I really latched onto the topic of social cohesion this chapter, and the correlation between anomie and suicide rates. Removal from the "fabric of society" Durkheim refers to is also a removal of purpose and community from the individual; The resulting loss of ability to communicate (and more importantly, relate to)...

Another connection I made about Adorno's theory to modern day culture is his comparison of "deep, complex ideas or... simple and surface-level" art to the difference between AI generated content and human-made art. One is only meant to be impressive on a technical level- no time dedicated to learning and refining certain skills is spent on it...

Despite Adorno's culture industry theory being formed in the early to mid 20th century, I found myself constantly applying it to modern day social media- specifically the short-form content introduced by apps like Tiktok and Youtube. Because these platforms generate revenue based on views, channels often referred to as content farms churn out mass amounts...

The way in which self-proclaimed rednecks valorize pain was probably my favorite part of the reading, because it's something that I've both been confused by and related to in a lot of ways- and I've never really heard it discussed outside of parody. Pain, or more specifically struggles of the working class, is seen as its own status symbol in a way.

The idea of exchange-value (referenced in the beginning of the "Redneck Woman" essay by Nadine Hubbs) helps visualize the ways cultural objects are traded or assigned to people by showing the desirability- or repulsiveness of said object (Hubbs, 46). On the topic of "playing" a persona by picking and choosing which cultural objects to adorn oneself..,

Seeing how much one statement impacted The Chick's reputation (and therefore wellbeing as artists) gives a good look into the political climate of the early 2000's. While it might not look like a lot in the year 2024, to say something like that with the whole country's eyes on you took some crazy confidence

When I was reading the Vox article on the history of protest music, it really made me think about how the scene today compares. Despite the presence of skinheads still existing today, I find they are a lot more scared to be open about their beliefs- in person, at least. Dog whistles like the lace codes nazis used to identify eachother have expanded to...

It's kind of crazy to think about how much easier it became to come out as queer or even talk about queerness once openly gay artists entered mainstream music. Their identity alone causes conversation, and normalizes talk about previously controversial subjects- this is why representation means so much for any marginalized group.

Wilkins' essay about masculinity and its ties to sexuality helped me a lot with my playlist project, actually. I was struggling to find a concise topic before reading it and found her writing of heteronormativity captured a lot of what I wanted to say about gendered oppression in a very clear way.

"The tradgedy of the situation is that, whilst we have forced these millions of women to walk along the wage-earning road, we have not unbound their feet!" (Webb 1998)
I found this excerpt to be especially relevant to the movie we watched for class this week, 9 to 5. The amount of obstacles imposed on women in the workplace is insanely disproportionate...