Cultural Identities in and out of the Cinematic Nation Popular Songs in British, Spanish, and Italian Cinema Of
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‘Playing’ Cultural Identities In and Out of the Cinematic Nation Popular Songs in British, Spanish, and Italian Cinema of the Late 1990s Thesis submitted in accordance with the requirements of the University of Liverpool for the degree of Doctor in Philosophy by Elena Boschi. September 2010 ii ABSTRACT The questions I set out to address in the thesis originate at the point where film music scholarship on identifications via popular songs and film scholarship on the necessity to look beyond national identity in cinema, intersect. By analysing the processes through which popular songs bring meaning into films, and focussing on how their meaning and other textual factors intersect in the film, I argue that soundtracks construct identities that are not uncovered through considerations of films as visual texts. To explore these processes, I chose to focus on films from three European national cinemas – British, Spanish, and Italian – and show how considering popular songs can reveal the paths audiences tread when they not only see but also hear the differences soundtracks construct in films. After situating my study in relation to the literature on film music studies and film studies, I discuss the concept of cultural identities used in the thesis and highlight its relevance to the study of films as audiovisual texts. In the nine case studies presented in the three central chapters, I illustrate how songs participate in the construction and positioning of cultural identities in films. Via connections between different musical groupings and the cultural identities these articulate, songs can acquire further meaning, which often changes during the course of the films and can situate cultural identities in relation to the cinematic representations of a dominant national culture. The possibilities for identifications offered through popular music in films are being explored in interesting ways in the field of film music studies. By applying these theorists’ ideas to British, Spanish, and Italian films, I propose to show the readings that a consideration of films as visual texts alone does not account for. In addition to illustrating how an audiovisual approach to films can inform other neighbouring disciplines, I build on existing ideas in film music studies and propose a basic model for understanding how songs can map cultural identities in the cinematic representation of nations as well as be influenced by their textual voyages through films. In this project, I ultimately aim to argue for the necessity to listen beyond national identity in order to understand where these narratives allow audiences to situate themselves in relation to the nations they inhabit. iii iv TABLE OF CONTENTS OPENING CREDITS ___________________________________________________ 1 CHAPTER ONE Introduction _______________________________________________________ 5 Film (Music) Studies _______________________________________________ 19 (Cultural) Identities and Identifications _______________________________ 37 Britain, Spain, Italy, and Their Cinemas in the Late 1990s ________________ 50 A Few Words About Words _________________________________________ 68 CHAPTER TWO A Study of Popular Songs in Three British Films ________________________ 71 Trainspotting ______________________________________________________ 75 The Full Monty ____________________________________________________ 89 Twin Town _______________________________________________________ 100 Conclusion ______________________________________________________ 117 CHAPTER THREE A Study of Popular Songs in Three Spanish Films ______________________ 123 Historias del Kronen _______________________________________________ 129 Barrio ___________________________________________________________ 140 Krámpack _______________________________________________________ 162 Conclusion ______________________________________________________ 172 CHAPTER FOUR A Study of Popular Songs in Three Italian Films _______________________ 175 Sono pazzo di Iris Blond ____________________________________________ 178 Jack Frusciante è uscito dal gruppo __________________________________ 205 Radiofreccia _____________________________________________________ 216 Conclusion ______________________________________________________ 228 v CHAPTER FIVE Conclusion ______________________________________________________ 233 BIBLIOGRAPHY ___________________________________________________ 245 WEB SOURCES ____________________________________________________ 254 FILMOGRAPHY ____________________________________________________ 255 END CREDITS _____________________________________________________ 264 vi vii OPENING CREDITS I started recording soundtracks off the TV speakers through a boombox before knowing I could one day write about those songs and their narrative functions, and I started finding the films I now write about interesting before knowing why. Just as Radiofreccia’s internal audience members could at last hear their musical culture on the free radio station that they founded, I could hear and see the sound of a world close to me in Radiofreccia. As a young Italian who liked a lot of ‘foreign’ music and had not known the feeling one experiences in front of a familiar audiovisual account of one’s culture, Radiofreccia was among the first few films that ticked all the right boxes. Not only did Freccia, Bruno and their friends have several beliefs and ideas I could share, but also their world sounded vaguely like mine. After obtaining a place on the MA Popular Music Studies at the University of Liverpool, I began discovering how films offer identifications through their soundtracks, and the concept for the present project gradually started to materialise. My earlier scholarly incarnation as a modern languages graduate gave me access to movies in English and Spanish as well as Italian, and realising how prominent the focus on national identity was in the discourse surrounding the cinemas of Britain, Spain, and Italy generated questions about whether I – and other filmgoers – could hear something other than just national identity. The questions I set out to address in the thesis originate at the point where film music scholarship on identifications via popular songs, and film scholarship on the necessity to look beyond national identity in cinema intersect. I started researching the topic in a quest to listen beyond national identity in cinema. I often found plurality and Otherness woven among the other narrative threads in the films I analyse, and sometimes unearthed further differences which, beneath their surface meaning, can point towards identifications I could not map using national identity as a compass. I will now provide a brief outline of the thesis structure. In Chapter One, I will outline my trajectory through the literature relating to film music studies and film studies on which I build my project, introduce the films I discuss in Chapters Two, Three, and Four and their respective national contexts, and clarify a few questions about terminology. In Chapter Two, I will offer a contextualisation on the British cinematic landscape through current film scholarship about British cinema in 1 the 1990s and different authors’ perspective on soundtracks. I will then propose a textual analysis of Trainspotting (1996), The Full Monty (1996), and Twin Town (1997), showing how, via connections between different musical groupings, on the one hand, and drugs, joblessness, and class divisions, on the other, songs can construct and situate different cultural identities among the cinematic representations of Britain. In Chapter Three, I will discuss scholarship about Spanish films where soundtracks enter the picture, considering how ideas about musical articulations of differences already surface in the writing about various Spanish films and their music, but are often unnoticed. I will then analyse Historias del Kronen (Stories from the Kronen, 1995), Barrio (1998), and Krámpack (Nico and Dani, 2000), considering how songs map different stances vis-à-vis patriarchal norms and society’s margins in the audiovisual narrative these Spanish films construct. In Chapter Four, I will reflect on the few scholarly discussions of Italian films where music is addressed, drawing on these authors’ ideas to develop my arguments about Sono pazzo di Iris Blond (I’m Crazy About Iris Blond or Iris Blond, 1995), Jack Frusciante è uscito dal gruppo (Jack Frusciante Left the Band, 1996), and Radiofreccia (Radio Arrow, 1998). In these three films, popular songs construct troublesome females, teenagers who reject predetermined adulthood, and yesterday’s disillusioned youth through the associative meaning the songs carry and acquire in the narrative, providing a different positioning for these groupings vis-à-vis the dominant culture their representatives inhabit. In Chapter Five, I will offer a few final reflections about how popular songs can construct different cultural identities in the films and situate these identities and their representatives vis-à-vis the dominant national culture and propose a basic model for understanding how these narrative processes occur. But first, I would like to reflect on where film music studies positions those who, like me, started writing about soundtracks in the young interdisciplinary landscape where musicology and film studies cross paths. Let me introduce a simile to help clarify my point of view on the study of films. A film is like a river. Like a river a film has several tributaries that make it what it is. Like a river