Week 7 - Barker, Chapter 13

I find this concept of resistance interesting. Many youth subcultures will focus on resisting “the man”, the capitalist hegemony with its own ideologies, sometimes considered as imposed on people through the media.

This resistance even though often passive has its own symbols and rituals. Youth from subcultures will appropriate elements from this entity they are resisting against to make them their own, giving them their own meanings. Somehow we find a way to build a resistance against consumption through consuming, and I am pretty sure the big “capitalist entity”, if such a thing does exist, doesn’t really care why people consume as long as they do. It is common to see television show tales of resistance against television, because it sells.

I might be wrong, but this apparent absurdity seems to have been dimmed a bit by the shifting from the concept of resistance to the more subjective concept of authenticity.