SPACE ODDITIES FOR THE AGE OF SPACE TOURISM Michael Mooradian Lupro A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 2009 Committee: Donald McQuarie, Advisor Lynn E. Pearson Graduate Faculty Representative Ellen Berry Jeremy Wallach © 2009 Michael Mooradian Lupro All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Dr. Donald McQuarie, Advisor This research focuses on musical representations of space in the context of the nascent space tourism industry. The argument contextualizes music as a political practice, one that conceptually constructs spaces and thus could intervene in the colonization of space as produced, largely discursively so far, by transnational entertainment corporations. I specifically focus on the musical texts “Space Oddity” by David Bowie, “Rocketman” by Elton John, and “Space is the Place” by Sun Ra as examples of interventions and revisions of dominant space discourse. Methodologically, the production and reception processes of popular music are used as a template for generating analyses of how particular musical texts might intersect with other culture industry productions such as space tourism. The research concludes that popular music has the capacity to help keep space open for multiplicity, diversity, equity, and, if need be, resistance. iv For Beth, Shaun, and Charley v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The greatest debt is owed to my life coach, editor, inspiration, and reality check Beth Ann Kaufka Jr. and our daughters Shaun (who joined us as the PhD process started) and Charley (who joins us as this project draws to a close). My parents Donald and Barbara provided all the right carrots and sticks to prepare me for the opportunity of higher education. I benefited greatly from intellectual engagement with my fellow students in the American Culture Studies program at Bowling Green State University especially those involved with Culture Club: The Cultural Studies Scholars Association and the Battlegrounds States conferences. As Director of the program, much of the responsibility for the recruitment and retention of such great colleagues and for creating a productive and welcoming atmosphere belongs to Don McQuarie. Turns out he’s a great dissertation advisor as well, with well-timed encouragement and perfectly pitched feedback. Jeremy Wallach provided a valuable model for how to apply ones love of music to cultural study. Ellen Berry accomplished what I thought impossible, making critical theory accessible, fun, and excitedly relevant. I would also like to recognize the generous support of my colleagues in the Division of University Studies at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. My Contemporary World teammates and Dean Joseph L. Graves Jr. have used the right combination of carrots and sticks to make sure I balance my teaching and my scholarship, and Dr. Gary Bailey organized the Faculty Roundtable where I was able to try out some of these ideas on a friendly and critically engaged audience. Thanks are also due to Scott Simkins and Sandra Totten for helping me access the HBCU Title III Junior Faculty Development Fund. vi Finally, to everyone who has ever let me jam with them, hang out in their studio, observe them directing or editing, traded a zine, or made their couch available for crashing – there must be a place for you if space is to be a place worth visiting. Thank you. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION: MUSICAL SUBVERSION OF SPACE TOURISM ............................ 1 Hard Days and Nights ............................................................................................... 2 On Planet Earth, I’ll Probably Stay ........................................................................... 6 Rock Space ............................................................................................................ 12 The Space Oddities: An Experimental Culture Studies Methodology ...................... 21 First Rough Mixes...................................................................................................... 38 CHAPTER I. FLOATING IN A MOST PECULIAR WAY ................................................ 47 Commencing Countdown, Engines On .................................................................... 52 The Stars Look Very Different, Today ...................................................................... 56 Message from the Action Man ................................................................................... 61 I Think My Spaceship Knows Which Way to Go ..................................................... 64 CHAPTER II. IT’S JUST MY JOB FIVE DAYS A WEEK ............................................... 68 A Thousand More Voices .......................................................................................... 70 Maybe Not Such a “Long… Long… Time” .............................................................. 78 I’m Not the Man [sic] They Think I am at Home ...................................................... 88 Build This City on Rock and Roll.............................................................................. 95 CHAPTER III. SUN RA’S SPACE IS THE PLACE OF YOUR ALTER-DESTINY .......... 97 Sun Ra, Science Fiction, and Afrofuturism ............................................................... 102 An Alter-Destiny ........................................................................................................ 110 I Noticed They Didn’t Invite Any of You ................................................................. 120 CHAPTER IV. CONCLUSION: IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE END………………. 126 viii On Such a Timeless Flight: The Patient Rhizomes of Space Oddities ...................... 131 Trans-National Entertainment: It Is All Just Wind in Sails ....................................... 135 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 142 Postlude: The Replacement Drummer -- Foucaultian Power .................................... 145 REFERENCES ...................................................................................................................... 151 INTRODUCTION: MUSICAL SUBVERSION OF SPACE TOURISM Space […] becomes an empty medium through which the heroic adventurers of science fiction fly to discover the strangeness of aliens or the weirdness of time. Lost to such adventures are the less sublime, more material spaces of social life, and with them the awareness that, for all its apparent vastness, space is socially produced. Paul Youngquist in “The Space Machine” (336). Music is prophecy […] ahead of the rest of society because it explores, much faster than material reality can, the entire range of possibilities in a given code. It makes audible the new world that will gradually become visible […] it is not only the image of things, but the transcending of the everyday, the herald of the future. For this reason musicians, even when officially recognized, are dangerous, disturbing, and subversive. Jaques Attali in Noise: The Political Economy of Music (11). Space is not the final frontier. No matter how many times this trope is deployed in popular culture, so long as there is a need for people to imagine a place where things might be different, new, and/or better, there will be places produced as frontiers. The frontier of space shares with previous frontiers - such as the New World or the American West – a mythological construction that serves as a repository for all manner of utopian dreaming and capital scheming. But unlike those previous frontiers, space is still open enough to be constructed differently, to avoid what Alondra Nelson calls the “social science fictions” that reinscribe the worst social inequalities of dominant culture as it seeks new territory to colonize (1). Space is still relatively non-existent as a place of real significant human occupation, meaning that space as most people know it today has been largely constructed through popular culture. The social, capital, or cultural restraints of our earthly existence need not follow should humanity colonize space in the future. As a place that has been socially but not yet materially produced, the everyday lived experience of people in space is still open to be constructed differently, to be a place where what seems odd to us today may turn out to be a perfectly normal part of everyday life. Importantly, the future of space is still in the hands of anyone who cares to participate in its construction. The existing discursive construction of space, to which this project is an amendment, valorizes American exceptionalism, normalizes frontier militarism, and perpetuates myths of technological and capitalist superiority. The space of twentieth century popular culture is of both endless opportunity and unlimited danger. From Star Wars to the Star Trek franchise, the Alien trilogy to Battlestar Galactica, the combatants and contests may differ but the regime of violent conflict is unchallenged. Even within the discourse of opportunity in space, the opportunities are circumscribed by socially constructed terrestrial limits on who gets to participate, how they do so, and to what ends. In other words, the Star Trek franchise may feature ethnically diverse crews and even a female captain in one case, and Trekkies consistently profess tolerant values, but the universalism is wrapped in militarism, the economics are ubiquitously capitalist, and uneasy differences like queerness