US Youth Films and Popular Music: Identity, Genre, and Musical Agency

199 Pages·2017·1.87 MB·English

by  Tim McNelis

US Youth Films and
Popular Music
This book brings theory from popular music studies to an examination
of identity and agency in youth films while building on, and comple-
menting, film studies literature concerned with genre, identity, and
representation. McNelis includes case studies of Hollywood and inde-
pendent US youth films that have had commercial and/or critical success
to illustrate how films draw on specific discourses surrounding popular
music genres to convey ideas about gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and
other aspects of identity. He develops the concept of ‘musical agency’,
a term he uses to discuss the relationship between film music and char-
acter agency, also examining the music characters listen to and discuss,
as well as musical performances by the characters themselves.
Tim McNelis is a youth film and film music scholar with chapters in
Inter national Cinema and the Girl: Local Issues, Transnational Con-
texts and The Time of Our Lives: Dirty Dancing and Popular Culture.
He has also co-authored pieces on songs in Wes Anderson films and
visible playback technology in film.
Routledge Advances in Film Studies
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com.
45 Mobility and Migration in Film and Moving Image Art
Cinema Beyond Europe
Nilgün Bayraktar
46 The Other in Contemporary Migrant Cinema
Imagining a New Europe?
Guido Rings
47 Horror Film and Affect
Towards a Corporeal Model of Viewership
Xavier Aldana Reyes
48 India’s New Independent Cinema
Rise of the Hybrid
Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram
49 Early Race Filmmaking in America
Edited by Barbara Tepa Lupack
50 Film Text Analysis
New Perspectives on the Analysis of Filmic Meaning
Edited by Janina Wildfeuer and John A. Bateman
51 The Camera-Eye Metaphor in Cinema
Christian Quendler
52 Surveillance in Asian Cinema
Under Eastern Eyes
Edited by Karen Fang
53 US Youth Films and Popular Music
Identity, Genre, and Musical Agency
Tim McNelis
US Youth Films and
Popular Music
Identity, Genre, and Musical Agency
Tim McNelis
First published 2017
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business.
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
The right of Tim McNelis to be identified as author of this
work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections
77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be
trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
CIP data has been applied for.
ISBN: 978-1-138-94691-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-67053-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
For Elena, with love and respect
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
List of Figures ix
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction: Youth Films, Identity, and
Musical Agency 1
Part I
She’s a rebel? Girls, Guitars, and agency 21
1 The Girl Can’t Have It: Restricted Musical Agency
in 10 Things I Hate About You and Love Don’t
Cost a Thing 30
2 Queer Agency and the Reappropriation of the
“Technophallus” in All Over Me 43
3 Silent Punk and Audible Folk: Musical
Sleight-of-Hand in Juno 56
Part II
Listening to the Other: Cultural Borrowing
and Critical reflection 69
4 Consumption, Authenticity, and Identity
Experimentation in Ghost World 78
5 “I didn’t move to Bosnia”: Critical Cultural
Immersion in Save the Last Dance 92
6 Cheerleaders, Bullies, and Nerds: Intersections of
White Stereotypes and Black Music in Bring It On,
Mean Creek, and Napoleon Dynamite 106
viii Contents
PART III
Unheard Ethnicities: Musical Construction
of Ethnic Identity and Agency 119
7 ‘Old World’ Ethnicity, Hybrid Identity, and
‘New World’ Agency in Real Women Have Curves 127
8 “Neighbourhood is sure changing, isn’t it?”:
Evolving Traditions and Complex Identities in
Quinceañera 143
9 Reimagining the All-American Teenager: Inaudible
Ethnicity and Agency from the Margins in Better
Luck Tomorrow 158
Conclusion: The Continuing Relevance of Film
Music to Identity and Agency 172
Index 183
List of Figures
0.1 Coach Carter ensures the party’s over. 14
1.1 Kat is silenced and surveilled. 35
1.2 Verona gives Kat the gift of musical agency. 36
1.3 Crazy cool dreads: an alternate ending. 39
2.1 Claude and Lucy: finally plugged in. 54
3.1 Juno and Mark have an illicit jam session. 62
3.2 ‘Café Triste’: Juno’s excluded performance. 64
4.1 Enid tries on “a 1977 original punk rock look”. 79
4.2 Enid hears ‘Devil Got My Woman’ for the first time. 81
4.3 Seymour freezes with his ice cream. 85
5.1 Derek teaches Sara hip hop attitude. 97
5.2 Sara dances under the “L” track. 103
6.1 Napoleon shows off his moves in front of the students. 112
7.1 Ana watches as a woman serenades an invisible audience. 130
7.2 A ‘Chica Dificil’ waits for the bus to school. 139
8.1 Serious dancing at the quinceañera. 148
8.2 Queering el perreo. 150
8.3 A misleading introduction to Carlos. 152
9.1 All-American boys. 160
9.2 Confrontation at the party. 162