Résister ou vendre ? La controverse des manele : marginalité, politique du goût et industries culturelles en Roumanie

Abstract

This article analyses the contemporary controversy around the manele genre of popular music in Romania. It nuances how this genre is situated in between cultural marginality and integration within the entertainment market. Although often discredited as ‘vulgar’ or ‘immoral’ artistic expressions, manele are at the same time widely consumed and politically instrumentalized in Romania, which turns them into a paradoxical cultural phenomenon. The study starts from the hypothesis that the ambivalence of manele – simultaneously subversive and co-opted by the market – reflects the social, ethnic, and symbolic tensions of post-communist Romania. The analysis unfolds along four directions. First, it discusses the provocative aesthetics of the cocalar, through which manele articulate an ostentatious masculine identity and an aesthetics of excess, opposed to the dominant values of Orthodox religious values. Second, it addresses taste as a social boundary, from the perspective of Bourdieu’s theory of distinction, showing how anti-manelism functions as a mechanism of exclusion and cultural legitimacy, but also how the excess present in manele’s message showcases a desire for social ascension. In this context, money is the main vector towards a better life. Third, the article examines the electoral use of manele, whereby politicians of various parties instrumentalize the genre’s popularity despite the continued marginalization of Roma communities, done by the same parties. Finally, it explores the limits of emancipation offered by manele, highlighting the contradiction between their potential for cultural resistance and the reproduction of dynamics of sexism, standardization, and integration into the logic of the culture industry. The methodology employed is interdisciplinary, combining cultural sociology, aesthetic analysis, and political analysis, with a corpus composed of viral YouTube songs, lyrics, video clips, and public discourses. The main contribution of the article lies in proposing a dialectical reading: manele are simultaneously the expression of a subaltern culture and the product of a globalized entertainment market. They constitute a contested ground between resistance and co-optation, visibility and discredit, emancipation and reinforcement of dominant logics.