Social Class and Marxism in Twenty One Pilots’ Trench

The purpose of this study is to analyse Twenty One Pilots’ 2018 album Trench from a Marxist point of view, focusing on the portrayal of social classes in the text. Most of the songs on the album are linked to a fictional city of Dema. Dema is an authoritarian city-state with two clearly separated social classes: the ruling class and the subordinate class. This thesis will analyse the social classes and the speaker’s attitudes towards them. The ruling class constitutes of nine bishops and the subordinate class is formed by the people of Dema as well as the rebels living outside of the city. I argue that the analysed texts in themselves present Marxist critique by describing the bishops’ hegemony as problematic. The album is analysed as a multimedia entity where the focus will be on the three songs that best portray the Dema-narrative: “Jumpsuit”, “Levitate”, and “Nico and the Niners”, the letters written by a fictional Dema-citizen called Clancy that were used in promoting the album, and the three songs’ music videos. The analysis is thus based on the song lyrics, letters, and the visual story portrayed in the music videos. The theoretical background of the analysis is cultural studies and Marxist theory. Cultural studies will present music as a political tool and discuss who can make music political. Marxist studies are used to present two important terms: ideology and hegemony, which are essential to the analysis and help analyse the differences and relationships between the two social classes. The analysis shows that the ruling class’ hegemony is seen as negative in the texts and resistance and escaping from Dema are two major themes in the album. However, a solution is also presented: the subordinate class, as a supportive community, is seen as a counterforce to the bishops’ hegemony. This study also opens new possibilities for further study: it enables further study of the album and the additional material attached to it and allows the study of the album as a reflection of real society