Exploring The Transformation Of American Emo Subculture's Media Image

Emo (short for"emotional") is originally a label of a melodic subgenre of punk-rock music characterized by emotional or personal themes, and later develops into a youth subculture. During this process, American mass media also change the way of representing emo. Initially, when emo is an underground post-pock music, the media simply perceive it as signifying emotion honesty; but later when it becomes popular and evolves into a confirmed youth subculture, the media reconstruct emo to a deviant youth subculture, a catalyst for teen suicide and self-injury.This paper aims to activate an argument that American mass media (especially news agencies) initially perceive emo as a revolutionary post-punk movement through a course of simplification and then during reporting teenage suicide incidents, the media begin to link every"emo thing"to self-destruction through repetitious exaggeration, prediction and symbolization.It involves an analysis of how the media choose to report and represent youth issues. What lies behind this diversion is a predicament between the advancement of multi-mediated environment and the opportunity this advancement has supplied for newly-emerging cultural patterns of current American young generation. Only if the public be critical towards the media and be tolerant towards youth, can the young generation no longer be stereotyped.