This collection explores the centrality of The Who’s classic album, and Franc Roddam’s cult classic film of adolescent life, Quadrophenia to the recent cultural history of Britain, to British subcultural studies, and to a continuing fascination with Mod style and culture. The interdisciplinary chapters collected here set the album and film amongst critical contexts including gender and sexuality studies, class analysis, and the film and album’s urban geographies, seeing Quadrophenia as a transatlantic phenomenon and as a perennial adolescent story. Contributors view Quadrophenia through a variety of lenses, including the Who’s history and reception, the 1970s English political and social landscape, the adolescent novel of development (the bildungsroman), the perception of the film through the eyes of Mods and Mod revivalists, 1970s socialist politics, punk, glam, sharp suits, scooters and the Brighton train, arguing for the continuing richness of Quadrophenia’s depiction of the adolescent dilemma. The volume includes new interviews with Franc Roddam, director of Quadrophenia, and the photographer Ethan Russell, who took the photos for the album’s famous photo booklet.
"Drawing on archival research, oral history interviews, and participant observation, this examination of the adoption and adaptation of Mod style across geographic space also maps its various interpretations over time, from the early 1960s to the present. The book traces the Mod youth culture from its genesis in the dimly lit clubs of London's Soho. where it began as a way for young people to reconfigure modernity after the chaos of World War II, to its contemporary, country-specific expressions. By examining Mod culture in the United States, Germany, and Japan alongside the United Kingdom, "We Are the Mods" contrasts the postwar development of Mod in those countries that lost the war with those that won. The book illuminates the culture's fashion, music, iconography, and gender aesthetics, to create a compelling portrait of a transnational subculture." --Book Jacket.
1964: Mods clash with Rockers in Brighton, creating a moral panic. 1973: ex-Mod band The Who release Quadrophenia, a concept album following young Mod Jimmy Cooper to the Brighton riots and beyond. 1979: Franc Roddam directs Quadrophenia, a film based on Pete Townshend's album narrative; its cult status is immediate. 2013: almost fifty years on from Brighton, this first academic study explores the lasting appeal of 'England's Rebel Without a Cause'. Investigating academic, music, press, and fan-based responses, Glynn argues that the 'Modyssey' enacted in Quadrophenia intrigues because it opens a hermetic subculture to its social-realist context; it enriches because it is a cult film that dares to explore the dangers in being part of a cult; it endures because of its 'emotional honesty', showing Jimmy as failing, with family, job, girl, and group; it excites because we all know that, at some point in our lives, 'I was there!'
The definitive history of the making of Quadrophenia, the 1979 classic mod movie loosely based on The Who's 1973 rock opera of the same name, directed by Frank Roddam and starring Phil Daniels as the protagonist 'Jimmy'
In The Who's second rock opera Quadrophenia, a fictitious teenager suffers from a mental illness that gives him four distinct personalities. Its main songwriter, Pete Townshend, uses the disorder and the four personalities as a means to represent the four members of The Who through the teenage protagonist, a young mod named Jimmy. Townshend reveals Jimmy's disposition at the conclusion of a lament written from Jimmy's perspective in Quadrophenia's liner notes, in a harrowing confession: "Schizophrenic? I'm bleeding quadrophenic." In this monograph, I will examine Quadrophenia for its representations of mental illness through textual, musical, and historical perspectives and how these perspectives provide evidence toward a storyline based around the cultural concept of madness. Mental illness is an invisible illness, for the inflicted does not present noticeable symptoms to others, making it difficult to perceive and accurately diagnose. That is why within popular culture, schizophrenia is oftentimes used interchangeably with multiple personality disorder (now known as dissociative identity disorder), as is the case with Jimmy in Quadrophenia. Although these disorders are not at all similar, both are considered under the broader umbrella of madness, a term which historically was of medical and legal significance but gained political and ideological meanings in our modern society. Quadrophenia was meant as a tribute and celebration of The Who's beginnings within the mid-60s London mod subculture. The invisible illness aspect of the storyline is worth investigating for its avoidance of treating mental illness within the medical model, in which it is considered to be a deficit of normalcy that is in need of a fix or cure. Though Jimmy struggles with his illness, it is mostly viewed as part of his adolescent character and then further used as a way of musically and textually representing The Who and the musicians' individual characters. The Who were the epitome of music and madness; their music often spoke in terms of deviance and disobedience, while their live performances were physical and objectionably loud, sometimes concluding with the destruction of instruments. Treating mental illness, as well as physical and developmental impairments, as difference rather than deficit, is a key principle of current disability studies and its cultural model of disability. This is in opposition to the biological model in the medical field. Society has constructed madness as a binary to sanity, and thus a contrast to normalcy. As this binary is still in practice today, society as a whole continues to stigmatize mental illness and forces it to remain invisible. The Who and their embodiment of mental illness in Quadrophenia are meant not merely to arouse sympathy for Jimmy, but also to empower mental illness as a basis of character strength. The following monograph begins with an introduction to music and disability studies regarding mental illness. The next chapter offers a glimpse into the literature on The Who and Quadrophenia, including a survey of a 2013 conference dedicated exclusively to Quadrophenia. Finally, a chapter analyzes representations of mental illness in Quadrophenia within the music, society, and The Who themselves before a brief concluding chapter.
It's nearly 35 years since Quadrophenia hit the world's cinema screens. Jimmy the Mod's search for identity against the backdrop of the May Bank Holiday riots of the 1960s is regarded as the finest example of a British 'youth' movie and a warmly remembered timepiece for a generation. This book explores the making of Britain's great cult film and its subsequent influence on popular culture.
London, 1958. In the smoky jazz clubs of Soho and the coffee bars of Notting Hill the young and the restless - the absolute beginners - are forging a new carefree lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. Moving in the midst of this world of mods and rockers, Teddy gangs and trads., and snapping every scene with his trusty Rolleiflex, is MacInnes' young photographer, whose unique wit and honest views remain the definitive account of London life in the 1950s and what it means to be a teenager. In this twentieth century cult classic, MacInnes captures the spirit of a generation and creates the style bible for anyone interested in Mod culture, and the changing face of London in the era of the first race riots and the lead up to the swinging Sixties...
"An outstanding entry level text aimed at those with little or no cultural studies knowledge... Innovative, creative and clever." - Times Higher Education "The ideal textbook for FE and first year HE cultural studies students. Its quality and character allow the reader to ‘feel’ the enthusiasm of its author which in turn becomes infectious, instilling in the reader a genuine sense of ebullient perturbation." - Art/Design/Media, The Higher Education Authority An introduction to the practice of cultural studies, this book is ideal for undergraduate courses. Full of practical exercises that will get students thinking and writing about the issues they encounter, this book offers its readers the conceptual tools to practice cultural analysis for themselves. There are heuristics to help students prepare and write projects, and the book provides plenty of examples to help students develop their own ideas. Written in a creative, playful and witty style, this book: Links key concepts to the key theorists of cultural studies. Includes a wide range of references of popular cultural forms. Emphasizes the multidisciplinary nature of cultural studies. Includes pedagogical features, such as dialogues, graphs, images and recommended readings. The book′s skills-based approach enables students to develop their creative skills, and shows students how to improve their powers of analysis generally.
What motivates people to dress in a manner that marks them out as different to the conventional norm? Is it true that, with dress, 'anything goes' in our mix-and-match postmodern culture? Have easily recognizable, authentic subcultures imploded in a glut of ironic revivals and stylistic fragmentation? Does this supposed 'post-subcultural' generation actively celebrate ephemerality, transience and disposability, merely casting off and trying on one alternative identity after another in an ever-accelerating fashion frenzy? This exciting book is a considered sociological examination of such questions. By listening to the voices of the subcultural stylists themselves - their subjective perceptions of their style and the ideas that lie behind them - the author provides original insights into issues of subjectivity and identity. Situating an empirical case study within a wider consideration of postmodernism and cultural change, the author rejects cultural studies perspectives that attempt to 'read' subcultures as texts. Drawing on extensive interviews with people who dress in what might be deemed a stylistically unconventional manner, he seeks instead to establish whether contemporary subcultures display modern or postmodern sensibilities and forms. He argues persuasively that they do both - a stress on postmodern hyperindividualism, fluidity and fragmentation runs alongside a modernist emphasis on authenticity and underlying essence. He concludes that a Romantic libertarianism has permeated working-class culture and that the distinction between 'individualistic' middle-class countercultures and 'collectivist' working-class subcultures has been over-emphasized.
