eight pages due by 48 hurs
aimeez
week10_online1.pdf
musical utopias and the music video revolution
Meet me in St. Louis. MGM musical (1944)
Oklahoma, Broadway cast recording (1948)
The Buggles- “Video Killed the Radio Star”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8r-tXRLazs
BTS- “Boy with Luv”: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x75t82k
Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894) - 1st Music Score: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwIcRSvQ_TY
-demonstration of the Vitaphone system (developed by Warner Brothers) in 1926. a process that would record film sound into a record and be played simultaneously with the film to achieve synchronized sound.
-the first film with synchronized talking was The Jazz Singer (1927).
Theodore Case
Lee de Forest
-developers of the Phonofilm system that premiered in 1923.
-a system that would be the basis for the primary way in which to record and replay synchronized sound alongside a moving image.
-Phonofilm was eventually surpassed by the technological advancements of Fox’s Movietone in 1926.
Sound Film History: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uu4SIlPxh0
(1924)
Ko-Ko Song Car-Tune: Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1924): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wX1_acp53U
“rock and roll…was created to provide the insurgent teen culture with a voice and an attitude at variance with mainstream values. it was supposed to stir things up and rage against the decade’s complacent, smug ethos, not propagate the status quo. rock and roll was loud, brash, and impudent’ TV was soothing and polite. rock and roll was sex; TV was violins. rock and roll was Elvis Presley; TV was Robert Young. TV was black and white; rock and roll was technicolor…”
-broadcast on CBS from 1948 to 1971.
-Sullivan was a former entertainment columnist.
-his “really big show” was inclusive, low-brow, and aimed toward family gatherings on Sunday night.
-hosted Presley on the show three times in 1956 after seeing the huge ratings Steve Allen received when he hosted Presley on his show.
Sullivan: “[Presley] would never go on our show. ours is a family show. if i were selling cigarettes, maybe i’d book him, but how many Elvis Presley fans are going to buy new cars?”
Presley first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show on September 9, 1956.
-in the 1950s advertisers discovered and cultivated the “teenager” as a consumer in training.
-even though teenage girls were responsible for the majority of record sales, it was thought to be a passing fad.
-according to a 1955 Ohio State University “study,” girls lost their taste for “hot” music once they assumed adult responsibilities and purchasing power. by their late teens, “their taste veers to the sweet and ‘schmaltzy’ (e.g. Lawrence Walk or Liberace).”
Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show 1956 [watch until 1:40]: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1VpbH7JZWof3D35Bmjw_LzlSCVFGD9IuS/view?usp=sharing
ELVIS PRESLEY "Hound Dog" on The Ed Sullivan Show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGZm7EOamWk
“fact in the 1950s girls and women drove [rock and roll] economically with their purchases as well as their influence as consumers.”
Elvis Presley—Lack of Responsibility is Shown by TV in Exploiting Teen-Agers
“when this code is applied to teen- agers just becoming conscious of life’s processes, not only is it manifestly without validity but it, alas, is perilous. catering to the interests of the younger generation is one of television’s main jobs; because those interests do not always coincide with parental tastes should not deter the broadcasters. but selfish exploitation and commercialized overstimulation of youth’s physical impulses is certainly a gross disservice.”
-Jack Gould, New York Times, 1956.
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937)
-Marxist philosopher.
-developed the idea of cultural hegemony: the philosophic and sociological concept that a culturally-diverse society can be ruled or dominated by one of its social classes.
Elvis Presley Blue Suede Shoes Screen Test Paramount Studios 1956: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dw2TDXfvph4
“the transformation was incredible…electricity bounced off the walls.[it was] like an earthquake.”
JAILHOUSE ROCK ('57): "Jailhouse Rock”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfrC8PAQtlg
Soudies: a WWII technology that played 16mm films with synchronized sound.
-found in bars, bowling alleys, and lodges.
-in addition to playing music clips they also later played pornography.
Scopitone: first developed in France in in 1950s.
-they were different from the Soundies in the sense that they didn’t have synchronized sound.
Vintage 1960s Scopitone 450 Video Jukebox: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kenBAGOF-g
Scopitone ST-36 jukebox: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIQSZ2DwbW8
-launched in 1981
-launched in 1981
MTV Original Broadcast 8/1/1981: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBf0yJVMSzI
John Scarlett-Davies: “the music videos on MTV are masturbation fantasies for middle America. they just sit there with their cans of beer, tossing off while their scantily clad girls do this and that with men with their big electric guitars like prick extensions.”
Rick James – “Super Freak”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYHxGBH6o4M
David Bowie ahead of the game calls out MTV on racism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4cQqKXH2Cg
Richard Dyer
-author or “Entertainment and Utopia.”
-“entertainment offers the image of ‘something better’ to escape into, or something we want deeply that our day-to-day lives don’t provide. alternatives, hopes, wishes—these are the stuff to utopia, the sense that things could be better, that something other than what is can be imagined and maybe realized.”
-“entertainment does not, however, present models of utopian worlds.”
-“rather, the utopianism is contained in the feelings it embodies.”
-“it presents, head-on as it were, what utopia would feel like rather than how it would be organized. it thus works at the level of sensibility, by which i mean an affective code that is characteristic of, and largely specific to, a given mode of cultural production.”
Gold Diggers of 1933 - "We're in the Money“: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJOjTNuuEVw
Björk – “It’s Oh So Quiet” https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WYiC_LVIiCPvrm05XvfVKD3acnSAjcWW/view?usp=sharing
Busby Berkley: musical director who turned individual dancers into a collective sensibility.
Busby Berkeley – “Dance Until The Dawn” (1931): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNW-AzZdBRU&t=33s
intensity: the capacity of entertainment to present either complex or unpleasant feelings (e.g. involvement in personal or political events; jealously, loss of love, defeat) in a way that makes them seem uncomplicated, direct and vivid, not ‘qualified’ or ambiguous’ as day-to- day life makes them, and without intimations of self- deception and pretense.
Justin Bieber ft. Nicki Minaj- “Beauty And A Beat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys7-6_t7OEQ
R.E.M. – “Überlin”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZITh-XIikgI
This Is Dominic Fike: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMYcubNOrPs
Young Dreams – “First Days of Something”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CAF26JV9qs&feature=emb_title
