REPRESENTATION OF SUBCULTURES

What is a subculture?

• People with distinctive styles behaviors and interests• Members often signal their membership by either

making distinctive or symbolic choices e.g. clothing styles or hairstyles

• They have common interests, dialects, ‘slang’ and music.

• They offer an identity outside social institutions such as family, work, school.

• Factors such as social class and ethnicity play an important role in ones subculture.

• PUNK – stereotypically have spikey hair, eyeliner and listen to metal rock music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtUH2YSFlVU

• RASTAFARIAN – a religion but also a culture, their known for their dread locks and represented as cannabis smokers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5FCdx7Dn0o

• CHAV – stereotype includes wearing branded designer sports wear, accompanied by fake gold or otherwise known as ‘bling’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOMSZQ7RacQ

• GANGSTER – stereotyped to wear hoodies, carry weapons such as knives and guns, sell drugs, and young black males. Using bandanas to represent their gang associaton or affiliation with an area or area code. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FP9u6lhJmc&feature=fvwrel

• NU RAVE – typically are represented to wear neon clothes, dramatic jewelery and take psychadelic drugs such as ‘meow meow’ and ecstasy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_7rmSwqwIc

• SKATER BOY – teenagers typically represented as a skater who has long hair, baggy jeans, t shirts and wear skating branded clothes. Also hang around in the streets and in skate parks

• SKINHEAD -

REPRESENTATION

• Some may argue that subcultures are either represented in mainstream society negatively although they do have their own niche audiences and markets within the media which are catered.

• Some may argue they are usually represented falsely or stereotypically as mainstream or popular culture and media does not identify with them.

• The distinctiveness of subcultures may benefit media outlets as they find it easier to target that audience.

KEN GELDER• •through their often negative relations to work (as ‘idle’, ‘parasitic’,

at play or at leisure, etc.)• •through their negative relation to class (since subcultures are not

‘class-conscious’ and don’t conform to traditional class definitions)• •through their association with territory (the ‘street’, the ‘hood’,

the club, etc.), rather than property• •through their movement out of the home and into non-domestic

forms of belonging (i.e. social groups other than the family)• •through their stylistic ties to excess and exaggeration (with some

exceptions)• •through their refusal of the banalities of ordinary life and

massification