Alternations

2009 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janne Mäkelä
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
International Level ◽  
National Cultures ◽  
Metal Music ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Media ◽  
Relationship Of

This article examines the national-international relationship of recent music discourses in Finland. Since 2000, Finnish popular music has gained notable recognition at the international level. Some acts (e.g. HIM, Children of Bodom and Apocalyptica) have even succeeded in the US market, which traditionally has been considered important for music performers. This export boom has had a significant role in the legitimization of rock music, yet it has revealed how contemporary national cultures are produced in a context of popular culture in which distinctiveness often is sought globally. Tracing the changes in Finnish music exports and using the media discourse of metal music as an example, this article argues that international fame not only supports the commercial prosperity and institutional production of Finnish popular music, but also appears as a form of modern nation-building.

scholarly journals Practices of Constructing Regional Identity in the Media Discourse of Tatarstan

2020 ◽  
pp. 52-66
Author(s):  
O. V. Ilyina ◽  
E. V. Kablukov
Keyword(s):  
Regional Identity ◽  
Cultural Identification ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Traditional Religion ◽  
Regional Center ◽  
The Media ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Empirical Material

The authors consider identity as a conditional discursive construct, the result of subjects of discourse identifications and offer their own methodology for its analysis. It is shown that regional identity can be represented in the form of a model based on spatial and temporal identifications that specify the coordinate system of reality in which there are residents of the region in question. The concept of space-time is complemented by a set of diverse thematic identifications, including economic, political, cultural, ethnic, religious, linguistic, etc. For the first time in the framework of the socio-constructionist paradigm, a discursive model of the regional identity of the inhabitants of Tatarstan is constructed in the article. The empirical material of the study is the corpus of texts of Tatarstan media for 2017-2019. It is shown that the spatial identification of Tatarstan people includes the practice of selecting, nominating and describing significant geographical objects, the practice of constructing relations of Tatarstan with other geographical objects. Particular attention is paid to the practice of constructing the capital status of a regional center, as well as the relationship of spatial and political identifications. Analyzing the practices of ethnic, religious, linguistic and cultural identification, the authors come to the conclusion that the identity of the Tatarstan people is ethnocentric: despite the declared multinationality and multi-confessionality of the region, Tatars as an ethnic group, Tatar language, Tatar culture and Islam as a traditional religion of the Tatars are of particular importance.

scholarly journals Where is the Law in ‘Unlawful Combatant’?: Resisting the Refrain of the Right-eous

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-159
Author(s):  
Melissa Gregg ◽  
Glen Fuller
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Leading Edge ◽  
Space Time ◽  
Holy War ◽  
War Machine ◽  
The Us ◽  
Saddam Hussein ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right

The rhythms of war and popular culture intermingle, amplify each other and become expressive. At the leading edge of the US military’s war machine assemblage, as the nation of Iraq is deterritorialised from the despotic signifier ‘Saddam Hussein’, the soldiers’ music consolidates a milieu of the battlefield. It also consolidates a space-time of the here-now with something less horrific. The popular music refrain produces a home away from home. In their patriotism, many of these singer–soldiers see a religious act. When someone is saying ‘God is on our side’ they are no longer talking about the nation-based context for which, whatever the rules of war might be, such rules are relevant. They’re talking about a Holy War. It has different rules. How to hold them to any actual account is the difficulty we seek to explore here.

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>

scholarly journals Luxury in Germany: Sick Cars and Healthy Bodies

Society ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brigitte Biehl
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Social Context ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
West Germany ◽  
Limited Resources ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
The Media

AbstractThe car is one of the few luxury items that historically is widely accepted in Germany, the land of “discreet consumption.” This contribution draws on social science research, includes writings on popular culture, and presents examples from people and their cars in the media that give evidence of how luxury is increasingly emotionally charged, enriched, and negotiated. Cars were status symbols in Germany as a divided nation, with people in West Germany driving a Mercedes and people in the East driving a Trabant. Today, German rappers praise their “sick” cars, and paradox 'Bio-Germans' shield their luxury body in an expensive SUV. These examples illustrate luxury consumption that aesthetically and narratively links identities to cultural heritage. The media discourse reflects the symbolic and also the increasingly affective nature of luxury, while healthy “luxury” bodies remain in a competition for limited resources in a social context.

Popular Music and the Modernist Dystopia: Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four

2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-41
Author(s):  
Alex MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
New World ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Popular Songs ◽  
Post Modernism ◽  
Brave New World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This essay explores musical references in Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, including music imagery and allusions to popular songs of the 1920s and 1940s. Huxley used the popular music of the Brave New World as an indicator of its emotional shallowness, represented by such immortal songs as “Hug Me Till You Drug Me, Honey.” Brave New World’s scorn for popular music, and for popular culture in general, situates Huxley’s famous dystopia as a high Modernist work. In Orwell’s case, implicit references to World War II hits such as “We’ll Meet Again” and “I’ll Be Seeing You” reflect ironically upon the relationship of Winston and Julia and their terrible situation at the end of the novel. His treatment of the musical thrush and the singing Prole laundrywoman plays a more hopeful note, and a positive attitude to popular songs and popular culture situates Nineteen Eighty-Four on the cusp of Post-Modernism. With respect to the critical discourse about hope and despair in these dystopian texts, the essay suggests that signs of hopefulness in Brave New World are very slight, although they do exist. The music of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and some other factors, lend support to the view that Orwell’s novel is not so despairing as it is sometimes made out to be.

Fragments of a Queer Feminist Rock and Pop History in Vienna

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Fürnkranz
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Electronic Music ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Pop Music ◽  
Rock Band ◽  
Music Scenes ◽  
Music Scene ◽  
Rock N Roll

The historical development of Viennese rock and pop music started with rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s, continued with beat music and the “dialect wave” in the late 1960s, punk in the 1980s, the popular Viennese electronic music scene in the 1990s, and is currently enjoying a renaissance of the “dialect wave.” Artists like the Rosée Sisters, Austria’s first all-female rock band founded in 1962, Topsy Girl, A-Gen 53, or SV Damenkraft were active in local music scenes. In retrospect, they are considered as exceptions in the historiography of Austrian popular music. This chapter discusses several feminist and queer artists and collectives in Austria, their position in popular culture, and in historical and geographical contexts. The author concentrates primarily on all-female bands, LGBTIQ+ artists, and queerpop projects to illustrate diverse approaches to music, feminism, and their position within the pop and rock music scenes in Vienna.

The new ‘tween’ music industry: The Disney Channel, Kidz Bop and an emerging childhood counterpublic

Popular Music ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-436 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tyler Bickford
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Music Industry ◽  
Children's Music ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
The Us ◽  
Music Market ◽  
Top 40

AbstractThis article examines the expansion of the US children's music industry in the last decade. It considers the sanitising of Top 40 pop for child audiences in the Kidz Bop compilations, the entrance of Disney into the popular music market and the meteoric rise of tween music products such as High School Musical, Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers and Justin Bieber. It shows that, as children increasingly consume mainstream musical products, in the converse dynamic children's artists themselves play an increasingly prominent role in popular culture and in many ways have taken the lead both in commercial success and in stylistic innovations. Examining public expressions of age-based solidarity among celebrity musicians associated with children, this article argues that children's music is increasingly articulated through tropes of identity politics, and represents the early stages of a childhood counterpublic.

scholarly journals Metaphor as a means of creating a humorous effect in Bulgarian media texts

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Viktotrovna Stoyanova
Keyword(s):  
General Context ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
Implicit Functions ◽  
Cognitive Mechanism ◽  
Sociocultural Factor ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Texts ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Linguistic Means

The paper is devoted to the questions of metaphor as a linguistic means and cognitive mechanism for creating a humorous effect in Bulgarian media texts. There is a similarity between the nature of metaphors and the humor, the ability of perception which refers to the evolutionary acquisition. The relationship of metaphor and humor is manifested in the comparison of the contradictory and the combination of the disproportionate. The humorous effect created by the metaphor in the media discourse is included in the general context and is the result of deliberate efforts, in accordance with pragmatic, linguistic and cultural settings. Despite the universality of humor and metaphor, the interpretation of knowledge, modeled by a comic metaphor, is governed by the sociocultural factor. The implicit functions of the metaphor fit into the functional and pragmatic parameters of media discourse, making the metaphor an integral part of media speech. The collected material allows us to conclude that there are single comic metaphors in Bulgarian media texts, or metaphors create the humorous effect of a fragment / whole media text based on one or more metaphorical models. Increasingly, in a modern Bulgarian media discourse, a metaphor is implemented as a construct script for the semantic development of the text.

‘You [still] have to fight for your right to party’: music television as billboards of post-modern difference

Popular Music ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-332 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence Grossberg
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Rock Music ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Rock And Roll ◽  
Contemporary Culture ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Political Struggles ◽  
Music Television ◽  
Contemporary Life

Rock music has not only provided the soundtrack of our lives, but a large part of the image repertoire as well. Neither the conjunction of popular music and other media (including television and film) nor the inseparable relation between rock and roll and visual iconographies, styles and attitudes is new. Nevertheless, it is clear that the force of these conjunctures in our cultural lives is rapidly spreading, viral-like, across media, genres, contexts, interests and generations. This is neither surprising nor necessarily bad; as rock and roll generations have grown up and asserted their plurality and influence, it is their music which is taken for granted, offered as capitalist entertainment and sometimes exploited for marketing purposes. This reconfiguration, often described as rock ‘moving into the mainstream of contemporary culture’ has been enabled and even engendered by technological, social and economic conditions. But it is the speed with which this is being accomplished, the particular ways it is inserted into broader contexts, and the effects it is having that interest me. The topography of popular culture is obviously changing; how rock and roll has come to define the dominant forms of cultural enjoyment and even legitimacy, offers us an opportunity to map out some of the cultural changes of contemporary life, and their relations to ideological and political struggles.

scholarly journals Popular culture and the ’darker side’ of alternative spirituality: the case of metal music

2009 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 130-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Moberg
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Popular Music ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Music Culture ◽  
Spiritual Beliefs ◽  
Metal Music ◽  
Alternative Spirituality ◽  
Entertainment Value ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Over The Top

Metal is perhaps the most extreme and aggressive form of contemporary Western popular music. Even though it continues to spark controversy and debate, it has also enjoyed enduring popularity for decades and has spread on a global scale. Metal music and culture has always been characterized by its fascination for dark and austere themes and imagery. Commonly dealing with topics such as evil, death, war, alienation and suffering, metal groups have traditionally found much inspiration in the world of religion, particularly Judeo-Christian eschatology and apocalypticism, different forms of paganism, occultism, esotericism and, last but not least, Satanism. These kinds of religious/spiritual themes have arguably developed into an integral part of metal culture on the whole. They contribute significantly to investing metal music and culture with an apparent aura of sincerity and mystique as well as to raising its shock and entertainment value. At the same time, metal culture is also marked by its high degree of humour and self-irony, its fondness for exaggeration, spectacle and over-the-top theatrics. Even so, metal stands out as a global popular music culture replete with various kinds of often dark and austere religious and spiritual themes, many of which stand in stark contrast to Christianity. Seen in the wider context of the changing face of religion in the West and the increasingly important role played by popular culture in the transformation of religious and spiritual identities, metal has come to play an important role in the dissemination of a wide variety of ‘dark’ alternative religious/spiritual beliefs and ideas. This article sheds further light on this issue through focusing on some contemporary and successful metal groups from the Nordic countries. In relation to this, attention is also drawn to some of the ways in which dark alternative religious/spiritual ideas may be viewed as having become an inseparable part of some sections of metal culture as they have become actively and consciously explored, and sometimes explicitly pro­moted, by the well known contemporary metal groups discussed in this article.

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