Indie Culture

Intro

What is Indie?

Postmodernist Theory

Subjectivity

Inspired

Determined

Innovative

Aesthetic

Carrying culture cachet (respected)

Rebellion and convention-breaking

Challenging the mainstream

Becoming mainstream

Deconstructionism

Tearing a text [indie] apart, revealing its contradictions and assumptions.

What are the assumptions or contradictions related to indie culture?

Living independently from the norm

Fashion Trend/ A Fad

Relates to the country of India

Hipsters

Modern day hippies

WHY?

Challenge/ question conventionality

Maximize sensitivity to subject's experience

Linguistic Domination

-This was the stance taken by some cinéphiles (person who is fond of motion pictures): one proposed that the film industry's mini-majors be renamed "dependies" (Newman, 2009, p. 17).

Film

• Indie film is any film that is not made by a large studio.
• These films are normally more personal to the director then part of the norm of Hollywood's films.

Films you might know

• 1st Terminator
• God's not dead
• The Passion Of The Christ
• Paranormal Activity

Independent film contains a populist rhetoric, against the system, against the grain. -James Mangold (director of Heavy)

Deconstructing Indies

1.Cultural codes

2.Artistic codes

3.Narrative codes

4.Cinematic Codes

5.Intertextual Codes

• Sociology
• Social context in ideology
• Structuralism & Semiotics
• Text and subtext
• Biographical
• Social background and career

Hipster Fashion Throughout the Years

Indie Culture

Fashion

2000: The Emo

2001: The Emo Redux

2002: The Ashton

2003: The Scenester

2004: The Twee

2005: The Fauxhemian

2006: The Mountain Man

2007: The Vintage Queen

2008: The Williamsberg

2009: The Meta-Nerd

Hipster fashion emerged in the early 2000s with the messy-on-purpose sort of look.

It started out in Brooklyn where the east coast culture to effect to the popular ideas of the hipster fashion.

From the trendy pieces of acid wash denim cutoff shorts to beat up old band T-shirts is one representation of the hipster fashion.

Theoretical

References

Gilmore, G. (n.d.). Long live Indie Film. ebscohost. Retrieved September 30, 2014, from

Levy, E. (1999). Cinema of outsiders: the rise of American independent film. New York: New York University Press.

Why is it considered a form of deviance?

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

What is indie?

"Language of strong dominating the weak" (the deviant)

Beginnings of...

"Looking at a subject’s own views as important in understanding deviance"

(Schwartz, Taylor, & Thio, 2013, p. 49)

Schwartz, M. D., Taylor, J. D., & Thio, A. (2013). Deviant behavior (11th edition.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Created by bored working-class youths

Refers to independent art

Idea of self-publishing and self-releasing

Original

Came to be in the 1970s with punk music

Sense of idealism and anti-corporate attitude

Make certain things for your friends and yourself

Influences from philosophical, political, and artistic movements; particularly modern art

Non-traditional

(Newman, 2009, p. 16)

First three "scenes" included Los Angeles, New York, and London

Music

Empowered

"However, these ideals had become marketable to the larger consumer culture, and major labels were buying or creating small boutique labels in order to capitalize on that trend " (Waits, 2008, p. 84).

Baker, B. [Bob Baker]. (2011, Dec. 8). What Is Indie? A Definition for Music, Books, Film & More [YouTube]. Retrieved from

Internet Fueling/Killing Growth

• Very Important

Has allowed for more accessibility and better distribution for smaller labels and imprints

Music

Has erased the need for shops, allowing even the smallest of brands to become available

Genesis 19:20

Then again, obtains more attention easily which makes small brands more popular and less "indie"

• Status Frustration
• Do It Yourself attitude
• Constructionist Theory
• Deviant?

Behold, this city is near enough to flee to, and it is a little one. Let me escape there -- is it not a little one? -- and my life will be saved!

Music

Steven

Spiritual Integration

• Independent record label
• Money Issue
• College radio
• Drug problems

References

Romans 12:2

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Colossians 2:8

See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces[a] of this world rather than on Christ

Mathew 5:13

“You are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.

Houston, T. (2012). The Homosocial Construction of Alternative Masculinities: Men in Indie Rock Bands. Journal Of Men's Studies, 20(2), 158-175.

Newman, M. (2009). Indie Culture: In Pursuit of the Authentic Autonomous Alternative. Cinema Journal, 48(3), 16-34.

Waits, J. C. (2008). Does ‘indie’ mean independence? Freedom and restraint in a late 1990s US college radio community. Radio Journal: International Studies In Broadcast & Audio Media, 5(2/3), 83-96

Schwartz, M. D., Taylor, J. D., & Thio, A. (2013). Deviant behavior (11th edition.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.