Dick Hebdige's reading "From Culture to Hegemony; Subculture; The Unnatural Break" discusses hegemonic discourse. I particularly enjoyed reading about hegemony as a moving equilibrium. Hegemony is a concept that we have been discussing since CMC 100. It is where social groups hold power over another subordinate group or put in Hebdige's terms "exert 'total social authority'. However, it cannot be simply gained. It needs to be won, reproduced and then sustained. It is a moving equilibrium because it contains relations of forces favorable or unfavorable to different tendencies.
I really liked the quote by Hall on page 153 that refers to challenging the normative world which breaches our expectancies. I think that this is what we do every day as a CMC class. We are analyzing the media and seeing what makes our norms exist and challenging them. We recognize that hegemony is prevalent in the media whether it is in magazines, films, television etc...
When the example of Punks going against the grain and violating norms came up, I thought of when in the past few years the gay community starting 'coming out'. To many people, this was violating the social norm that it should be a man and a woman together - especially when it comes to marriage. This 'unleashed a storm and tempest' (153) by challenging the symbolic order. They were perceived as the Other by many. Families were ‘disgraced’ and people viewed it as ‘wrong’. I think that my generation as opposed to the older ones is the first to be more open to this group of people. However, hegemony shows that people still think in terms of a man and woman together. This is evident as it is rare to see same sex couples portrayed in the media. I have yet to see a same sex couple modeling together in a magazine or commercial.
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