Question 11

This advertisement for Airwalk shows relates to my topic in that it shows how music magazines advertise and identity of an oppositional nature, so that instead of advertising sports such as football or soccer it advertises skateboarding. This oppositional identity is made evident in the advertisement not only through the skateboarding, but also through the environment of the advertisement such as the graffiti.

This argument of how the music magazines sell an identity can be further expanded through the article “Johnny Can’t Dissent” by Thomas Frank. This article argues about the difficulty in dissenting from institutional power/corporations because the dissent is built into the marketing. In this case, dissent is the idea behind the identity being sold, and taking on this identity is still buying from major companies and is not really dissent at all. This identity is basically about the rebellion against dominant social ideas and instead being “all about the music” however, they are instead creating a new dominant within that group of people, and not dissenting but instead conforming to something else.

This idea of rebellion can also be expanded to talk about the article, “The Precession of Simulacra” by Jean Baudrillard. In this case, the identity of a music fan is a simulation of the identity of the musicians, which is based on a concept of rebellion. In this version of masculinity, skateboarding is a signifier of a rebelling teenager, which is along the same identity many young musicians associate with. Then the music fans imitate the musicians in the way they dress and act.