Re:Punk is dead and so are we
by OkayPhysicist on Monday February 26, 2024 @01:28PM
(#39515005)
That's an interesting theory, but what means of cultural promotion were newly democratized in the 60s?
In the 60s, mass media liberalized pretty quickly in all mediums as decreases in production costs broadened access and led to more experimentation and less ability for a limited set of gatekeepers to police content against historical norms.
F.ex. Motown Records was literally founded in the back of a house. [0]
It's more difficult to say "There's no market for African American music, so we're not going to make any" when someone is technically able to demonstrate otherwise on their own.
Without technical disruption (mostly, in the falling cost and footprint of capable equipment), it could have been business as usual and a lot of ideas would have remained uncirculated.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motown#West_Grand_Boulevard
By definition, you cannot have popular counterculture, as it just becomes "the culture."
However, most of the capital assets of culture promotion are also tied to popularity (e.g. mass-market media publishing, advertising). Denied access, counterculture exists in the woods, but most people don't know.
Which is why you see truer counterculture move closer to popular culture when those assets are (usually temporarily) democratized during technological shifts (e.g. the 1960s and 1990s).
But hey, maybe I just miss zines...