coolbeans, 3/22

In Thursdays class, we discussed how everyone is a follower of an ideology. The more I thought about this, the more I realized that this is true. It is true that those who are a part of a subculture follow an ideology also even though it is not the hegemonic ideology. They are still subscribing to a set of different beliefs. But one might ask then, “what about those who do not believe in anything?” Well even those people are conforming to the ideology of not believing in anything. Everyone is a follower of ideology in a way because everyone believes in something and most likely there are other people who also believe in the same things. This is similar to Lyotard’s view that postmodernism causes the disappearance of the avant-garde. A subculture is seen as avant-garde until it becomes another social group for people to join. An ideology is seen as unique until other people start to follow the same ideology and then it becomes a part of the mainstream. When it becomes a part of the mainstream people forget the meaning behind the reason why people did what they did and instead they just do things because that is what people associate the culture with. For example, people who were considered to be followers of the “punk rock” subculture originally dressed the way that they dressed and did their hair the way that they did their hair in order to make a statement of rebellion against the establishment. They did it as a political message. These days it seems that the whole message of “punk rock” has been commodified and it has become a social group to subscribe to. Television shows, music videos, and movies about high school commodify the different social groups, telling people how they should act and what they should dress like to be in a particular social group. For example, through these media outlets athletes are told that they need shove smart kids into lockers and wear Abercrombie and Fitch, people who follow the subculture known as “gothic” are told that they must wear black and be angry at the world, and the smart kids are told that they must be powerless and have a poor sense of clothing coordination. The different subcultures have been commodified and people lose their originality by trying to conform to what media tells us these people should be like.