The counterculture industry

Gilad Padva

pp. 1-16

in: UWE H. Bittlingmayer, Alex Demirović, Tatjana Freytag (eds), Handbuch kritische Theorie, Berlin, Springer, 2019

Abstract

Whereas Neo Marxist thinkers regularly focus on the hegemonic heterosexual Culture Industry, the idea that a counterculture can constitute and maintain its own profitable Culture Industry is generally unrecognized. This essay problematizes two popular countercultural music videos: the Pet Shop Boysʼ "Go West" which ironizes the Soviet fetishization of muscular male physique, and Lady Gagaʼs "Alejandro" which erotically objectifies the athletic bodies of fascist soldiers and their quasi-Nazi regalia. This essay suggests that the totalitarian male bodies in these music videos, however, are not only commercialized and objectified but are also inverted and subverted.

Cited authors

Marx Karl