Scene (subculture)

American Scene Kids, late 2000s

The scene subculture is a contemporary subculture which has mostly taken place in United States, associated with a style of fashion and sometimes music.

History and evolution of fashion

Origins (Late 1990s-early 2000s)

The scene subculture began in United Kingdom during the late-1990s when some members of the chav subculture began to experiment with alternative fashion, and took fashionable characteristics of indie pop, emo, rave music, and Japanese glam rock style, and spread to America and Australia in the mid-2000s. The fashion originally was tripp pants, stripes, tartan, spiky hair, Chucks, Vans, and trucker hats derived from grunge and skate punk fashion. The name was originally derived from "scene queen", a derogatory term within the 1970s glam rock scene for a heterosexual musician who pretended to be gay and later applied to poseurs within the UK goth, heavy metal and punk subcultures. Later, "scene queen" itself was adopted by leading female members of the modern subculture who were unaware of its original meaning, like supermodel Audrey Kitching. By 2008, the most conspicuous style became the "scene kids." By this time, the fashion evolved into androgynous, matted, flat and straight hair sometimes dyed bright colors, drainpipe jeans, cartoon print hoodies, shutter shades, promise rings, checked shirts, and lots of very bright colors. Scene girls often would even wears lot of eyeliner. The fashion was influenced by the fashions of emo, preppy and glam.

Controversy and criticism

Scene has often been confused consistently with emo. Many people involved in the emo style have accused scene of ripping off emo. Music associated with the scene subculture, including Brokencyde and Blood on the Dance Floor, have received lots of criticism for their music and were major controversies in 2009 or the 2010s. For example, Brokencyde is generally panned by critics. Cracked.com contributor Michael Swaim said the band sounded like "a Slipknot-Cher duet". British comic book writer Warren Ellis considered Brokencyde's "FreaXXX" music video "a near-perfect snapshot of everything that’s shit about this point in the culture". A writer for the Warsaw Business Journal attempted to describe their music: "Imagine an impassioned triceratops mating with a steam turbine, while off to the side Daft Punk and the Bee Gees beat each other to death with skillets and spatulas. Imagine the sound that would make. Just try. BrokeNCYDE is kind of like that, except it also makes you want to jab your thumbs into your eyeballs and gargle acid."

The New Musical Express stated in a review of I'm Not a Fan, But the Kids Like It!, that "even if I caught Prince Harry and Gary Glitter adorned in Nazi regalia defecating through my grandmother’s letterbox I would still consider making them listen to this album too severe a punishment."

August Brown of the Los Angeles Times writes:

"This 'Albucrazy'-based band has done for MySpace emo what some think Soulja Boy did for hip-hop: turn their career into a kind of macro-performance art that exists so far beyond the tropes of irony and sincerity that to ask 'are they kidding?' is like trying to peel an onion to get to a perceived central core that, in the end, does not exist and renders all attempts to reassemble the pieces futile."

Moreover, the electropop duo Blood on the Dance Floor's member Dahvie Vanity has been consistently accused of rape.

Music

Often the scene subculture has been associated often with music. It was often associated with crunkcore, rave music, electropop, techno and electronica. Some groups and artists in music associated with the scene subculture include Brokencyde, Blood on the Dance Floor, Dot Dot Curve, 3OH!3, Breathe Carolina, Jeffree Star and Millionaires.