Defending ski-jumpers: A critique of theories of youth sub-cultures

Abstract

Pop music can be a force of either the most unmitigated idiocy or of extraordinary emancipation, but as a very young, highly exploitative and very fluid branch of modern capitalism it offers unique chances. There is certainly a delicious vulgarity, infuriating megalomania, desperate clamour for glamour, and a bewildering style. But over the last five years since the punk explosion and the international recognition of reggae music, beneath all the crap a surprisingly high proportion of the music has aimed at educating rather than anaesthetising the senses – in illuminating rather than obscuring reality, in heightening awareness rather than promoting stupidity . . . There have also been depressing band waggons of near-rapist heavy metal music, vogues for arty nihilism and the current phase of military flippancy, elaborate hair-dos and pseudo-Latin vocalists keener on getting down and boogying than standing up and fighting.

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