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The article Rethinking Subcultural Resistance: Core Values of The Straight Edge Movement, by Ross Handler about his own experience as well as those he meet through participant observation of the straight edge movement. What he wanted to address in his article is basically what is stated in his title. He wanted to get down to the core values of the straight edge movement and those involved in it. Before discussing much else he covered a little on "previous youth cultures", meaning people who were part of movements that called themselves hippies, skinheads, or punks. He explained that when he was younger he saw that to be cool, most of the time you needed to be involved with drugs or alcohol and be wanted to resist against this notion of "cool". What he then noticed was that the sXe movement, or straight edge movement, were people who actual agreed with his same values. The X in the sXe is even actual meant to symbolize the clean-living lifestyle. He was actual part of this movement for most of his life, and when he did get about a four year break from it he went back to it in order to investigate what the core values were. His findings actual came down to something I found rather interesting. The straight edge movements values were, and I'm sure still are, to like a positive clean lifestyle, reserve sex for caring and meaningful relationships, to get a grasp of self-realization, spread the message to others, and to have an involvement in social change. In his article Haenfler actual goes over each of the core values in detail but just from that you can get a simple idea of what exactly the sXe movement core values were. As you can see from this article people who are involved in the straight edge movement actual seem a lot more together than others may think. In his concluding summary he basically ended with saying that "resistance" can be much more than appearances. So in other words just because of what people may look like on the outside, whether it be dramatic or not, what they really believe in may be a lot different than what you think.

 

In the article Inside Shock Music Carnival: Spectacle as Contested Terrain by Karen Bettez Hanlon was a field work study done in a matter of years to dig deeper about shock music carnivals. In a point of the article she discusses an article of Frank Weilands and how he seen that the idea of "counterculture" today is incredibly influenced on "1960's model of youth rebellion". She also goes over an article of Arnett's (Metal Heads: Heavy Metal Music and Adolescent Alienation) and says that this is basically suggesting that shock music carnivals serve as a way for some people to fit in. For some people it functions as a place to be free and to escape from their differences of the world and actual come together in a non-judgmental sort of way. She then spends a large amount of the article going over the "grotesque realism" of shock music carnivals. What she basically discusses is the "transgressive celebration of a grotesque body through its down to earth, human-equalizing exposure of fluids, excretions, organs, uncivilized movements, and anatomy". She also explains that this scene is usually done by people who be considered under the norm. In her conclusion she also points out that these carnivals signify a demand for difference, it is done in a very dramatic and intense way but its main function accept the difference it belongs in and to celebrate that difference in crazy ways.