Popular music and masculinity have rarely been examined through the lens of research into monstrosity. The discourses associated with rock and pop, however, actually include more ‘monsters’ than might at first be imagined. Attention to such individuals and cultures can say things about the operation of genre and gender, myth and meaning. Indeed, monstrosity has recently become a growing focus of cultural theory. This is in part because monsters raise shared concerns about transgression, subjectivity, agency, and community. Attention to monstrosity evokes both the spectre of projection (which invokes familial trauma and psychoanalysis) and shared anxieties (that in turn reflect ideologies and beliefs). By pursuing a series of insightful case studies, Scary Monsters considers different aspects of the connection between music, gender and monstrosity. Its argument is that attention to monstrosity provides a unique perspective on the study of masculinity in popular music culture.
Popular music and masculinity have rarely been examined through the lens of research into monstrosity. The discourses associated with rock and pop, however, actually include more ‘monsters’ than might at first be imagined. Attention to such individuals and cultures can say things about the operation of genre and gender, myth and meaning. Indeed, monstrosity has recently become a growing focus of cultural theory. This is in part because monsters raise shared concerns about transgression, subjectivity, agency, and community. Attention to monstrosity evokes both the spectre of projection (which invokes familial trauma and psychoanalysis) and shared anxieties (that in turn reflect ideologies and beliefs). By pursuing a series of insightful case studies, Scary Monsters considers different aspects of the connection between music, gender and monstrosity. Its argument is that attention to monstrosity provides a unique perspective on the study of masculinity in popular music culture.
Introduction
Jon Hackett
1. A Night at the Opera: Updating The Phantom
Mark Duffett
2. ‘His Muscles Still Bulged Like Iron Bands’: King Kong and the
Promotion of Lead Belly
Mark Duffett
3. Colonel Parker and the Art of Commercial Exploitation: The
Manager as Monster
Mark Duffett
4. The Platformed Prometheus: Frankenstein and Glam Rock
Jon Hackett
5. The Case of Mark Chapman: Extreme Fandom as Monstrosity?
Mark Duffett
6. Exhuming the Gravediggaz: Gothic Hip Hop and Monster Capital
Jon Hackett
7. Masculinity on Trial: Noir Désir and Perverse Narcissism
Jon Hackett
8. ‘Jingle Jangle Man’: Jimmy Savile, Paedophilia and the Music
Industry
Mark Duffett
References
Endnotes
Index
Through a series of case studies, Scary Monsters examines masculinity in popular music culture from the perspective of research into monstrosity.
Mark Duffett is Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural
Studies at the University of Chester. He is known for the book
Understanding Fandom (2013).
Jon Hackett is Associate Professor in Film and
Communications and Head of Communications, Media and Marketing at
St Mary's University, Twickenham, UK. His research and teaching
interests include critical theory, film studies and popular music
studies.
Mark Duffett and Jon Hackett have compiled a fascinating collection
of analyses that provide new perspectives on popular music figures,
popular culture, and the societies and cultures of both the 20th
century and the first two decades of the 21st. Thanks to their
innovative utilization of different theories regarding concepts
such as masculinity and monstrosity, their collection is of
interest to a wide range of scholars ... Through their close
readings of popular culture figures, texts, and discourses, they
demonstrate an adeptness at incorporating the less commonly applied
monstrosity studies with the more prevalent gender studies to
provide new insights into music studies.
*Popular Culture Studies Journal*
The collection of set pieces in the volume … is also strangely,
perversely entertaining and seems weirdly suited for our viral,
pox-ridden times in the era of post-truth.
*Popular Music*
Seldom has the monster metaphor been used with such depth,
diversity and complexity in the field of popular music studies.
Applying an overarching approach that covers music artists,
managers, fans and associated showbusiness personalities, in Scary
Monsters Duffett and Hackett present a compelling and theoretically
rigorous account of popular music, monstrosity and masculinity that
will serve as an invaluable resource for students and scholars in
popular music studies, cultural studies, media and communications,
sociology, social history and other fields concerned with the
intricate relationship between popular culture and society.
*Andy Bennett, Professor, Griffith University, Australia*
Scary Monsters brings popular music studies into an innovative and
important dialogue with theories of monstrosity. Exploring how
culture and industry attribute the monstrous also enables Duffett
and Hackett to analyse who is marked as innocent, naïve and
exploited. Monstrosity is more than attribution alone, however, and
this book interrogates pop music’s monsters of toxic masculinity,
ranging from managers to stars, and from fans to DJs. Pop’s shiny
glamour may promise what have often been culturally feminised
pleasures, but Scary Monsters instead approaches the darker
recesses and the dangerously romanticised excesses of popular
music’s 'monstrous masculine.'
*Matt Hills, Professor of Media and Film, University of
Huddersfield, UK*
[A] useful collection of interviews and ideas for musical majors or
biographers of each individual featured, and the reader should
expect a ‘true-crime’-esque experience that exposes the deliberate
(or indirect) monstrosities of the music industry.
*Limina: A Journal of Historical and Cultural Studies*
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