Rachael Maddox starts the essay with the question Is Indie Dead? and ends the essay with concluding that Indie is indeed, dead. She summarizes the history of Indie and tries to show how it evolved to give us the incredible confusing term 'Indie' as we know it today. How it evolved from the late 70's rebellious punk it started it out as to what it is today (which no one is entirely sure of) contains many contradictions and complexities. She states that no one can agree what indie is, so she provides many examples of what the word Indie (then and now) means to people today. Is it independent? Is it authentic? Is it unique and creative? Is it really counter mainstream? These are questions asked in efforts to try to define Indie.
My favorite analogy she uses is comparing us trying to define Indie to blind men trying to describe an elephant. There are so many facets to the term and so many different definitions, that it is impossible to determine what Indie really is. How can we possibly look at everything that fall under Indie (how to we even decide what falls into the category) and then how do we describe it? She concludes that because of this, the term means nothing and "Indie is dead."
Because Indie is so confusing, I did not think of three things to embody this essay right of the bat. Particularly because I am part of the population that heard Indie used in the sense of different, creative, and independent, but I didn't know what that entailed. I think that Rachael Maddox's description of Indie that best describes my understanding is Indie as
"a different kind of different, something simple and honest and true, a little weird, a little funny—rebellious, if anything, in its delightful ordinariness."There is a band that I am a huge fan of that I would call indie or alternative (however after reading this article I don't think I will ever again be confident in deeming a band 'Indie'). They are a Scottish band called Frightened Rabbit. I would recommend listening to all of their songs, but I'm providing a link to the first album of theirs that I heard and immediately became obsessed with.
Click here to go to their Album on Grooveshark.
I couldn't pick a specific song to include so I did eenie meenie minie mo and ended up with this one.
I also found a video that embodies many of the things Maddox touches on in the article. It is entitled "13 songs you wish you found- Best Indie and Alternative Songs July 2009". The fact that each of the songs are so diverse and many really don't fall under the so called genre of Indie shows that the indie realm really may not have any meaning. The "songs you wish you found" in the title exemplifies the sentiment of the cool factor of "finding" bands that aren't mainstream. Maddox touched on this when she stated that many fans feel outraged when bands show up in commercials or mainstream because they think of it as something private that was destroyed.
I really like everything that falls under that "genre" and I even related with some of the sentiments she talks about in the article. So I want to show somethings that meant Indie to me (except for now I'm not so sure), somethings that were labeled Indie but I had the same feeling that it was "too mainstream and not private" so it was therefore not Indie.
The Sundance Film Festival is a festival purely dedicated to independent films. Wikipedia describes it as "... a film festival that takes place annually in Utah, in the United States. It is the largest independentcinema festival in the United States." It is a collection of a wide variety of film genres that are all produced with an independent label. This illustrates the original idea of what Indie meant (i.e. independent). I love checking out the Sundance Film Festival; it's on my bucket list to go to one someday. Here is a link to the website--check it out, it's pretty cool. http://www.sundance.org/festival/
Discussion Questions:
1. What was your understanding of "Indie" before you read the article. What was it afterwards? Did it change?
2. Do you agree with the statement "Indie is Dead"?
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