A push and a shove and the land is ours: Morrissey's counter-hegemonic stance(s) on social class

Abstract

We explore how the singer Morrissey has represented the struggles of the proletariat in creative and provocative ways, inviting a deep textual reading that reveals a complex counter-hegemonic stance on the issue of social class. A champion of the ‘Other’ in a variety of guises, Morrissey is revealed in this article as a raconteur of the marginalized working class. We illustrate this through a detailed semiotic, musical and contextual reading of one particular song; ‘Interesting Drug’. We reveal tensions in Morrissey's representations of the proletariat. Specifically, Morrissey's romantic, nostalgia-laden, oversimplification of the working-class hero of an earlier era seems some distance from the ‘real’ proletariat struggle for representation in the places that count. However, in providing both collective places and intimate spaces in which to reflect, his music becomes counter-hegemonic as he hands power back to the individual to make the music meaningful in whatever way he or she wishes.