Covers

Pat Boone - Ain't It A Shame
Pat Boone - Bluberry Hill
Pat Boone - Tutti Frutti
Elvis Presley - Tutti Frutti
Elvis Presley - Shake, Rattle and Roll
Bill Haley & The Comets - Shake, Rattle and Roll
Gale Storm - Why Do Fools Fall In Love
Bill Haley & The Saddlemen - Rocket 88

Old habits are hard to die:

Pat Boone - Stairway To Heaven

Whither Goest Thou: Readings

from The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock:

-Straw, "Consumption"
-Star Profiles I (Elvis, The Beatles, Dylan, Hendrix, The Stones, JB, Marvin Gaye)
-Keightley, "Reconsidering Rock"

-Middleton, "Pop, Rock and Interpretation"
-Street, "Rock, Pop and Politics"
n.b. The Middleton and Street are highly recommended readings but you will not be responsible for them for the midterm. We will discuss the issues and concepts raised in them after the exam. I do however urge you to read them as they offer a lot of points for review of material that will actually be on the midterm.

In Garofalo you should read up to and including Chapter 6.

"I mean, man, whither goest thou? Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?" Jack Kerouac

Subcultures Assignment

Find the assignment for the midterm presentations on subcultures here.

JFA - Low Rider (Live in 1984)

JFA was a hardcore punk band from Phoenix, AZ identified as one of the seminal 'skate punk' bands in the US. Low Rider is a cover of a 1975 recording by WAR, a rock band with a multi-ethnic line-up. Low Rider is a celebration of another particular subcultural style from LA involving the cultural practice of certain specifically Chicano groups of hydraulically hot-rodding classic American cars.

Montage Theory: Caught Between the Soviet Union and Hong Kong

The 'dream sequence' in John Woo's The Killer (Hong Kong, 1989)

Vsevolod Pudovkin, "On Editing" from Film Technique
Sergei Eisenstein, "The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram" + "A Dialectic Approach to Film Form" from Film Form
David Bordwell, "Plots: Slack and Stretched" from Planet Hong Kong

The 'Odessa Steps' sequence in Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (USSR, 1925)
referred to in the "A Dialectic Approach to Film Form" article above.

True Norwegian Black Metal

From VBS.TV - True Norwegian Black Metal - a portrait of Gorgoroth's Gaahl.

Subcultures I

In the Cultural Resistance Reader read the short chapters in Section IV on "Subcultures and Primitive Rebels" --we will be discussing the subcultures profiled there as case studies.

Extra Readings: Dick Hebdige from Subculture: The Meaning of Style

Chapter 6 : Subculture: The Unnatural Break
Chapter 7 : Style as Intentional Communication
Chapter 8 : Style as Homology

Rock'n'Roll. Transubstantiated R'n'B?

Elvis Presley - That's All Right, Mama + Blue Moon of Kentucky
Bill Haley & The Comets - Crazy Man Crazy
Fats Domino - Ain't That A Shame + Blueberry Hill
Little Richard - Tutti Frutti
Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues + I Walk The Line
Chuck Berry - Almost Grown + Little Queenie
Bo Diddley - Pretty Thing
The Chords - Sh-Boom
Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers - Why Do Fools Fall In Love

Why We Fight: Hollywood Steps In

Frank Capra's Why We Fight Series on The Internet Archive. The first three and the final film are the classics of the series.

1. Prelude to war
2. The Nazis strike
3. Divide and conquer
4. The Battle of Britain
5. The Battle of Russia pt. 1
5. The Battle of Russia pt. 2
6. The Battle of China
7. War comes to America

Below you can find Joris Ivens' The Spanish Earth (1937) a different kind of 'bugler' film. The embedded video is the first section of the film. For the rest click on the image and watch it as part of the YouTube playlist:

Patti Page - How Much Is That Doggie In The Window



The Robins - Riot in Cell Block #9
The Robins were a vocal group that eventually became The Coasters. This particular line up includes Richard Berry, the man responsible for possibly the most performed song in history, the immortal Louie Louie. Riot in Cell Block #9 is by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller --more on them later.

R'n'B is on the Indies

Big Joe Turner - Shake, Rattle and Roll
Big Mama Thornton - Hound Dog
Rufus Thomas - Bear Cat
Arthur 'Big Boy' Crudup - That's All Right
Jackie Brenston & His Delta Kings (aka Ike Turner) - Rocket 88
Junior Parker - Mystery Train
Little Walter - Dead Presidents

Post War Hillbillies: Western Swing, Honky Tonk and Bluegrass

Bob Wills & The Texas Playboys - Take Me Back To Tulsa
Hank Williams - Hey Goodlookin' + Lovesick Blues
Bill Monroe & The Bluegrass Boys - Muleskinner Blues + Blue Moon Of Kentucky

Realism in the Cinema

Bazin's collection of articles on neo-realism from What Is Cinema?; Vol. II
Merleau-Ponty, Preface to Phenomenology of Perception
Kracauer, The Found Story and the Episode from Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality
Below you will also find, embedded, Bazin's 'The Virtues and Limitations of Montage' from What is Cinema?; Vol I --click on the Google Books logo at the bottom of the frame and a new tab will open with a more comfortable page size for reading.

Towards A Third Cinema

Of all African film directors, Sembene is the first to confer value to images."
--Med Hondo

Fernando Solanas & Octavio Getino, Towards a Third Cinema
Med Hondo, What is Cinema for us?

If you are interested in reading a brief outline of the life, ideas and struggles of Ousmane Sembene: OUSMANE SEMBENE: THE LIFE OF A REVOLUTIONARY ARTIST

Barnouw - Chapter 3: Sound & Fury
(on John Grierson, Leni Riefenstahl, Pare Lorentz, Joris Ivens and other advocates)

Susan Sontag, "Fascinating Fascism"
Be prepared to discuss issues related to aesthetics and politics in documentary film and non-fiction representation. New York Review of Books link to the original article here.
There's a 'multimedia' version of the article here --footnoted with video clips of examples discussed in the article.

The Classic Realist Narrative Text

The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, USA, 1953)

David Bordwell, "Classical Hollywood Cinema: Narrational Principles and Procedures"
Tom Gunning, "The Big Heat: Circuits of Corruption"