“Fight the Power” or Fear the Power? Perceived Levels of Political Agency via Musically Driven Emotional Intervention

While much of the focus on international relations understanding of hegemony sticks to physical, hard power manifestations of it, hegemony often is reinforced via more subtle and culturally salient means. Through culture, the hegemonic class is able to produce consent and approval of the governed by disseminating ideas and feelings through more subdued means of popular culture, such as popular music. I argue that emotions evoked by popular music affect an individual's level of political agency, paving the way for manipulation by the hegemon. By using U2 and Rage Against the Machine as case studies, this paper demonstrates that creating different emotional responses in the listener effects how they will interact with political stimuli in the wake of such emotional manipulation. The findings suggest that popular culture, and in this case music, is an area of hegemonic control that is less obvious in nature, and more difficult for the individual to resist against.