Haters beyond the Hate
Stigma and Prejudice against Funk Carioca on YouTube
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jwpm.33202Keywords:
Brazilian funk, cartography of controversies, symbolic disputes, taste performance, YouTubeAbstract
For almost 30 years, funk carioca has been one of the most “popular” musical genres among working-class young adults in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. However, funk’s consolidation as a musical expression does not imply wide cultural acknowledgement. Associated with “bad taste” in music by middle-class music critics in Brazil and bearing connotations to violence and sex, the musical genre has been one of the most persecuted by the media and the police forces, who have repeatedly used moral panic arguments to address the phenomenon. During the last ten years, funk carioca obtained national visibility in Brazil through its circulation on social network sites and YouTube. However, the spread of funk music through these online spaces did not help to diminish the prejudice against the genre. On the contrary, social networks have been used by “haters” of this musical genre to express their prejudice against funk. Within this context, the article will discuss taste, stigma and value disputes around funk carioca on YouTube. The analysis will focus on comments posted by haters of funk about the ‘Passinho do Volante’ music video, which was the second most viewed music video on YouTube in Brazil in 2013. To do so, we collected, organized and analysed the most aggressive comments according to four categories: (1) racial prejudice, (2) social-territorial prejudice, (3) aesthetic criticism and repudiation of funk as cultural expression, and (4) funk popularization as a “threat” to the country’s progress. Our theoretical and methodological discussions make reference to the sociology of music on value and taste, and, more specifically, Antoine Hennion’s discussion on taste performance, as well as to actor-network theory related to the theoretical approach of cartography of controversies.
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