"Capitalizing on Cool: The Music That Makes Girls" out in "HBO's Girls and the Awkward Politics of Gender, Race, and Privilege"

Life gets crazy. One of the reasons for the lack of posts has been that in my day job as a University professor, I've had to dedicate way more time to academic writing and way less time to bloggy writing. Sometimes, those two things converge, as it did in my article "Capitalizing on Cool: The Music that Makes Girls,"  which was published in August in anthology HBO's Girls and the Awkward Politics of Gender, Race, and Privilege. I reached out to our readership in 2014, while composing the chapter, and thought it only fitting to give back by offering the chapter up for your reading. 

My main contention is that the music of Girls operates as (sub)cultural capital which reinforces the consumerist paradigms of post-hipster commercialism. All that's pretty fancy language to say that the music of the show--in particular the musical choices--promulgate post-hipster consumerism through musical taste-making. Interestingly, this is mostly curative as the music makers on the show (in particular Adam and Marnie) are, generally, mocked for their musical endeavors.

If you want to read up more, check out the book, which you can purchase above, or read up on my chapter via Academia.edu. You can find me here.