A School for Singing: the Poetics, Politics, and Aesthetics of the CBGB Scene Shaun Michael Cullen Springfield, PA M.A., Humanit
A School for Singing: The Poetics, Politics, and Aesthetics of the CBGB Scene Shaun Michael Cullen Springfield, PA M.A., Humanities, University of Chicago, 2005 B.F.A., Cinema Studies, New York University, 2002 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Language and Literature University of Virginia December, 2013 © Copyright by Shaun Cullen All Rights Reserved November 2013 ii ABSTRACT On August 16, 1974, exactly one week after Richard Nixon’s resignation, the Ramones made their debut at CBGB. Over the next ten years, the club would become synonymous with the punk aesthetic that the Ramones embodied. By shifting, however temporarily and by no means completely, the focus of punk studies (and by extension, cultural studies, American studies, urban studies, and queer studies) back to an often disavowed origin point, CBGB and New York City, “A School for Singing” rediscovers a utopian imaginary inherent in that scene often taken to be one of the most shambolic and nihilistic in the history of postmodern arts and letters. Punk was not just a musical movement, it was an artistic event that had wider ramifications, felt across the art world, from the dingiest clubs to the most rarefied art galleries, publishing houses, and runways. Just this past year, the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art opened its fifth most popular exhibit of all time, “Punk: Chaos to Couture,” which features, among other mementos of the punk era, a faithful recreation of the CBGB bathroom, where “all the action happened,” as Patti Smith once quipped.
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