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Re-producing pop

The aesthetics of ambivalence in a contemporary dance music

University of California, Los Angeles, USA, luvaas{at}ucla.edu

Electroclash is an electronic dance music popular in cities like New York, Los Angeles, and London between 2001 and 2004. In this article, I use the example of electroclash to demonstrate the significance of media in structuring social reality. I argue that electroclash constitutes a set of aesthetic tactics for living through the confusions and contradictions of life in a media-saturated, increasingly globalized, late capitalist economy. It is produced by a diverse assemblage of urban youth, whose primary commonality is an ambivalent relationship towards media. Electroclash artists, I argue, engage with and respond to meanings within existing media texts. They ironically perform the clichés and representations of popular culture, re-investing them with critical, though often ambiguous new meanings. In these re-readings of media, I conclude, electroclash artists blur the distinction between celebration and critique, and ultimately complicate any clear-cut, theoretical opposition between resistance and accommodation.

Key Words: consumption • dance music • mass media • performance • popular culture • style • youth

International Journal of Cultural Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2, 167-187 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/1367877906064029


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