Creative violence.
In typically tragic-Clash fashion, this was one of their early mandate-defining slogans. It was offered with the best of quasi-tough-guy intentions; three quarters of the band came from an art school background, with bassist Paul Simonon in particular, who coined both it and the band’s namesake, showing great savvy in his own design and sartorial sensibilities. Hinged as it was upon such posturing and jargon, The Clash was a constantly fermenting idea of what a band might be as much as it was an actual working band. As such, the idea was that acts of such guile or impact as could be called violent – or broadening our etymology, in violation – could serve creative, positive purposes over destructive ones (even there was some form of destruction involved).
Marcus Gray is hilariously succinct on the subject in his bio The Last Gang In Town, quoting a presumably knife wielding young Strummer:
“‘Suppose I smash your face in and slit your nostrils with this, right? Well if you don’t learn anything from it, then it’s not worth it, right? But suppose some guy comes up to me and tries to put one over one me, right? And I smash his face up and he learns something from it. Well, in a sense, that’s creative violence.’ And in another sense, it’s almost unbelievably stupid.”
As an aside, I love how earnestly and enthusiastically uncouth the early Clash are.
While clumsy at times in their efforts to cut a brutish front, the germ of the idea is compelling, coming especially as it does from the mouths of a pop group, which punk bands were taken as in England. It reflects the “spirit of invention” that Georges Sorel sought to instill in his readers, in celebrating a potential for proletarian violence. Strummer’s thuggish caricature has an odd clarity however, speaking to violence for, well, I suppose discursive and educative purposes as opposed to those of aggression or personal gain. As noted, why not broaden this to include a variety of public violation, unrest or disruption? Why not demonstrations? Vandalism? Performance or street art? Mischief and the disposal of mores? Perhaps Ms. Brigette DePape and her “Stop Harper” stunt should qualify as a phenomenal act of creative violence considering its sheer gall.
Which is exactly why the kids out in Van City have done nothing more than commit a sadly pedestrian act of civic pornography by rioting after the weekend’s Stanley Cup finale. No remotely creative element was visible in any of the images, texts, status updates or news on the subject. What I saw instead was a carnivalesque and predominantly male display of predation, homophobia, misogyny, hubris, celebrity and wantonness. I realize that sports riots are hardly a new phenomenon by any stretch*, but trending does not equal legitimacy. It is good that there is conversation arising from this, especially following hot on the heels of contemporary uprisings as Egypt’s recent ejection of Hosni Mubarak’s three decade presidency or the lack of a measurable public response to the election of the recent Conservative Majority.
I am hardly suggesting that May 3rd should have cast a smouldering sunrise across a newly revolutionized Canada, or even that such a thing should come to pass on any sizable scale. In fact, I tend to imagine such an incident as The Last Poets did back in 1970 when they released the above track "When The Revolution Comes," a terrible and catastrophic event, and something which the smug villains of Vancouver would seem to take wholly for granted.
Instead I’ll keep my lot with folks like Ms. DePape or the fellow recently dubbed the Banksy of Bulgaria. During the wee small hours in the morning of June 17, an artist to whom someone has given an unfortunately lazy nickname, transformed a host of Red Army soldiers into a testament to the ubiquitous banality of America, inscribed with the message “Moving with the times”: Superman, Captain American, Ronald McDonald, etc., rebutting a longtime state imposed monolith in a way that is substantive, direct, harmless and clever. The act is steeped in what I would argue Strummer, Simonon and co.’s genuine intentions were behind this particular slogan.** 
So void are acts like that of Vancouver’s sports fans of any sagacity that there is fundamentally nothing to be gained and no room for dialogue other than weak apologies. There was no seed of invention in slavishly reconstructing familiar images or scenes of protest. There is no just cause for this event to give meaning to fighting and fucking in the streets.
There is no kind of emotional resonance here, no artful defiance or social design, no decisive purpose in this whole wasted gesture. It is not romantic and it squanders the severity of public violence. It is politically impotent; a flash failure of self-control, an act of power, vanity and opportunity, a pornographic reflection of what a public uprising might be, a profoundly empty vessel.
*Personally, I love the one where Italian weekly Il Male caused a riot and three hour traffic jam in downtown Rome when they ran a cover deliberately mimicking a popular sports daily, the highest circulating paper at the time, misreporting the outcome for a recent World Cup match. This was a then trend in leftist European magazines, comics and serials to provoke and mislead for a time during the late 1970's.
**These guys didn’t slit nostrils. Sure they had punch-ups, but they also went out for ice cream together and painted “I’m so bored with the USA” with their cones on the parlour windows. By the way, that's actually now three Clash anecdotes for those keeping score.
