Indie rock questions

1, I consider indie rock began to separate itself from alternative rock when Nirvana tried to have some impact on the mainstream, which later became commercialized and marked a big success and others stayed underground. As Johnson says “Economic profit is normally disavowed (at least by the artists themselves), and the hierarchy of authority is based on different forms of symbolic profit…” (Quoted; Hibbett, 57). However, Hesmondhalgh argues that “the logic of the music industry as a cultural system is towards internationalization, because of the economies which accrue to very big, as opposed to moderate, sales…but such economics are not enough in themselves to explain what happened in indie in the late 1980s”. Is the economic situation of the band can be a criterion to define whether it is in the group of indie rock bands or not? And how can the band keep the balance between the profits from mass audience or just the band itself, for example some from the sales of albums or some just make profit from tickets income? Are there any specific boundaries within all indie rock bands between those bands are commercialized and those are not?


2. As the musicians and fans gradually remolded the alternative rock or rock music into a new form of serious hardcore, the whole process is shaping the music genre which became indie rock more predictable and testosterone-driven. Hibbett also says “indie rock requires its own codes, i.e. cultural capital, and therefore can be used to generate and sustain myths of social or intellectual superiority”. (57) By saying this and gives the example of “Soyouwanna Fake Being an Indie Rock Expert?” , how to connect people’s factual knowledge and their social savvy if the goal is just “faking” rather than Bourdieu’s “being” somebody else? Is the also a way to say that some of Bourdieu’s distinctions between classes are so static that people don’t even have a chance to change or even to fake?


3, In the 1990s, the indie music divided into different subgenres like indie pop, dream pop, math rock, space rock, sadcore and so on. How can those subgenres maintain their own positions and make the underground phenomenon in a balanced situation? In Hongkong, Taiwan and mainland China, the concept of indie was explored too much by those songwriters and audience. A song called The Lament of Indie indicates how embarrassing the place indie music is in the current Chinese music industry and how they are struggling to survive. When talking about the regional identification, does the whole indie music will face the problem of searching “an artistic ‘elsewhere’”(Hibbett, 65) or just indie rock in this case?

Underground Music

Hesmondhalgh says that “one of the successes of the post-punk independents in the 1980’s was there ability to set up a network of distribution which enabled not only musicians to get signed to their labels, but also to string other companies and musicians across the country to reach a much wider public than would have otherwise been possible” (37). Hesmondhalgh later implies that they were unable to maintain such successes later into the 1990’s. This may be true of independent mainstream, but is this necessarily true of all independent music (which I will refer to as underground music)? Increases in smaller record labels that press DIY albums and networking sites, like Myspace, have allowed bands to create music and travel the world playing to audiences outside of where they live. Does an underground label have to sell 100,000 records to be successful? Can’t it be successful in just putting out great music? Isn’t that the point of Indy/Underground music?

It seems like all of these articles talk about how Indy music has positioned itself against mainstream music and mainstream culture. I wonder how much of this is actually conscious on the part of musicians and listeners? Hesmondhalgh says on page 38, “the post-punk independent sector set itself determinedly against these commercial methods.” Are underground musicians really “reconciling conflicting aims towards being different and being popular?” (Hesmondhalgh 52). Furthermore, I have never thought, “wow… in this album that sounds like it’s recorded live, the artist is exposed to us, caught naked in the act of his creation” (Hibbet 62).

Last time we talked about Indy culture possibly being like high culture according to Bourdieu. All of the articles talk about image and the cultural capital as an entrance into underground music scenes. “Collecting and studying old rock bands is a rite of passage for young men (and women) entering the scene” (Bannister 85). Soyouwanna.com advises on how to “fake being an indy rock expert” (Hibbet 56)…presumably so you can fake your rite of passage to enter the music scene. Do these examples support another social structure in which Bourdieu’s definitions of taste and cultural capital can be applied? Is this what Hibbett is arguing? Does he prove this?

INDIE ROCK more questions

(1) Hibbett discusses the DIY ethic as a demystification of the record-making process for those who identified themselves as existing apart from mainstream popular music, e.g. major label pop. (Hibbett, 62) However, many indie artists were willing to “compromise” in order to reach larger audiences by signing to a major label or using a “top” producer. Within the indie rock culture, this type of move was often criticized as too “slick” or “too pop” or “selling out.” Is it “closer to the truth” to be less professionalized in the production of rock music in order to fit the definition of “indie?” When something “sounds indie” what does that mean? Could Nirvana have had such wide-reaching success (even if on DGC) if that album had been produced with a more DIY, lo-fi production, e.g. Bleach? Is it a necessary part of being considered “indie,” to be identified as “popular” only within a subculture that praises an “unfinished” sound? Why would its cultural value be lost once it became part of a larger commercial effort?

(2) Hibbett remarks that, often, definitions of “indie rock” are determined by “particular understandings of an artistic genre shaped by the conditions of one’s own experience.” (Hibbett, 59) In my personal experience, as with Hibbett’s, to define “indie rock culture” can depend greatly on ones relationship to a specific regional scene. Where one resides can greatly color the experiences relating to accessibility and awareness of certain record stores, clubs, bands, etc., and therefore defining“indie rock” would be in terms that are specific to a region. For example, I was a musician and observer/participant in the independent rock scene in Boston/Cambridge, MA in the early 1990’s. The local media (WFNX, college radio, and the Boston Phoenix – the alternative newsweekly) played an integral part in building the “scene” and shaping perceptions by defining who the major “players” were - (top DJs, journalists, local indie rock band “royalty”), often setting the parameters for what belonged in the category/genre of “indie rock” – at least in Boston during that specific time. During that era, I also visited Seattle, and found that the Northwest "scene" had a very unique and different indie rock culture, with a hierarchical structure of clubs/papers/bands that had a defined “indie” differently, even though the culture functioned similarly. Indie rockers in Seattle were unaware (and fairly uninterested) in many bands that were seen as “crucial” at the time within the Boston scene. How could regional identity play into the idea of what defines indie rock?


(3) In Bannister’s article, he points out the White, geeky, nerdy male as a center point of indie rock canonism, and calls indie guitar rock a “tightly bounded space/genre.” (Bannister, 91) This is an interesting diversion from the norm of what one usually thinks with regard to the relationship between rock music and masculinity, in that sexuality was not the focal point. Rather, Bannister brings to the forefront the “asexuality” of indie guitar rock, saying that it’s a reaction to 1980’s “hypersexualized mainstream” but also that, perhaps, it was reacting to feminist claims that popular music was sexist. (Bannister, 92) Specifically, with young, White males as the indie guitar rock creators and "scenesters," where is this lack of sexuality in their live performances and musical output coming from? What is it a reaction to, if anything? Does indie guitar rock, as a genre, speak to class or gender issues in any specific way?

Indie Rock Questions

Ryan Hibbert suggests that to consumers of “high art,” which according to Bourdieu would presumably be the legitimate art consuming members of the bourgeoisie, “indie rock would be relegated to the nebulous and ‘inferior’ world of popular mass culture.” But to indie rockers, high art would likely be relegated to the doldrums of the meaningless dominant culture. Hibbert goes on to explain that while indie rock and high art may have different meanings to very different people, and may have stemmed from different circumstances, they both operate on the same functional logic, i.e. both indie rock and legitimate art (or any other “indie culture”) set out to shun large audiences in favor of smaller ones, sacrificing economic capital in exchange for cultural capital in the process, in order to be recognized as “not A”? (Hibbert, 57). Are the arguments posed by both Hebdige and Bourdieu the same, only focused on different subcultures? Are all indie cultures and subgroups interested in obtaining exactly the same recognition from different people?

An important concept discussed by Hibbert is his interpretation of cultural capital, which as far as I can tell is translated into hipness, the currency of cool. Hibbert acknowledges that there is something inherently monetary about being cool. “Cultural capital can cease to have value as it becomes increasingly accessible” (Hibbert, 64). By this principle of rudimentary economics, the more concentrated the cultural capital is in one small group, the more it is worth. But if it becomes widely used or accessible, and the market becomes flooded with one kind of cultural capital, then it loses its value. Considering that there is no physical representation of this currency, how can the solvency be determined? Is obtaining cultural capital really a job, with hard work transformed into acceptance and popularity in a group that values it? Bannister comments on this as well, detailing the work and reward that goes into finding an obscure record (Bannister, 81). But the record is inherently worthless unless a group of people has determined that it has indie cultural value. So is it worth anything to people who don’t care about its cultural value, or is the value of cultural capital relegated only to the indie communities that covet it?

There is an interesting logic that we must buy into in order to place indie music in a different category than popular mainstream music. All bands, indie or mainstream, have a desire to get their music out to the largest number of appreciative fans as possible. So inevitably, the determination to create a dearth of indie talent free from the control or influence of the mainstream public will only end up creating a new indie mainstream that will then be subjected to the same indie/mainstream dichotomy that produced the initial separation. I suspect this is why I get frustrated when dealing with members of an indie crowd, because there seems to always be some person who knows more about the indie music than anyone else, and considers everyone else a mainstream indie fan. There is mainstream indie, and there is indie indie, and so on. So is there something contradictory, or outright irrational about determining the value of an intangible object by its “scarcity”?

Indie rock articles, illustrated

David Hedmondhalgh, "Indie: The Institutional Politics and Aesthetics of a Popular Music Genre"

Crass



Crass, "Bloody Revolution"

Flux of Pink Indians

The Sugarcubes



The Sugarcubes, "Birthday"/"Deus"



My Bloody Valentine, "Soon" (DH writes page 46: "The deliberately 'formless' studio experiments of MBV are far removed from the traditional rock song.")



Primal Scream, "Loaded" (DH continues, same page, "PS's 1991 album Screamadelica was the most successful attempt to fuse dance rhythms with a rock sensibility during the dance boom of the late 1980s and early 1990s....")



Oasis, "Supersonic", epitome of Britpop (DH page 48: "Oasis was marketed from the start of its deal with Sony as an authentic British rock act for the global, or at least the US, market...")

Ryan Hibbett, "What is Indie Rock?"

Lou Barlow


Lou Barlow, "Brand New Love"

Sigur Rós



Sigur Rós, "Glósólie" (RH, page 65: "SR aspires toward a self-contained, transcendental beauty")

Godspeed You! Black Emperor



Godspeed You! Black Emperor, "The Dead Flag Blues" (RH, same page: "a sound at once threatening and majestic."

So You Wanna Be an Indie Rock Expert? (pp. 69-73)

Bourdieu, day 2

This pair of images is to illustrate the comparison Bourdieu makes between the taste for Renoir (L) and the taste for Kandinsky (R) on p. 292. Here he is contrasting distributions of capital within the dominant classes: +econ/-cult (L) and +cult/-econ (R).

more Bourdieu questions again

1. According to Bourdieu, people’s tastes and life style are strongly tied in with their social positions. To illustrate this point, Bourdieu examines three main classes and their typical life styles. He connects “the sense of distinction” with the dominant class (professionals or executives), “cultural goodwill” with the petit bourgeois (small business owners or clerical workers), and “the choice of the necessary” with the working class. What do you think of such class-tastes pattern he states? Given that the book was written 20 more years ago and the mass survey data he collected was from the 1960s and 1970s, do you think such class-tastes mode is still well-applied to today’s society? If not, what are the changes and what factors could possibly result in these changes? I personally think that in today’s much more complicated society, the boundaries of such class-tastes mode are gradually mixed or blurred. What do you think regarding this?

2. According to Bourdieu, taste of food is an important indicator of social classes as he believes that lower classes are more likely to choose high-fat or poor quality food and higher classes are more likely to choose fresh vegetables or lean meats. I found this point is not necessarily true at least from people I know. As health promotion is increasingly emphasized through nowadays media, more and more people become aware of eating healthily and living in a healthy life style, and this does not have to have something to do with social classes. I can think of many examples of people around me living healthily and having classic tastes of food, but they are not necessarily from what Bourdieu calls higher classes. What do you think of regarding this point? Do you think that the taste of food still plays as an important indicator in representing social classes as what Bournieu states?

3. According to Bourdieu, people’s aesthetic tastes are more likely to be influenced by their social origin than accumulated capital over time. Young people’s perception is heavily shaped by “definitions that their elders offer them” from the early stage of life (Bourdieu, 477). What do you think of this point? How do you understand that many parents don’t appreciate their children’s clothing styles or their children don’t like their parents clothing styles? Between inherent cultural capital and acquired cultural capital, which one you think it’s more influential in shaping people’s aesthetic tastes in contemporary society?

Even More Bourdieu Questions

Cultural capital, unlike economic capital (and to some extent educational capital), is not easily quantifiable. Despite its arbitrary nature, cultural capital is valued in similar ways as physical assets. At times Bourdieu complicates his statistical results by pointing out the potential problems with “objective” findings. Yet, I wonder if the problem with this runs deeper. By assigning quantifiable value to an otherwise nebulous category how is Bourdieu shaping the way we think of cultural capital from the beginning? Can critiques of monogamy, especially the notion of “starvation economies” put forth in The Ethical Slut, provide other ways of approaching the concept? How might thinking of cultural capital as infinite rather than a scarce commodity impact Bourdieu’s analysis?

Even in this book, the working classes are treated unfairly. While Bourdieu discusses bourgeois taste for 61 pages and that of the petit bourgeois for 54, he only devotes 24 pages to working class tastes. How can we account for this? What tastes and life styles are we not hearing about? Did the survey design encourage this by structuring legitimate taste as presence and vulgar/popular taste as lack? Can we discuss the popular taste without reference to legitimate taste?

Bourdieu writes, “the most fundamental principles of class identity and unity, those which lie in the unconscious, would be affected if, on the decisive point in relation to the body, the dominated class came to see itself only through the eyes of the dominant class” (384) What does he mean by “unconscious” class unity and/or identity? How does this correlate to his other claims that the creation of a habitus is an active yet socially constrained process? Does occupying a marginalized social position exclude one from an active role in identity formation? Other than his attention to magazines earlier in the passage, what is the significance of the body here? How does physicality figure into class identity?

More questions on Bourdieu's book, 2nd

1. In Chapter 6, Bourdieu argues that the new petit bourgeoisie invented new and renovated occupations by adjusting jobs to their ambitions rather than by adjusting their ambitions to fit already existing jobs (p. 358-9). Then, he introduces the jobs like marketing, public relations, sex therapy, and radio/TV producers as examples of such occupations. What kinds of new occupations in today’s society can you think of as the examples that took the similar footsteps with the new petit bourgeoisies that Bourdieu mentions? As the society keeps changing unceasingly, characteristics and qualifications or even the nature of jobs keep changing as well. What kind of jobs can you think of as an example of such a job whose nature, characteristics, and qualifications have been changed and so that they are not like what it used to be in the past? How and why have that job changed? What would that job mean in social space now and how it would be different from what it used to be in social space?

2. On p. 461, Bourdieu states: “whenever they[the dominated] emerge from doxa they are liable to fall into allodoxia, into the false recognitions encouraged by the dominant discourse.” (This statement is almost identical with Karl Marx’s ‘false consciousness.’) Bourdieu explains the risk of false recognitions in the realm of politics in particular. What other examples can you think of as the evidence of this argument? In what kind of everyday life experience do you see this false recognitions created/encouraged by the dominant class/discourse? Also, on p. 384 he mentions that the dominated class sees themselves through the eyes of the dominant class in terms of the dominant definition of the body and its uses. What kind of situation or experience would explain this argument? (In fact, this argument has been reintroduced in the feminist discourse in regard to women’s obsession with the body, especially in the Sandra Lee Bartky’s internationalization thesis.)

3. On p. 370, Bourdieu introduces an interesting term, “practical utopianism.” Through a rejection and refusal, the class who forms and lives in this “practical utopianism” is characterized as unclassifiable, excluded, dropped out, marginal, and anything rather than categorized in social space. But, what is exactly a practical utopianism? What would he mean by a practical utopia? How could this concept explain the subculture groups that Hebdige examines? What would a practical utopia be like for the subculture groups and what would they get from the site then?

Bourdieu Part Two: Questions

“Cultural omnivores,” which I believe we talked briefly about, are people who describe an interest in all types of culture including, in Bourdieu’s terms, the legitimate, middle brow, and popular. How would these cultural omnivores fit into Bourdieu’s classification scheme? Would it depend on the omnivore’s disinterestedness? Their family size? Education? (Is omnivorousness mainly autodidactic in contemporary American culture?) Where do you think cultural omnivores fit?

Bourdieu’s examples and classifications seem to work well in France and would probably map easily on to countries with related cultures, but how well would Bourdieu’s classifications and analysis work in vastly different cultures? i.e. Sub-Saharan African culture. Is Bourdieu’s analysis relevant throughout history? i.e. Is there legitimate and popular Aztec culture? Can Bourdieu’s analysis apply to a global scale or is there a point when culture becomes too heterogeneous for such classification to work effectively? i.e. Are the legitimate cultures of New Guinea and France equal in their legitimacy? (I bet the French wouldn’t say so). In essence, what are the limitations of Bourdieu’s work?

Bourdieu seems to think that tastes reinforce class divisions. That is, consumer desires maintain class divisions. Shouldn’t Bourdieu more fully acknowledge the interests of cultural producers of reinforcing class boundaries through taste? In this world of narrowcasting and the profit imperatives of mega media conglomerates, doesn’t it make financial sense to reinforce class divisions through taste thereby maintaining diverse and expanding markets on which to capitalize? Why else would we see conglomerates buying independent film studios and record labels only to try and keep them as ‘indie’ as possible as opposed to buying them out to reduce competition to mainstream films and albums?

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On a related indie-culture note, the Cream City Collectives (a community space for all types of people to get creative and work towards progressive social change) is having their two year anniversary block party this Saturday the 27th from 4-9pm on Clarke st. and Fratney st. A new art exhibit created by participants at this year's crimethinc. convergence is also premiering that night (indie culture x 1000).

Bourdieu, day 1

Where might these images fit in the taste preferences of the classes Bourdieu describes and analyzes?

***

The following videos are to illustrate Bourdieu's examples of legitimate, 'middle-brow' and 'popular' taste on pages 16-17.



The Well-Tempered Clavier (legitimate)



Rhapsody in Blue ('middle-brow')



The Blue Danube (popular)

Reading Questions for Bourdieu(1-259)

1. On p. 14, at the very bottom, Bourdieu starts on how secondary factors(composition of capital, social trajectory, age, place of residence)vary with different works(almost like he's giving some leeway to agency). But then, in the next sentence, he says as one moves toward works that are least legitimate, age becomes the dominant independent variable(and seems to push one to their natural place). Would it be logical to assume that he's saying someone near the bottom rungs of the class ladder, for instance, would abandon any affinity they had towards a work of high taste, and embrace works more in alignment with their class position when they reach a certain age? Do less legitimate forms of culture vary more with age, or class(in terms of accessibility)?

2. The crux of the book so far, as I can understand it, is that those born into a position of high cultural capital will maintain that position throughout their entire life, that cultural capital(inherent and acquired) is a self-reinforcing mechanism. Bourdieu seems rather ambiguous as to the role of human agency in French society. Given that, what institution do people affirm their agency through as they progress from a small to child to adult? What might Bourdieu suggest as the ultimate constraint on any progress made through that institution?

3. Last week's class discussion revolved largely around punk as the abrasive, atonal, and revolting counterpoint to middle-class cultural standards. While Distinction doesn't specifically address different counter-cultures and their attendant social enclaves, Bourdieu does give a pretty damning assessment of their existence, essentially saying their greatest feat will be reinforcing dominant values. On p. 251, he says "The latter(counter-culture) merely contest one culture in the name of the other...in doing so they fulfill the traditional role of a cultural avant-garde which, by its existence, helps to keep the cultural game functioning." Do you agree with Bourdieu? Are counter-cultures essentially waiting to be appropriated? Is one's inborn cultural capital(class) too dominant of a trait to be displaced by anything encountered in the social world?

More questions on Bourdieu's book

1. Bourdieu's explanation of how the differences in social, economic, and cultural capitals make the different tastes of the classes is complex but useful in various ways. His study of this social mechanism of the different tastes among the classes is based on systematic and structuralist approaches. Not only he adapts Saussure's ideas to explicate the meaning of the symbolic representations of consuming cultural goods by each class, his structuralist view is in fact revealed when he defines habitus, life-style, and taste (p. 170 -175). However, it could be expected that there would be many criticisms on such structuralist approach in sociology. What kinds of criticisms have been made in this particular study? In what ways, this approach would be beneficial or harmful in understanding and investigating the differences of classes?

2. As he states that "sexual properties are as inseparable from class properties" (p. 107), Bourdieu sees sex as a (secondary) variable to determine the construction of class. Although women in the 1970s when the survey was conducted were still in lower positions in social spaces, it is true that women were growing in power. Still, most of the surveys have focused on men and their tastes and their cultural appropriations, and Bourdieu interprets and analyzes the different mechanisms of tastes among the classes on the basis of the men-centered survey. How do you think that this aspect would limit the scope of this study? Bourdieu argues that taste "naturalizes real differences, converting differences in the everyday class of acquisition of culture into different of nature." (p. 68) If the taste of men in consuming whatever cultural goods is different from the taste of women in consuming the same cultural goods, is this because of the differences of nature between men and women? How do you think that this argument is applicable in the discourse of feminism? Or what do you think about his argument on this particular matter?

3. On page 144, Bourdieu interestingly points out that the young working-class people (in France), whose social identity and self-image have been undermined by a social system and an educational system, can find no other way of restoring their personal and social integrity than by a total refusal. What did the young French people do or what kinds of refusal expressions did they make? How is this account different from the one about the youngsters who have made their own subcultures in England? Similarly, America went through the civil movement during the 1960s, which focused on the racial and sexual issues. How did the young, working-class, African-American, and women refused the social system in America during the period?

Reading Questions: Bourdieu (for 9/17)

1. Bourdieu states that “A work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is, the code, into which it is encoded” (p. 2). But let’s take a step back and ask: How can we define art? In Theatre 100 I was taught that there are three ways to define art: 1) Art is what we’ve been told art is, 2) Art is what we expect art to look like, and 3) Art is what moves us personally. Would Bourdieu agree with any or all of these definitions? Given the above quote, do you think Bourdieu argues that the class one belongs to affects how he/she views art? Would a change in a person’s class change his/her definition of art?

2. Bourdieu argues that the social and educational system (in France) have “fobbed” off the working-class with a “worthless piece of paper”—the diploma (p. 144). After receiving their diploma and getting less than desirable jobs, some members of the working-class decided to stop working for a while as a way of dealing with this issue (p. 146). What are they trying to prove by quitting their jobs? (See p. 155). How is this working-class similar and different from the subcultures Hebdige examined? How would the working-class youth in Britain deal with the situation of not getting a suitable education and job? Would they quit working for a while and continue to think if they wait change will happen, or would they try other ways of rebelling?

3. When discussing sports and the life-styles of the spectators and players, Bourdieu notes that the game of rugby represented a “cult of manliness and the taste for a fight” (p. 213). Bourdieu points out that rugby shows “working-class strength in its approved form (self-sacrifice, ‘team spirit’ and so forth),” yet it is sometimes played by members of the dominant class who also tend to make an “aesthetico-ethical investment” in the game. Would playing and investing in sports be considered an exception to keeping the lines drawn among the social classes or a blurring of the lines (i.e., upper class members can play working-class sports, but you wouldn’t see working-class members playing golf)? Is fan culture a class in itself? What class(es) would play “alternative soccer”—the game in which women and men play together with limited or no regulations concerning appropriate dress and rules of the game? (See p. 222 for description of this sport).

fun times this weekend!

my friend's band, eat the mystery, is performing saturday night at the bremen street cafe (901 east clarke). they describe themselves as a "post-millennium cabaret troupe, featuring an imagintive mix of song and satire, theatre and spectacle, served up in a spicy gumbo of whiskey and enchantment." they put on a really good show, and you kind of walk away feeling as if you were a part of the act, which i suppose could be either a fun or horrifying prospect. they have an interesting following, and the show is free. so if you want to check out some performance that is really rather unique, i highly recommend it. opening up is an accordian player from san francisco and the waltzing matildas. eat the mystery will go on around 11pm.

also, i have a video playing in the lgbt film festival this sunday afternoon. it's screening as part of the series of shorts entitled "on our team", which begins at 4pm in the union theater. tickets are $7 for students. it was made to help promote the pedal pusher society, an all girl's and trannies bike gang, so it's pretty self congratulatory. it's also my first attempt at making a video, so please take it with several grains of salt. if you aren't able to attend but still want to see the video, you can watch it here. we made a new video this summer (which is the second video i've ever made, so again with the salt), and if you'd like, you can watch that here.

lastly, the holler house, the nation's oldest continually running bowling alley, is celebrating its 100th birthday this saturday with a block party that begins in the early afternoon and goes until god only knows when. i truly believe that any time spent at the holler house is guaranteed to be about as genuine a milwaukee experience as you could hope to have. if you need further convincing, read this. then, next week, we can talk about whether the holler house is the hub of a milwaukee subculture or just part of the mainstream.

More Hebdige Questions

1. Hebdige often describes subcultures in political terms, writing that “the tensions between dominant and subordinate groups can be found reflected in the surfaces of subculture”; yet, he also questions the political efficacy such style choices as “opposition . . . displaced into symbolic forms of resistance” (148). Hebdige appears to draw a line between truly political action and merely symbolic action. Moreover, he divides these two modes of resistance between middle-class youth and working class youth. As attentive as he is to class in this book, what are the ramifications of this split? Does he perpetuate working class oppression by denying style as a form true protest? Aren’t “explicitly ideological” types of resistance (writing manifestos, organized protest marches, teach-ins, etc) also forms of symbolic action?

2. Where are the queers in this book? Where are the women? In short, where is the sex? Hebdige claims punk obtained its androgyny through glam (25); but where did glam get it? How did the contemporary struggles for gay and lesbian and women’s liberation effect the development of these subcultures? Though early punk allowed for varied gender presentation, it was still a male dominated and often misogynistic space. The riot grrl and queercore scenes split off in part to create spaces for queers and women to play. Why don’t we hear about this? How do oppositional subcultures recreate systems of oppression? I’m also interested in Hebdige’s claim that David Bowie’s “meta message was escape – from class, from sex . . . into a fantasy past . . .or science-fiction future.” (61) How does (sexual/gender) fantasy function as resistance?

3. I wonder if the rigid policing of subcultural identity is a function of its very instability. The borders between subcultures are presented as stable and rigid, yet they also change and influence one another organically. How did Hebdige come up with his conclusions, i.e. placing certain bands in the category of punk or glam? What about bands or fashions that bridge subcultures? What are the ethics of a researcher imposing identity categories on others? What is the relationship between in-group identity policing and academic taxonomy? Is self-identification the best way to sort people into different subcultures? If not and we rely on outward signs, do we recreate a rigid system that denies the dynamism of subcultural style that makes it so exciting in the first place?

Hebdige Questions

Hebdige points out that Subcultures do not form nor exist in an ideological vacuum. Instead, each is a solution to a distinct set of circumstances in history. This affects not only how the subculture views itself, but also how those outside the subculture view it. As an example, Hebdige points out the differences between the first and second Ted movements. The mainstream vilified the first but acknowledged the second as an almost established part of British culture. Both were characterized by their racism, but the second movement was positioned closer to the parent/dominant culture. It reflected the spirit of revival, nostalgia, and a sense of “Britishness.” In what ways do time and media exposure help legitimize a subculture, as in the case of the Teds? Also, by aligning closer to the parent culture’s values, did the Teds lose some defining characteristics of a subculture?

Chapter six deals with forms of incorporation, the ways in which mainstream culture defines, positions, and eventually absorbs subcultures. One step in the eventual incorporation of a subcultural style is moral panic. This describes the tendency of the press to exaggerate the danger or problem something like a subculture might pose. How does moral panic help in the process of either trivializing or satirizing subcultures? Examples?

In Chapter seven, Hebdige deals with two questions. How does a subculture make sense to its members? How does it go about signifying or representing disorder? In what ways did the Punks and other subcultures achieve these two goals through their dress, language, or dance? How do you see the term Bricolage, the science of the concrete, play out in answering these questions (103)? For punks? For mods? Rastas? How does the phrase “semiotic warfare” fit in (105)?

questions about hebdige

1. On page 131, Hebdige writes "much of this book has been based on the assumption that the two positions 'Negro' and 'white working-class youth' can be equated". Do you think this is a just, plausible equation? How does your answer affect your reading of this text?

2. Throughout the course of his descriptions and analysis, Hebdige almost entirely disregards queer culture and women. In so doing, he seems to indicate that the formation of subcultures, and consequently of style, is a predominately male experience. He often describes the emergence of subcultures as a reaction to the parent culture, or a reaction to the norm. Through this discourse, do you think Hebdige enforces stereotypes of what it means to be normal? Do you think this limits the scope of his analysis?

3. On pages 93 and 94, Hebdige begins to discuss the "process of recuperation", or, how subcultures and their many stylings are absorbed back into the norm or sometimes turned into pop-culture. Given the emergence of the internet and the faster rate at which media is able to be produced and consumed, and also considering the new levels of accessibility and interactivity that this creates, how do you think Hebdige's analysis would hold up in today's world?

Adbusters vs. Hipsters

A friend told me about an article in the new issue of Adbusters called Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization. There's a lot of hipster-hating and not a lot of analysis; but, it's interesting for the ways the author separates the categories "hipster" and "revolutionary." Plus, as some of the commenters mention, it's telling that the article is printed in Adbusters, which is selling its own brand of soulless, commodified revolution.

Subcultures via ABC/Disney

Reading Hebdige's book made me think about a show I watched this past Monday on ABC. It was the first time I watched this show, but it was actually decent. Okay, so don't laugh, but the show is called "High School Musical: Get in the Picture." It's the reality show that picks the next up-and-coming Disney star, I guess, and they get to be in the new "HSM 3" movie. Anyway, in this particular episode the finalists had to perform "A Whole New World" (from Disney's "Aladdin") in a musical style that was different from their own. It was kinda humorous and some of the styles that were explored were Goth, folk, rock, and a few others that I can't recall off-hand. You can view it online, and I think it's worth watching at least the scenes in which they dress up in character and do their thang. lol It's the 9/2/08 episode called "Other People's Shoes" and can be found at: http://abc.go.com/player/

But isn't it kind of ironic that a major corporation like Disney is bringing indie music and their subcultures to life on network television by using one of their songs: "A Whole New World"? At least they showed that everyone has a different style and what may seem weird to one person may be a way of life for another.

punk photo exhibit tonight

i just spotted this on the marn listserve. i don't know the photographer or anything about the show besides what follows, but it seems like it would really tie in nicely with our discussion on friday and with the hebdige text we're about to read. here's the post, and maybe see you tonight!:

-A Photographic Exploration of Subculture-

Joe and Daniel have invited you to "801 Gallery- Identity Worn" on Friday, September 5 at
6:00 pm.

801 Gallery- Identity Worn
"Sept 5 - 20, 2008"
801 Gallery
Opening Party on Friday, September 5 at 6:00 - 9:00 pm

801 Center Street (corner of Fratney)

To see more details and RSVP, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=26726631&k=Y5B4YWWRR5YM5FGBTEZTXS

Joe Ventress is a Peck School of the Arts Graduate. His work will be shown at
801 Gallery.

"I have long been interested in documenting communities that reside well outside of mainstream social constructs including the ways in which they can subversively influence the mainstream in both subtle and conspicuous ways. I have recently embarked on a project to document the Punk and Metal communities of South East Wisconsin via photography (for gallery and book,) and video or 16-mm film (for installation.) This project will eventually expand to include national and international extreme music communities, i.e., Black-metal, noise, Pagan, Hardcore, Political, Peace-punk, Anarcho-punk, etc. "

-Ventress

For me, I see a community I have long been familiar with, documented in a sensitive way that reveals an identity that is worn on the outside. An inescapable identity, an identity in progress, a physical palette of past, present and future literally sewn together, stitched into cloth and skin.

-Dan Kelly

Come for the opening party, 6pm, Friday the 5th of September.

Hebdige Illustrated

These links and videos accompany/illustrate/explicate Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (London: Methuen, 1979).

1 Jean Genet, The Thief's Journal

8 Roland Barthes, Mythologies

9-10 Hebdige discusses this photo from the magazine Paris-Match, which Barthes analyzes.



15 Hegemony

25 David Bowie on the Dick Cavett Show, "Young Americans"



25 The Heartbeakers (last.fm)

25 Iggy Pop (last.fm), live in 1970



25 Richard Hell (last.fm)

25 The 101'ers (last.fm)

25 Crime, "I Stupid Anyway" (last.fm)

25 Dr. Feelgood, "Route 66"



25 The Ramones, "Pinhead"



25 Northern Soul, e.g.,



26 Punk fashions:
Punk hair etc.
Fashion museum
Punk Rock 1976-1980, a Flickr photoset

26 Brothel creepers, wincklepickers, pimsolls...

27 David Bowie, Diamond Dogs (last.fm)

36 Don Drummond (trombone, composer), the Skatellites, "Don D Lion"



36 Reco, "The Lion Sleeps"



37 Prince Buster, "Shaking Up Orange Street"



37-8 Max Romeo, "War inna Babylon"



38 Junior Murvin, "Police and Thieves" (wikipedia)



51 Elvis Presley, "Heartbreak Hotel"



51 Gene Vincent, "Be Bop a Lula"



53 Tony Clarke, "The Entertainer"



53 James Brown, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag"



53 Dobie Gray, "The In Crowd"



53 Prince Buster, "Madness"




59 I-Roy, "Black Man Time" (last.fm)

60 David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust



61-62 Glam rock (wikipedia)

62 Marc Bolan (T. Rex), "Ride a White Swan"



62 Lou Reed, "Walk on the Wild Side"



64 Sex Pistols, "God Save the Queen"



64 Sex Pistols, "Anarchy in the UK"



64 Jordan, "Rule Britannia" from Derek Jarman's film Jubilee



67 The Clash play reggae, "Police and Thieves"



76 Culture, "Two Sevens Clash"