Notebook
Music Video Culture and Cinema as a Response: Frank Zappa’s Films in Conservative Revolution.
Published 2012-07-01
Keywords
- Frank Zappa,
- rock,
- videoclip,
- MTV,
- reaganism
- mobilization,
- conservative revolution ...More
Abstract
The life and work of the musician Frank Zappa constitutes one of the clearest examples of social mobilization through rock music and cinema. Throughout his eight feature films, he articulates a discourse of opposition against the leading politicians of the day: firstly, against the music industry, and especially MTV and its process of personality construction through music video; and secondly, against Ronald Reagan’s governments and conservative lobbies that dominated the political scene in the United States in the 1980’s. Zappa’s oppositional discourse is focused on the political awareness of young people to whom he explicitly addresses in his work. We will analyze his work in this article as a defining proposal in the political and social mobilisation of rock music in film, which has had a great influence on present-day political cinema.References
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HUMPHRIES, Reynold (2009). Las listas negras de Hollywood. Una historia política y cultural. Barcelona: Península.
MARTEL, Frédéric (2011). Cultura mainstream. Cómo nacen los fenómenos de masas. Madrid: Taurus.
NYBERG, Amy K. (1998). Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi.
RAMET, Sabrina Petra (1994). Rocking the State. Rock Music and Politics in Eastern Europe and Russia. Boulder / Oxford: Westview Press.
ROCA, J.M. (2009). La reacción conservadora. Los “neocons” y el capitalismo salvaje. Madrid: La Linterna Sorda.
SPENCE, Louise y NAVARRO, Vinicius (2010). Working-Class Hero: Michael Moore’s Authorial Voice and Persona. The Journal of Popular Culture, 43 (2), 368-380.
ZAPPA, Frank y OCCHIOGROSSO, Peter (1989). The Real Frank Zappa Book. New York: Poseidon Press.