Music of the “Fourth Gender”: Morrissey and the Sexual Politics of Melodic Contour (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Disruption of Normativity: Queer Desire and Negativity in Morrissey and The Smiths
gender forum, 2017
Two of the terms most frequently used by scholars and music journalists alike to describe former The Smiths singer Morrissey’s persona are ambiguous and ambivalent – an evaluation that applies among other things to his attitude towards gender and sexuality. While Morrissey refuses to classify himself in any predefined categories of gender and sexuality, his own and his band’s musical canon is rife with narratives of queer desire and instances of sexual intimacy, which often allow for both a gay and a straight viewpoint. It is precisely this ambiguity that offers the possibility of an interpretation offside a compulsory heterosexuality and –normativity, therefore opening it to a queer audience. It is furthermore among the reasons why lyrics by Morrissey and The Smiths, as I will argue, qualify as queer texts. In order to establish and defend such a view, this paper will draw on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s approach of a queer reading and her work on homosocial desire in literature, Harold Beaver’s examination of homosexual signs, and Teresa de Lauretis definition of queer texts. One of the pillars of de Lauretis’s classification is that of non-closure of a narrative and is thus closely linked to queer negativity and non-futurity. Morrissey and The Smiths’ oeuvre offers a significant set of songs that embrace these ideas. Deriving from Jack Halberstam’s concept of the queer art of failure, Lee Edelman’s critique of reproductive futurism, Judith Butler’s reflections on the term queer, and José Esteban Muñoz’s conceptualisation of a queer utopia I will show how Morrissey uses different formulas of negativity and longing to generate power from, thus transforming them into critique of regimes of the normal. It is in this diverse and subversive expression of queer negativity and desire that Morrissey disrupts normativity and its underlying stigmatising and discriminating potential.
2007
Steven Patrick Morrissey was the lead singer of the 1980s British band The Smiths. Since the band’s demise in 1987, Morrissey has had a successful career as a solo performer. Morrissey is a rich case study for the analysis of mediated celebrities. This dissertation examines the ways in which Morrissey’s public persona has shifted throughout his career. These changes have to do with the nature of popular cultural mediation, the status of celebrity, and Morrissey’s engagement with issues of gender and desire. Morrissey’s celebrity persona, or star image, takes shape within the ongoing production of what Roland Barthes refers to as enigma, and its incompleteness is thus one of its consistent features. This star image is constructed from—and within—“streams” of information which are produced and circulate over time. The unending character of this “stream” is such that Morrissey’s star image is perpetually produced and continues to evolve. The sense of the celebrity’s image as incomplete leads, in turn, to an ongoing impulse, on the part of fans and observers, to find resolution. Throughout his career, Morrissey has maintained mystery around key aspects of his identity, in particular his sexuality, his feelings about England, and his relationship to pop stardom. This dissertation explores the various elements which contribute to Morrissey’s enigmatic star image: critical press; music videos; live performance; musical syntax; and interviews. This dissertation explores the interaction of these various elements, and how they have given rise to ongoing speculation within fan and critical discourse, and it explores the particular kinds of mystery and gender roles which arise to accompany these sorts of enigmas. As a celebrity, Morrissey is subject to the gaze of an audience in a way that has historically been construed as objectifying, and theorized within important works as feminizing. Morrissey’s principle response to this objectification has been the maintenance of a constant sense of enigma. While other performers might seek clarification of their images as a means of controlling them, Morrissey’s response to ongoing objectification is the ongoing production of enigma. His active control of his image is manifest through his constant transformation of that image.
I am a ‘Humosexual’ and I need to be loved: a queer reading of Morrissey
2014
Within hours of the publication of the Penguin Classic 'Autobiography' by Morrissey on October 17 th 2013, the bulk of media commentary focused on the singer's account of his relationships with a man (Jake Walters) and a woman (Tina Dehghani). After years of tedious music press speculation and conjecture concerning Morrissey's sexual preferences, many commentators concluded that Morrissey had finally admitted to being gay. However, just two days later Morrissey wryly refuted this narrow interpretation of his book by stating: "Unfortunately, I am not homosexual. In technical fact, I am humasexual. I am attracted to humans. But, of course ... not many" (Morrissey, 2013). Over three decades, media discourse in the music press and elsewhere concerning Morrissey's sexuality have focused, in turn, on his selfdeclared celibacy; his sexual orientation and his references (coded and otherwise) to Gay experiences in particular. Such myopic commentary serves to ignore the totality of how Morrissey has treated the complex question of human sexuality. Rather than going down the 'is he?/isn't he?' cul-de-sac, this paper takes, as a starting point, the way in which Morrissey's creative output has consistently recognised the fluidity of
Reading Lyrics, Hearing Prose: Morrissey's Autobiography
Music, Memory and Memoir, 2019
is best known as the vocalist and songwriter (alongside guitarist Johnny Marr) for the 1980s Manchester band The Smiths. Following the band's split in 1988, he embarked on an equally successful solo career. But from the moment he entered the spotlight as a miserabilist, acerbic popstar, empathizing with those on the margins and antagonizing the establishment, he has cultivated a persona that confronts traditional notions of what it means to be a popular musician. Since 2016, however, his politics (including a pro-Brexit stance) have been fiercely scrutinized-and in a move that alienated swathes of fans and eroded his authority as an ally of the marginalized, he endorsed the farright party For Britain in April 2018 (Morrissey 2018a; 2018b). In this chapter, I theorize that Autobiography marks a departure for how Morrissey constructs himself as an artist and casts new light on his musical output. Following introductory comments, I situate the 2013 book in the field of contemporary music memoirs. Subsequently, I investigate the relationship between this memoir and its author's activity as a recording artist, through an analysis that demonstrates how Morrissey's mode of lyrical expression influenced the text's themes and literary style. Secondarily, I trace how synergies operate between his musical catalogue and the book's audiovisual paratexts. Finally, given the rhetorical inflection of Morrissey's recent political pronouncements, I suggest that his memoir alerts audiences to his practice of re-appropriating song lyrics to serve new agendas. To date, scholars have cited Autobiography and its critical reception to support queer readings of Morrissey's recordings and performances. Dillane, Power and Devereux (2014: 149) observe that media scrutiny of the star's romantic relationships appeared 'within hours' 8
The Cruel Poetics of Morrissey
Drawing on existential phenomenology, particularly Heidegger's analytic of Dasein, and combining it with a developmental perspective, the paper focuses on those moments of crisis, in which a self faces the question of its own truth, and in the process posits the conditions for disclosing key aspects about the world and society. Late adolescence and early adulthood are the 'ages of life' in which such possibility of disclosure occurs most eminently, and this is relayed expressively and reflectively, the paper further argues, in the few examples of popular music that act as genuine outlets for young people's desires and anxieties. The poetic work of Morrissey is a particularly eloquent case in point. However, a succinct analysis of Morrissey's poetics reveals that underneath the explicit thread of sexuality, it is violence and cruelty that shape the young soul into becoming a channel for world and social disclosure.
Discourses of (hetero)sexism in popular music
Journal of Language and Sexuality
This article analyses interview data to explore how participants negotiated discourses of (hetero)sexism in relation to the controversial pop song Blurred Lines. Our previous work, based on questionnaire data, interrogated interpretations of Blurred Lines (Handforth, Paterson, Coffey-Glover & Mills 2017) and showed how participants drew on discourses of sexism in their responses. Several participants experienced significant conflict in their interpretations, and here we focus on these more complex interpretations, considering the “small stories” (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou 2008) identified in follow-up interviews with participants. Individual narratives acted as mechanisms through which participants linked Blurred Lines to wider issues such as rape culture, drawing parallels between these and their own lives. Following research in queer linguistics (King 2014; Leap 2014; Motschenbacher 2010) our use of thematic analysis, corpus linguistic tools and narrative analysis highlights the va...
Understanding Gender and Sexuality in Rock Music
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Rock Music Research. Edited by Allan F. Moore and Paul Carr. Bloomsbury Press, 2020
As an artistic form that circulates widely, rock music shapes and reflects social and cultural values, communicating powerful stories about the ever-shifting dynamics of human agency in society. 1 Douglas Kellner writes that "Radio, television, film and the other products of media culture provide materials out of which we forge our very identities; our sense of selfhood; our notion of what it means to be male or female; our sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality; and of 'us' and 'them. '" 2 In the context of popular musical expression, artists adopt strategies for the representation of gendered and sexualized identities that are bound up with the social values, workings of power, and norms of the musical genres in which they operate. Our cultural understanding of these representations are grounded in an appreciation of the specific genre contexts, production and industry factors, as well as aesthetic, performative, and formal features. As social constructs, the identity categories of gender and sexuality are shaped and reshaped by cultural, political, and economic forces that vary over time and across social spaces. This chapter explores a number of analytic approaches to gender and sexuality in scholarly writings about rock music, with the aim of offering a critical review of the primary concepts raised in the interpretation of gendered subjectivities and representations in popular music. The field of inquiry emerged in the 1980s with the pioneering work of scholars such as Barbara Bradby and Brian Torode, whose analysis of vocal expression led to understanding artist subjectivity as residing in the musical materials, and E. Ann Kaplan, whose work on music videos offered tools for the interpretation of visual representations and narratives. 3 During the 1990s, the field burgeoned when authors opened up a range of reflections upon gendered identities and social practices in a variety of popular music genres, upon analytic methods for musical texts, as well as upon theories of reception and postmodern criticism. 4 From the field of gender studies, the seminal writings of authors such as Judith Butler and Judith Halberstam positioned gender performativity as a negotiation of gender categories. 5 The new millennium saw this line of inquiry firmly established with writings dedicated to the subject of popular music and identity, bringing forward the manifold ways in which individual artists navigate the politics of identity in 28
Gabriel García Román’s Queer Icons series disrupts the traditional form of renaissance era religious artwork, allowing viewers to consider the juxtaposition of the queer and trans people of color he foregrounds within the constructs of traditional religious iconography. Demonstrating a socially conscious brand of art that is emblematic of some of today’s visual artists, García Román works within and through traditional constraints (material, temporal, and spatial) to innovate new means of civic engagement and rhetorical intervention. Expanding on Pérez and Brouwer’s work on queer decorum, I argue that García Román uses perspective by incongruity to revise the relationship between the center and margins, rearticulating what counts as art, where it ought to be viewed, and how it functions rhetorically.