White boys, white noise : masculinities and 1980s indie guitar rock / Matthew Bannister.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bannister, Matthew.

Series:

Ashgate popular and folk music series.

Ashgate popular and folk music series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Alternative rock music--History and criticism.

Alternative rock music.

Masculinity in music.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (229 p.)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Aldershot, England ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, c2006.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"To what extent do indie masculinities challenge the historical construction of rock music as patriarchal? This key question is addressed by Matthew Bannister, involving an in-depth examination of indie guitar rock in the 1980s as the culturally and historically specific production of white men. Through textual analysis of musical and critical discourses, Bannister provides the first book-length study of masculinity and ethnicity within the context of indie guitar music within US, UK and New Zealand 'scenes'. Bannister argues that past theorisations of (rock) masculinities have tended to set up varieties of working-class deviance and physical machismo as 'straw men', oversimplifying masculinities as 'men behaving badly'. Such approaches disavow the ways that masculine power is articulated in culture not only through representation but also intellectual and theoretical discourse. By re-situating indie in a historical/cultural context of art rock, he shows how masculine power can be rearticulated through high, avant-garde, bohemian culture and aesthetic theory: canonism, negation (Adorno), passivity, voyeurism and camp (Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground), and primitivism and infantilism (Lester Bangs, Simon Reynolds). In a related vein, he also assesses the impact of Freud on cultural theory, arguing that reversing binary conceptions of gender by associating masculinities with an essentialised passive femininity perpetuates patriarchal dualism. Drawing on his own experience as an indie musician, Bannister surveys a range of indie artists, including The Smiths, The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine and The Go-Betweens; from the US, R.E.M., The Replacements, Dinosaur Jr, HÃơsker DÃơ, Nirvana and hardcore; and from NZ, Flying Nun acts, including The Chills, The Clean, the Verlaines, Chris Knox, Bailter Space, and The Bats, demonstrating broad continuities between these apparently disparate scenes, in terms of gender, aesthetic theory and approaches to popular musical history. The result is a book which raises some important questions about how gender is studied in popular culture and the degree to which alternative cultures can critique dominant representations of gender."--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction : white boys

Reviewing theories and representations of masculinities

Powerless power : masculine intellectualism and aesthetics

What does it mean to be alternative? : indie guitar rock as a genre

The singer or the song? : homosociality, genre and gender

Someone controls electric guitar : indie and technologies

What will I do if she dies? : music, misery and masculinities

Conclusion :

white noise.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [168]-186) and index.

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.

ISBN:

1-351-21801-8

1-351-21802-6

1-351-21800-X

1-281-89414-1

9786611894146

0-7546-8803-8

9781351218023

OCLC:

290509987