Hebdige

In Dick Hebdige’s article, “From Culture to Hegemony; Subculture: The Unnatural break he explores the concept of culture and is mindless acceptance as natural or inherent. In his piece Hebdige refers to the ideas and definition of other theorists such as Barthes. Barthes is one of my favorite theorists from previous Critical Media and Cultural study classes probably because he was one of the more straight forward theorists and his concepts were easy to comprehend. Overall, Barthes believed that culture stretched farther than opera or books. That culture was involved in our everyday lives. Culture is in the way we great one another, the phrasings we use, our body language, our manners, and in our accepted modes of behavior in relation to specific circumstances. Hebdige focuses on ideologies and hegemonies. Both are forms of or a way of controlling culture. They define what the ‘norm’ of the culture is, and those defining it are not the population in its entirety, but instead an elite group which establishes dominance over the rest of the populace. Therefore, the ideology benefits only a few and oppresses the rest. I really like Hebdige’s relation to Hegemony as a moving equilibrium, because the dominate group of people, or bourgeoisie, is every changing. It does not change in mere days but over long periods of time, new populaces come into power, and then their dominate ideal are accepted as norm. A culture is neither fixed not static, but continuously flowing, evolving and changing over time. Hebdige refers to the subculture as the unnatural break. If the dominate culture is what is considered natural, than the subculture of the oppressed is ‘unnatural’. Often referred to as the protarriate, the subculture does not have dominance in the society; therefore, their cultural aspects go against what is seemingly accepted as normal. This sensation can cause incorporation and assimilation. Subcultures may possibly lose their culture and adapt the dominate cultural norms. Overall Hebdige is dissecting culture, and causing his audience to look at everyday life and sequences critically, instead of simply conforming.

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Kelsey Hughes