Punk Slash! Musicals

"It is rare indeed to encounter such a lucid, entertaining, yet highly theoretical book that promises to say something new about punk. Punk Slash! Musicals updates the celebration of punk to present a nuanced reading of the punk musical's richly complex negotiations of the popular." -- Bishnupriya Ghosh, Professor of English, University of California, Santa Barbara "David Laderman's sterling book is one of the most intelligent and creative contributions to the literature on the rock 'n 'roll film I have read. He surveys the cycle of punk musical films that ran from Derek Jarman's underground Jubilee (1978) to Alex Cox's Sid and Nancy (1986) through the optic of two wonderful original critical coinages: '(s)lip-sync' and 'in/authenticity.' These enable him to manage with great verve the interdependence of resistance and collusion that makes punk (along with rap) prototypical of popular culture in the era of late capital. Punk Slash! Musicals will be of major interest to scholars of both cinema and music, but it's so engagingly written, it deserves a wide popular reception." -- David E. James, Professor, Critical Studies, School of Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California

This lively study of key British and American punk rock musical films from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s explores how this musical cycle represents a convergence between independent, subversive cinema and the more classical Hollywood movie musical.

Punk Slash! Musicals is the first book to deal extensively with punk narrative films, specifically British and American punk rock musicals produced from roughly 1978 to 1986. Films such as Jubilee, Breaking Glass, Times Square, Smithereens, Starstruck, and Sid and Nancy represent a convergence between independent, subversive cinema and formulaic classical Hollywood and pop musical genres.

Guiding this project is the concept of "slip-sync." Riffing on the commonplace lip-sync phenomenon, "slip-sync" refers to moments in the films when the punk performer "slips" out of sync with the performance spectacle, and sometimes the sound track itself, engendering a provocative moment of tension. This tension frequently serves to illustrate other thematic and narrative conflicts, central among these being the punk negotiation between authenticity and inauthenticity.

Laderman emphasizes the strong female lead performer at the center of most of these films, as well as each film's engagement with gender and race issues. Additionally, he situates his analyses in relation to the broader cultural and political context of the neo-conservatism and new electronic audio-visual technologies of the 1980s, showing how punk's revolution against the mainstream actually depends upon a certain ironic embrace of pop culture.