scholarly journals Rebel Girl and the Wrecking Ball – The Cruel Optimism of Empowerment and the Revival of Feminism in Contemporary Popular Music

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1,2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Richter
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Artistic Expression ◽  
Feminist Art ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Riot Grrrl ◽  
The Media

In this article, I explore ways in which contemporary two female artists convey their individual feminist agenda through their artistic expression. The juxtaposition of two allegedly ideologically opposed cultural products—Miley Cyrus’ video for her song “Wrecking Ball” and a simultaneously released video by former Riot Grrrl activist Kathleen Hanna—will allow me to explore the mechanics of Lauren Berlant’s cruel optimism with respect to claims of empowerment in art. In addition, a revisit of the media scandal surrounding Cyrus’ videos opens pathways into the delineation of a continuum within feminist art that will result in a plea for the re-appropriation of punk feminist DIY practices for the present of the 2010s.

scholarly journals “Boundlessly Different”

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 118-147
Author(s):  
Bernhard Steinbrecher ◽  
Bernhard Achhorner
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Young People ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Cultural Activity ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
The Media ◽  
Brass Music ◽  
Nazi Era ◽  
Current Popularity

Brass music has become increasingly popular in recent years in Europe’s German-speaking regions, especially among young people, who attend brass festivals, such as Woodstock der Blasmusik, in great numbers. This article examines this phenomenon within the context of its historical weight. Particularly in Austria, brass music is intertwined strongly with local cultural activity and heritage, alpine folklore, and national identity, with the Habsburg Monarchy and the Nazi era as well as with the rise of Volkstümliche Music and Austrian popular music. The study pinpoints the initial spark of the current popularity to the early 1990s, when young brass musicians set new tones musically and culturally. It illustrates how bands such as Mnozil Brass and Innsbrucker Böhmische, and later Viera Blech and LaBrassBanda, renegotiated established conceptions, ideas, and attitudes, and how they have, or have not, overcome habitualized ways of performing and enjoying brass music. On a broader level, the article uncovers how narratives related to regionality, Heimat, community, institutionalization, virtuosity, internationality, openness, corporality, and hedonistic pleasure all come together, at times in contradictory ways, in the media and musicians’ ethical-aesthetic discussion about contemporary brass music. Ultimately, a close music-analytical reading of selected songs shows how the music fosters and reflects these interrelations.

scholarly journals Oaknín, Mazal. Feminism, Writing and the Media in Spain. Oxford, Peter Lang, 2019, 209 pp., ISBN 978-3-0343-1865-5

Hikma ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-370
Author(s):  
Maria Luisa Rodríguez Muñoz
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Essential Work ◽  
Rosa Montero ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Ana Maria Matute ◽  
Lucia Etxebarria ◽  
Descriptive Research ◽  
The World ◽  
The Media

In line with the sociological shift in translation and literary studies, which is experiencing increasing success nowadays, Professor Mazal Oaknín offers us an essential work to delve into the evolution of women’s writing in Spain in the twentieth century and how it is represented and constructed through the media. Unlike descriptive research focusing on cultural products, this scholar bases her research on the influence that historical context and marketing constraints have exerted on the image through which three emblematic female Spanish writers (Ana María Matute, Rosa Montero and Lucía Etxebarría) have introduced themselves to the world of letters and their readerships.

Shopgirls as Consumers: Selling Popular Music in 1920s Australia

2021 ◽  
Vol 121 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-174
Author(s):  
Henry Reese
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Local Market ◽  
Valuable Insight ◽  
Department Stores ◽  
Retail Sale ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Colonial Modernity ◽  
Recorded Music ◽  
Recorded Sound ◽  
Insight Into

The mid-1920s were boom years for the Australian gramophone trade. The most prominent multinational record companies had established local branches, and a handful of new factories produced millions of records for sale on the local market. Department stores joined an established network of music traders in retailing these cultural products. This article explores the labour of women involved in the retail sale of gramophone records in Melbourne. Selling recorded sound animated a charged rhetoric of musical meliorism, class and taste, according to which the value of the product was determined by the supposed musical quality thereof. Australian saleswomen or “shopgirls” were required to perform evidence of their modernity in the commercial encounter. I propose that conceiving of record saleswomen as simultaneously sellers and consumers provides valuable insight into the entangled nature of capitalism and culture in the realm of Australian music. This exploration of the process of commercialisation of recorded music illuminates the connection between labour and culture, leisure and society in colonial modernity.

Riot grrrls and shredder bros: Punk ethics, social justice and (un)popular popular music at School of Rock

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kayla Rush
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Frame Analysis ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Music Teaching ◽  
Riot Grrrl ◽  
Cultural Status

This article presents a case study of riot grrrl music in a School of Rock franchise in the Midwestern United States. It presents the school as a place in which gender is bound up in specific notions of what it is to play rock music, notions that directly inform what constitutes popular popular music within this context. The article examines the Riot Grrrl project using frame analysis, presenting and discussing three frames through which riot grrrl was taught: as music, punk ethics and social justice. It examines a case of frame conflict as played out in a disagreement between the programme’s two male instructors. It suggests that multi-frame approaches to popular music teaching, including clashes that may arise from conflicting frames, are effective in disrupting the musical-cultural status quo and in creating spaces in which students may productively and empathetically encounter the unpopular popular music of marginalized musical ‘Others’.

scholarly journals Media, ideological hegemony and popular music: Golden microphone song contestMedya, ideolojik hegemonya ve popüler müzik: Altın mikrofon şarkı yarışması

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 1446
Author(s):  
Levent Ergun
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Music History ◽  
Symbiotic Relationship ◽  
Daily News ◽  
The Past ◽  
Theoretical Status ◽  
The Media ◽  
Popular Music History

<p>This article focuses on "Golden Microphone Award" song contest which has been organized under the sponsorship of Hürriyet Daily News between the years of 1965-68. Between the different forms of popular culture/music and mass media, there is a characteristically symbiotic relationship in which one almost can not survive in the absence of the other. Golden Microphone song contest, organized under the sponsorship of the mass media institution, Hürriyet Daily News, requires an evaluation in a scope that exceeds this symbiotic relationship. Because the role that Hürriyet plays in the circulation and the support of the dominant ideological definitions and representations is more important here. If we consider Golden Microphone contest as a moment,we can say that: there is a dynamic arena for the media, official ideology, musicians and audience in which both the elements of resistance and consent, the issues of the past and the future; hence overlapping and conflicting elements are available. In this framework, this research tries to analyse the dynamics of this specific moment of Turkish popular music history by using the theoretical status of media, sponsorship, ideology and hegemony concepts.  </p><p> </p><p><strong>Özet</strong></p><p>Bu makale, Hürriyet Gazetesi’nin sponsorluğunda 1965-68 yılları arasında düzenlenen “Altın Mikrofon Armağanı” adlı şarkı yarışması üzerine odaklanır. Popüler kültürün/müziğin farklı formları ile kitle iletişim araçları arasında, diğeri olmadan birisinin hayatını neredeyse sürdüremez olduğu karakteristik bir simbiyotik ilişki vardır. Bir kitle medyası olarak Hürriyet Gazetesinin sponsorluğunda düzenlenen “Altın Mikrofon” şarkı yarışması, bu simbiyotik ilişkiyi aşan bir çerçeve içinde değerlendirmeyi de gerektirmektedir. Çünkü Hürriyet’in egemen ideolojik tanımlar ve temsillerin dolaşımı ve pekiştirilmesinde oynadığı rol, burada çok daha önemlidir. Altın Mikrofon yarışmasını bir uğrak (moment) olarak ele alırsak şunu söyleyebiliriz: bu uğrakta gerek medya, gerek resmi ideoloji, gerekse müzisyenler ve izlerkitle için; hem direniş hem kabullenme ögeleri, hem geçmişin ve geleceğin unsurları, dolayısıyla hem birbiriyle örtüşen hem de çatışan ögelerin olduğu dinamik bir mücadele alanı bulunmaktadır. Bu çerçevede çalışma; medya, sponsorluk, ideoloji ve hegemonya kavramlarının teorik statüsünden yararlanarak, Türk popüler müzik tarihinin bu özgül uğrağını biçimlendiren dinamikleri analiz etme girişimidir.</p>

A prescribed alternative mainstream: popular music and canon formation

Popular Music ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANTTI-VILLE KÄRJÄ
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Small Group ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Canon Formation ◽  
Historical Knowledge ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Media ◽  
Printed Word

This article applies the processes of canon formation suggested by Philip V. Bohlman in The Study of Folk Music in the Modern World to the historiography of popular music. Bohlman distinguishes between at least three different types of folk music canon: a small group canon, a mediated canon and an imagined canon. Adjusting Bohlman's ideas to the case of popular music, a reformulation is proposed in the form of an alternative canon, a mainstream canon, and a prescribed canon. The unstable power relations implied by the juxtaposition of different canons are considered, as well as the cumulative aspect of canon formation. The article also looks for each type of canon in the media through which historical knowledge is transmitted, and considers the tendency to narrate the historiography of marginal musics with more ephemeral media than the printed word.

Linking Information Saturation to Cultural Shifts in Preferences for Simpler Cultural Products

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael E. W. Varnum ◽  
Jaimie Arona Krems ◽  
Colin Morris ◽  
Igor Grossmann
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Partial Correlation ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Auto Correlation ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Ecological Changes ◽  
Draft Version ◽  
American Popular Music ◽  
Cultural Shifts ◽  
Over Time

***DRAFT VERSION, 3/2019. THIS PAPER HAS NOT BEEN PEER REVIEWED. PLEASE DO NOT DISTRIBUTE OR CITE WITHOUT PERMISSION***How has the complexity of cultural products changed over time and what is responsible for these changes? A cultural compression hypothesis (CCH) suggests that changes in simplicity (vs. complexity) of cultural products is associated with shifts in the volume of cultural products, with greater within-domain volume of products facilitating evolution within the domain toward simpler products. To test this hypothesis, we introduce a novel approach to assessing lyrical complexity in popular music over a period of six decades. Consistent with the CCH, we show that the average lyrical compressibility of American popular music (an index of simplicity) has increased over time and that this rise is driven by increases in the amount of music produced annually (an indicator of the amount of cultural products people have to choose from). This relationship holds controlling for a number of potentially-related ecological changes and alternative explanations, and when accounting or correcting for temporal auto-correlation using a variety of methods (including correcting significance thresholds based on observed auto-correlation, partial correlation analysis controlling for year, and using auto.ARIMA to assess the contribution of amount of music produced to compressibility over and above autocorrelation in the two time series). Results of auto.ARIMA forecasts confirm the contribution of amount of music produced to success of more repetitive songs and suggest that the trend of increasing simplicity will continue over the next several decades. We discuss implications of the cultural compression hypothesis for understanding cultural evolution and social change.

Gamers (Don't) Fear the Reaper

2016 ◽  
pp. 71-91
Author(s):  
Andréane Morin-Simard
Keyword(s):  
Video Games ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Television Series ◽  
The Media ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Relationship

Given the pervasiveness of popular music in the contemporary media landscape, it is not unusual to find the same song in multiple soundtracks. Based on theories of intertextuality and communication, this chapter seeks to define the relationship which develops between two or more narrative and/or interactive works that share the same song, and to understand the effects of such recontextualizations on the gamer's experience. The media trajectory of Blue Öyster Cult's “Don't Fear the Reaper” is mapped as a network to categorize the many complex intersections between video games, films and television series which feature the song. Three video games are analyzed to propose that the song's previous associations with other works may positively or negatively interfere with the music's narrative and ludic functions within the game.

Animating Artifact Spirits in the 2.5-Dimensional World

2020 ◽  
pp. 55-65
Author(s):  
Akiko Sugawa-Shimada
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Young People ◽  
Web Browser ◽  
Cultural Products ◽  
Folk Belief ◽  
Folk Beliefs ◽  
Mobile Game ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Mix ◽  
Online Web

In Japanese folk belief, inanimate objects used for 100 years are believed to be granted a spirit. They are called tsukumogami, or artefact spirits. Through personification of the spirits in recent popular cultural products, the belief of tsukumogami has been popularized among young people who are unaware of the folk belief. One of the most popular works utilizing personified tsukumogami is Token Ranbu-ONLINE-, an online web browser (2015) and mobile game (2016). It has been adapted into 2.5-dimensional plays and musicals, anime works, and other media forms. The article explores how tsukumogami of Japanese swords are adapted in the media mix strategy of Token Ranbu. It argues that those adaptations serve to provide a spiritual site where Japanese folk beliefs can be traced. Through her study, the author also shows how Japanese folk beliefs (a mixture of Shintoism, Buddhism, and Chinese philosophies) are constructed, consumed, and used in Japan’s contemporary popular culture.

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