Off Key: When Film and Music Won't Work Together

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An Overture
One The Status and the Potential of Film-Music That
Doesn't Work
Two The Motion Picture You're About to See is a Story
of Music: The Migration of Cinema into Rock 'n' Roll
Three It's Not Only Trivial, It's Bad, Vulgar: Ken
Russell's Composer Biopics and the Uneasy Realignment of
Work and Culture
Four Troubling Synthesis: The Horrific Sights and
Incompatible Sounds of Video Nasties
Five Pop Stars Who Can't Act and the Limits of
Celebrity Flexibility
The Problems of Conclusion

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In Off Key, Kay Dickinson offers a compelling study of how certain alliances of music and film are judged aesthetic failures. Based on a fascinating and wide-ranging body of film-music mismatches, and using contemporary reviews and histories of the turn to post-industrialization, the book expands the ways in which the union of the film and music businesses can be understood. Moving beyond the typical understanding of film music that privileges the score, Off Key also incorporates analyses of rock 'n' roll movies, composer biopics, and pop singers crossing over into acting. By doing this, it provides a fuller picture of how two successful entertainment sectors have sought out synergistic strategies, ones whose alleged "failures" have much to tell about the labor practices of the creative industries, as well as our own relationship to them and to work itself. A provocative and politically-conscious look at music-image relations, Off Key will appeal to students and scholars of film music, cinema studies, media studies, cultural studies, and labor history.

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Music and Letters

an inspiring contribution to the debate on the meaningful difference between film and music, infusing the discussion of film music with a rare sense of political urgency and great intellectual depth

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