I looked online for further secondary research in order to gain a better understanding of our target audience and how to relate to them.
Exploring Dress and Behavior of the Emo
Subculture
The emo subculture, derived from
“emotional hardcore,” or “emo-core,” is a sub-genre of punk music that came into existence
in the mid-1980s. It consists of male and female youths transgressing beyond standard dress
and expectations, often presenting an androgynous look as male and female “emo kids”
share similar hair- and clothing styles.
Emo is kind of like gothic-light, to some, emo means not knowing how to
deal with the large amount of emotions that rage through adolescent and
teenage bodies so the emo-subscribing teens act as if they have no place in
the world. Some say that they just don’t know where they fit in the world and don’t
know how to deal with that lack of connection.
What was it about this subculture that allowed for boys to dress so
androgynously that it both bordered on femininity and avioiding traditional masculinity
to the point where, while observing these individuals in a public gathering place, many cannot immediately and definitively ascertain certain individuals’ genders.
Emo’s resistance to identity in
general, whether as a fixed form or as an individual’s or even entire group’s. That is,
most kids who appear “emo” are not willing to identify as emo. Referring to these individuals in the subculture as “emo kids,”, many believe that this is simply the most appropriate term allotted for these individuals, even
though many would resist the term and would necessarily refer to one another as such.
Because a distinct style, behavior, and musical interest is present within this subculture,
one that all of my interviewees agreed upon, it seems to be the most fitting and organized
way within which to refer to these individuals. Although they may appear similar, it is important to remember that these individuals are unique and differ from one another in addition to the
rest of society, and that therefore can complicate understandings of these people as
members of a distinct group.
Emo Music History
To the emo kid, musical taste trumps all else in discerning potential friendships
and in assessing an individual’s coolness. This is perhaps troubling in a psychological
sense because membership, or acceptance, often is extended to others based upon surface
similarities, as well as similarities beyond the individual’s direct control, such as his or
her socioeconomic classification. Musical taste does not exist in a vacuum, but is instead
developed and encouraged by many social and individual factors. It is, however, a
primary method of including and excluding among many subcultures, with emo certainly
being both excluded by others (including the emo kids themselves) who laugh at its
silliness or femininity and by the emo kids who include those who wear the same band
tees and attend the same concerts.
Emo kids all have one crucial characteristic in common: they are all drawn into
the emo subculture by their love of music. The connection between the emotions and
instances of their lives and the music speaks that to them is undeniable for teenagers in
general, but for the emo subculture in particular. Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a
Wallflower shows the relevance of music and literature to high school student Charlie’s
Schmitt 8
and his friends’ lives and has received wide support throughout the emo subculture.
Though emo was not quite at its peak during the publication date of 1999 (and in the,
presumably, years prior that Chbosky was writing the novel) it had been in the periphery,
evolving from hardcore punk since the mid-1980s.
Though this book was likely not
intended solely for teenage emo youth readers, their own lives and obsession with music
seems to parallel the focus on music for the characters in the novel.
Formerly a private space not present in the mainstream, emo initially grew out of
the hardcore punk music genre (abbreviated to “hardcore”) during the mid-1980s,
reaching its peak in the summer of 2002. According to the 2006 documentary American
Hardcore, the hardcore genre emerged out of “a bad economy, inflation, change of
administration. [The election in 1980 of Ronald] Reagan was the kind of antithesis or the
reaction, a whole new, like a paradigm shift. There was a lot of concern of, you know,
what might that mean in terms of all kinds of issues: freedom of speech, repression, and
civil liberties, and that was sort of that era.”
The anger represented within hardcore is
further expressed in the opening commentary of the film by lead vocalist and guitar
player Vic Bondi of the Chicago-based band Articles of Faith:
In the early ‘80s there was a sense of reestablishing the order: the white
man, the Ronald Reagan white man order, is coming back.
Cultural symbols indicate that the members are similar, and they help the members of the
group identify one another in a crowd. Without even speaking a word, two members of
the emo subculture could identify one another by similar hairstyles and clothing choices;
importantly, members of the emo subculture could also identify non-members, all
without ever exchanging words.
There is a link at the top to go to a gig called download, where Muse will be playing. The latest tour dates are easily seen on the left hand side of the page with the date clear with the city they will be performing in next to it. There is news in the middle, of festive competitions and new about their gigs. With their latest tweet at the bottom of the page. Something that is unique from muses website compared to others, is that is encouraging an active audience. On the left below the tours it tells us about their fan database. Collecting the information on how many comments are made, images uploaded and the amount of members who have signed up on their website.
The link to 'maps' on their website is also unique. It collects information from their database of members who have signed up and shows us where their fans are located worldwide! we can see their tweets about Muse across the world and really emphasises how strong the internet is in connecting the fans of Muse. This further encourages an active audience as it wants the consumer to sign up and tweet about muse. this increases their fanbase and is a clever form of marketing as it gets more and more people to talk about them. The tweet is connected to their location and the website tells us where their fanbase is as it collects information on where all of their members are tweeting from.
What I also love about the website is the backgrounds. Each link that you click on has a different background, and each of these backgrounds are the album covers. This keeps variety in the website and makes it differ from its competitors. The link to their forum also connects fans on a global scale. For an example, their website tells us that user James90 made a post which got over 9,600 replies and 533,000 views. This is an example of participatory culture as the public do not act as consumers only, but also as contributors.
