Roll Over Adorno: Critical Theory, Popular Culture, Audiovisual Media

by Robert Miklitsch

Overview

What happens when Theodor Adorno, the champion of high, classical artists such as Beethoven, comes into contact with the music of Chuck Berry, the de facto king of rock 'n' roll? In a series of readings and meditations, Robert Miklitsch investigates the postmodern nexus between elite and popular culture as it occurs in the audiovisual fields of film, music, and television—ranging from Gershwin to gangsta rap, Tarantino to Tongues Untied, Tony Soprano to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Miklitsch argues that the aim of critical theory in the new century will be to describe and explain these commodities in ever greater phenomenological detail without losing touch with those evaluative criteria that have historically sustained both Kulturkritik and classical aesthetics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780791481875
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	02/01/2012
Series:	SUNY series in Postmodern Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	284
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Robert Miklitsch is Associate Professor of Critical Theory at Ohio University. He is the author of From Hegel to Madonna: Towards a General Economy of "Commodity Fetishism," also published by SUNY Press.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Script

INTRODUCTION: CRITICAL THEORY, POPULAR CULTURE, AUDIOVISUAL MEDIA

Popular Music
Sound Film
Television

Part 1. Popular Music: Hi-Lo Fidelity

1. ROCK ‘N’ THEORY: CULTURAL STUDIES, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, AND THE DEATH OF ROCK

A Side: The Birth of Rock, or Memory Train
B Side: Rock in Theory

The Culture of Rock
Rock, Rap, and Riot Grrrls
World Musics: After Rock Imperialism
Production of Culture
Forced Choice: Britney or Avril?

My Generation

2. ROLL OVER ADORNO: BEETHOVEN, CHUCK BERRY, AND POPULAR MUSIC IN THE AGE OF MP3

Mass Culture, Ersatz Kantianism
From Beethoven to Fascism
Amerika: Beethoven or Bikinis
Radio Days
“Roll Over Beethoven”
Magic Spell and the Two Spheres of Music
MP3
Fantasia

REPRISE: BEETHOVEN’S HAIR

Part 2. Sound Film: Screen Theory and Audiovisuality

3. THE SUTURE SCENARIO: AUDIOVISUALITY AND POST-SCREEN THEORY

Theory: The Suture Scenario
Post-Screen Theory: Suture-as-Desuturing
Audiovisuality in Tongues Untied and Set It Off

Illustration A: Tongues Untied

“Lover Man”: Lady Day/Blue Boy
En Vogue

Illustration B: Set It Off

Cleopatra Jones Redux: Queen Latifah as Gangsta Butch Diva
G-Funk: Girlz N the Hood
Crossroads

4. AUDIOPHILIA: AUDIOVISUAL PLEASURE AND NARRATIVE CINEMA IN JACKIE BROWN

Cinephilia
Scopophilia
From Scopophilia to Audiophilia: The Gaze qua Race
Audiophilia: Auditing Jackie Brown
“Across 110th Street”: Overture
“Street Life”: Jackie as Femme Noire
“Across 110th Street”: Dénouement
Audiophilia Reconsidered: “Asking for It”
Counterpoint: Post-Soul Music or Pre-Gangsta Rap?

REPRISE: ALEX’S “LOVELY LUDWIG VAN” AND MARTY MCFLY’S WHITE ROCK MINSTREL SHOW

Part 3. TV: Television, Telephilia, Televisuality

5. GEN-X TV: POLITICAL-LIBIDINAL STRUCTURES OF FEELING IN MELROSE PLACE

PREVIEW
After the Reagan Dynasty: “Help Me, Rhonda”
From Race to Sex-Gender: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
The Romance of Capital: Fox, Female Address, and Postfeminism
Melrose Space: The Fashion Mode
Adcult: The Commercial Supertext
Review

6. SHOT/COUNTERSHOT: SEXUALITY, PSYCHOANALYSIS, AND POSTMODERN STYLE IN THE SOPRANOS

Shot: The Godfather
Citationality: The Gangster as Serio-Comic Hero

“I’m a Man”: Crossing Cultures

Psycho-Gangster TV: Seriality and Self-Reflexivity
A la Recherche du temps perdu
Primal Scene: Capicola as Proustian “Tea Cookie”

Countershot: Case Study

Black and Blue: Puzo’s Women
Repetition Compulsion: From The Godfather to The Sopranos
Beyond the University
Post-Mortem: Bad Love
D-I-S-R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Tele-Psychoanalytic Metatext
Après Coup: Analysis Interminable

Martini Shot: “Hall Hath No Fury”

REPRISE: TONY SOPRANO, MEET BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

Notes
Bibliography
Index