Toronto Metropolitan University
Browse

Hiding in Delight: Transgression, Irony And the Edge of Vice

Download (3.32 MB)
thesis
posted on 2021-05-23, 15:14 authored by Ryan Bigge
This study examines a Montreal-based underground magazine and its use of "edge" as a strategy of retaining subcultural capital and limiting its readership, thus creating a narrow but profitable niche market that extends Thomas Frank's work on rebel consumption. Vice, through its content, tone and business strategies, unites a series of diverse but related issues including subculture, transgression, cultural intermediaries, the political economy of magazines, the audience commodity, the politics of pleasure and how media texts constitute audiences as consuming subjects. Through a combination of interlocking discursive and aesthetic strategies that involve transgression and irony, Vice is able to minimize aspects of the audience commodity as described by Dallas Smythe while foregrounding its subcultural capital. In this way, it is able to convert subcultural capital into economic capital while remaining a relevant and authentic underground publication.

History

Language

English

Degree

  • Master of Arts

Program

  • Communication and Culture

Granting Institution

Ryerson University

LAC Thesis Type

  • MRP

Year

2007

Usage metrics

    Communication and Culture (Theses)

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC