Search results for ""Author Karl Spracklen""

Alternativity delineates those spaces, scenes, club-cultures, objects and practices in modern society that are considered to be actively designed to be counter or resistive to mainstream popular culture. The idea of the alternative in popular culture became mainstream with the rise of the counter culture in 1960s America (though there were earlier forms of alternative cultures in America and other Western countries). Alternativity is associated with marginalization, both actively pursued by individuals, and imposed on individuals and sub-cultures, and was originally represented and constructed through acts of transgression, and through shared sub-cultural capital. This edited collection maps the landscape of alternativity and marginalization, providing new theory and methods in a currently under-theorized area, setting out the issues, questions, concerns and directions of this area of study. It demonstrates the theoretical richness and empirical diversity of the interdisciplinary field it encompasses, and is deliberately feminist in its approach and its composition, with a majority of the contributors being women. Divided into three sub-sections, focused on sub-cultures, bodies and spaces, contributors explore this exciting new terrain, both through critiques of theory and new theoretical developments, and case studies of alternativity and marginalization in practice and in performance, expanding our understanding of the alternative, the liminal and the transgressive.

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Metal is a form of popular music. Popular music is a form of leisure. In the modern age, popular music has become part of popular culture, a heavily contested collection of practices and industries that construct place, belonging and power. The arrival of Donald Trump in the White House has shown that angry white men still wield huge social and cultural power in this new century. The aim of this monograph is to explore metal music - might be seen as leisure spaces that resist the norms and values of the mainstream; but also how they might also serve to re-affirm and construct those norms and values. In particular, this book is interested in how forms of metal might work to re-imagine masculinity, race, nation and class in an intersectional way through the myth of warrior masculinity and blood and soil. This monograph explores the history of the myths, and the reaction by fans to the music. The focus is extended to bands that use the warrior-nation myth in places and countries beyond the global North, and in ways that challenge or subvert hegemony.

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The origins and deeds of the old Goths were constructed by Roman historians in fear of the Goth as a barbarian outsider; at the same time, the Goths were themselves the heroic subject of their own histories, constructed by their supporters as stories of their mythical origin and the deeds that led them to be rulers of their own kingdoms in post-Roman Late Antiquity. Who the old Goths were, their origins and their deeds, was a product of history, historiography and myth-making. In this book, Spracklen and Spracklen use the idea of collective memory to explore the controversies and boundary-making surrounding the genesis and progression of the modern gothic alternative culture. Spracklen and Spracklen argue that goth as sub-culture in the eighties was initially counter cultural, political and driven by a musical identity that emerged from punk. However, as goth music globalised and became another form of pop and rock music, goth in the nineties retreated into an alternative sub-culture based primarily on style and a sense of transgression and profanity. By this century goth became the focus of teenage rebellions, moral panics and growing commodification of counter-cultural resistance, so that by the goth has effectively become another fashion choice in the late-modern hyper-real shopping malls, devoid generally of resistance and politics. Goth, like punk, is in danger of being co-opted altogether by capitalism. This book suggests that the only way for goth culture to survive is if it becomes transgressive and radical again.

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This book defines the key ideas, scholarly debates, and research activities that have contributed to the formation of the international and interdisciplinary field of Metal Studies. Drawing on insights from a wide range of disciplines including popular music, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and ethics, this volume offers new and innovative research on metal musicology, global/local scenes studies, fandom, gender and metal identity, metal media, and commerce. Offering a wide-ranging focus on bands, scenes, periods, and sounds, contributors explore topics such as the riff-based song writing of classic heavy metal bands and their modern equivalents, and the musical-aesthetics of Grindcore, Doom metal, Death metal, and Progressive metal. They interrogate production technologies, sound engineering, album artwork and band promotion, logos and merchandising, t-shirt and jewellery design, and fan communities that define the global metal music economy and subcultural scene. The volume explores how the new academic discipline of metal studies was formed, also looking forward to the future of metal music and its relationship to metal scholarship and fandom. With an international range of contributors, this volume will appeal to scholars of popular music, cultural studies, and sociology, as well as those interested in metal communities around the world.

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