Cinema, Communication, Interculturality and Rock and Roll: Sought Obscenity.

Abstract

There is a certain obsession in film theory with the need to mark the boundaries between documentary and fiction. However, these limits, are in many cases mere arbitrary semiotic considerations which do not take into account that those porous borders are traversed by the visual image, moreover in an era of fusion and hybrids (which others might call the intercultural communication era). In the case of music, and more precisely rock and roll, sound and visuals come together, pass each other by, devour each other, generating —on the margins— impure, contaminated and interstitial genres. This paper analyses the impurities found in some films, which can be defined as interstitial, disseminators which cross boundaries and put a strain on signifiers. The theoretical and methodological concept which intersects the text is obscenity —what is out of the picture—, a ghostly, spectral or virtual instability.