Subculture Theory

A subculture is a group of people with distinct common behaviours and values that can separate them from a larger culture that they are also part of. Subcultures could have similar tastes and values in anything from politics to clothing and music. In this case I am talking about subcultures in music, some examples of subcultures in music are, Punk, Hippies, Emos and Indie. Subcultures in music are usually people who are not in the mainstream - so they usually go against what is popular, such as music that is in the charts.

There are three main subcultures that I have looked at, and they are Grant McCracken, CCCS (The Centre for Contemporary Culture Studies), and Hebdige's theory.
McCracken was previously the director of the Institute of  Contemporary Culture and a senior lecturer at the Harvard Business School. He believed that the postmodern world is full of diversity, dynamism and creativity, and that subcultures are not a result of groups rebelling from mainstream culture. McCracken believes that if we were to look at the array of values and ideologies then we will be unable to say that all subcultures come from just one initial culture.

However, CCCS subculture theory appears to go completely against McCrackens theory and says that it assumes all subcultures do come from just one culture and that subcultures are formed as a reaction to mainstream. So mainstream is the big culture that all of these subcultures were formed from as many people wanted to rebel against what was considered the normal and popular.

The last theory I looked at was Dick Hebdige, he is a British media theorist and sociologist, he is mainly known for his study and research on subcultures. Hebdige came to the conclusion that although some people think that subcultures only appear to be different, deep down they are all the same. He also states that if you look deeper, there is enough richness to warrant remaining 'subcultures' as 'little cultures'. He decided that subcultures are created by bringing together people with similar characteristics who feel neglected and overseen by societies norm and want to create their own identity by joining one of these subcultures.

The target audience for my music video for Example's 'Stay Awake' would likely be considered as a mainstream culture rather than as a subculture, due to the fact that my artist is regularly played on the radio and sometimes in the top charts, also as many of his music videos are regularly played on mainstream music channels such as MTV Dance. I think the subculture theory that applies to my music video the most is Hebdige, this is because he believes that the mainstream culture is made up of many different cultures, and as my music video is under the genre of dance I believe this genre makes up part of the mainstream. Also, the dance genre is usually mixed with other genres/cultures, for example some dance songs are also mixed with Rap, R'n'B and pop, so this links with Hebdige's theory. All of these genres are subcultures, but when put together they do all create part of the mainstream, so my music video for Example's 'Stay Awake' is mainly under the dance genre and will follow Hebdige's theory more so than the other two theorists.