Off Key: When Film and Music Won't Work TogetherIn Off Key, Kay Dickinson offers a compelling study of how certain alliances of music and film are judged aesthetic failures. Based on a fascinating and wide-ranging body of film-music mismatches, and using contemporary reviews and histories of the turn to post-industrialization, the book expands the ways in which the union of the film and music businesses can be understood. Moving beyond the typical understanding of film music that privileges the score, Off Key also incorporates analyses of rock 'n' roll movies, composer biopics, and pop singers crossing over into acting. By doing this, it provides a fuller picture of how two successful entertainment sectors have sought out synergistic strategies, ones whose alleged "failures" have much to tell about the labor practices of the creative industries, as well as our own relationship to them and to work itself. A provocative and politically-conscious look at music-image relations, Off Key will appeal to students and scholars of film music, cinema studies, media studies, cultural studies, and labor history. |
Contents
| 3 | |
1 The Status and the Potential of FilmMusic That Doesnt Work | 13 |
The Migration of Cinema into Rock n Roll | 41 |
Ken Russells Composer Biopics and the Uneasy Realignment of Work and Culture | 81 |
The Horrific Sights and Incompatible Sounds of Video Nasties | 119 |
5 Pop Stars Who Cant Act and the Limits of Celebrity Flexibility | 155 |
The Problems of Conclusion | 189 |
Notes | 199 |
| 227 | |
| 243 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
acting aesthetic African American ambivalence argues artistic audience become biopics Britain British Cannibal Cannibal Holocaust capital capitalist chapter cinema commodities composers consumer contemporary creative critics cross-over stars crucial culture decentralization dialectical dialecticism economy Eisenstein Elvis employment entertainment industries example exploitation Fats Domino film and music film-music Freejack genre Girl Can't Help global Guy Ritchie Harum Scarum Hegel Hollywood horror increasingly instance Jagger Jailhouse Rock Ken Russell labor leisure Liszt Lisztomania Madonna Mahler manufacturing Marx means Mick Jagger mismatch modes Music Lovers musicians narrative particular percent performance perhaps political popular post-Fordism postindustrial potential practices Presley Presley's production Rattle and Rock relation responses Rock rock n roll movies scoring screen sector sense social song sound soundtrack space structure Swept synthesizer Tchaikovsky teen teenagers television tion tradition understanding Variety video nasties Video Violence viewers Violence and Children Virno workers