On the western wall of my bedroom, I have several shelves lined with books, journals, magazines and CDs. Of these pieces of media, a good chunk of them are often created and released independently, as opposed to a large publishing house or monolithic record company. I read an article on common-place.org called "The Emancipation of Boyhood" by Lara Langer Cohen that was quite interesting in it's relation to independent media.
The article is about the old-timey practice of self-published newspapers and zines. During the 1860's many companies put out cheap, small printing presses for the consumer market. Around these presses sprung up many independent, or "amateur" newspapers, written, edited, printed and published by teenage boys. Soon after a whole community or subculture sprang from these newspapers. But this also led to a kind of insulation of the community as well. Most amateur newspapers out there bore very few dissimilarities, and in general were not so much for a individuals to more clearly voice their opinion, but too stick to the subculture as a whole.
This article fascinated me greatly because it reminded me a lot of something things that are very relevant to our culture, or pop-culture today (or at the very least, my personal taste): Independent music scene and the internet. It reminded me of the indie music scene in that it was a relatively tight-knit, active community (though mostly of hipsters). It also is very much independent of large record labels and many bands compose, record, edit, publish and promote their music themselves, just how amateur reporters did with their newspapers. But a negative both subcultures seemed to share a kind of self-imposed isolation. Both of them suffered from a self-contained repetition and adherence to the norm within their own subcultures (kind of ironic considering indie music started out as a kind of rebellion against generic factory produce pop music). A lot of that adherence to their own norm sprang from a sense of elitism derived from being "underground" or "obscure" as well as simply being to lazy to innovate within the genre. This too was a flaw in the amatuer newspaper scne. That is a connection I made to modern life.
I love how you related it to yourself and your room. Your details were great and I enjoy how you focused on relating it to modern day.
ReplyDeleteI liked how you made it personal by connecting it to your life but you also managed to stay on topic! Also I liked your picture choices, I think they went along well with the topic.
ReplyDeleteThe relation to yourself is outstanding. But beyond that, the facts presented are also great.
ReplyDeleteThe pictures were great and great post. I like how you related it to yourself that was great. I wished you explained the topic a little more in depth but overall it was great. The paragraphs were easy to read but I did not see a connection to our history class. Great post. Keep blogging.
ReplyDeleteI also loved the title!
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this post. You did a nice job relating to your life; however, you jumped from topic to topic. I liked how you added pictures to give the reader a visual of what they are reading. One of your sentences started with "but this also..," and instead you can just start off with "This also..." Over all this was a great post. Well Done!
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