Harvard Munch Club: BDSM subculture

The recent institutional recognition of Harvard College Munch has been shocking our middle class sensibilities and causing a slew of media articles. According to its constitution, Munch is a group for students interested in kinky sexuality to meet, and organize relevant events—speakers, discussions, screenings and demos. Its purpose is to create a safe forum for students to discuss their sexuality and problems in their relationships, and to promote a positive and accurate understanding of kinky sexuality on campus.

The Atlantic reports on BDSM at Harvard, and the incorporation of BDSM into the mainstream:

This story has been getting lots of attention. Fox News is shocked, The Daily Mail is breathless, and Gawker is amused. But none of these pick-ups note how Harvard is a bit derrière on the Ivy League BDSM support group trend. "The popularity of 50 Shades of Grey has accelerated a mainstreaming of the BDSM subculture already underway," The New York Observer's Rachel R. White reported earlier this month.

Like the excerpt notes, BDSM has been a popular topic this year ever since the Fifty Shades trilogy brought BDSM into national media attention. Its status as a subculture will only remain so long as it remains disruptive and has relative independence from forms of media. The subculture's independence from media has been decreasing as more documentation of the practices and objects of BDSM have surfaced, but the BDSM lifestyle still has the ability to "shock" more conservative readers, as evidenced by the disapproving comments found in the Crimson about this topic. On the other hand, the Crimson's op-ed, voicing its support for Munch will lead to a decline in BDSM's status as a subculture and the dominant hegemony subsumes it into the mainstream.

 

One way that Harvard College Munch (specifically) has remained independent from the hegemony of the dominant class has been by avoiding media exposure of individual members. Munch members are kept anonymous. It is also difficult to find extensive documentation of the culture of Munch members unless you are on their email list, which assumes that you've been accepted into that subculture already.

This subculture is also influenced by class. For example, one BDSM/Fetish demographic survey done by Gloria G. Brame, PhD in 1999 revealed that 63 percent of people who participated in BDSM/fetish had middle class incomes. 62 percent had parents who had middle income as well. Of course, some of this data is outdated, so it is difficult to say how relevant it is today. However, it is still a high enough percentage to take note of. The following two results are from the released survey results.

 

4. How would you describe your household income?
Middle Income	4411	63%
Upper Income	1456	21%
Low Income	1016	14%
Wealthy	114	2%
5. How would you describe your parents' household income when you were growing up?
Middle Income	4344	62%
Low Income	1407	20%
Upper Income	1117	16%
Wealthy	129	2%

These results suggest a link between those who identify themselves as having "middle" income and those who participate in the kink community. Perhaps those with more time and money on their hands were able to indulge in kinks. After all, kink objects range from cheap plastic handcuffs to expensive toys. Thus, those with more money will have a greater ability to explore their kink. Even designing complicated rope constraints takes a certain amount of leisure time, something people with greater distance from economic necessity can afford to do.

Seriously, who has time to learn how to make this kind of rope formation?

Dog collars, a throwback to the Punk subculture, now used as a fetish object.

The Riches: Using Symbols to Create Identity

The Riches is an FX original American television series that focuses on a family of Irish Traveller con artists. The family consists of the parents, Dahlia and Wayne Malloy, and their children, Di Di, Cael, and Sam. At the beginning of the series, the Malloy family is escaping from a botched Traveller clan reunion in an RV. While on the road, the Malloy family gets into an altercation and RV chase with another Traveller family. During the chase, the Malloys accidentally kill another family travelling on the road: the eponymous Riches.

It turns out that the Riches were just on their way to move into a new neighborhood in Baton Rouge, LA. They also happen to have all their personal items with them, including identification documents. Wayne convinces the family to assume the identity of the Riches. The shows follow their attempts to blend in in an extremely wealthy community and keep their stolen identities a secret 

The Malloys went from this...

...to this

The family pick up the semiotic codes of the wealthy in order to create a new identity for themselves in their new environment. Owning "a beautiful wife", "a multi-million dollar home" and "a fancy car" are outward signs of wealth. However, semiotic codes are manifested in subtle things as well, such as hobbies. For example, when Dahlia tests her daughter on her hobbies, her daughter's "hobbies" include fencing, skiing, racquetball  and sex/chess. The semiotics codes are a conduit through which differences in power and hierarchy are communicated. Travellers in The Riches call everyone who is not a traveller a "buffer", which essentially denotes them as a law-abiding citizen and an easy mark for a con-artist. The difference in hierarchy can be seen in the slang that travellers use and the language the Malloy family encounter in their new lifestyle, among other things.

Their travails show how class differences are socially constructed; their ability to de-construct the wealthy lifestyle and re-incorporate the codes they find into their own behavior show how human efforts can overcome initial structural conditions. Wayne's desire to keep the new, high-class lifestyle he conned his way into symbolizes the desire of the lower class or the middle class to achieve a higher status. Wayne's optimism that "we can make [their con] real" symbolizes the American dream to achieve the class status you want by adopting the semiotic codes of the class position you desire to have.

Hipsters: Subculture is dead

I am tired of talking about hipsters. This is a group whose dress, attitude, and taste have been adopted by so many people that it can not even be considered a subculture anymore. This is ironic, because hipsters pride themselves on being separated from the mainstream. However, their presence has been so documented that it has now become mainstream. Hipster clothing is mass-produced by stores like Anthropology, Free People, and Urban Outfitters. Hipster styles can be found in magazines, chain stores, and almost everywhere I look. There is even a handbook on how to be a hipster. Everyone is a hipster nowadays. Even denying that you are a hipster can be a form of hipster-ism. 

This video sums up the history and codes of being a hipster quite nicely. It also presents a paradox to of being a hipster nowadays:

Hipsters are definitely not a subculture, though they used to be. In class, we talked about how resistance and struggle are key in forming subcultures. For example, each British youth subculture was subversive to what was considered 'normal'. However, there is nothing in hipster style, attitude, or taste which "contradicts the myth of consensus" (as put by Dick Hebdige in Subculture)--the myth of consensus being the codes of the dominant hegemony (e.g. the middle class). 

 

From Key themes in Media Theory by Dan Laughey:

Subcultures operate through a system of oppositional codes that offend the majority, threaten the status quo and contradict the 'myth of consensus' suggested by dominant codes (Hebdige 1979: 18)

Laughey defines a subculture as "an underground set of practices -- usually working-class in character -- that try to resist surveillance by the dominant culture (e.g. police) as well as incorporation into mainstream culture. A subculture ceases to exist when it becomes incorporated, manufactured and packaged by commercial interests.

If this picture below presents accepted objects and style of a hipster...

  Let's see how well Urban Outfitters follow it:

Well, we've got the blazer, the cuffed pants, and white converse (or white shoes that look like converse). And that's just one picture from the fall men's catalog.

Part of why hipsters became incorporated into the mainstream is because of the internet and media. The video above cites the creation of hipster-parody memes which really brought hipsters to the attention of the general public.

Illustrator Jean-Philippe Delhomme, who just recently published The Unknown Hipster Diaries (which was compiled from his blog titled The Unknown Hipster) says, "subculture is dead. In this age, subcultures become documented immediately and therefore are mainstream instantly."

I agree that the presence of Reddit, Tumblr, and Lookbook have created outlets to document the rise of any subculture. The more interconnected we become, the faster subcultures become incorporated into the mainstream, and the harder it gets to create subversion. To preserve subculture then, will be to avoid media exposure.