Hello folks! Welcome to the class blog for Asian American Lit spring 2008 at the Claremont Colleges. Start posting anytime....
BTW I recently found out that I am in complete ignorance about a look/style/way of life/philosophy/aesthetic system called Emo. If you'd care to share please do. And why the Ramones?
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Emo is a truly interesting beast.
Emo began as an aesthetic movement in the 1980s, largely in the Washington D.C. music scene. As one of the several musical styles of the post-punk wave, Emo music celebrated the additional freedom of guitar-based expression opened up by the Punk movement - the Emo "look" of messy hair, tight clothes, and, well, anorexia - most likely followed from the gender-bending tendencies of the Punk scene. As a whole, the Emo sound is largely acoustic, moving away from the harsher electric sounds of the punk movement while still maintaining the breakdown of traditional rock instrumentation that Punk brought to the scene - the lyrics are generally more expressive of an emotional interiority, thus blurring the line between the song's narrator and the singer himself (and I do mean the masculine pronoun, as original Emo was a male-dominated scene to work in).
For almost an entire decade, Emo stayed underground but still continued to evolve in new and interesting ways and more and more independent bands took up the Emo sound. The Emo aesthetic has been theorized in four waves (my personal favorite is the second-wave, which combines the mellower Emo sound with the screams and riffs of Punk).
With the fourth wave of Emo, the aesthetic found itself swallowed by American corporate rock in the early 2000s. (I personally blame Dashboard Confessional, while others blame Bright Eyes - still a slightly obscure band - or Jimmy Eat World - who, notably, is not Emo as defined by the aesthetic movement's predecessors.) The sound has become very mainstream, but within the realm of the four distinct radio sounds - skate-punk, hip hop, country, and soft(ish) - Emo still maintains a certain subcultural value.
Now, onto Emo as a cultural phenomenon of this decade. One of the more glaring effects of mainstream Emo is that it has effaced American corporate rock history - that's why the Emo look involves T-shirts of artists not even related to the movement, such as The Ramones, who came before Emo even hatched. This sort of misguided nostalgia has elevated the pretentiousness associated with Emo as a cultural phenomenon, as Emo kids are known to have more "discriminating" tastes than other music fans.
Another effect, related to the previous, is the popular lack of distinction between generic lines. If anything involves an acoustic guitar or has a male singer expressing melancholy, that's now emo, even though it may very well be more related to Folk Rock, Post-Grunge, or even just straight-up corporate.
A subcultural association with Emo is suicidal tendencies, which is troubling. This came from the extreme emotions expressed throughout the Emo aesthetic history, some of which are not socially acceptable. Since Emo's emergence on the mainstream scene, the sound, largely the more expressive lyrics, has provided teens with an outlet for frustrations and depression. Masculinist notions of silence or stoicism police Emo as a mainstream subculture, thus associating Emo with weakness.
Emo as a popular term has conflated with "Indie," which is actually an umbrella term that refers to independently-signed artists of all genres (mainly rock-related ventures, since Indie Hip Hop is better known as Underground). However, like Kip Fulbeck explains, language is a moving and changing creature. Since Emo and Indie have taken on meanings influenced by corporate rock, the terms can also be joined as "Indie/Emo" as a descriptive term for less-popular or lesser-known rock bands. A popular activity of this mainstream Emo subculture is to compare music tastes and see who likes more obscure bands.
Since the Emo bloc no longer recognizes history or distinctions, Emo as a style has changed in interesting ways. The gender-bending is still there, explaining why men's jeans are so much tighter than they were in the Grunge/Gangsta Rap 90s. Emo has incorporated many different elements from other styles, including Punk without the violence inherent in its predecessor, Grunge without the headbanging, and to a certain extent Skate subculture. This explains most of Old Navy, Abercromie, and most other fashionable upper-end clothing stores.
A final observation about Emo. Since Emo has "caught on," many previously obscure bands are being uprooted and incorporated into the Emo bloc - Modest Mouse, Taking Back Sunday, and Radiohead are good examples of this. With popularity, their sounds have become progressive more like the corporate rock-sanctioned norm, but these bands still largely maintain their subcultural appeal.
So is mainstream Emo necessarily a bad thing? I think not. What I have seen, with myself included, is that corporate rock Emo has the potential to bring expressive, creative people into the scene and expose them to true artists that exist right beneath Emo's generally superficial exterior.
But I do take offense when people claim to be hardcore Emo fans by going to the Warped Tour or by loving everything that Jimmy Eat World does. Skate-Punk and straight-up corporate still have distinctly different sounds than mainstream Emo.
I didn't realize I had so much to say about Emo. Enjoy!
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