Assignment 11

According to Heller, mainstream design and underground design is being described as what Arzensek said in Underground vs Mainstream Cultural production. Arzensek said “Mainstream culture is one whose values, language, and ways of behaving are imposed on a subordinate culture or cultures through economic or political power. (Arzensek 2) and “Underground movement, A culture in which the values expressed and promoted are in potential or actual opposition to those of the dominant culture, sometimes amounting to a wholesale rejection of that culture.” (Arzensek 2). Under both author’s words, mainstream design is a type of design that would use the majority taste of language, behavior, and culture to grab the attention of the audience. Meanwhile, underground design is the opposite of mainstream design. Underground design is using something that’s not very well known and considered new. However, mainstream design is considered as the category of designs under branches of underground design. It’s because every style that comes up in the market is started as underground, and it would take their breed of followers throughout the period of time. Some underground designs would succeed. It will dominate the market, and turn to be the taste of the majority. However, when certain mainstream designs stay for too long, they will become a standard. People will get bored, and they will explore something new, and they will look for underground design again, the process will repeat. So I would say that mainstream and underground design is a cycle of design. 

I think my final project would be about the taste of aesthetic changes throughout 150 years. It would focus on what is the taste before, how it changes, why it changes, and what is the taste now. Also in how the changing in taste changes design and how it changes people. 

I have read a chapter from The Racial Order. It was chapter 8, Desmond & Emirbayer-Aesthetics. It’s about how colonialism and imperialism provide an idea of European Orientalism (It’s from a film called Edward Said on Orientalism ) and developed the idea of white supremacy. And how “white” turned out to be the mainstream design. Such as the paintings from the 1800s are always spotlighting the white painting such as “Jean-Leon Gerome’s The Great Bath at Bursa”, photographs are only picturing the white, how luxury brands are using white models, how cosmetics companies are promoting white skin tone as beauty, how Hollywood only accept actors that are white and only sponsor movies that are using white actors as the main character. However, the underground design kicks in, people stand up for their culture. And it changed the taste of society. There was pop music, hip-hop, colored people started to be the cover of magazines, posters…etc. Like how it changes society around throughout generations. 

Film: Edward Said on Orientalism 

Emirbayer, Mustafa, and Matthew Desmond. The Racial Order. The University of Chicago Press, 2015. Arzenšek, Martin, and Dr. Arjo Klamer. “UNDERGROUND VS. MAINSTREAM CULTURAL PRODUCTION- VALORIZING THE UNDERGROUND AND ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH ON UNDERGROUND ELECTRONIC DANCE MUSIC MOVEMENT.” Erasmus School of History, Culture and Communication, June 2016, p. 39, https://thesis.eur.nl/pub/34609/Arzensek.pdf.