Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory

D-M Withers

Description

Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory presents Kate Bush as you have never seen her before. Encounter the polymorphously perverse Kate, the witchy Kate, the queer Kate; the Kate who moves beyond the mime.

Through in-depth readings of the often critically neglected works of Bush’s career (The Kick Inside, Lionheart, The Dreaming, The Red Shoes and her film The Line, the Cross and the Curve), Withers guides the reader through the complexity of Bush’s art and how it transformed popular culture. 

Not just another book about Kate Bush.

 

Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory: Introduction

The Kick Inside: The Beginning of the Journey

Lionheart and the Queer Life of the BFS

Never for Ever: the continuity and change of the BFS 

The Dreaming, the Breakdown and Becomings of the BFS

The Red Shoes and the death of the BFS

The rebirth of the 

Notes 

Glossary 

Bibliography

Sujets

• Musique
• Histoire de la musique
• Kate Bush
• Music
• History
• Human sexual activity
• Sexuality
• Gender
• Criticism
• Multiple signal classification
• Sociology
• Critical Theory

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 15 mars 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780956450777
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Adventures in
Kate Bush
and Theory
Adventures in
Kate Bush
and Theory
Deborah M. Withers
Published by HammerOn Press 2015
Copyright © 2010 Deborah M. Withers
The right of Deborah M. Withers to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews.
ISBN 978-0-9564507-7-7
Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory / Deborah M. Withers 1. Bush, Kate - Criticism and interpretation. 2. Cultural studies - gender, sexuality and music.
EPUB edition 2015
HammerOn Press, UK www.hammeronpress.net
Cover design by Caroline Duffy www.carolineduffy.co.uk
dedicated to the fags
Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory would not have been possible without the support, love and inspiration from the following people:
Kris Hubley, Red Chidgey, Amy Lou Spencer, Molly James, Emma Thatcher, Edie Pain, May and John Withers, Paul Beswick, Ron Moy, Karren Ablaze, Caroline Duffy, Michal William/Cupid, Sal Harrington, Natalie J Brown, Dimitris Papadopoulos, Rose Clark, Lisa Brook, Melanie Maddison, Sophie Brown, Nicola Elliott and Sadie.
Thank you to Kate Bush, without whose music these thoughts would have never have happened.
Contents
Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory: Introduction
The Kick Inside: The Beginning of the Journey
Lionheart and the Queer Life of the BFS
Never for Ever: the continuity and change of the BFS
The Dreaming, the Breakdown and Becomings of the BFS
The Red Shoes and the death of the BFS
The rebirth of the BFS
 
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory: Introduction

[Kate Bush] supplies me with all the clues and it’s up to me put the answers together – well that’s the Koran of music – and that’s surely what we’re all looking for, no easy answers to anything.
John Lydon 1
Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory will present Kate Bush to you as you have never seen her before: the polymorphously perverse Kate, the witchy Kate, the queer Kate; the Kate who moves beyond the mime. To do this I need to tell a story, the story of the Bushian Feminine Subject (the BFS). The BFS is found within Bush’s music but she is not the same as Bush herself. When Bush the person dies, the BFS will absolutely live on through her music. The BFS is a multiform character who appears across Bush’s music and films and you will get to know her intimately. This book is the story of the BFS’s movement through birth, performance, breakdown, death and rebirth. Finally it charts her disappearance into the landscapes of her own creation.
I call the book Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory to invite a sense of playfulness and wonder. These are two strategies which I think are important when engaging with Bush’s work. The adventure emerges because her music provides an impressive terrain of codes and sources that can be deciphered given the appropriate tools. To put it another way; if Bush’s music is a treasure map then the theory I use in this book are the clues in which to read it. What follows is the treasure. Within these pages I roam throughout her music, making connections and telling the stories that are embedded within them. For Bush is first and foremost a story-teller and invites a way of thinking and reading about her work that comes from this position.
When I combine ‘Kate Bush’ with ‘Theory,’ I want to build a creative theoretical narrative that tells a story. In the story, the BFS becomes a character who is, in many senses, independent of her creator. I want Bush’s music to come alive in an experimental fashion but retain a focus on how it exists at the interrelation of popular culture, theory, art, the avant-garde, history and philosophy. I also want to demonstrate how sexuality, gender, power, race, class and spirituality shape her work. My desire is to move away from conventional uses of theory that are often found within academic writing. I want an adventure. These impulses shape this work because theory can be funny, sordid and relevant – despite what most people think. Theory can be used to tell and develop stories, and situate those stories within larger stories. These can help further understanding of the diverse political and social worlds we inhabit. Theory is useful to creative minds, as is Kate Bush.
Certain stories are always told about Bush in the popular media. The BBC’s 2009 documentary, Queens of British Pop, contained many of them. It highlighted Bush’s enigmatic nature, the uniqueness of her voice and her difference from the humdrum pop mainstream. She writes challenging songs which make the listener work to genuinely appreciate them. She was a pioneer of the music industry in the late 1970s where ‘“birds don’t sell”’ 2 and did not produce their own records. Ultimately fame was the ‘unwanted consequence’ 3 of her creative actions. The aim of this book is not to challenge these stories. They are the more flattering media myths that represent Bush within popular culture. We shouldn’t forget the other myths that suggest she is a control-freak crazy recluse either.
While all of these myths contain shadows of truth within them, my aim is to engage with the myths that Bush created within her music. I am not interested in the popular mystery of the person but I am interested in creating further mysteries as I tell the life-story of the BFS, the multiform character who appears within Bush’s music.
Part of the aim of this book is to situate the common, intuitive and everyday statements made about Bush within popular culture (for example, about the uniqueness of her voice) within philosophical writing. I will also explain how these ideas can also be linked to social and cultural change.
The beginning of the journey
Within this book I will focus on many of the albums and films that are neglected or easily dismissed when critics and commentators write about Bush. Again, there are often common stories that frame her creative output. The Kick Inside is the interesting debut which shows promise and the breakthrough hit, ‘Wuthering Heights.’ It is hastily followed by Lionheart, which is seen as a rushed affair and the result of industry pressure. Never for Ever is where Bush begins to gain control over the production of her music, as signs of her maturation as an artist emerge. The Dreaming is her ‘crazy’ album and receives polarised reviews (genius! or over-elaborate nonsense). Hounds of Love is considered her masterpiece. The Sensual World is said to be her ‘female’ album (as Bush herself described it). The Red Shoes is generally seen as an under-performer and its accompanying film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve, is basically erased from most critics’ interest. After the much lamented twelve year absence from the public eye, Aerial is widely considered to be a return to form by critics and fans alike.
While these stories offer a way of framing understandings of Bush’s music, they simply do not do justice to the complexity of albums such as Lionheart, The Dreaming, The Red Shoes, and films such as The Line, the Cross and the Curve. This complexity is the BFS. She (the BFS) moves through Bush’s work and takes a different form in each release. Through getting to know the BFS, Bush’s work will become more alive, unified and multiple. All too often Hounds of Love grabs the critical limelight and I want to engage with Bush’s work that is pushed to the margins.
Much of the writing and media about Bush, certainly within popular culture, is produced or written by (now middle aged) heterosexual white men. They are either her contemporaries or enjoyed her music as a teenager. This is not to deny the validity or authority of such commentators to write about Bush’s work. However what these men write often reproduces gendered and sexual cultural norms, purely by virtue of their frame of reference. My perspective is different. I am a white, queer woman in my late 20s and offer readings of Bush’s work from a slightly different position. My perspective is sensitive to the marginalised, peculiar and downright weird voices within her music. These sing through the body of the BFS as she appears through Bush’s career.
While subjectivity is the main focus of the book, I do not want to emphasise my own subjectivity too much. However, I will offer this disclaimer. Your experience, gender, sexuality, race, class, physical ability, age and so on matter in how you receive and interpret cultural messages. In other words, how I read Bush’s music is going to be unique because my life experience creates a particular perspective from which I interpret Bush’s music.
There are of course many interpretations of Bush’s music that can be enjoyed by people interested in her work. They range from online blog entries to fan discussion forums 4 and magazines, 5 to music magazines to academic sources. 6 Adventures in Kate Bush and Theory is a small contribution to these unique responses to Bush’s music.
I offer a queer feminist re-interpretation of Bush’s music as told through the life of the BFS. This queered strategy (when queer is understood to query, question and disrupt) is reflected in the albums and films that I explore in the book. By focussing on Bush’s neglected albums I hope to renew interest and appreciation of the highly engaging (as well as musically brilliant!) aspects of Bush’s music.
How are we going to do this?
The main theoretical concept that is drawn upon within the book is subjectivity. 7 Subjectivity is what forms the ‘life’ of the BFS. At a very basic level, it should be understood as the ‘I’ that is found within, and as it moves through, Bush’s music. These ‘I’s’ (for they are multiple) undergo numerous changes over the range of albums that Bush has created in her career. I will chart their (non-linear) development as a journey that shifts between birth, death and rebirth.
Thes