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The Function and Effect of Popular Music in Cinema

Hi everyone, for my last post I will present you one of my seconday sources. It is titled Popping the Question: The Function and Effect of Popular Music in Cinema, which is an article written by Hilary Lapedis and is available on Jstor.

In this article the author mostly argues that the use of popular music in cinema has been influenced by the music video and especially video clip. Nevertheless, other interesting elements are developped.

Firtsly, the author argues that the use of popular music, instead of classical music, able the spectator to have a cultural association with a scene thanks to associations the song already had.

One of the example used is the movie Forrest Gump, by Robert Zemeckis (that I highly recommend if you have not seen it yet). Popular musics in this film are esential because they are linked to US history during the second half of the 20th century. Therefore the use of these songs can have several purposes that can be connotations but also the bonding the spectator has with each songs.

Another intersting point in my opinion is the argument regarding the lack of a soundtrack during particular scenes. There is a scene in the movie that takes place during the Vietnam war, Forest is a soldier in Vietnam and rescues all his companions and there is not a single song playing during this scene, just the sounds of gunshots and explosions. This catch the spectator by surprise and ables him to see the scene as 'real'.

I hope that you appreciated my posts and wish you all the best for the exams and your project!

[maxime-mlr]

Lyrics as commentary

Hi everyone, I hope that you are all doing well with your sources and research. In this week post I will still talk about DreamWorks Animation: Intertextuality and Aesthetics in Shrek and Beyond and its chapter 3 like last week post.

As some of you mentionned in the comment section of my previous post, popular music and its lyrics are often associated with humor in the movie Shrek. The best example being the very first scene in which we are listening to Shrek telling a fairy tale story from a book and suddendly he uses one of the pages of the book as toilet paper and at the same time 'All Star' by Smash Mouth starts playing, which indirectly indicates to the spectators the tone of the movie.

According to Sam Summers, popular music in DreamWorks movies has 2 roles. The first is to show "an ironic contrast with predicaments", the second is "a reflection of a character's inner thoughts".

I think the two best example for the later are 'Bad Reputation' by Joan Jett & The Blackhearts which really goes well with Shrek personality in a scene in which he manages to win against all the kinghts (by doing wrestling holds for example) that Lord Farquaad assembled to save Princess Fiona. The second example I chose is 'My Beloved Monster' by Eels that plays during a sequence of scenes between Shrek and Fiona and the use of this particular music emphasizes that they are both falling in love with eachother.

I think that these two scenes and their musics are really good examples of what Summers further developed later in the chapter. He argues that the songs used can also help the audience make the connections and help them understand better the characters' inner thoughts and feelings.

I wish you all the best for your project and nice weekend!

[maxime-mlr]

Dreamworks Animation: Intertextuality and Aesthetics in Shrek and Beyond by Sam Summers

Hi everyone, I am really delighted to see that my project interests so many of you. In this week post I will focus on one of the secondary sources I introduced in last week post which is Dreamworks Animation: Intertextuality and Aesthetics in Shrek and Beyond by Sam Summers.

I will specifically focus on the third chapter of the book titled: '"All Star' Soundtracks: DreamWorks and the pop song'. In this chapter Sam Summers focuses on the use of popular musics in the DreamWorks movies. He develops the several reasons for the specific use of popular songs instead of classic song like in other animated movies and especially Disney movies. To justify his arguments, he uses example that are from many different movies made by DreamWorks but not only Shrek. Nonetheless, many of his arguments do work with the first Shrek movie that he considers as a basis for the other DreamWorks movies.

His first argument is that the use of popular music in these movies are for the market appeal, people would identify the movie as rebellous and contemporary which is quite the opposite of Disney movies that are often associated with nostalgia. Furthermore, the movie appeals to a very large audience, both a young and older audience will find a song that they know in the movie. He also develops the notion of "cross-media synergy" which is the release of the movie and the songs at mostly the same time and both will "boost" the sales for the other and create an association between the two, 'All Star' by Smash Mouth is the best example because when we think about this movie we think of this music and when we hear the song we instantly think about the movie.

I won't elaborate his other arguments in this post but I will definitely use them in my project. I hope that you enjoyed my post and I hope that you are all doing well with your sources! I wish you a nice weekend and see you next week!

[maxime-mlr]

The use of popular music in movies: Shrek

Hi everyone, in this week post I will introduce you the subject of my projet. You read it right, my project is about the first Shrek movie, released in 2001 and directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson.

Shrek is still today a very popular movie license and one of the factors that made it popular is the musics you can hear in the movies. The most known is probably 'All Star' by the band Smash Mouth that is still today very popular because of the Shrek movies and the internet memes.

In my project I would like to focus on the musics of the first movie for several reasons but the main reason is that the first Shrek movie is the first animated movie that used popular musics for its soundtrack.

My problem statement would be that the choice of popular music, and especially the ones that are in the movie, is not trivial at all. The musics I would like to analyze are 'All Star' by Smash Mouth, 'I'm a Believer' sung by Smash Mouth but originally sung by The Monkees, and at last 'Halleluja' sung by Rufus Wainright but originally sung and written by Leonard Cohen.

One of the parts of my project would be an analyze of the lyrics in the context of the movie and its characters, this would also be link to the chapter Mediation of the Negus. Another part of my project would be the use of popular music as a marketing tool for the popularity of the movie. And the third part of my project would be the use of popular music by Dreamworks in the context of the rivalry with the Disney movies.

My primary sources are the movie Shrek (2001), the three songs I mentioned before 'All Star' and 'I'm a Believer' by Smash mouth and 'Halleluja' by Rufus Wainright, but also interviews of the movie producers that you can find in the DVD versions of the movie. But I also have other documents to help me for this project that are Popular Music in Theory - An Introduction by Keith Negus and Dreamworks Animation: Intertextuality and Aesthetics in Shrek and Beyond by Sam Summers (especially chapter 3: 'All Star' Soundtracks: Dreamworks and the pop song)

As a huge fan of the movies and the musics I am very glad to be able to work on such a topic. I hope that you are all doing well with your project and I wish you all a very nice weekend!

[maxime-mlr]

The notion of identity in popular music : the example of Men at Work

Hello everyone, in this week post I would like to focus on the notion of identity. My personal example is the autralian band Men at Work. You have probably already listen to one of their songs such as Who can it be now? ou Down Under. I would like to focus on the later.

Down Under as I said is one of their most popular songs, it was a great hit when it was released in 1981 in Australia but also all around the world. The song depicts the story of an Australian man travelling around the world and meeting people that are interested in his home country which is Australia. We can also observe that this song features australian slangs such as "kombi" or ""chunder". I think we could also link this song as an example for the chapter "Geography" of the Negus, because many people of Australia identified with this song because of the slangs that are typical of Australia, and the fact that the song is about an Australian man speaking about Australia. Furthermore, the singer of the band, Colin Hay, explained that the song was also stating that the identity of Australia was dying little by little because of Americanization, another notion developped in the chapter "Geography" of the Negus.

It is still today a very popular song in Australia and it is still used for sport games for example.

I hope you enjoyed my post and I wish you all a nice break!

[maxime-mlr]

The representation of the Northern Ireland Conflict

Hello everyone, in this week post I would like to study how both U2 and The Cranberries refer to the conflicts in Northern Ireland and more generally to the tensions between Ireland and the United Kingdom.

Firstly U2 refers to this conflict in Sunday Bloody Sunday by describing the horror and violence felt in Northern Ireland and especially during the events of the Bloody Sunday in 1972. Moreover they question these conflicts and their lenght with the repetition of "How long, How long must we sing this song?".

The Cranberries talk about this conflit from the start by referring to the Easter Rising of 1916 which was an armed insurrection against British authority in Ireland, but also refers to the victims of several conflicts and attacks since the beginning of the conflict. I believe that the video clip itself is also very powerful and as we saw last week is clearly an amplification of their message.

I think it is interesting to observe that both of these groups come from Ireland but are quite different in style but denounce the same things because they feel concerned about this issue regarding their country. I also find fascinating that those two songs are still very popular today and are still very important for the Irish population.

I hope that you enjoyed my post and I wish you all a nice weekend!

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Hello everyone, in this week post I would like to talk about the video clip of I Want to Break Free by Queen.

This clip was very popular when it was released, however in the United States it was considered scandalous. The singer and musicians of the band are all dressed as women in this clip to reffer to a British soap but the clip was even censored on MTV.

This clip can be seen as an amplification of the original lyrics, it focuses on the lyrics that are the name of the song: "I want to break free". Freddy Mercury admited himslef that the video clip could be interpreted as a celebration of homosexuality, because he was himself homosexual and was proud to be able to say so, because when the clip was released it was easier than before to admit your homosexuality even though it was not tolerated by everyone.

The music and the clip are still today among their most popular works, and it is partially because of the popularity of the video clip.

I hope that you enjoyed my post and wish you all a nice weekend!

[maxime-mlr]

Music in Politics

In this week post I would like to talk about the relationship between politics and music, especially how politicians use music. An interesting example is Donald Trump using Queen's music for his political campaign in 2016.

Indeed Donald Trump used "We are the Champions" of Queen during his campaign for obvious reason. We all know this music and it is often used to celebrate sport victory for axample. However Queen have always tried to be as far as possible from politic. Therefore when Brian May, the lead guitarist of the group, heard the news he was not happy about it and made everything possible to stop this practice. He declared : "Regardless of our views on Mr Trump’s platform, it has always been against our policy to allow Queen music to be used as a political campaigning tool.”

I think it is quiet an interesting topic, especially with the next presidential election coming really soon in the United States and both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are using every medium for their political campaign.

I hope you appreciated my post and I wish you all a nice weekend!

Maxime.

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Hi everyone, I'm Maxime and in my very first post I'll introduce you the artists I listen to and also raise an observation I had after reading the first chapter of Negus' book.

I listen to many different kinds of music synthesizer to rock but also indie. To give some example, I like to listen to Empire of the Sun, Capital Cities but I think the band I'm most fond of is probably Electric Light Orchestra that you may know for the song Mr. Blue Sky.

As I read the fisrt chapter of Negus' book, the author talked about Adorno's opinion on popular music and especially its audience. He explains that the audience has many different factors such as the age or the social environment. However, a thing that Adorno did not think about is also that popular music is popular through time, in large audiences who have not experienced the period of much of the music they listen to. Therefore I tend to disagree with Adorno for this reason but also for other reasons that I won't develop today.

I hope that you enjoyed reading my first post.

have a nice weekend everyone!