Description
For two decades after the mid-1950s, biracial popular music played a fundamental role in progressive social movements on both sides of the Atlantic. Balancing rock's capacity for utopian popular cultural empowerment with its usefulness for the capitalist media industries, Rock 'N' Film explores how the music's contradictory potentials were reproduced in various kinds of cinema, including major studio productions, minor studios' exploitation projects, independent documentaries, and the avant-garde. These include Rock Around the Clock and other 1950s jukebox musicals; the films Elvis made before being drafted, especially King Creole, as well as the formulaic comedies in which Hollywood abused his genius in the 1960s; early documentaries such as The T.A.M.I. Show that presented James Brown and the Rolling Stones as the core of a black-white, US-UK cultural commonality; A Hard Day's Night that marked the British Invasion; Dont Look Back, Monterey Pop, Woodstock, and other Direct Cinema documentaries about the music of the counterculture; and avant-garde films about the Rolling Stones by Jean-Luc Godard, Kenneth Anger, and Robert Frank. After the turn of the decade, notably Gimme Shelter, in which the Stones appeared to be complicit in the Hells Angels' murder of a young black man, 1960s' music-and films about it-reverted to separate black and white traditions based respectively on soul and country. These produced blaxploitation and Lady Sings the Blues on the one hand, and bigoted representations of Southern culture in Nashville on the other. Ending with the deaths of their stars, both films implied that rock 'n' roll had died or even, as David Bowie proclaimed, that it had committed suicide. But in his documentary about Bowie, Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, D.A. Pennebaker triumphantly re-affirmed the community of musicians and fans in glam rock. In analyzing this history, David E. James adapts the methodology of histories of the classic film musical to show how the rock 'n' roll film both displaced and recreated it.
About the Author
David E. James is Professor of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Written Within and Without: A Study of Blake's Milton, Allegories of Cinema: American Film in the Sixties, Power Misses: Essays Across (Un)Popular Culture, The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles, and more.
Reviews
I love this book right from the opening sentence, with its fresh yet entirely proper reference to Elvis Presley's first (and timeless) record; the attention paid to the music * not least the black musicin that bizarre film The Girl Can't Help It; and the affection everywhere (including the relish of absurdities like the Teen Age Music International documentary that had Gerry & the Pacemakers take over from Chuck Berry in mid song). Dip into it, or read it straight through. Either way, you'll value it.Michael Gray, author of Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan *
This is a first-rate book: well-researched, well-organized, well-written, and on a topic that is of wide interest yet poorly represented in print. James' work will substantially raise the level of discourse on the relationship between rock music and cinema. * Rick Altman, author of The American Film Musical *
In Rock 'N' Film, David E. James provides a complete overview of rock music in the movies, from the teenage exploitation flicks of the mid-fifties to Elvis Presley's decidedly lightweight years in Hollywood and the Beatles' forays into absurdism. Written with a director's eye for detail and a songwriter's understanding of the milieu, Rock 'N' Film is a comprehensive and invaluable guide to the on-again, off-again romance between rock and the silver screen. * Bruce Pegg, author of Brown Eyed Handsome Man: The Life and Hard Times of Chuck Berry *
David E. James' Rock 'N' Film is a valuable, capacious resource, tracing the intersection of popular music and motion pictures from Bill Haley to David Bowie, through exploitation films, documentaries, and every genre in between, on both sides of the Atlantic. Like Hendrix at Monterey, it leaves us wishing there were even more. * Marc Dolan, author of Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock 'n' Roll *
Covering rock 'n' roll filmmaking in its entirety, this accomplished volume is readily accessible and written (as James himself notes) without the jargon that often mars film studies...Illustrated with a host of frame blowups, this informed, sharp, inviting, and absolutely authoritative book will be the source to beat on the subject of rock 'n' roll movies for quite some time...Summing Up: Essential. All readers. * CHOICE *
Rock 'N' Film is an erudite and encyclopedic study of cinema's role in creating the social, cultural, aesthetic, and industrial worlds known collectively as "rock 'n' roll". His knowledge of cinema, as well as his clear love for and deep understanding of popular music as both a sonic and cultural force, make his book an indispensable treasure trove for studying the role of the popular arts in shaping the look and sound of American culture ... He has written a highly readable text, one that appeals to a broad audience and stands as a major contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship in the humanities. * Phi Kappa Phi, University of Southern California *
With Rock 'N' Film, David James has provided not only a signal contribution to the much-needed reimagining of film history and cinematic intermediality but also one of the most cogent and revealing histories of Western popular music in the second half of the twentieth century. * Diacritics *
Awards
Winner of Winner of the University of Southern California's Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award.
Book Information
ISBN 9780190842017
Author David E. James
Format Paperback
Page Count 484
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 696g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 157mm * 25mm
About the Author
David E. James is Professor of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. He is the author of Written Within and Without: A Study of Blake's Milton, Allegories of Cinema: American Film in the Sixties, Power Misses: Essays Across (Un)Popular Culture, The Most Typical Avant-Garde: History and Geography of Minor Cinemas in Los Angeles, and more.
Reviews
I love this book right from the opening sentence, with its fresh yet entirely proper reference to Elvis Presley's first (and timeless) record; the attention paid to the music * not least the black musicin that bizarre film The Girl Can't Help It; and the affection everywhere (including the relish of absurdities like the Teen Age Music International documentary that had Gerry & the Pacemakers take over from Chuck Berry in mid song). Dip into it, or read it straight through. Either way, you'll value it.Michael Gray, author of Song & Dance Man III: The Art of Bob Dylan *
This is a first-rate book: well-researched, well-organized, well-written, and on a topic that is of wide interest yet poorly represented in print. James' work will substantially raise the level of discourse on the relationship between rock music and cinema. * Rick Altman, author of The American Film Musical *
In Rock 'N' Film, David E. James provides a complete overview of rock music in the movies, from the teenage exploitation flicks of the mid-fifties to Elvis Presley's decidedly lightweight years in Hollywood and the Beatles' forays into absurdism. Written with a director's eye for detail and a songwriter's understanding of the milieu, Rock 'N' Film is a comprehensive and invaluable guide to the on-again, off-again romance between rock and the silver screen. * Bruce Pegg, author of Brown Eyed Handsome Man: The Life and Hard Times of Chuck Berry *
David E. James' Rock 'N' Film is a valuable, capacious resource, tracing the intersection of popular music and motion pictures from Bill Haley to David Bowie, through exploitation films, documentaries, and every genre in between, on both sides of the Atlantic. Like Hendrix at Monterey, it leaves us wishing there were even more. * Marc Dolan, author of Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock 'n' Roll *
Covering rock 'n' roll filmmaking in its entirety, this accomplished volume is readily accessible and written (as James himself notes) without the jargon that often mars film studies...Illustrated with a host of frame blowups, this informed, sharp, inviting, and absolutely authoritative book will be the source to beat on the subject of rock 'n' roll movies for quite some time...Summing Up: Essential. All readers. * CHOICE *
Rock 'N' Film is an erudite and encyclopedic study of cinema's role in creating the social, cultural, aesthetic, and industrial worlds known collectively as "rock 'n' roll". His knowledge of cinema, as well as his clear love for and deep understanding of popular music as both a sonic and cultural force, make his book an indispensable treasure trove for studying the role of the popular arts in shaping the look and sound of American culture ... He has written a highly readable text, one that appeals to a broad audience and stands as a major contribution to interdisciplinary scholarship in the humanities. * Phi Kappa Phi, University of Southern California *
With Rock 'N' Film, David James has provided not only a signal contribution to the much-needed reimagining of film history and cinematic intermediality but also one of the most cogent and revealing histories of Western popular music in the second half of the twentieth century. * Diacritics *
Awards
Winner of Winner of the University of Southern California's Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award.
Book Information
ISBN 9780190842017
Author David E. James
Format Paperback
Page Count 484
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 696g
Dimensions(mm) 235mm * 157mm * 25mm
