“Give and Take”

Representations of the Post-socialist “New Bourgeoisie” in Music Videos

Abstract

This article explores the critical question of how music videos portrayed the “new bourgeoisie” in early post-socialist music videos. Additionally, it tackles two side issues: the depiction of criminal groups and foreign countries. Unlike the “new class”, post-socialist new bourgeoisie emerged as a class that was entirely economically defined by its own material interests. Several values attributable to post-socialist “new bourgeoisie” can be discerned from the music videos: an interplay of ambitions and hedonism, cosmopolitanism as well as of patriotic narratives, and the aspiration of the new bourgeoisie to assert its culturedness vis-à-vis the “intelligentsia”.

Keywords: class, post-socialism, new bourgeoisie, music videos, pop music