The Christ-like Antichrists: Messianism in Sex Pistols Historiography

Abstract

Typical accounts of punk locate “Year Zero” in 1976. Implying the death of an old order and the beginning of an entirely new epoch, punk discourses contain no shortage of grandiose claims about how punk permanently altered the course of not only popular music, but also the entire world. The standard historical narrative has come to resemble a mythology, with the Sex Pistols as the central figures responsible for instigating this transformation. Drawing upon the primary propagators of this narrative (Malcolm McLaren, Greil Marcus, and Jon Savage), and a contemporary portrayal of the Sex Pistols mythology in the film 24 Hour Party People, this article argues that a distinct strand of messianism marks the common historical narrative of punk. Walter Benjamin and Alain Badiou provide theoretical models for how scholars might recognize the intellectual consequences of this historiography.

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