“The fear of subculture being co-opted, repackaged, and sold back to the masses as a watered down, inauthentic version of itself, has been realized several times—in the case of hip hop, originally an underground political and arts movement hijacked by commercial promoters and record executives and re-sold to the general public as mostly devoid of its political content, and then in the case of Riot Grrrl, a grassroots feminist rebellion by adolescent girls that was converted by the mainstream media into a fashion trend, and also, in the case of punk itself, which has been co-opted and commercialized and sold to us for so many years that most people argue it’s already dead. As In Every Town makes clear, however, punk—or at least, the spirit of punk is still very much alive—not in the form of individuals, but in the form of communities. In the form of organizations that foster the growth of authentic youth culture as a form of resistance to the dominant, commercial, whitewashed, masculine, and inauthentic cultural ideologies of our day … . . . . Some may fear that publicizing information that was previously available only through private relationships with others in “the scene” may contribute to the further weakening of underground culture. But the fact is that the Internet has changed everything about underground music, and about who can access it, and how. Whether we like it or not, ours is a new, open source culture, where sharing information doesn’t necessarily mean selling out.”
(via amyrebeccaklein)
