The Authenticity of a T-shirt: Ryan Gosling, Roddy Dangerblood, and the Rebellious Genealogy of Thrasher Magazine*

AbstractThis paper addresses the cultural aesthetics of the skateboard magazine Thrasher and its significant role in allocating means for self-narration and self-stylization of white American males. In exploring skateboard culture from a transnational American studies perspective, this article will excerpt and analyze the sources, narratives, and tropes that pervade the rebellious stylization of such magazines. In doing so, I intend to find new ways of accessing and comprehending the dialogical processes and collective histories of surf and skateboard culture, and thus aim at understanding the discursive regimes that stylize the icons of newly emerging punk scenes.