Scholarly record

COLLISION OF SUBCULTURE AND MAINSTREAM IN THE CONTEXT OF MEDIA COMMUNICATION

Martin Solik

Abstract

People develop and form their ways of thinking throughout all their lives. These processes are inevitably associated with certain pressures from society and our surroundings and we may either resist or give in to them. Thanks to the people around us and environment we live in, we are able to form particular views of the world; we can reappraise our sets of values and act in accordance with our conscience. Since men are social beings, one of our basic needs is to maintain relationships with other people. The problem of cultural classification as a social category is currently one of the most discussed questions. We distinguish between ‘mainstream’ that involves popular and media culture – typically disseminated by the media – and subcultures. ‘Mainstream’ and subcultures can be differentiated on the basis of the size of the groups formed by their users. However, we cannot assume that subcultures are, in terms of quality, superior to mainstream (even though their users are often sure about that). Subcultures are what they are just because they offer an alternative to mainstream. That is why we tend to call them ‘alternative culture’ or ‘underground culture’.

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