Surviving through subculture: Finding undeath in psychobilly
While some scholars suggest that subcultures are a thing of the past, that we are living in a post-subcultural era, an ethnographic exploration of psychobilly shows that subcultures still play a meaningful role in contemporary society. Since its development in the early 1980s, psychobilly has uniquely blended punk, rockabilly and horror to express countercultural values and aesthetics. Like the groups studied by the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in the 1960s and 1970s, the psychobilly subculture is characterized by consistent and distinct values and tastes, a shared sense of collective identity, committed involvement over a long period of time, and relative independence from the culture industry. By participating in this obscure but strongly defined subculture, psychobillies not only express their resistance to mainstream culture but also find strategies to manage and improve their lived experience. As a result of their committed subcultural involvement, psychobillies feel alive, or, rather, ‘undead’, a metaphor made all the more symbolic because of the subculture’s interest in a host of undead creatures. This article thus argues for continued application of subcultural theory to understand the significant meaning and impact of participation in non-conformist communities today.