Masculinity in Emo Music a Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Arts and Social Science in Candi
CARLETON UNIVERSITY FLUID BODIES: MASCULINITY IN EMO MUSIC A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCE IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS DEPARTMENT OF MUSIC BY RYAN MACK OTTAWA, ONTARIO MAY 2014 ABSTRACT Emo is a genre of music that typically involves male performers, which evolved out of the punk and hardcore movements in Washington DC during the mid-80s. Scholarly literature on emo has explored its cultural and social contexts in relation to the “crisis” of masculinity—the challenging of the legitimacy of patriarchy through “alternative” forms of masculinity. This thesis builds upon this pioneering work but departs from its perpetuation of strict masculine binaries by conflating hegemonic and subordinate/alternative masculinities into a single subject position, which I call synergistic masculinity. In doing so, I use emo to explicate this vis-à-vis an intertextual analysis that explores the dominant themes in 1) lyrics; 2) the sites of vocal production (head, throat, chest) in conjunction with pitch and timbre; 3) the extensional and intensional intervallic relationships between notes and chords, and the use of dynamics in the musical syntax; 4) the use of public and private spaces, as well as the performative masculine body in music video. I posit that masculine emo performers dissolve these hierarchically organized masculinities, which allows for a deeper musical meaning and the extramusical signification of masculinity. Keywords: emo, synergistic masculinity, performativity, music video, masculinities, lyrics, vocal production, musical syntax, dynamics. ABSTRAIT Emo est un genre musical qui implique typiquement des musiciens de sexe masculine et qui est issu de movement punk et hardcore originaire de Washington DC durant les années 80.
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