Genre boundaries historically encoded audience social divisions

Evidence

Omnivore tastes were cosmopolitan, and country music was a proud bastion of provincial American tastes. While genre distinctions often function as artistic boundaries, they also serve as shorthand for audiences who want nothing to do with each other. Despite journalist Nadine Smith’s observation that hip-hop and country are “the two forms of pop music that speak most directly to the everyday problems of ordinary people struggling to survive,” fans of each genre historically despised the other in reflection of a broader social conflict. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 627

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the ‘collapse of subcultural difference’ pillar of the omnivore monoculture thesis the reader must trace. — connects to: Audience sympathy for a character is a structural effect of genre and class ideology — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 703