Steven Heller’s â€œUnderground Mainstream”

  • In your opinion, is there a difference between “underground” and “mainstream” today? Why?
  • Heller identifies a few underground movements, like 1960s psychedelia, that turned mainstream; which ones does he identify? And can you think of any others?
  • Provide a visual example (with citation) of culture jamming today. Describe why it would be considered culture jamming.

In my opinion, “underground” in the modern age refers to things that are trying to stand out amongst a sea of corporate media that tends to be the same things we’ve seen over and over. Underground media takes more risks, and most importantly, has less mass appeal. Underground media is something that a group of people likely would not be able to understand. “Mainstream” media is what everyone tends to know and talk about. It appeals to a wider audience, and tends to take less risks or a more standard approach to storytelling. Mainstream media is something that almost everyone can understand the concept of.

Heller identifies the Punk and Grunge movements, being more aggressive and “unhinged”, and the movement of embracing sexuality more. While maybe not necessarily a “movement” in the larger sense, something this does remind me of is the Simpsons in the 90’s. Before the Simpsons, family-centric television shows were very idealistic and safe. They showed the ideal, but charmingly flawed, American family. The Simpsons aimed to dismantle this idea with a very glaringly flawed family structure. It also did a lot of things that, while common now in adult animated shows and other media, were revolutionary for the time. It did things such as cutaway gags, making fun of political figures, satirizing groups of people, etc.

The example below is an example of modern culture jamming because it takes the style of the Pepsi brand and puts a twist on it through turning the symbol into a morbidly obese person, the implication being that this happened through drinking so much Pepsi.