Post by The Real Wizard on Feb 10, 2022 21:36:39 GMT
Someone sent me this review of the MSG 2/5/77 show...
...and I googled the first phrase hoping to find a transcription of the rest of the article, and instead I came across this pleasant surprise:
A master's thesis from 1999 discussing Queen's status of being just outside of the mainstream due to the femininity of Queen's music/presentation and society's views on homosexuality at the time (it was 1990s North America - I grew up in it, so I know).
This thesis aims to account for the marginalization of the British rock band Queen by the press and in scholarly writing, despite their enormous popular appeal and commercial success. Why have they not been critically acclaimed as part of "mainstream" rock? This thesis proposes that gender issues lie at the center of the band's marginalization. Lead singer Freddie Mercury's stage persona, the types of music on which Queen drew, and Brian May's guitar playing all serve to "feminize" the band and, as such, provoked their critical dismissal.
Chapter One surveys American and British journalistic writing spanning Queen's twenty year career, revealing a consistently negative reception of the band by the press, despite Queen's acceptance by audiences worldwide. This lack of critical acclaim may in part account for Queen's continued absence from the rock canon as it is currently being constructed in historical surveys of rock and in scholarly writings. Chapters Two and Three investigate Queen's challenge to accepted gender conventions in rock music. An analysis of Mercury's costumes, physical gestures, and demeanor in performance, and of the classical music appropriations in the bands' music which, it is argued, worked to feminize their sound, will reveal how Queen resisted the common codes of masculinity that dominate hard rock music. In so doing, they challenged the foundations of rock which privilege masculine constructions, resulting in their marginalization.
This exploration of Queen's marginalization hinges on the larger issue of what is and is not accepted as mainstream in popular music culture. This is a dubious labeling process, as it devalues the listening experiences of many musical subcultures, situating them as Other in relation to the mainstream. Given that this process can be viewed as an initial step towards the construction of a popular music canon, it becomes vital to scrutinize the ideologies upon which exclusion from the mainstream is being based.
Chapter One surveys American and British journalistic writing spanning Queen's twenty year career, revealing a consistently negative reception of the band by the press, despite Queen's acceptance by audiences worldwide. This lack of critical acclaim may in part account for Queen's continued absence from the rock canon as it is currently being constructed in historical surveys of rock and in scholarly writings. Chapters Two and Three investigate Queen's challenge to accepted gender conventions in rock music. An analysis of Mercury's costumes, physical gestures, and demeanor in performance, and of the classical music appropriations in the bands' music which, it is argued, worked to feminize their sound, will reveal how Queen resisted the common codes of masculinity that dominate hard rock music. In so doing, they challenged the foundations of rock which privilege masculine constructions, resulting in their marginalization.
This exploration of Queen's marginalization hinges on the larger issue of what is and is not accepted as mainstream in popular music culture. This is a dubious labeling process, as it devalues the listening experiences of many musical subcultures, situating them as Other in relation to the mainstream. Given that this process can be viewed as an initial step towards the construction of a popular music canon, it becomes vital to scrutinize the ideologies upon which exclusion from the mainstream is being based.
I skimmed through it, and it seems like a wonderful and thoughtful read.
Pretty well no-one outside of academia nobody was talking about this kind of stuff in 1999. There definitely is no coincidence that society's growing acceptance of the LGBTQ community has contributed to Queen becoming one of the biggest bands in the world once again.