Week 7, Subcultures/Countercultures Flashcards
2 ways for things to be dominant/mass culture
Prevalence
Core set of beliefs, ideas, and identities that are circulated through forms of pop culture.
How are subcultures and countercultures similar?
They are both groups both develop their own culture that opposes dominant structures that the group see as problematic.
They both seek to create their ow form of social reality, this reality is different from the mainstream.
Although not interchangeable, both can flow fluidly into one another.
Subcultures
Draw attention to limitations of majority culture.
Not essential to be political but can be.
Strength in friction with mainstream.
Exists underground and creates own spaces to form community.
Scale is typically small.
Countercultures
Are more explicitly political in their aims, willing to “drop out” of culture.
Want to replace values of majority with their own.
Political identity in addition to cultural identity.
Scale is typically large.
Situationist International
1957-1972
Active, politicized group in Europe
Talked about opposition to advanced capitalism, consumer capitalism, every day life needed to be reclaimed from mass culture.
Flow of spectacle
Spectacle
Guy Debord, “Society of the Spectacle”, 1967
A form of society in which our understanding of social relations is mediated.
Capitalism is an instrument for pacifying the masses, social control.
How to interrupt the flow of spectacle?
Dérive and Détournement
Dérive
Drift
Avoid fixed patterns, take unexpected routes.
De-familiarize your surroundings, so to think about how space is organized.
Exercise choice.
A political and social practice that proposes to explore the city in new ways.
Détournement
Re-routing, hijacking spectacular images to reverse or subvert meaning, reclaiming the images.
Like culture jamming or punk culture.
What did Dick Hebdige say about clothing?
Style: symbolism attached to clothing and music allows subcultures to symbolically separate from mass culture. Expressing of political values and systems.
What did Dick Hebdige say about noise?
Subcultures are a form of cultural noise that block mainstream society, indicative of society’s failure to meet certain groups needs. Starts to speak to issues of visibility and invisibility.
