Communication, class and the commodified self: exploring the divergent pathways to celebrity in the electro dance subculture

ABSTRACT

Young dancers who participate in urban music subcultures have found new social media outlets that help them attain social recognition outside of their group, sometimes bypassing mainstream media circuits and cultural intermediaries, and other times interacting with them. This novel scenario has modified the dialectics between the cultural spheres of youth and celebrity, expanding the ways in which celebrity is manifested and achieved. Drawing empirically on fieldwork conducted within the electro dance scene – a dance-based phenomenon born in France in the past decade that has spread worldwide – I compare the structural and subjective dimensions around which, in different periods, distinctive pathways to celebrity emerge. In particular, two dancers’ pathways to celebrity, one corporate and the other self-made, are examined using an extended approach based on Bourdieu’s field theory. Each pathway leads to a celebrity type, whose relation to media platforms, following, geography, cultural corporations and agents is shaped in different ways by commodified behaviours, class-imbued authenticities and revenue opportunities. While such diversity features novel elements, it ultimately preserves the economic and socio-cultural logic of celebrity, as it (re)produces our now-familiar and increasingly accelerated consumption cycles, ‘normalising’ middle-class values and the commodification of the self.

KEYWORDS:

• Subculture
• dance
• youth
• class
• commodification

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Antonio Cambra González

Antonio Cambra González holds a PhD in the “Knowledge and Information Society” programme of the Open University of Catalonia (UOC). He also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Humanities and a Technical Engineering Degree in Computer Science. He works as a teacher at CIPFP Mislata Vocational Training School (Valencia, Spain) as well as an assistant tutor in the Doctoral School of the UOC. In addition, he collaborates with the research group PROTCIS-GRECS of the UOC. Finally, he is the author of the monography “ElectroDance: Youth styles and digital communication in the Network Society”, published in 2018 by “Institut Alfons el Magnànim” (Spain).