Youth Subculture as A Commodity
C. Youth Subculture as A Commodity
At first the function of youth subculture in general is to get a place for young people to express themselves in order to fight against the dominant standard of a society controlled by parent culture. The more members join with a youth subculture, the more attentions are given to that youth subculture and its members. Their way to communicate their language through appearance and defiant behavior gradually becomes the center attention of society since the emergence of a spectacular youth subculture is invariably accompanied by a wave of hysteria in the press which typically fluctuates between dread and fascination, outrage and amusement (Hebdige, 1979: 92). The media takes an important role on how certain of youth subculture is accepted and known by the society although media stand on two kind of opposite sides. In one side, youth subcultures are ridiculed as a social problem, but on the other side they are alternatively celebrated as a breakthrough phenomenon in society (ibid: 93).
Media spotlighting change the function of the previous youth subculture through the med ia‟s perspective. As Hebdige also writes based on his examination
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In most cases, it is the subculture‟s stylistic innovation which first attracts the media‟s attention. Subsequently, deviant or „anti-social‟ acts- vandalism, swearing, fighting, „animal behavior‟- are „discovered‟ by the police, the judiciary, the press; and these acts are used to „explain‟ the subculture original subculture‟s original transgression of sartorial codes……..as the subculture begins to strike its own eminently marketable pose, as its vocabulary (both visual and verbal) becomes more and more familiar, so the referential context in which it can be most conveniently assigned is made increasingly apparent. (ibid: 93-94)
Media do not only record its resistance but also place youth subculture in the dominant framework of meaning which cause young people who choose to inhabit a spectacular youth culture are simultaneously returned as they are represented on TV and in the newspapers, to the place where common sense would have them fit. Through this recuperation process created by the media, youth subculture is incorporated within the dominant standard of culture which is mostly controlled by parents. Fashion and mannerism as y outh subculture‟s ways of communication become two characteristics forms of recuperation (ibid: 94). However, this process is shadowed by the commercialization created by various industries to make them marketable. With the process of commercialization youth subcultures, they are depoliticized, accepted into society and subsequently become a part of mechanism.
Fashion as a symbolic system used for communication in a subculture has gradually been shifted by the industry to be a new commodity. Subcultural fashion is created differently considering the function of this symbol to communicate. Fashion gives young people strong appeal for them to follow the newest or most update fashion trend offered by market. It makes the meaning of early youth subcultures frozen since it is removed from their private contexts by the small
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„everyone else‟ in their increasing struggle for social power (Directo, 2006: 3)
Besides fashion as the immense products of youth subculture, mannerism or behavior of a youth subculture is also another commodity highly exploited by various industries. However, the way in which youth subcultures are represented in the media makes them both more and less exotic than they actually are (Hebdige, 1979: 97). Youth subculture can be trivialized and domesticated in one side, but on the other side it can be transformed into meaningless exotica as a pure object and a spectacle (Barthes in Hebdige, 1979: 97). Hence, youth subculture is often represented as a group of deviant young people causing riot and chaos everywhere; by contrast, it can be defined as the normal young people who just want to express themselves.
One of the ways media exploiting the two forms of youth subculture through its styles is represented within the music video. Besides become an effective promotional tool for the musician, music video has significantly changed the music industry since it has changed the habit of music consumer from the listener into the viewer. In America, it can be noticed after the distribution of television in the 1950s that make the dominance of visual over verbal information (Tetzlaff, 1986: 80). Behind this phenomenon, the dynamics of capitalism through the political economy acts shapes culture in a very powerful
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Music videos nowadays do not simply form the ideology of a certain youth subculture but tend to sell the pleasure through everything appears on it (ibid: 84). The traditional form of ideology which is identified as the function of mind nowadays has been shifted into the modern one which also means that the replacement of persuasion and rationality with a direct fusion of item and response. This pursuit of pleasure is directed towards the products of the system (ibid: 86), including what can be found within a music video. Through music videos, which are mostly broadcasted by the phenomenal music videos television channel or MTV, the industries simply recycle the styles and offer the fascination to the viewers. In attracting the viewers‟ attention, this industry exploits the subcultural symbol systems which are torn from their referents in lived
experience and social structure (ibid: 87). Each youth subculture‟s symbol systems is reduced to a variety of poses offered for young shopper, punker,
metalhead, Emo, hip-hopers and other members of youth subcultures. In a music video, the visualization dominates the video but this visualization, in reality, is dominated by the lyric. The pictures, as what have been stated above illustrate the lyric which for sure is adjusted with the music genre. Punk, Metal, Hardcore and Emo genres are basically rooted from rock music. Those genres actualize the existence of youth subcultures of which each idea is used within the video (ibid: 88). In Emo for example, the concept of the video is
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Since, the function of each video is to sell the image of performers and its music; the media place the band or singers as the tastemaker subculture through its fashion, music, and every appealing feature. Similarly, Directo notes:
For the public, the tastemaker subculture represents the instinctual knowledge of everything cool. By injecting products, clothing, and music into the public sphere through the tastemaker who promotes products by listening, wearing, or using them, he or she then becomes a spectacle. In an effort to possess this tastemaker status, consumers jump on the bandwagon so they, too, can be a part of the hipster subculture that is continuously ready to serve up the next important band/electronic device/fashion accessory. (Directo, 2006: 5)
As a tastemaker subculture, the performer has a significant role in determining the viewe rs‟ perception of a certain subculture through the symbolic styles of a subculture. It means that everything performed by the performer is the right standard of how to be involved in certain subculture. The viewers of the music video influenced by the role of the performers as tastemaker subculture will indirectly follow everything performed by their idols including fashion and mannerism they show on the video.