Media+Essay+1--Emilee

Media Essay #1

“Rage rock” is not only a dare, it is also a threat. The popularity of music celebrating anger and hate is not simply a powerful statement, it also a fashion trend. As rebellious as the chaos is, it is also a very systematic approach to breaking the feedback loop; a Sisyphean chore.

At the same time, the gist of rage rock is basically just another teen culture trying to define itself; attempting to create a niche in which they can feel comfortable and can express mutual ideas and beliefs. Inevitably, they are doing the same thing marketers are—by creating a certain “type” of music, or a “new” type of expression, they are also creating boundaries encircling that freedom. By creating what they consider “liberation,” they have to define “liberation”; they are creating a set of rules, mutual likes and behaviours, and expected norms that people of the same group will follow to belong to that crowd. This leads to eventual homogenization if the group is allowed to grow outside a small gang of high school friends. Is this not the same thing the “deviants” are complaining about in the first place?

Admittedly the main difference is that this culture is something they are creating themselves; something teens feel they own and isn’t been chewed and spit out and fed back to them—they feel less force-fed and more independent. The boxes they are shutting themselves into are homier because they’ve constructed them themselves. The norms and laws they follow they’ve formed themselves, obviously because creating them holds a secret thrill similar to creating one’s own religion. Because this worldview is supported by others, it is considered “normal,” within crowds of outsiders.

Needless to say, the relationship between people of the same group is very unique. Founders of things like “rage rock” will share this closeness— a relationship which marketers are constantly trying to replicate and end up mirroring by gaining control of these creators, and very willing to exploit. As a result, the creators of raw potential are also creating their own demise. By being involved in this, teens are merely creating a label for themselves so marketers don’t have to. Consider the fact that even if they are given labels like “destructive,” “immoral,” or “insane” by “society” and “the mainstream,” they still feel acceptance within their own group of outsiders; exactly what any other clique is. The only difference between that and already-declared labels is that marketers haven’t picked up on the nametag yet. Just as MTV offers a very limited selection of music, effectively creating partiality in its audience by streamlining their options, fans of rage rock could be thinking they aren’t yet part of the system, when in all actuality, they already are. By defining themselves, they are already defining a genre that MTV only has to pick up, chew up, and sell back to them at the mall.

Take the basics of this feedback loop and multiply its effects by other contributing factors; the mass media and pop-culture marketers exploiting the results of its own ugly creation; the perpetual reactions to the feedback loop, and general progress. With recent advances of technology, communication, and globalism, the rate at which teen culture can be identified, processed, exaggerated and sold back to them has become an intense, chaotic cycle. Can something this powerful and this monstrous really be fought with protests? Can the underhanded tactics of stealth marketing really be combated against with such comparably feeble remonstrations? Are the increasingly destructive expressions a cry out against branding, or simply contributing towards it? Do we really live in a world where we have to hide ourselves from the prying eyes of the ones who created us?