Dogtown And The Z-Boys: Concept Of The Skater Subculture

Dogtown and the Z-boys is a movie that illustrated the concept of the skater youth subculture. This film demonstrated how the skater subculture was influenced by social conflicts associated with class, and culture. Besides, these social conflicts, later in the film, we see that environmental, and historical consequences were also important factors in establishing a future for the skater subculture. Initially, the skater subculture was first assembled in Dogtown, California. They were formed by the Zephyr club which consisted of a culturally minority group of teenagers from the outskirts of Southern Santa Monica and Venice Beach. Besides coming from a minority culture, these teenagers also experienced similar backgrounds and lifestyles

The city of Dogtown was described as being made up of low-income residents, the location looked discarded, and the city was a melting pot of varies subcultures, and ethnicities. Skipp mentions “If you were from Wilmore you had money, if you lived below Wilmore you wanted their money.” Therefore, making fun of Dogtown’s harsh financial instability that leads to social inequality. The film first introduces the surfing subculture, in order to explain why the skater subculture emerged. The film, described the surfer subculture, as being a social outcast, competitive, and aggressive for attention. Such attitudes, and passion to get out of Dogtown, lead to the creation of a youth crew of anti-mainstream surfer teenagers. This crew was created by a nonconformist surfer artist known as Jeff Ho. The surfing club created by Jeff Ho was called the Zephyr boys. In order, to be in this club you had to be a local or be very aggressive in the sport. As one of the Zephyr boys mention in the movie “The goal of the Zephyr boys was to create an image of the debris meets the sea”. Therefore, referring to an anti-mainstream and hardcore lifestyle that was different from the status quo. Such tight structure, established by this crew created a close net cult where it provided as a refugee for troubled teenagers. One of the Zephyr boys mentioned that being part of the Z-boys almost resembled a street gang because of the

Members of the skating subculture were known to be from a poor social class. For example, the Z-boys mentioned in the film that they lived in a city that was dirty, and full of violence. Dogtown was not a safe place and with social inequality many of the local residents rarely had the chance to run away from the city’s ruins. On the other hand, the skating subculture was typically consisted from youths of the minority class, race, and they consisted as a multi-culture group. In the Z-boys there was a mixture of Whites, Hispanics, and Asians. Gender wise the skating was consisted of all male, but there was one female. The film also describes their diversity earlier in the film when they expressed Dogtown as being very diverse in cultures, violence, and gangs when referring to Jeff Ho’s vibrate and wild color in his shop which resembled their