Since the 1950s and the birth of 'counter culture' as we know it, the mainstream has continually absorbed the signifiers associated with various movements until said signifiers become widely disseminated and steadily lose the cultural purchase they once possessed. It happened to punk (see: Supre shirts with safety pins, Ramones shirts on sale at K-Mart), it happened to hip hop, it happened to grunge - it's a cycle that endlessly repeats itself.
The same is true of the signifiers and tropes of indie movies. The impetus behind this post has been two movies I've seen in the last fortnight, both of which are ostensibly banal Hollywood genre movies that tried to decorate unimaginative characters and plots with indie songs and images in a superficial attempt to connect with/conflate themselves with a demographic that A) enjoys basking in their own reproduced codes, and B) shuns cultural product made from mainstream media outlets/isn't championed by blogs (this is an important caveat, since 'Where The Wild Things Are' is a movie from a major studio that still excites the indie kids).
I would have to identify myself as part of the indie crowd. I love the fact that it's incredibly codified - music and image have always been connected and to say that visual and musical aesthetics should be totally disengaged is rubbish. Style is important and exciting. It obviously goes too far at times, but this has been the folly of the subculture since way back. While I mention above that us indie kids love recognising and reproducing our stylistic codes, nothing annoys us more than when those codes are adopted by outsiders for commercial reasons.
This brings us to 500 Days of Summer, and Whip It.
