During this process, I felt as if I were writing about my own history. Hippie ideology, fashion and music is my parent culture and the originator of symbolisms that have effected youth countercultures which can be seen well into the millennium.

My culture, the grunge movement, was instantaneously commodified by my parents the moment it began. In fact, many of the creatives that absorbed the grunge culture were hippies themselves who cooped out in exchange for entrepreneurship. As I have stated in my conclusion, this does not overlook the corporate creatives as revolutionaries who employ cultural studies and firsthand experience with astute methods, but it seems that they inflicted the same hegemonic infraction but on a massive global and technological scale with unprecedented speed.

The poverty, the homelessness, the drug addiction and the personal tragedies all became part of the commodity. Reminiscent of the same pathway that absorbed the hippie movement and the significance of the kind of culture that it represented entirely.

The process of co-optation throughout history remains the angst of youth countercultures that can be gauged well into the millennium. Much like the Dadaists who challenged the bourgeoisie’s ideals of societal behavior and aesthetics…new cultures arise to reject these hegemonic impositions placed on society.

References:

Frank, T., 1997. The Conquest of Cool. Business, Culture, Counterculture and the Rise of Hip Consumerism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Frost, Amber, an interview with Bruce Pavitt, 1989  [online] available at: dangerousminds.net/tag/grunge [accessed 04-20-2017]