AN ANALYSIS OF THE POLITICS OF CONTEMPORARY DANCE CULTURE AND ITS TELEVISUAL REPRESENTATIONS".

© Stuart Borthwick,
BA (Hons.), PGCert., PhD.

A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Liverpool John Moores University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 1998.

This series of web pages contains the bulk of my doctoral thesis © Stuart Borthwick. Due to the conversion from a word-processed document to a HTML document, some text that was italicised and emboldened in the original hard-bound copy is now in plain text. The full hard-bound copy of this thesis is available from The British Library through the Inter-Library Loan Service.

Please respect the copyright on this unpublished thesis. If you do use any of the ideas, analyses or data contained within this thesis, please cite it according to academic convention.

Abstract

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Introduction: Aims and Objectives.

Introductory footnotes

Public Order and ‘Kill The Bill’
‘Exodus’
‘Radical Consumerism’ and Cream
Politics and Ecstasy
Disappearance
A Refusal of Language
Applications of the work of Pierre Bourdieu
Conclusion
Chapter 1 footnotes

Why Does Contemporary Cultural Studies Now Ignore Youth Culture?
The CCCS
‘Youth as Consumer’
'Youth as Folk Rebel’ and ‘Youth as Consumer’; Combining Discourses
Contextualising Contemporary Cultural Studies
‘Youth as Folk Rebel’ and ‘Youth as Consumer’; The Contradictory Impasse
The Marxist Metanarrative Collapses
Conclusion
Chapter 2 footnotes

The Origins of Youth Television
Theoretical Issues in an Analysis of Televisual Discourse
BPM: An Institutional Analysis
The Discourse of Post-Reithian Public Service
The Discourse of Free-Market Liberalism
Competing Discourses
Conclusion
Chapter 3 footnotes

Introduction
Bakhtin’s Carnival
Televisual Representations of the Contemporary Dance Floor
Dance Culture, Music and Television: A Goldmannian Analysis
Ecstasy: Use[r]s and Gratifications
The Culture of the Weekender
Homology: From Form to Style
Interlude; An 'Adornoesque' example of journalistic discourse
Applying Adorno: Modernism, Music and Repetition
Jungle as Critique? Homologous Structures in Drum and Bass
Conclusion
Chapter 4 footnotes

Introduction
Ethnography
Cultural Currency and Time
Multiaccentuality, Location and Time
Group or Individual Viewing Sessions?
‘Passive’ versus ‘Active’ Audiences; Distraction and Femininity
Problems with Oppositionality and the ‘Encoding/Decoding’ Model
Terminology
Ethical and Legal Concerns
Chosen Method
Chapter 5 footnotes

Introduction: Presentation of Data
Viewing Session 1: Nigel
Viewing Session 2: Catherine and Robert
Viewing Session 3: Angela, Julia, Guy and Sarah
Viewing Session 4: Graham
Viewing Session 5: Stephen
Viewing Session 6: Sandra
Viewing Session 7: Nicola
Viewing Session 8: Collette
Viewing Session 9: Alan
Viewing Session 10: Lorna and Karen
Viewing Session 11: Mary
Conclusion: Key Discourses and Dominant Themes
Chapter 6 footnotes

Chapter 7 footnotes

Appendix 1: Literature Review

Appendix 2: Copy of Steyn, M. (1990) ‘Lords of the dance: Mark Steyn, chillin out, pursues his solo career’ in The Independent, 19 October, p.14.

Appendix 3: A Brief Structural Analysis of BPM

Appendix 4: Complete transcript of interview with ‘Nigel’, 27 July 1995

Appendix 5: Guide to Sound Samples

Appendix 6: Definitions

Ancillary footnotes

Discography

Teleography

Digitography
 
 

This research is concerned with the role that contemporary dance culture (also known as ‘rave culture’) plays in British society. Drawing on a range of research methodologies, it provides a critique of those common-sense, academic and televisual discourses that suggest that contemporary dance culture is an apolitical culture, containing cultural texts of little aesthetic worth.

Drawing on interview material and original research I suggest that contemporary dance culture, through its resistance to state regulation, has become oppositional to the dominant order within society. I also show how, irrespective of state interference, contemporary dance culture contains elements and dynamics that could be considered to be radical and progressive, and is therefore inherently political.

Academic discourses also view contemporary dance culture as apolitical and containing texts of little aesthetic worth. This thesis examines why this is the case through an examination of the history of contemporary cultural studies’ analyses of youth culture.

This thesis then looks at televisual discourse concerning contemporary dance culture, highlighting connections between televisual discourse, academic discourse and common-sense discourse. In particular I show how the discourses of ‘post-Reithian public service’ and ‘free-market liberalism’ came to govern the production of a specific television programme entitled BPM, broadcast by the ITV network early on Sunday mornings between 1992 and 1995, and aimed at contemporary dance culture.

Once common-sense, academic and televisual discourses concerning contemporary dance culture have been critically examined, this thesis then proposes a set of working theoretical models for the examination of the relationship between contemporary dance culture and its televisual representations. Adapting Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the carnival and the carnivalesque, Lucien Goldmann’s analysis of structural homologies, and Theodor Adorno’s analysis of ‘the culture industry’, I show how the relationships between young people, contemporary dance music, and televisual representations of contemporary dance music are more complicated than common-sense, journalistic and academic discourses suggest.

This work continues with an in-depth examination of ethnographic methodology, showing how an examination of anthropological principles can highlight issues in the study of the relationship between contemporary dance culture and its televisual representations. The thesis concludes with an analysis of a series of "viewers’ workshops" where participants in contemporary dance culture air their views concerning the relationship between contemporary dance culture and television.

The conclusion to this thesis makes the point that common-sense, academic, televisual and journalistic discourses concerning contemporary dance culture have much in common in their simplistic attempts to understand what is a complex set of cultural forms.

The completion of this research has involved an enormous amount of help from many people. I owe particular thanks to:

Sean Cubitt and Timothy Ashplant for their advice and support whilst supervising this work.

Bob Millington, John Corner and Len Masterman for their helpful advice and comments on preliminary drafts of this work.

Antonio Melechi for publishing some of the work contained in chapter 4 (Metcalfe, 1997).

Peter Childs and Mike Storey for publishing some of the work contained in the glossary of this thesis (Childs and Storey, 1999).

Steve Sweeney-Turner for offering to publish some of the work contained in chapter 4 (Borthwick, forthcoming).

Phil Markey for the space, time and freedom he gave me to complete this work.

Adrian Mellor for his intellectual support and friendship. Without the spark of creativity that I felt in an undergraduate seminar many years ago this thesis would look very different indeed.

All the staff in the School of Media, Critical and Creative Arts for their advice and guidance.

Rachel Tolhurst for showing me the light.

Dani Metcalfe for her unstinting support over many years.

My parents for their moral and financial support.

I also owe thanks to Skitch, Andy Nicholson, Jenny, Caroline, Rolf, Kate and Lianne, Nick Walton, Justine, Gary Haywood, Natalie, Shirley, Amy Wright, Michelle Lanaway, Claire and Sam at Voodoo, Mary Anna Wright, Emma Postlethwaite, Karole Lange at the BBC, Simon Potter, Jayne Casey at Cream, Hillegonda Rietveld, Eric Herring, Tom Irwin, Bob Askwith, Cath Woodman, Pete Lawrence, Dimitrius Eleftheriotis, Al Deakin, Ron Moy, John and Paul from Bugged Out and Jockey Slut in Manchester, everyone I know from uk-dance@uk-dance.org, and everyone at Voodoo in Liverpool.

Introduction: Aims and Objectives

This thesis has four primary aims:-

1.To counter common-sense discourse on the nature of contemporary dance culture.

2.To counter contemporary cultural studies’ discourse on contemporary dance culture.

3.To critically examine televisual discourse on contemporary dance culture.

4.To counter common-sense discourse on the relationship between young people and television.

Aim One

Common-sense discourse¹ characterises dance culture as an apolitical youth culture of little aesthetic worth, dominated by little more than hedonistic drug consumption and ‘mindless’ repetitive music. In chapter 1 I counter the first part of this suggestion, showing how dance culture’s resistance to state repression demonstrates that the politics of contemporary dance culture are far more sophisticated than common-sense discourse suggests. In chapter 4 a shift in emphasis towards musical form counters the second element of common-sense discourse; the suggestion that contemporary dance music is of little aesthetic worth.

Much of contemporary cultural studies ignores contemporary dance culture, or analyses it in terms that suggest that it is merely another facet of capitalist consumerism. Through an examination of both dance culture’s resistance to state repression, and dance culture’s utopian impulse, chapter 1 implicitly addresses those few writers within contemporary cultural studies who have maintained an interest in contemporary dance culture, and who characterise contemporary dance culture as non-rebellious.

My critique of contemporary cultural studies’ discourse on contemporary dance culture becomes more explicit in chapter 2 where I show how the collapse of the dominant paradigms of youth cultural study left contemporary cultural studies disinclined to study contemporary dance culture. Chapter 4 continues this work, showing how the application of theoretical positions offered by, amongst others, Mikhail Bakhtin, Lucien Goldmann and Theodor Adorno, demonstrates that dance culture is more complex than common-sense and contemporary cultural studies’ discourses suggest, and is eminently worthy of study.

Televisual discourse on contemporary dance culture is similar to both common-sense and academic discourses in that it views contemporary dance culture as a culture of little aesthetic worth, and, like contemporary cultural studies’ discourse, has a tendency to shy away from representing it. Chapter 1 and the introduction to chapter 2 lay the foundation for my critique in that they show that contemporary dance culture is a sizeable and significant social development. Chapter 3 critically examines the commissioning and production of a specific British youth television programme entitled BPM, a show that took contemporary dance culture as its textual referent. In particular chapter 3 shows how the independent production company that made BPM attempted to negotiate a path between two conflicting discourses within television production.

Having completed this analysis, chapter 4 introduces the reader to theoretical positions offered by, amongst others, Mikhail Bakhtin, Lucien Goldmann and Theodor Adorno. In applying these theoretical positions to the study of the relationship between contemporary dance culture and television, this chapter shows how, in their avoidance of contemporary dance culture, common-sense discourse, academic discourse and televisual discourse do dance culture a disservice. Chapters 5 and 6 also directly address this aim through an examination of contemporary dance culture’s own critique of televisual discourse, showing how young people’s involvement in dance culture is more sophisticated than televisual discourse suggests.

Common-sense discourse on the relationship between young people and television suggests that young people ‘mindlessly’ consume televisual texts of little complexity and of little worth. In chapter 4 I formulate a model of the relationship between dance music and dance culture that suggests that the relationship between young people and television is far more sophisticated than common-sense discourse suggests.

Chapters 5 and 6 continue in the pursuit of this aim through the use of audience research techniques inspired by 20th century ethnography. These final two chapters suggest that young people’s television viewing is far more sophisticated and discriminating than journalistic discourse suggests.

Throughout all six chapters I offer readings of dance culture through an application of the works of specific theorists, some of who are less than fashionable within the field of contemporary cultural studies. It somehow seems appropriate that neglected and forgotten theorists and approaches should be revived to examine a topic the study of which was once at the height of academic fashion, but is now all but shunned. This is all the more ironic when considering contemporary cultural studies’ previous willingness to defend earlier youth cultures from those official, social and media discourses that characterised youth culture as either mindlessly consumerist, or dangerously deviant.

It also seems appropriate that Western Marxists previously ignored should form the backbone of my approach. The irony is that, whilst the broadly Marxist approach of contemporary cultural studies in the 1970s has collapsed, the work of marginalised Marxists should prove so useful to this thesis. Where more ‘fashionable’ names are applied to the study of dance culture (such as Adorno and Gramsci) I have attempted to maintain a particularly critical approach in order to show that currently in-vogue theorists are often as flawed as those who have been sidelined in past.

For an examination of work already published in the field, and an examination of the relationship between this thesis and published research, please consult the Literature Review in Appendix 1.

1.Extended definitions of "common sense" and "discourse" are provided in Appendix 6.