While watching the movie, I was reminded of an idea I had a little while ago. The movie talked about how the Insane Clown Posse was a representation of everything against the mainstream. It then went on to point out that they became more popular as they associated with the media more. I believe that this has a direct connection to many teens' lives. I know many people who say they are against "going with the crowd", but they still say and do everything like "the crowd" does. For example, my sister and her friends say that they are "unique". They reject certain ideas only because they are not "unique". My sister will not wear certain clothes, such as regular jeans, not because they are not her "style", but because she believes too many people wear them. She will only wear bright colored skinny jeans. Yet, these have become more and more popular nowadays. (Colin touched upon this subject in his Urban Outfitter's post.) What my sister considers is only her own style is really most other people's too. So, if everybody is "unique", is it still being unique, in the common sense of the word?
-Audrey Kindsfather
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I think uniqueness (is that the noun form of unique?) is ephemeral. While something may be unique for a time, people will eventually see it, admire it, and emulate it. Once a thing is emulated, it is no longer unique. It goes back to how cool things are sucked dry by the mainstream.
ReplyDelete-Colin
I don't think a person should be defined as unique on their fashion sense alone. Everyone is unique based on their ideas, goals, personalities, interests, hobbies--the list can go on forever. To judge one's uniqueness on what they wear is too superficial.
ReplyDeleteFads of any sort, however,--from clothing styles, to notions, to manners of conduct-- are original for a while, but eventually fade away, to be replaced by another. Creating fresh ideas, styles, words, etc. is a cycle that will go on infinitely.
-Chloe Martianou
I think we've pretty much exhausted the discussion on "indie" and "unique" becoming mainstream. It is inescapable. It is also inescapable that people will still cling to these terms and believe they are making a statement by "rejecting" the current mainstream. But they are making a statement, as is everyone else whenever they make a decision that affects others in any way.
ReplyDelete-Alexa
I find it a little ironic that your sister's friends all go against the mainstream by going along with the members of their group. They reject uniqueness by becoming conformist within their group. And going along with what we talked about today, advertisements that would target your sister's kind of demographic would be appeals to the herd mentality and bandwagon lifestyle. Examples would be that commercial featuring happy groups of people enjoying Coke, or an advertisement that says a statistic like “Four out of five dentists surveyed preferred Crest toothpaste.”
ReplyDeletehttp://ksuweb.kennesaw.edu/~shagin/logfal-emotion-bandwagon.htm
-- tori
Everyone is unique, as Chloe said, but when it comes to fashion, very few of us are totally unique. Having met her, I can say your sister is more unique than most of us. I think there are varying degrees of uniqueness. The girl who tries to follow the crowd, is much less unique than the girl who tries not to. But no one is totally unique, partly because there is a crowd of friends who are the same type of "unique" and partly because society sweeps up the uniqueness.
ReplyDelete~Becca
I agree. The only way for a person to be totally unique in fashion is for he or she to make all his/her clothes his/herself, and that is just impractical. Plus it's hard to be extremely unique and creative with something that, technically, everyone must do. Everyone must wear clothes, they are a necessity in society.
ReplyDelete-Alexa
I was thinking about our discussion in class on uniqueness and wanted to add my thoughts on how it related to this. Our discussion in class was on how we all have unique perceptions and are unique people. That is basically an elemental truth. We've all been told how "special" we are. However, at least to me, this blog meant unique in fashion. That is entirely another subject matter. One could argue we are all slightly different in our clothing choices, but not by much. Not enough to be truly unique.
ReplyDelete~Becca
I disagree to an extent with Becca. I think that, especially in fashion, though people may have similar elements and pieces in their wardrobes, each person brings their own unique twist to the way that they wear the clothes. Likewise, we each bring our own unique twists to the language that we use. As we discussed in class today, groups of friends do have certain words and phrases that they use, but I believe each person in the group uses the words in a slightly different way. Though on the surface, people may all seem to be the same, I believe that each person is unique in the way they use and phrase the expressions.
ReplyDelete-Tara
Ok, I don't think I made my point clear enough in my post. I meant to focus on the difference between the word "unique" and the actual concept of being unique, in a broader sense than what we talked about in class today. I didn't mean fashion specifically, like Becca said, but I used fashion as an example for the teen sense of uniqueness.
ReplyDeleteI was reading my book, "Drive Yourself Sane" by Susan and Bruce Kodish, today after school and I saw a few sentences that show my point perfectly. "...we may act as if people 'are' what we call them... When we behave intensionally, our maps become more important than what we are mapping... our descriptions [become] more important than non-verbal experience." What I was trying to say was that, to many teens, my sister and her friends as an example, being called 'unique' or 'cool' is more important than actually possessing these characteristics. Just wanted to clear that up!
-Audrey