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Re-producing pop: The aesthetics of ambivalence in a contemporary dance music
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Re-producing pop: The aesthetics of ambivalence in a contemporary dance music

Brent Luvaas
International journal of cultural studies, v 9(2)
Jun 2006

Abstract

performance dance music popular culture mass media consumption style youth
Electroclash is an electronic dance music popular in cities like New York, Los Angeles, and London between 2001 and 2004. In this article, I use the example of electroclash to demonstrate the significance of media in structuring social reality. I argue that electroclash constitutes a set of aesthetic tactics for living through the confusions and contradictions of life in a media-saturated, increasingly globalized, late capitalist economy. It is produced by a diverse assemblage of urban youth, whose primary commonality is an ambivalent relationship towards media. Electroclash artists, I argue, engage with and respond to meanings within existing media texts. They ironically perform the clichés and representations of popular culture, re-investing them with critical, though often ambiguous new meanings. In these re-readings of media, I conclude, electroclash artists blur the distinction between celebration and critique, and ultimately complicate any clear-cut, theoretical opposition between resistance and accommodation.

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