CULS20015 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Heterosexuality, One Direction, Consumerism
15 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Lecture 8: gender, girls and the mainstream - music for basic bitches
Gender
• As a form of socialization, product of discourse, yet performed through and by bodies
• Identity that is hierarchal
• Complementary heterosexuality" -> masculinity and femininity as opposing forces but compliment
each other
Gender and music
• Music as cultural product -> shapes and influenced by wider society -> "white-supremacist-
capitalist-patriarchy"
• Popular music contains numerous messages about gendered behaviour, gendered power
dynamics, gender roles etc
• Certain music sounds, structures, instruments, vocal techniques, etc have been gendered
• Nothing we do is not gendered
Rock
• Means of production largely controlled by men
• Rock confines sexuality to the cock, eroticism in thrusting, grinding etc, not whole body, but
phallic -> no space for women
• Very masculine genre
• Women have little opportunity and little encouragement to be performers themselves -> shapes
the way music is taught, appreciated etc
Techno
• Digital tech needed to make this music is gendered masculine
• Lack of female DJs and producers = lack of role models -> makes it hard for women to see
themselves in that position
• Process of gatekeeping -> men more likely to learn IT, get gigs, assumed as competent by
audiences
• Not vocally dominant, hard beats -> associated w masculinity and masculine power
• Dancing to techno almost purely physical as opposed to aesthetic -> makes it more like a
"workout"
The mainstream
• Loosely defined flexible term that can refer to a place; cultural force; mass audiences; an
adjective; a synonym for normative; a socio-economic category
• A term that often operates on an ideological level as the 'other' to the subcultural, the authentic
etc
• Certain types of music that comes to dominate everyday life -> what is mainstream is pop but is
more particular than that bc of its connotations
• Taste as a means of distinction
• Not totally subjective and random but in complex ways we are already predisposed to have
certain tastes due to out social class, and out tastes due to our social class, and our tastes and
preferences actually work to sustain and reproduce class distinction
• Social identity formed through a sense of inclusion and exclusion
Gender and cultural value
• Women's authorship and creativity largely judges as lesser than that of men's
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
