shady Batmobile-driving eccentric while reciting group prayers with AA by day. Yet he is above tedious ‘in my day’ grumbling. He accepts rave’s mainstream present as another point in history, never mistaking his experience for authority. It’s this painstaking focus on history which makes Subculture Vulture more than a confessional memoir.
‘Deafness’, for instance, is vital reading if you know Alexander Graham Bell only from inventing the telephone. Bell’s responsibility for spreading oralism – the idea that deaf people should learn to speak rather than sign – throughout America had a devastating effect on their ability to communicate, something which they had been doing perfectly well since the French Enlightenment.
As a (hearing) child of deaf adults, Kasher impressively demonstrates the torturous inefficiency of oralist education to a reader in the hearing world. It is hard not to share his anger, but some of the book’s biggest, most uncomfortable laughs come when he describes his work as a sign language interpreter. One of his clients called a police officer over webcam, only to shower him with profane insults. Remembering his job’s strict non-interventionist policy, our hero relished this zero-consequence opportunity for cop-baiting until things got a bit too personal…
These potted histories are particularly welcome when Kasher touches on more arcane scenes, with the legendary ‘Burning Man’ desert festival being a case in point. The common myth goes that it grew from anarchic roots to become gentrified by tech billionaires, but Kasher argues – having worked its gates for fifteen years – that it never had much in the way of ethics in the first place.
Instead, he argues that what it does have is a sense of surrealistic, magical, bacchanalian chaos that can’t be replicated anywhere else. He’s one of the lucky ones, he says, because he eventually managed to give up his volunteer role without feeling a shattering loss of identity.
Indeed, Kasher’s relationship with each subculture is as fluid as it is deep. Only his Judaism gets treated as an immutable part of his being. Even then – in the chapter ‘The Jews’ – he makes it poignantly clear that his faith only had real meaning to him after his father’s death. By sitting shiva and attending the following Shabbat services, he found a way to process his loss and newly appreciate the strict Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism to which his father belonged.
Kasher suggests that any history of Judaism is a history of grief, too. His register shifts from wit to profound sadness as he details how the extinct sects of Hasidim outnumber the living. In his commentary on anti-Semitism, he clarifies the relativism of ‘whiteness’ and reminds us that the idea of religion and ethnicity as discrete characteristics is a modern invention.
But society (or at least Wikipedia) also defines people by what they do for a living – hence the final section, ‘Comedy’. Never a man for dogma or self-importance, Kasher chronicles the subject with a refreshing lack of pretension.
He shakes his head at the media’s attempts to frame his line of work as a cultural battleground, as well as anyone who takes that perspective seriously. He’s also convinced that the idea of comedy as the preserve of great philosophical truth-tellers is nothing more than a rationalisation which comics tell themselves so they can feel better.
For those looking to break through themselves, he emphasises the importance of hard work above anything. Practising as much as he can using the DIY ethos he learnt from raving and the public speaking opportunities given by his other subcultures, Kasher eventually got where he dreamed of going.
Still, far from being rungs on the career ladder, these six subcultures have defined Kasher’s life, and he passes on the lessons he’s learnt from each. You may have spent as much time in tribes as he has, you may be a perpetual cultural loner, you may be a fan of his work or not – it doesn’t matter. Whatever your situation, you’ll think anew about the groups you belong to and come away with a new comprehension of those you don’t, as Subculture Vulture provides a brightly paved and wildly winding path to understanding.
Subculture Vulture: A Memoir In Six Scenes is released on Tuesday 30th January – pre-order via Penguin Random House
Find out more about Moshe Kasher on his official website
Review by Poppy Bristow
Photography by Moshe Kasher
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