Since the end of the 1960s, the experience of the live concert has in many respects been at the core of the construction of value judgements in the public discourse about popular music. The celebration of the live show as a moment of collective identity construction is based on the premise that this moment is universally accessible, involves a community of peers that interacts peacefully despite their differences, and follows a set of common – often unspoken – rules. This chapter seek to demonstrate how that the audiovisual representation of the popular music concert retains such values at its very core, which presents the live show as a moment of democratic self-recognition for the community of its participants, illustrating my argument by a series of examples drawn from a variety of genres and decades (from the Chemical Brothers to Frank Zappa, from the Taking Heads to Sigur Rós). A set of recurring tropes are then discussed through the perspective of "performative democracy", highlighting the fact that the first step in building a community such as the one envisioned by the film concert is the shared participation in a specific idea of belonging embedded in the media representation.
As the band hit full throttle: live event, mediatization and collective identification in popular music concert films
Alessandro Bratus
2020-01-01
Abstract
Since the end of the 1960s, the experience of the live concert has in many respects been at the core of the construction of value judgements in the public discourse about popular music. The celebration of the live show as a moment of collective identity construction is based on the premise that this moment is universally accessible, involves a community of peers that interacts peacefully despite their differences, and follows a set of common – often unspoken – rules. This chapter seek to demonstrate how that the audiovisual representation of the popular music concert retains such values at its very core, which presents the live show as a moment of democratic self-recognition for the community of its participants, illustrating my argument by a series of examples drawn from a variety of genres and decades (from the Chemical Brothers to Frank Zappa, from the Taking Heads to Sigur Rós). A set of recurring tropes are then discussed through the perspective of "performative democracy", highlighting the fact that the first step in building a community such as the one envisioned by the film concert is the shared participation in a specific idea of belonging embedded in the media representation.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
