Week 5- Subculture and Style

NOTES 

• Subcultures - Can be traced back to the 1800s.
  
• Deviant groups of urban underclass. 
  
• rebels against parents or mainstream culture.

Mainstream Culture - content and themes that are popular at the time - Dominant ideology that reflects the interest of social groups. Governed by consensus - themes and ideologies only remain relevant while they are engaged with and popular. 

Subculture is a breakdown of consensus. 
- A refusal to participate in mainstream culture
- Subvert parody or disrupt elements of mainstream culture.

The Beat Generation was a literary movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized throughout the 1950s.

Allen Ginsberg’s Howl became the most representative poetic expression of the Beat movement: the poem itself embodied the essence of the Beats’ voice; its first performance, in 1955, was a disorderly celebration; and the obscenity trial, in 1957, that followed its publication showed the movement’s social and political relevance.

Squares vs Beats

Square Values
Mainstream Culture
deferred gratification/planned future action (taking out loans for cars, houses etc)
Conforming to bureaucratic rules
comfort in routine - strong work ethic
consumerism = status
Emphasis on family as a moral centre
heavily defined gender roles (Housewife / working husband)
deference to church / state
fatalism

Beat Values
counter-cultural 
hedonism - leads to personal enlightenment
Spontaneous action and new experiences
non-conformity
distain for work ethic.
spiritual with an interest in other (Eastern) belief systems
anti - materialistic
non-binary relationships
belief in self-autonomy. 

BLOG TASKS.

What is a subculture? 
​A subculture is a group of people within a culture that differentiates itself from the parent culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles. Subcultures develop their own norms and values regarding cultural, political, and sexual matters.

this article goes on to explore Japanese subculture: https://www.futurelearn.com/info/courses/intro-to-japanese-subculture/0/steps/23560

Post visual examples of cultural capital (fashion, graphics … etc) for a subculture of your choice.
I think that Drag is a subculture of the our culture today. One of the biggest traits, or behaviors, that this group has that differs from the culture-in-general is that they dress and act in a way that deconstructs our understanding of gender. They create and perform personas, through their dress and actions, that demonstrate the fluidity of gender. This stands out against the culture-in-general, as gender has been socially constructed to be in a binary state, one of these binary's being men and the other women.