music video

It can be considered that the music video is a way to promote singers, as a result, is the context of the music radio is very important?
In west countries, the music videos look like dance or technique videos, they try to avoid getting geography and lyrics match, however, in china, most of the music videos are produced to illustrate the songs.
So, what is the aim of producing the music video? Is it introducing the star or promoting the song, or both?
The music videos let the costumes, especially the funs to purchase the products, the music video is not only about the music, but also the fashion and style of the stars. The music video that has associated with the lyrics or the theme of the songs, tries to move the audiences and let them feel familiar with the song and remember the singer’s voice and emotions. On the other hand, the music video that has no relations with the lyrics, but try to illustrate the passions and other emotional elements, are struggling to introduce and show the star’s fashion style and outfits.
It can be noticed that the style of the music video is not only about the style of the star, but also depends on the tempo of the music, if the tempo is slow, the music video is almost associated with the lyrics and producing a story about the lyrics, but if the tempo is fast, the music video more focuses on the star’s style and fashion elements.

Silent Hill (2006) and the expressive use of video game score

Academic Film literature has already established that a significant amount of a Horror film's tension can be constructed through its score. I really enjoyed the class example of Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) - where the simple visual sequence of Marion driving lost most of its 'punch' simply by muting the film. But I am interested in how the style of video game score, a subject area still adolescent in its academic exploration, can enhance tension in these films.

I missed Silent Hill (2006) in its theatrical run but I impulsively purchased the DVD last week and was quite pleasantly surprised! I was expecting the same rushed, low art, mass appeal-style adaptation like Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004) and Doom (2005), but as Rose awakens from her crash and enters the town in search of her daughter - i found that a very different kind of score begins to consume the audioscape, giving the film a much more expressive feel. Interestingly enough I discovered from Wikipedia that some of the score from this scene is a direct sample from the video game!

As Roze gazes through the mist and begins to call out for her daughter and for help, the music drives up subtly but dramatically. As this non-diagetic audio track quickly overpowers her diagetic cries for help, I already feel that her situation is hopeless in a new and different way than I have previously experienced with horror. The music falls silent with the clang of a metal pipe as the welcome sign to Silent Hill is revealed. Then a more classical horror score takes over - with elements of clanging metal, a low bassy growl, and a sinister-silophone children's tune all layered under her diagetic footsteps. But as she enters the center of town we witness a series of disorienting tracking shots accompanied by an alien-electronic humm. As these stabilize visually we re-enter the video game score style - kicked off by an audio sample i could only describe as "the non-diagetic sound that accompanied each of Neo's footseps as he entered the lobby in The Matrix". This next sequence builds on this, using this video-game audio mode to pick up the pace as Rose catches a glimpse of her daughter and hurriedly follows in pursuit. But the space expands and Rose is left isolated oncemore - which again cues a more passive and traditional horror score.

I find this interplay between the traditional mode of scoring and the video game mode facinating and this is the first film i've seen thats used it so effectively. If anyone wants to defend the scores from Resident Evil or Doom i'm keen to start a debate thread here :)

MTV in New Zealand.

I perhaps should have posted this last week when it was more relevant to what was going on in the class but it only just occured to me.

I was skimming an old magazine when I encounterd an advertisement proclaiming the imminent launch of MTV in New Zealand. The adverisement featured the slogan "Pure New Zealand goodness."

I thought this was quite unusual because I have yet to notice much of this "New Zealand goodness" on the channel. Maybe it's because I don't watch enough, but every time I see MTV I hear american accents, Laguna Beach, Jackass, Punk'd, Cribs, Pimp-my-ride, Viva la Bam and other, similar directly important content is all that ever seems to air, and on the rare occasion that MTV plays music videos, they are predominantly from the US and UK also.

Perhaps the slogan should have been "Pure American goodness, with a few token kiwi bands and some local news out of prime time"

But then would anybody watch it?
Answer: yes of course, because theyre all brainwashed by The Man anyway.

AndrewS.

Research essay related stuff

Kia Ora all

The FTVMS Department's Equity Tutor Ruth Lysaght is going to have some workshop hours to help you fine-tune your research topics from 3-5 pm, Monday 23 April, in Room 303 in Arts 1 Building. If a lot of people show up she'll find a bigger room. This workshop is recommended for students who have difficulties with writing and/or those for whom English is an additional language. Ruth has a lot of training and experience in teaching EAL students.

No lecture on Wednesday 25 April because it's Anzac Day.

My extra office hours on Thursday 26 April. 12-3 pm, Room 314, Arts 1.

A couple of points that came up in discussion with students in office hours:

Just a reminder that your research essays can focus on something that isn't covered by the lectures and readings and can deal with an area that hasn't been written about much or at all in academic circles. The main point is that you have a point of view and back up your claims, make a persuasive argument and write well. Your own voice should ring through the essay. I welcome you writing 'original research'. So please draw on your backgrounds from various places and your own histories of watching and listening. And don't be afraid to be creative and imaginative in your essay.

The course is heavy with US and UK material which reflects my interests, but you can write about Aotearoa/New Zealand or anywhere else and material that I don't have time to deal with in detail in the lectures e.g music and moving images from many other parts of the world, game music, TV ads and music, music in documentaries etc. You can also focus on audiences and consumption. You don't have to write about particular films or soundtracks or shows. Textual analysis is familiar to many of you but it's not the only way to do film, television and media studies.

I won't be available during the mid-semester vacation so don't email me unless it's a very serious issue.

The latest lecture outline is on CECIL. Please start blogging if you haven't already. Details on course outline. Ditto for the submission of the assignment by Tuesday, 1 May.

Have a safe and happy holiday.

A Hard Days Night

In the ‘band narrative’, more specifically A Hard Days Night, there seems to be an obsession with realism. The black and white, the verité style and the behind the scenes footage all lead us to believe this is how life for the band actually is. There is a pleasure in absorbing what appears to be the ‘real face’ of the Beatles, as a unit and as each individual persona. A Hard Days Night’s realism is bound within the mise-en-scene and the dialogue of the characters themselves, like the impromptu jam in the “grotty” animal carriage on the train .There is also sort of normal working man notion that is explored in A Hard Days Night, where the boys are portrayed as young exuberant working class fellows living out everyone’s dream, although with Paul and John a working class title is far from true. The characters are each constructed in their own right however there is actually little revealed, more just a surface adjective given for each, nice guy, cynical guy, loner and larrikin. Of course this is all a blatant fabrication and in fact the entire film, and others alike, are staged. But while absorbing this ‘realism’ within the film my attention was drawn to another British band movie, Spice World; The Movie. Both movies seek to promote new and old songs spattered throughout the weak narrative plot line and both use realism to bind the spectator to the main characters, the band. The Spice Girls too have numerous off-the-cuff rehearsals and often look back at their past to their roots and when they first began as musicians, if you will. Something A Hard Days Night is missing but is often referenced in the form of their home towns, typically working class, and their mums.

There are scenes which disrupt this realism however; it is the lack of synchronisation. It is when Lennon starts singing before his mouth starts moving in almost every impromptu singing scene. At which, when noticed, we are pulled back (accidentally I believe) to a critical distance and reminded that this is all staged. It was through this disruption that I realised both these movies seem to need realism in order move away from the feature length music video it could so easily fall into. If we did not see backstage or feel like we knew them personally we would be less emotionally involved. As an audience we rely on realism to connect with ‘our’ band but there is no realism so in fact could you say that all ties with a band, if not personally encountered experiences, are inauthentic and surface. So who are the Spice Girls, and who are the Beatles if they aren’t what these narratives portray?

Screening the Past: Popular Music and Film issue

Here's a journal issue with many articles relevant to the course.

Pop Princess's vs Dirty Sex Symbols

Why is it that these days sex & sexuality can be found everywhere and in everything. Music videos are a perfect example. Gender plays a large role within music videos today, and we can see this through the representation of the female body and the way this represents women. Women have many subjectivities in music videos. Take Christina Aguleria for example. She started off as a pop princess, singing about things such as not wanting to lose her virginity if she wasn't in love in "Genie in a Bottle". Her video fitted this accordingly. We saw her looking innocent and cute, still hot to male viewers but not overly sexual. Her next album however, was a little bit more 'dirty'. In her single "Dirty" we see her new image as being excessively sexual and provoking. She is wearing long pants, i'll give her that, but as soon as she turns around, the sexual side of the outfit is exposed. The bottom of her butt cheeks are completely on show, as there is a cut out of the back of her pants. Her dance moves are also relativley filthy. She is placed in many erotic positions with male back up dancers and she performs vulgar moves to some somewhat vulgar lyrics.
Her poor fans, she was once a fresh young blonde pop princess who young children looked upto and desired to be, she then turned, somewhat over night, into a black haired, sex symbol performing, both lyrically as well as through her dance moves, sexually. Did she do this just to increase sales? Is this why sexuality is placed in all of our video clips these days? I would prefer to watch a video clip without seeing young women baring pretty much all and see some clever sequencing, shooting and better dance moves.

There can be no such thing as genderless culture: 'One's social sexual identity, or gender, is a very central concept in music, linked with interaction between the sexes. The girls or woman are much more violent and hot-tempered than the men. The maledictory songs against unfaithful lovers are addressed in far greater number to men than women. Women in music are still prisoners of their sexual roles. For example, an ageing female rock star is almost impossibility. For example, Tina Turner is the shining exception, but she is black. Someone already on the margins through being black, gay or diverging from the norm in some other way, can bend the limits. However, Many songs, and women singers, feature cross-gender situations, such as Madonna, or the 'Female Warrior' ballads. In these songs women were extending their space. Although women are known to have occasionally smuggled themselves into the armies and navies of earlier centuries, the disguise songs do not operate primarily as records of actual practice but as a challenge to the gender coding of dress, work and terrain.

Video Killed The Radio Star

After Nabeel played the video by the Buggles 'Video Killed The Radio Star', it got me thinking. Has MTV killed music? As I listen to the new Timberland album, I feel that I have heard all of these songs before. With Timberland being the producer for Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado alike, his beats seem to be everywhere. This got me thinking again, will there ever be a true superstar or super band in music again. We are so over-saturated with music nowadays that it is hard for a musician to become a true superstar. One moment they are the flavour of the month, next no one really wants to listen to them. No longer is someone able to become a true superstar, selling out concerts at a drop of a hat. If you look at the top earners for 2006, most of the bands that are on the list were around when MTV was in its infancy or around before that. Rolling Stones, U2 and Bon Jovi round out the top three. Probably the only band on the list that you could consider only making it big in recent years is Coldplay who come in at number seven. I don't see any new band at present selling out concerts like U2 and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers can do. Will we ever see a true music superstar ever again? Who knows all I know is that Britney Spears won't fill that category.

Ashley N

The importance of synchronisation

As far as the visual is concerned, it is critical to mention the importance of synchronisation of music and the performance. There would be nothing more dreadful than seeing a singer whose lips move differently with his voice on live stage. Such asynchrony unconsciously disturbs the viewers to experience bad feelings that would cause negative evaluation of the material. However, when the image and sound are put together in synchronous form, it could bring up the positive side of the contents by maximising its feature and quality. Below is one of the clips from the Animusic DVD, the Pipe Dream. The computer-generated animations that perfectly match with the sound and on-screen action make the most of its rhythmic features and one can notice how the simultaneously driven actions of the metal balls make such an amazing effects out of simple midi-based percussion sound.



It is also interesting to see how it brings other instruments into the ongoing music each by each with the use of lighting and camera works, giving emphasis on the innovative robotic-instrument. This would add more fun to the video and therefore entertain the viewers by introducing such fictional musical instruments that could not possibly exist in the physical world. Also note that every time when the new instrument comes in to the harmony, the sound becomes more ambient; and it is the accelerated sequence of the visuals as well as the sound that build up the music towards its climax.

Overall, one can say that the synchronisation does affect the mode of gratification of the audience in terms of audio-visual sense and the Pipe Dream seems to be a good example of achieving it.

Here are some extra Animusic clips for extra fun!!

Don't Let it Get You

For my New Zealand film class, I watched John O'Shea's 1966 musical Don't Let it Get You. Although the film is not one of my favorites, I was interested in its resemblance to 1960s American beach party movies.
Don't Let it Get You follows the adventures of an Australian drummer (Gary Wallace) who sells his drums to buy a ticket to Rotorua for a music festival. He meets singer Howard Morrison, who tries to help him get a gig with a band. Unfortunately, all the bands already have drummers. Gary has to find a way to play while simultaneously wooing a girl who has also caught the eye of a rival drummer. The plot is pretty thin, and the film is mostly a showcase for contemporary New Zealand musicians. Howard Morrison, Lew Prime and Kiri Te Kanawa all play themselves.
Rotorua is portrayed as a great attraction for young people, and Don't Let it Get You is certainly a film for teens. There are many shots of musicians and festival-goers gallavanting by the pool, dancing, courting and enjoying their youth. Judy's mother, the one authority figure in the film, is seen as a bit uptight at first. She is the one hinderance to Judy's good time.
Everyone else is having a good time though. In one scene, Lew Prime and The Impacts pull up in a car, singing and playing the guitar, and soon a dance party is underway at Caltex. Oftentimes, the music does not seem to fit a scene at all and there is simply a sequence of an entertainer singing to a crowd.
As in the beach party film, there is some conflict between the "real" world (that without music, full of parents and other authority figures) and the "ideal" (the world that we see when the music is playing). There is also conflict between the males who vie for Judy's affection. Music, however, is the centerpiece and the film would be crippled without it.
Another similarity Don't Let it Get You has to the beach party film is the critical reaction it received. Although the film was popular with New Zealand viewers, most critics panned it as a piece of fluff work. Nevertheless, it is an important film and an homage to New Zealand pop musicians who might otherwise have been forgotten.

Music Videos replacing Audio Video??

So I was having a think about the notion of the music being secondary to the video- hence there not often being complete narratives, & then what features come into play when music is played on a pc or portable mp3 player. I came up with this:

When playing a song on one’s computer through iTunes, Media Player or one of the alternate popular mp3 player programs for the PC, there is a ‘virtual space’ that is present and not being used. By this I am referring to the possible mediums the song could be using to connect with us, but isn’t. So if one was sitting on their squashed-padded chair which they saved from an inorganic collection one year, and reading the latest Craccum while listening to the music from their PC, their screen would be wasted space (and energy too- unless it is switched off ). The music video makes the viewer become more engaged with the song (the product) right, so what would you say to the idea of music videos becoming the future of legal downloading? Hear me out…

If the shear size of the MV files were no longer a factor, and we did not have to worry about them chewing up bandwidth or our monthly download quotas, as well as them taking up too much space on our iPods, would we substitute them for the humble mp3? Well if we think about mp3 players 7 years ago, a simple 512mb mp3 player was considered extravagant, & now it is considered to be inadequate; current iPods are able to play movies & in fact the iPhone (which will be in NZ next year) is rumoured to have a 100 gig hard drives. So if the average size for an entire album of 12 songs, in mp3 format at a respectable encoded bit rate, was 160mb, one would be able to fit somewhere in the region of 7500 songs, or 625 albums. & one can download a high quality MV for, say 30mb. So one could fit roughly 3333 music videos on it, which equates to (presuming that a MV was made for every song) 278 albums! (Remember that video formats are constantly being improved, with picture quality becoming crisper, & file size decreasing in time). But when we are strutting around uni, we are not looking at our iPods most of the time, so one could argue that it would use up too much battery life - well not necessarily if one switches off the screen. Plus, batteries with longer lives are constantly being released. So therefore we would have a library of music videos at our disposal, right in our left pockets with no real loss- not too many off us own more than 264 entire albums. Record companies are never going to completely eradicate piracy, so why not make a buck out of it by promoting their music videos & receiving lost revenue through product placement?!? So perhaps if the music videos are provided on the discs when we buy, or in buying the disc we are granted permission to download the music videos, as opposed to merely having to settle with viewing them online. Could we then possibly expect to see the cost of CD’s reduced? Ha, if a utopian morality kicked in over night then perhaps. But a similar notion is quite common nowadays- when we buy the original disc, we are granted ‘access to VIP areas on their website’ when we put it in our PC’s. But this idea of ‘behind the scenes’ is a marketing ploy that has been around for the last decade or so. Anyone remember EnhancedCds? They were normal audio CDs that, when put in our PC had a whole bunch of media for fans on the disc (including the artist’s single music video), & did not simply provide a few desktop pictures & a link one could follow to get to the fan site with all the media like we get nowadays. These were most popular in the Backstreet Boys/young Britany Spears era- late 90’s, when the internet was taking off, but while it remained a novelty to most people….I know this because my sister had the disc, not me.

So to summarise all that: mp3’s do not make use of all the virtual space they have access to. Therefore in this society, that is constantly technologically bettering itself, could the humble MV be expected to evolve into a viable competitor against the single audio track, if the technological margins separating the 2 were lessened? If no, then what about in the next decade? Remember, the American engineer-turned-inventor Lee Deforest stated, in 1926, that he could not see television succeeding as a ‘commercial proposition’, and dismissed it as a ‘development’ which ‘America needed to waste little time dreaming about’.

Just a thought.

Music Videos replacing Audio Video

So I was having a think about the notion of the music being secondary to the video- hence there not often being complete narratives, & then what features come into play when music is played on a pc or portable mp3 player. I came up with this:

When playing a song on one’s computer through iTunes, Media Player or one of the alternate popular mp3 player programs for the PC, there is a ‘virtual space’ that is present and not being used. By this I am referring to the possible mediums the song could be using to connect with us, but isn’t. So if one was sitting on their squashed-padded chair which they saved from an inorganic collection one year, and reading the latest Craccum while listening to the music from their PC, their screen would be wasted space (and energy too- unless it is switched off ). The music video makes the viewer become more engaged with the song (the product) right, so what would you say to the idea of music videos becoming the future of legal downloading? Hear me out…

If the shear size of the MV files were no longer a factor, and we did not have to worry about them chewing up bandwidth or our monthly download quotas, as well as them taking up too much space on our iPods, would we substitute them for the humble mp3? Well if we think about mp3 players 7 years ago, a simple 512mb mp3 player was considered extravagant, & now it is considered to be inadequate; current iPods are able to play movies & in fact the iPhone (which will be in NZ next year) is rumoured to have a 100 gig hard drives. So if the average size for an entire album of 12 songs, in mp3 format at a respectable encoded bit rate, was 160mb, one would be able to fit somewhere in the region of 7500 songs, or 625 albums. & one can download a high quality MV for, say 30mb. So one could fit roughly 3333 music videos on it, which equates to (presuming that a MV was made for every song) 278 albums! (Remember that video formats are constantly being improved, with picture quality becoming crisper, & file size decreasing in time). But when we are strutting around uni, we are not looking at our iPods most of the time, so one could argue that it would use up too much battery life - well not necessarily if one switches off the screen. Plus, batteries with longer lives are constantly being released. So therefore we would have a library of music videos at our disposal, right in our left pockets with no real loss- not too many off us own more than 264 entire albums. Record companies are never going to completely eradicate piracy, so why not make a buck out of it by promoting their music videos & receiving lost revenue through product placement?!? So perhaps if the music videos are provided on the discs when we buy, or in buying the disc we are granted permission to download the music videos, as opposed to merely having to settle with viewing them online. Could we then possibly expect to see the cost of CD’s reduced? Ha, if a utopian morality kicked in over night then perhaps. But a similar notion is quite common nowadays- when we buy the original disc, we are granted ‘access to VIP areas on their website’ when we put it in our PC’s. But this idea of ‘behind the scenes’ is a marketing ploy that has been around for the last decade or so. Anyone remember EnhancedCds? They were normal audio CDs that, when put in our PC had a whole bunch of media for fans on the disc (including the artist’s single music video), & did not simply provide a few desktop pictures & a link one could follow to get to the fan site with all the media like we get nowadays. These were most popular in the Backstreet Boys/young Britany Spears era- late 90’s, when the internet was taking off, but while it remained a novelty to most people….I know this because my sister had the disc, not me.

So to summarise all that: mp3’s do not make use of all the virtual space they have access to. Therefore in this society, that is constantly technologically bettering itself, could the humble MV be expected to evolve into a viable competitor against the single audio track, if the technological margins separating the 2 were lessened? If no, then what about in the next decade? Remember, the American engineer-turned-inventor Lee Deforest stated, in 1926, that he could not see television succeeding as a ‘commercial proposition’, and dismissed it as a ‘development’ which ‘America needed to waste little time dreaming about’.

Just a thought.

Boogie Nights: Nostalgia and The 13 inch Penis

Being cooped up in a small room with my boyfriend and parents, I found myself restlessly squirming on my seat as I endured the excruciatingly awkward shot of Dirk Diggler and his “package”. Such a scene reminded me of the legendary J. L. Godards’ movie “Tout va Bien” where the audience are made prisoners within the film as we are forced to glare at the raw image of a mans’ genitals for a horrific 13 seconds. (Note to self: Always pre-view films before suggesting a “family viewing” in order to avoid awkward moments).

Beyond what some may consider “the pleasures” of forbidden flesh within films, a main appeal of Boogie Nights is the element of nostalgia of the 70’s / 80’s era. Within the film, Phillip Brophy accurately likens the soundtrack to the eclectic 70’s décor of the film set. As the camera takes us on a tour of Dirk Digglers house with Marvin Gayes;’ classic “Got to give it up” playing, the film appeals to be revelling in the spectacle of the period. Absorbing all the crass 70’s furnishings I felt a sense of pleasure as I have virtually no connection with that era therefore the music and the mise en scene acted as an ironic distancing device in which I could look on the time period from a remote perspective and not take it too seriously.

At the last lecture, somebody shared with the class their view that the music was playing constantly throughout the film except for porn filming scenes which reflected the 70’s outlook on life as being “one big party”. However, I believe that there were many non-porno filming scenes in which music was not present and where instead of music expressing the 70s view on life, diagetic sound was used to heighten the mood and emphasise the monotony of family domestic life within representations of the 70’s. When Dirk Diggler is sitting in the kitchen with his father and mother doing chores, no one appears to be happy. The husband is gloomy because the wife denies any attempt of affection and the wife seems generally pissed off with her life. There is no music playing, however the diagetic sound is amplified and the harsh clanking of dishes and the pouring of coffee heightens the drab life of the family and emphasizes the tension within the room.

As Anahid Kassabian points out in the book Hearing Film: tracking identifications in contemporary Hollywood film music, there is a problem with the distinction between diagetic and non-diagetic sound because it is premised on the idea that there was a film before the sound, which as Nabeel pointed out is not always the case for example directors such as Tarantino who often select the soundtrack before filming. Also this general categorisation between diagetic and non-diagetic leaves no room for anything that lies within the continuum and therefore Kassabian suggests that we look at film soundtracks through 1) Music that clearly has a source, 2) Music that a composer has written and 3) source scoring – the in between state. In Boogie Nights the sound often changes from the broad term of diagetic to non-diagetic and the predominant presence of 70’s/80’s pop/rock music often is privileged over the dialogue. This contrasts to many conventional films in which music is softened in order to hear the dialogue coherently and thus progress the fluidity of the narrative.

In this sense, Boogie Nights can almost be read as a modern musical (ignoring the uncensored genital shots!) in which music motivates and often furthers the narrative whilst unconventionally distancing us by the ironic displacement of songs within unexpected scenes for example in the murder scene at the drug dealers house where cheery eclectic pop songs are uncomfortably juxtaposed with the edgy editing of the scene.

Pre-conceiving pre-existing music

Is there a trend with contemporary film viewing that makes a distinction between the viewer identifications we make with classical film scoring versus popular songs compilation scoring? It seems that we understand lyric-based popular songs as coming into a compilation scoring with a certain kind of “baggage” – a set of preconceived ideas about the song, the artist, the culture it comes from.

But does pre-existing classical music come with similar baggage? In particular, I am thinking of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. As a piece of music, it has been used and reused countless times on film and television. As a pre-existing piece of classical music, it is more recognizable than a score from Star Wars, and also brings with it a discourse that is tied to (high) culture with various connotations. As a result, you would assume it more likely to appear on an advertisement for luxury carpets than an American indie film.

Hence, I find Happiness, directed by Todd Solondz, amusing for how he uses Four Seasons. I think that Four Seasons is generally thought of with pleasant, positive connotations – a scene of nature, man at harmony with nature and the seasons. In the film, Dr Bill Maplewood (Dylan Baker) drives in his car playing the music in his car, and he looks tense and urgent as he searches for something. The music sits very uncertainly with his body language, and even more so when it is revealed that he is buying a magazine catered for young pre-teen boys, and that he is a homosexual pedophile.
This visual-audio association completely subverts any pre-conceived ideas we may have about Four Seasons. A pre-existing piece of classical music can also function as subversion, and not simply just to heighten and support the visual as we assume it does in the majority of classical scoring does in contemporary films.

The Simpsons - Beatles Memorabilia

Oh, the many ways the Beatles were commodified.

The Beatles' first time on US TV

This is a January report on The Beatles before they actually landed in America and on to the Ed Sullivan show in February 1964. A Hard Day's Night was made after that tour and released in July 1964.

Extra office hours this week

Kia Ora everyone

Since we're losing a week's lecture after the break due to Anzac Day (Wednesday 25 April) and the research assignment is due the following Tuesday 1 May, I'm going to have some extra office hours this week. This will be the last time before the Easter break that you can see me to discuss essays. I won't be available during the two week vacation.

So if you'd like to see me, could you come to my office during the following hours:

Thursday 10:30-11:30 am & 12:15-3:00 pm
Room 314, Arts 1

If you can't see me during these hours, Email me with your idea before those office hours and I'll reply to your enquiries before Easter.

Whether you see me in person or contact me by email. Please write down your research essay project in 3-4 sentences so I've got a clear idea of where you're at so far and can give the best advice.

Many of you will already have seen Kevin for advice. He's available in his usual office hours too.

See you tomorrow in lecture.

best

Nabeel

The soundtrack of our lives

Eric Harvey on Hitchcock's Rear Window and Muzak

Pantomime Terror

DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY
SPECIAL SEMINAR

Dr John Hutnyk

(Goldsmiths College, University of London)

"Pantomime Terror: UK Hip Hop at War (or Paranoia in London: 'Lookout, he's behind you!')".

To be held at 4.10 pm – 5.30 pm

on Tuesday, 3 April 2007

In Architecture 5 (ALR5)

With terror alerts and constant announcements at train stations and airports where the Queen's subjects are called upon to 'report any suspicious baggage'; with stop and search security policing focused upon Muslims (and unarmed Brazilians shot on the underground); and with restrictions on civil liberties and 'limits' to freedom proclaimed as necessary, it is now clear that spaces for critical debate are mortally threatened in contemporary, tolerant, civilized Britain. This discussion addresses new work by diasporic world music stalwarts Fun-da-mental and the drum and bass outfit Asian Dub Foundation, relating to insurgency struggles, anti-colonialism and political freedom in the UK. The presentation will argue for an engaged critique of "culture" and assess a certain distance or gap between political expression and the tamed versions of multiculturalism accepted by/acceptable in the British marketplace. Examples from the music industry reception of 'difficult' music and creative engagement are evaluated in the context of the global terror wars and a new paranoia that appears endemic on the streets of London today...

John Hutnyk is a Reader and Academic Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths College, University of London and is the author of several books including "The Rumour of Calcutta", "Critique of Exotica" and "Bad Marxism: Capitalism and Cultural Studies".