Ironic (In)Authenticity

Emmanuel College Ironic (In)authenticity A Class Based Theoretical Account of Contemporary Indie Culture Brian W. Westerlind Research Submission for Distinction in the Field of Communication, Media, and Cultural Studies Facuity Advisor: Dr. Christopher Craig 25 April 2013 © Brian W. Westerlind Abstract In this study I explore indie culture specifically as a manifestation of Zizek's cultural capitalism in which we are encouraged to consume in order to do culture and capitalism "better." In this sense, indie positions itself as a means to do authentic culture independently of the "mainstream," which it subsequently positions as an impure and inauthentic cultural space contaminated by corporate interests, conformity, and mindlessness. However, the dialectic relationship between indie and the mainstream reveals that indie instead functions as a culturally superior position of consumption of and within mass culture. Through analysis of both the dominant narrative of indie culture as well as the ironic indie subject, I demonstrate how indie functions as a position of (upper) middle class consumption that upholds class distinction while repressing antagonistic voices that challenge the very exploitive social structure upon which indie finds its articulation and with which it is aligned. Introduction I was recently working on this project at a chain coffee house when a single line from an exchange between the barista and another customer cut through my own thought. The customer, a 20-something female who wore a frayed leather jacket (perhaps frayed at home) and loud- patterned leggings (definitely factory made) said in a light ironic tone: "everyone's so alternative, and we're all the same, and it's great." This sentiment epitomizes indie culture today. First, it suggests that indie is a popular, or more precisely "mainstream," cultural formulation that has a problematic relationship with "the mainstream." As cultural dissidence is certainly profitable today, indie has been thoroughly commodified. Therefore, indie-and its dominant narrative prescription to do authentic culture and cultural production independent of mass culture-today functions as part and parcel of mass culture. Indeed, in this project I approach indie culture specifically as a middle class position of consumption. I am interested in how indie is consumed and how such consumption encourages individuals to conceptualize 2 themselves in tenns of an exteriority from the system in which they participate. Therefore, I am specifically interested in indie as a mass produced commodity and I am in no way attempting to undennine the work of small indie music or art scenes that strive for authenticity and autonomy by valuing DIY and distance from corporate influences. These communities certainly exist and I do believe there is value in such endeavors. However, I will also levy some critical pressure on the notion that such communities operate as real kernels of authentic cultural production within a cultural field co-opted by corporate profiteering. The point of course is that we must thoroughly consider just how we attempt to do culture "against the grain" when such cultural practice is still predicated upon consumption. Second the above quote demonstrates how individuals who participate in or identify with indie behave with the understanding that in tenns of its very own paradigm, indie is inauthentic. By ironically consuming indie culture (and also aspects of mass culture that have not been "indie-ed") the indie subject maintains a critical distance from consumed inauthenticity, thereby shoring up a sense of personal authenticity. The entire second half of this project is dedicated to exploring the indie subject as an ironic subject. Of course this is not to say that my construction of the indie subject is the only indie subject position out there. However, in light of late capitalism's commodification of indie, I do think that material conditions provide for the emergence of a dominant subject position in which irony figures most predominantly. I am concerned here specifically with the material conditions as realized within the context of late capitalism. Indeed, what the scholarship on indie culture lacks is a rigorous theoretical account of indie ideals and subjectivity through the lens of Marxism. In their respective studies of indie culture, Michael Newman and Ryan Hibbett have begun the 3 groundwork for this endeavor. Put simply, they argue that indie functions as a mode of consumption from which consumers derive a sense of superior taste. Hibbet sums it up nicely when he asserts that indie rock "satisfies among audiences a desire for social differentiation and supplies music providers with a tool for exploiting that desire" (56). Yet although Newman and Hibbett are clearly invested in Marxist ideas, they do not sufficiently theorize their important and certainly legitimate claims regarding indie culture. For example, how do material conditions not only exploit but also produce the desire for social differentiation in the first place? Also, how does all this fundamentally tie back to class? The notion of superior taste always advances a class position, and instead of skirting around class, or considering it simply as one (possibly peripheral) element of indie culture, we must thoroughly interrogate indie in terms of its class based constitution and functioning. The Narrative ofIndie Culture Let us begin with a deceptively simple binary upon which the dominant narrative of indie culture emerges. This, of course, being the binary opposition between indie and mainstream culture. Upon first consideration, indie's declaration of independence from the mainstream may appear to denote a formal rupture between two communities. Instead, the indie-mainstream binary emerges through the dual process in which indie constitutes itself, first through the constitution of an Other, and second through the subsequent positioning against this Other in terms of antithesis. Far from a clash between oppositional forces, indie needs mainstream opposition in order to be. It follows then that indie's disavowal from the mainstream must always 4 contain an internal inconsistency: although indie emerges for the very purpose of asserting its independence from the mainstream, it must always already exist in intimate relation to the mainstream precisely due to the categories' relation of mutual constitution. Thus, akin to the Hegelian master-slave dialectic that informs the most fundamental germ of Marxist thought, indie can only claim its independence from the mainstream through its relation with the mainstream, lest it extinguishes its own categorical existence. Nonetheless, indie culture establishes itself through this precarious relation. Structurally speaking, it emerges largely through negative relation. Indie positions the (ideologico-discursive) mainstream as a self evident and ubiquitous population through which indie emerges as a wholly negative and independent relation. Simply speaking, it largely defines itself through what it is not-in die is not mainstream. In his study of indie rock, Hibbett conceptualizes this fundamental structuring in terms of a negative relation: "Indie rock exists largely as an absence, a nebulous 'other' or as a negative value that acquires meaning from what it opposes. Indie rock is far from a static entity; rather, it is a malleable space filled by discourse and power" (58). As a structural absence, indie opens a space in which a moralizing cultural politics can ideologically position itself against a "bad" mainstream culture. Of course, paradoxically, the former must repeatedly conjure up the latter rather than attempt to abolish it in the name of "good culture." Before specifically interrogating the ideological function of the narrative of indie culture, we must first consider the "raw" discursive materials through which indie generally promulgates its moralizing prescription for good, pure culture and cultural production. A triad of interrelated ideals-authenticity, purity, and autonomy-saturates indie's discursive landscape. As opposed to privileging and isolating each ideal individually, I identify a triad here because from a 5 standpoint of semiotic functioning, the three ideals come to ambiguously signify and reciprocally denote each other within discourses about indie. Consider Newman's treatment of these ideals: "the alternative practitioner sees autonomy and authenticity as markers of their purity.. .In independent music and movies, the ideal of separation is most often figured as autonomy, as the power artists retain to control their creative processes. Autonomy, in turn, is seen as a guarantee of authenticity" (19). Here autonomy from the mainstream signifies authenticity, while autonomy and authenticity both signify purity. Of course, within this loose framework we could also say that purity and autonomy signify authenticity. Clearly the symbolic clarity and integrity of each term becomes less important than the whole triad's function to shore up a general symbolic bastion against the "mainstream." In order to advance its own position, indie invests the mainstream with notions of cultural, intellectual, and social inferiority at the same time it positions itself against the latter as a culturally superior relation. Indie produces the mainstream as an apocalyptic vision of an impure and inauthentic cultural space contaminated by corporate interests, conformity, and mindlessness. Indie conjures up the emptiness of the automaton in order to fill

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