SUNY Series in Postmodern Culture : Roll Over Adorno : Critical
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ADORNO OVER ROLL ROLL OVER ADORNO CRITICAL THEORY, POPULAR CULTURE, AUDIOVISUAL MEDIA ROBERT MIKLITSCH CRITICAL THEORY, POPULAR CULTURE, MEDIA AUDIOVISUAL Roll Over Adorno Roll Over Adorno Critical Theory, Popular Culture, Audiovisual Media Robert Miklitsch State University of New York Press Cover photo: Action Portrait of Chuck Berry. Frank Driggs Collection/Hulton Archive/ Getty Images. Used by permission. Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2006 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, address State University of New York Press, 194 Washington Avenue, Suite 305, Albany, NY 12210-2384 Production by Marilyn P. Semerad Marketing by Fran Keneston Library of Congress Cataloging-in Publication Data Miklitsch, Robert, 1953– Roll over Adorno : critical theory, popular culture, audiovisual media / Robert Miklitsch. p. cm. — (SUNY series in postmodern culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7914-6733-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-6734-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Television broadcasting—Social aspects—United States. 2. Motion pictures—Social aspects—United States. 3. Popular music—Social aspects— United States. 4. Popular culture—United States. I. Title. II. Series. PN1992.6.M49 2006 302.23—dc22 2005015254 ISBN-13: 978-0-7914-6733-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-7914-6734-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 10987654321 It is peculiar to the bourgeois Utopia that it is not yet able to conceive an image of perfect joy without that of the person excluded from it. we can understand why the “problem of the Ninth Symphony” was insoluble. In the fairytale Utopia, too, the stepmother who must dance in burning shoes or is stuffed into a barrel spiked with nails is an inescapable part of the glorious wedding. —Theodor Adorno, Beethoven On August 20th, 1977, as part of the US bicentennial celebrations, a Voyager spacecraft left Cape Canav- eral with a message to other life forms in our universe and beyond. On board was a recording of the 5th Movement from Beethoven’s String Quartet in B Flat, Number 13, Opus 130; also, a piece of rock and roll music called Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry. Contents List of Illustrations xi Acknowledgments xiii Script xvii INTRODUCTION: CRITICAL THEORY, POPULAR CULTURE, AUDIOVISUAL MEDIA 1 Popular Music 3 Sound Film 8 Television 15 PART 1. POPULAR MUSIC: HI-LO FIDELITY 23 1. ROCK ‘N’ THEORY: CULTURAL STUDIES, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, AND THE DEATH OF ROCK 25 A Side: The Birth of Rock, or Memory Train 25 B Side: Rock in Theory 29 The Culture of Rock 30 Rock, Rap, and Riot Grrrls 33 World Musics: After Rock Imperialism 35 Production of Culture 36 Forced Choice: Britney or Avril? 38 My Generation 40 2. ROLL OVER ADORNO: BEETHOVEN, CHUCK BERRY, AND POPULAR MUSIC IN THE AGE OF MP3 43 Mass Culture, Ersatz Kantianism 44 From Beethoven to Fascism 46 Amerika: Beethoven or Bikinis 47 Radio Days 49 “Roll Over Beethoven” 52 Magic Spell and the Two Spheres of Music 54 MP3 57 Fantasia 58 REPRISE: BEETHOVEN’S HAIR 61 vii viii ROLL OVER ADORNO PART 2. SOUND FILM: SCREEN THEORY AND AUDIOVISUALITY 67 3. THE SUTURE SCENARIO: AUDIOVISUALITY AND POST-SCREEN THEORY 69 Theory: The Suture Scenario 70 Post-Screen Theory: Suture-as-Desuturing 72 Audiovisuality in Tongues Untied and Set It Off 73 Illustration A: Tongues Untied 74 Illustration B: Set It Off 79 4. AUDIOPHILIA: AUDIOVISUAL PLEASURE AND NARRATIVE CINEMA IN JACKIE BROWN 91 Cinephilia 92 Scopophilia 94 From Scopophilia to Audiophilia: The Gaze qua Race 96 Audiophilia: Auditing Jackie Brown 98 “Across 110th Street”: Overture 99 “Street Life”: Jackie as Femme Noire 101 “Across 110th Street”: Dénouement 107 Audiophilia Reconsidered: “Asking for It” 111 Counterpoint: Post-Soul Music or Pre-Gangsta Rap? 117 REPRISE: ALEX’S “LOVELY LUDWIG VAN” AND MARTY MCFLY’S WHITE ROCK MINSTREL SHOW 121 PART 3. TV: TELEVISION, TELEPHILIA, TELEVISUALITY 133 5. GEN-X TV: POLITICAL-LIBIDINAL STRUCTURES OF FEELING IN MELROSE PLACE 135 Preview 136 After the Reagan Dynasty: “Help Me, Rhonda” 138 From Race to Sex-Gender: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang 142 The Romance of Capital: Fox, Female Address, and Postfeminism 144 Melrose Space: The Fashion Mode 147 Adcult: The Commercial Supertext 149 Review 151 Contents ix 6. SHOT/COUNTERSHOT: SEXUALITY, PSYCHOANALYSIS, AND POSTMODERN STYLE IN THE SOPRANOS 153 Shot: The Godfather 154 Citationality: The Gangster as Serio-Comic Hero 154 “I’m a Man”: Crossing Cultures 157 Psycho-Gangster TV: Seriality and Self-Reflexivity 159 À la Recherche du temps perdu 160 Primal Scene: Capicola as Proustian “Tea Cookie” 162 Countershot: Case Study 164 Black and Blue: Puzo’s Women 166 Repetition Compulsion: From The Godfather to The Sopranos 167 Beyond the University 168 Post-Mortem: Bad Love 172 D-I-S-R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Tele-Psychoanalytic Metatext 173 Analysis Interminable 175 Martini Shot: “Hall Hath No Fury” 179 REPRISE: TONY SOPRANO, MEET BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER 183 Notes 197 Bibliography 233 Index 253 Illustrations 1. Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman) in Pulp Fiction (Tarantino, 1994). 13 2. Cleo (Queen Latifah), Frankie (Vivica Fox), Stony (Jada Pinkett), and Tisean (Kimberly Elise) in Set It Off (Gray, 1996). 83 3. Cleo in Set It Off.85 4. Cleo, Tisean, Frankie, and Stony in Set It Off.88 5. Jackie Brown (Pam Grier) in Jackie Brown (Tarantino, 1997). 104 6. Ordell Robbie (Samuel L. Jackson) in Jackie Brown. 105 7. Jackie in Jackie Brown. 108 8. Max Cherry (Robert Forster) in Jackie Brown. 113 9. Louis Gara (Robert De Niro) and Melanie Ralston (Bridget Fonda) in Jackie Brown. 116 10. Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) in Back to the Future (Zemeckis, 1985). 129 11. Left to right: Jo (Daphne Zuniga), Alison (Courtney Thorne-Smith), Jake (Grant Show), Jane (Josie Bisset), Billy (Andrew Shue), Matt (Doug Savant), Michael (Thomas Calabro), and Rhonda (Vanessa Williams) in Melrose Place (Fox, 1992–99). 140 12. Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini), Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler), Anthony, Jr. (Robert Iler), and Carmela (Edie Falco) in The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–present). 155 13. “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero (Vincent Pastore), Tony Soprano, Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli), Paulie “Walnuts” Gaultieri (Tony Sirico), Hesh Rabkin (Jerry Adler), Silvio Dante (Steven van Zandt), and Furio Giunta (Federico Castelluccio) in The Sopranos. 165 14. Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) in The Sopranos. 178 15. Spike (James Marsters), Anya (Emma Caulfield), Tara (Amber Benson), Rupert Giles (Anthony S. Head), Buffy Summers (Sarah Michelle Gellar), Xander (Nicholas Brendon), and Willow (Alyson Hannigan) in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (WB, 1997–2001; UPN, 2001–03). 186 16. Tara and Willow in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 189 xi Acknowledgments hen Keith Richards was once asked how he came up with the world- W historical chords for “Satisfaction,” he responded by saying that he had dreamed them: he got up one morning and, bam!, there they were on the tape recorder. “In dreams begin responsibilities . .” I invoke Delmore Schwarz because, to accentuate the obvious, books incur responsibilities, not least to one’s dreamwork. Although the following debts are rather more familiar and less strange, none of the people acknowledged is in any way responsible for whatever errors of fact or fantasy remain uncorrected in this book. First off, I’m enormously grateful to James Peltz, Interim Director at State University of New York Press, as well as to the editor of the Post- modern Series at SUNY Press, Joe Natoli, for their steadfast encourage- ment and unstinting support. I’m also grateful to Margaret Copeley for her painstaking copyediting of the manuscript, and to Marilyn Semerad, for scrupulously overseeing its production. I owe debts, both large and small, to numerous people at Ohio University: Leslie Flemming, the Dean of Arts and Sciences, for time off to work on this book; Ken “The Kinks” Daley, for being an unusually solicitous and good-natured chair while I was going down the long and winding road of actually completing the manuscript; Joe McLaughlin, our new chair, for cheerfully working to remunerate me for the illustra- tions and, together with Howard Dewald, Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, for the cover image of Chuck Berry; my colleagues in the English Department for their day-to-day, week-to-week, quarter- to-quarter collegiality (no mean thing these days); Gerri Lux, for gra- ciously greenlighting miniprojects and generally being a super-fun person; Barb Grueser, for being unfailingly helpful and cheerful about assisting me in all manner of tasks; Todd Gardner, for regularly coming to my aid, with alacrity and nary a complaint, in the electronic prepara- tion of the manuscript; Richard Comfort, for assiduously assembling the xiii xiv ROLL OVER ADORNO index; Cara DiBlasi, for diligently compiling the bibliography; and last but by no means least, the graduate and undergraduate students in my Literary Theory and Popular Culture classes—especially the “Buffy” gang (Grant Allen, Katherine Furler, Christina Pedersen)—who, like good Socratic fellows, sparked me while I endeavored to think and feel my way, sometimes blindly, through various texts and ideas. As a number of these chapters have appeared, albeit in slightly different form, in journals, I’m much obliged to the following editors: for chapter 1, “Rock ’n’ Theory,” Lisa Brawley and Stuart Moulthrop at Postmodern Culture; for chapter 4, “Audiophilia,” John Caughie and Simon Frith at Screen; for chapter 5, “Gen-X TV,” Stephen Tropiano at the Journal of Film and Video; and for chapter 6, “Shot/Countershot,” Warren Buckland at New Studies in Film and Television.