Just hear me out on this one for a moment. Being an anthropologist doesn’t mean that I am limit myself to ancient cultures from ancient civilizations, It also means dissecting current or past trends that can be considered to be a “culture” or a “subculture” to a specific extent. I can vividly remember a quote from an Indonesian anthropologist Koentjaraningrat, which explains about what culture is in the first place. His statement, roughly translates as “Every ideas, behaviors and human crafts that belong to a particular society as a whole, and can only be obtained through learning and knowledge.” And every side of human life can be considered as a cultural point, if there is enough members of the society that support it. The music scene is no different, due to varying styles and genres offered today. From mainstream, alternative to underground, every tune is different from the next, and dedicated fans are often come together for enjoyment or making a statement towards the society. For now, I’m throwing back to the late 2000s and early 2010s, where Alternative music was on its prime as the answer of popular culture at the time. Although I was never a member of this particular subculture, The “Scene” is always interesting to dive and discover, particularly their dedication to the music within this “scene”, and also their fashion statements.
The scene subculture first emerged in the United Kingdom during the early to mid 2000s, and developed simultaneously with the more emotionally driven “Emo” subculture. Due to this, the two are often mislabeled and confused with one another. One key difference between these subcultures is the use of bright, often clashing colors and outfits, mostly wear by scene kids (The term for someone who follows the scene subculture), while the other are more darker in color shades, mostly favoring black. This particular subculture also developed from mainly other branches of the alternative culture, like Indie, Goth, Retro and Skater Culture. By late 2000s, the subculture spread throughout the British Isles to Europe and America, most notably The United States and Mexico. At that point, most scene kids are also part of the Metalcore and Deathcore branch of Heavy Metal music, with other styles including Pop Punk, Crunkcore, Hip Hop and Electronic Music. As of the late 2010s, this particular subculture has decreased in popularity, it even considered ‘dead’ as of today.
Someone can be identified as a scene kid if he/she wore bright, sometimes clashing or contrasting color for their outfit, which typically consists of tight t-shirts and pants, multi-colored bracelets, Vans sneakers, leather jackets, retro belt buckles, ear gauges, piercings, and makeups like eyeliners. For either sex, their hairstyle is mostly flat, androgynous long hair covering the forehead, and to an extent, covering either one or both eyes. Scene girls are also known to puff their hair with various accessories like ribbons or pins. The hair is not spared from the same bright colors either, with most of them dyed their hair with red, blue, green, or any other neon colors they had in mind. For their shirts, graphic shirts are most common piece of clothing among scene kids, with motives ranging from cartoon characters like Hello Kitty, SpongeBob, and etc. to band shirts. They are also an exclusive community, opted to socialize with fellow scene kids, either at music concerts, or social media platform at the time, Myspace. They often use this particular platform to look for new fashion trends among other members of the scene, or setting one. Trendsetters on social media for scene kids are often called “Scene Queens”. They are typically own multiple accounts on multiple platforms like the aforementioned Myspace, Flickr, or the then unknown Facebook as a way to spread current trends at the time. Well-known scene queens ever recorded are Americans Luna Fang and Jeffree Star, and Russian Kristi Massacre. The way they communicate amongst themselves were also a lot different, with mostly modified slang words like “hella”, “uber”, “stella” and “radd”, abbreviations like “STFU”, “LOL”, “IDGAF”, and so on, or even a word most commonly known, “Rawr”, which is a modified version of the word “roar”, often followed with emoticons like “:3” or “XD”.
Music wise, the scene subculture embraced Metalcore, Deathcore, Hip Hop, Electronic Music, Pop Punk and something called Crunkcore, which is the result of electronic music fused with Hardcore Punk. Most of the music styles carry lyrics full of rebellion, angst, and the desire to break away from conforming society. Bands like Fall Out Boy, Paramore and Bring Me The Horizon once started as scene bands, initially gaining fame through Myspace. Other bands that belonged to the scene are Brokencyde, Blood On The Dance Floor, Asking Alexandria, Black Veil Brides, I See Stars, Attila, We Came As Romans, Pierce The Veil, and many others. Music festivals like Warped Tour (discontinued after 2019) are often the place for scene kids to come together and enjoy (what they thought as) good music. Scene kids are also seen in Skate Parks, as few elements of this movement are borrowed from the Skate Culture. These guys would spend hours socializing with skaters or fellow scene kids, despite never skate for once or even remotely learned how to skate in their lives. They are mostly hate pop music, and see various Rock genres mentioned above, as well as Alternative music as their main preference. They often stated things like “music is my life” or “this band saves me”, or even “(insert band name here) is the best ever!” Of course, with various modifications on the spelling or grammar, which is the thing they are mostly known for.
From appreciation, come the critics. Since the scene emerged around the same time as the mainstream exposure of emo, many members of the emo subculture accused the scene of blatant “rip-off” of many aspect of said subculture. Scene kids are also the source of controversy by the metalheads, often showed by blatantly dissing more experienced, well-known and legendary bands like Pantera and Slayer, and in turn, metalheads take aim at the deathcore and metalcore scene, calling it “emo crap with whiny lyrics”. Both genres are also criticized for their heavy use of breakdowns, which is a part of a song where instruments have solo parts (breaks) between verses, and screaming vocals, often done incorrectly. Their exclusivity is also displayed by only socialize or date people who also belonged to the scene. This move often responded by criticism of social exclusion and rejection by mainstream masses. Scene kids themselves often label these critics as ‘haters’. They are also known to be equally hostile to individuals that are new to the subculture. Most scene kids will brand them as ‘posers’ (which is a hilarious thing on itself, metalheads also call these scene boys are girls with the same term). They did this with the belief of those same “posers” are in the scene for the fashion, not the music (ironically, the scene from the beginning to its supposed “demise” is all about making fashion statements). Bands within the scene are often criticized for lack (if they have any) of musicianship. Brokencyde was regarded as the band that started the genre Crunkcore, often met with negative reviews. One of them, like Warren Ellis, a Britain-based comic book writer even wrote about their 2008 single and music video FreaXXX, reviewing it as “a near-perfect snapshot of everything that’s shit about this point in the culture.” Blood On The Dance Floor is the more notorious scene bands ever existed, with Jesus “Dahvie Vanity” Torres as the sole member. The group has been reviewed with mostly negative remarks, due to their discography consisting of songs with materials like sex, drugs, and hate speech, beside all the plagiarism accusations in the past, most notably with Nu Metal artist Otep Shamaya. Vanity himself has been linked with statutory rape allegations during his career; with most of the victims were girls around the age of 12 to 17 years old at the time. One of the alleged victims was New Years Day singer Ashley “Ash” Costello.
As someone who appreciates modern culture, I have to say that the scene subculture in itself is like a two sides of the same coin. In one side, it’s about making trends and appreciation of the music as the way to escape conformity. In other end, we often picture this as an exclusive community of mostly teenagers who are thinking (or deluded) about themselves as a misfit, while in reality, they alienate themselves from the society. They are known for their unusual (to say the least) way of communicate amongst themselves, with slangs and abbreviations inserted in their speech or written forms like social media comments. Today, many have thought that the scene is already “dead”, but somewhere around the world, there might be a scene queen who wants to revive the culture and make it popular again like the days of the 2000s. I was never a part of this movement. That being said, if the scene rises again, despite my intention to stay away from it, I can guarantee that exploring this subculture through the anthropological lens could be an interesting thing indeed.
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