Description: "Busby Berkeley's big-production numbers are emblematic of the Hollywood dream factory. Exploring the tensions between escapism and ideological overcoding in the Warner Bros. musical, this book tracks the ways in which Berkeley created spectacles that are both critical and complacent in relation to the society that produced and received them. It makes the case that the Warner Bros. musical, with its attention to the specificity and containment of the aesthetic dimension, has corrective lessons to impart for the aestheticized politics not only of the 1930s, but also of the current age"--
Brief description: Lisa Perrott is Senior Lecturer and Researcher in Screen and Media Studies at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. She is co-editor, with Holly Rogers and Carol Vernallis, of the Bloomsbury book series New Approaches to Sound, Music and Media, and the collected volume Transmedia Directors: Artistry, Industry and New Audiovisual Aesthetics. Lisa is also co-editor, with Ana Cristina Mendes, of David Bowie and Transmedia Stardom. Her interests include music video, animation, documentary and transmedia, with an emphasis on the relations between sound, music and visual media. Lisa is currently completing her second Bloomsbury monograph David Bowie and the Transformation of Music Video (1984-2016 and Beyond).
Review Quotes:
"With his riveting assessment of Busby Berkeley's contributions to the Hollywood musical in the 1930s, James Phillips offers sharp insights into a body of work that was not only shaped by the cultural politics of its time but continues to influence popular culture in the twenty-first century. Phillips's smart analysis opens up the tensions and ambiguities that make Berkeley's work deliciously provocative to this day." --Dominic Broomfield-McHugh, Professor in Musicology, University of Sheffield, UK
"James Phillips' book will be a treat for anyone who is both fascinated and uneased by the Busby Berkeley movies-as Phillips himself clearly is. Focusing on just a handful of the films made for Warner Bros., Phillips situates Berkeley's kaleidoscopic imagery within multiple contexts, exploring the aesthetics of labor, the allure of camp, the challenge of censorship and the iconicity of spectacle. The book is wonderfully informed, intelligently written and as absorbing to read as Berkeley's sequences are to watch." --Dominic Symonds, Professor of Musical Theatre, University of Lincoln, UK