Initial Topic Proposal: 8-Bit Culture

For my final ethnography project, I'd like to explore the virtual and real life elements of the 8-bit subculture. 8-bit culture interests me because of its presence across many media, and I want to explore how a culture that is entrenched in digital history represents itself in real life. There's also an interesting tension to explore, which is how 8-bit culture is getting appropriated into the mainstream. What does it mean that Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World became a movie? What does it mean that Anamanaguchi, a canonical 8-bit rock band, wrote the soundtrack? In addition, I'd like to explore the style of 8-bit culture. Does the pixelated reduction that is present in the music and the art come across in the way members of the scene represent themselves physically? If so, what does that look like and how does it alter our perception of the culture?

I'll take a look at the many online forums and hubs for 8-bit music and culture. These include 8bitpeoples, 8bc, 8bitguerilla and micromusic. These sites have forums and serve as places for conversation, as well as music creation and sharing. A large part of 8-bit and chiptune music is the creation of 8-bit covers of popular and rock songs. I'll be attempting to interview performers and artists both electronically and in person. Anamanaguchi are playing a show in Boston on December 1st and I hope to attend and interview members of the band. When I am home in Los Angeles for Thanksgiving I can also conduct in-person interviews with people who are active members of the scene, both in its online and in-person manifestations. I'm also hoping to find some students at Brown who are involved in the culture as well.

I think this will make a really interesting project because of 8-bit culture's relation to media and distribution, as well as its translocal nature.

Critical Review #3: "From the Mission Myth to Chicano Nationalism"

Mina Yang explores the Chicano movement in Los Angeles through its musical and political roots. She starts by giving historical context on immigrant life and the cultural pastiche Los Angeles, unpacking two contrasting mythic narratives of Mexican American life. One myth is that of the mission, where "music permeated every aspect of life, endowing everyday vents with magic and gaiety." (102) The music that accompanies this myth is filled with lyrics of romantic heartbreak and sorrow. The other myth, much more real, is that which accompanies the musical "corrido." Rather than lament heartbreak, lyrics of corridos "dwell on the details that flesh out the immigrant's misery with excruciating realism." (106) Yang proves music an integral part of Mexican American culture, and important element of their identity -- "defined ethnically by what they were not." (107) As civil rights movements picked up nationally and locally, Mexican American appropriated music as a political form. Los Angeles became a hub for the Chicano subculture, entrenched in both political activism and a musical style that borrowed elements from all of the minorities of east Los Angeles. This subculture came to define a generation of Mexican Americans and "gave the Chicano generation its first taste of independence from Anglo and African musicians and recordings, even if [their] sounds reflected the mixed heritage of Mexican American culture." (114)

Questions:

How did the Chicano subculture break the binary of black and white? If, as Hebidge suggests, subculture presents a binary between the mainstream and the independent, what aspects of Chicano subculture allowed it to turn the strict lines into a gradient? Was it because this subculture was "self-enclosed?" (114) Also, what role did Los Angeles geography play in giving this musical subculture a very unique political association?

Critical Review #2: "Translocal Connections and the Goth Scene"

Paul Hodkinson discusses the translocal nature of the goth music scene in England, tracing its presence across geographical bounds. He reveals his position as a "critical insider" and aims to "assess the consistency of the goth scene from place to place and to establish the extend to which it was experienced as translocal by participants." (132) Hodkinson describes two categories of cultural connections that goths experience. Identity and and taste comprise abstract connections, while connections through travel commerce and media make up the concrete. His interviews with members of the culture reveal their connection to each other across local boundaries, mostly through gatherings in physical (music festivals) or virtual space (online communities). Connections between goths depend far less on a locally-based community, and much more on a shared aesthetic. Shop owners and DJs share information about what sells, and through compilation CDs and curated stores, goths can find music and clothing that fit their common style. Hodkinson writes this account to prove that musical subcultures don't have to be rooted geographically in a single area, that they can exist translocally or in virtual space.

Questions: Hodkinson says that "goths perceived that they had more in common with other goths hundreds or thousands of miles away than they did with most nonaffiliated members of their immediate locality." (134) Is this commonality something that is unique to goth subculture? What traits of goth music culture make it so that this is possible? What is the relationship between the translocal nature of a scene and the connection between its members? Is isolation from the "immediate locality" what fosters translocality?

Critical Review #1: "Exploring the Meaning of the Mainstream (or why Sharon and Tracy Dance around their Handbags)"

In "Exploring the Meaning of the Mainstrem," Sarah Thornton details the subculture of club music both subjectively and objectively. She begins her essay with a personal account of attending a series of acid house raves, profiling the events as she experienced them. She then branches out into a larger social discussion of the culture and its ethnographic complications: how club culture deals with gender and class. As the subtitle indicates, she discusses the notion of "handbag house," and the Sarahs and Tracys that were icons of what some perceived to be the mainstream. The handbag being an image of housewifery and adulthood, Sarahs and Tracys are decidedly un-hip. This subjective approach (Thornton portrays the world as its participants see it) culminates with a discussion of subcultural capital--the knowledge of certain members of a subculture that ascends their status. Before transitioning into her objective account, Thornton acknowledges the impossibility of being both a participant in and an observer of club culture, as the two are implicitly disconnected. But as an objective observer, Thornton fails to "find a crowd [she] could comfortably identify as typical, average, ordinary, majority or mainstream." (106) This substantiates her main argument that the concepts of mainstream and subculture are fluid rather than rigid--"mainstream culture" is actually to broad and assumptive to view with a sociological lens.

Discussion topics: How does social media affect the hierarchy and exclusivity of club culture? How much cache lies in secrecy--does Twitter ruin this subculture or enable it? What happens to the idea of "mainstream" when there is no majority? Based on the data Thornton gives, women are far more likely to go out dancing than men. What does this say about the nature of socialization in the subculture?