White Boys, White Noise: Masculinities and 1980s Indie Guitar Rock

by Matthew Bannister

Overview

Through textual analysis of musical and critical discourses, Bannister provides the first book-length study of masculinity and ethnicity within the context of indie guitar music within US, UK and New Zealand ‘scenes’. Drawing on his own experience as an indie musician, Bannister surveys a range of indie artists, demonstrating broad continuities between these apparently disparate scenes, in terms of gender, aesthetic theory and approaches to popular musical history. The result is a book which raises some important questions about how gender is studied in popular culture and the degree to which alternative cultures can critique dominant representations of gender.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781409493747
Publisher:	Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Publication date:	01/28/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Matthew Bannister is Senior Lecturer/Postgraduate Supervisor in Media Arts at Wintec (Waikato Institute of Technology), Hamilton, New Zealand.

Table of Contents

Contents: Introduction - White boys...; Reviewing theories and representations of masculinities; Powerless power: masculine intellectualism and aesthetics; What does it mean to be alternative? Indie guitar rock as a genre; The singer or the song? Homosociality, genre and gender; 'Someone controls electric guitar': indie and technologies; 'What will I do if she dies?' Music, misery and masculinities; Conclusion - ...white noise. Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

’Solid, researched intellectual discourse on rock music, particularly punk and indie, is hard to come by, and Bannister treats his subject matter - which includes R.E.M., the Smiths, The Minutemen and Nirvana - with the same level of respect a classical music scholar would give Mozart or Bach. That's refreshing.’ Thrive ’Matthew Bannister's new title adds a precious new body of study to the relatively thin gathering of books about the male and maleness in rock music, as he unpicks the part that masculinity and masculine values have played in shaping both the rock discourse and our understanding of it... rich and informed...an impressively researched survey... a highly satisfying overview...’ Popular Music

From the Publisher