Weird Al Yankovic essay (first draft)

Introductions: Weird Al, Parody and Postmodern Cultural Theory

As Simon Dentith states, a key characterisation of parodic practice is the ‘polemical allusive imitation of a preceding text’[1], but a broad definition of parody (and a one I will adopt here) ‘can have its polemic directed to the world rather than the preceding text’.[2] This means that in broadening the definition, we must now include various cultural practices, such as ‘imitation, pastiche, mock-heroic, burlesque, travesty, spoof, and parody itself’,[3] which would have otherwise been separated by tightly defined descriptions. It is this combination of polemical allusion to both the text and the world, with particular emphasis on the world where I will locate the practice of Weird Al Yankovic.

The practice of Weird Al Yankovic has been largely neglected by musicology, perhaps because it is deemed to be ‘novelty’ and ‘only entertainment’, [4] or maybe because it imitates and as Douglas Kahn says, musical practices that imitate have throughout history been considered to be ‘lower life forms’.[5] Weird Al Yankovic as an artist who imitates imitative practices must be therefore seen as the lowest of life forms, with very limited aesthetic value. However, a critical look to Al Yankovic’s career should show that his practice has wide and important implications for the cultural study of music. These implications go far beyond those theories involved solely with parody and extend into postmodern cultural theories, such as Jean Baudrillard’s ‘Simulation and Simulacra’[6], Roland Barthes’ ‘Death of the Author’[7] and Jacques Attali’s ‘Noise’[8] amongst others. I want to argue that if it is accurate that the postmodern time is a one that Baudrillard calls ‘hyperreality’: a cultural state in which ’the real is no longer real’,[9] then Weird Al Yankovic’s practice through inscribing it on the same level as the established order, attacks ‘hyperreality’ at its ‘heart’: the sonic mainframe of late capitalism’s mass-reproduced chart music.

Weird Al in the postmodern bin.

The essence of the humour in the early work of Weird Al predominantly comes in the form of taking material that has an overwhelmingly quotidian familiarity, and transplanting it onto so called ‘serious’ material, like for instance ‘My Bologna’, ‘I Love Rocky Road, ‘Spam’, ‘Addicted to Spuds’ and ‘Lasagna’. This is nothing new of course, it is one of the fundamental aspects of humour, as Simon Critchley states, the comic world is a world with ‘its causal chains broken, its social practices turned inside out, and common sense rationality left in tatters.’[10] So when Weird Al replaces the REM ‘Stand’ lyric of ‘Think about the place where you live, wonder why you haven’t before’[11] with ‘Think about the stuff it’s made from, wonder if its mystery meat’[12] or Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted to Love’ with ‘Addicted to Spuds’, he is directly replacing common sense ‘serious’ rationality with quotidian ‘humorous’ familiarity, and as such he turns these social practices inside out to great comedic effect. This displacement of common sense also shows the signs of a cultural probing, as Richard Dyer states: ‘Questioning common-sense…stops the flow, unsettles the comfortable taken-for-grantedness [sic] of the ways in which we habitually make sense of our lives.’[13] With that said it remains relatively harmless and while this aspect of humour continues throughout the career of Weird Al, it begins to take more complex and polemic-centric undertones, as the probing deepens in parodies like ‘I Can’t Watch This’, ‘Syndicated Ink’, ‘Couch Potato and ‘Why Does This Always Happen to Me’.

While it could be argued that the transplantation of Soul Asylum’s ‘They say misery loves company’ into ‘My whole family loves “Three’s Company”, see the re-runs constantly, they’re on my TV.’ is just silly and harmless, I believe it opens a portal to a more serious aspect of Weird Al’s work; a one which directs its polemical allusion head on with the world. This aspect critiques postmodern culture and in particular a chief protagonist in the television, perhaps the most glaring and dominant feature of late capitalism to have stunted social interaction amongst communities (and in some cases, families). As Weird Al says in ‘I Can’t Watch This’: ‘Poke out my eyes, I can’t take this torture no more, I Can’t Watch This…Why did I ever pay for this junk… its awful, its putrid, it’s stupid.’ The chorus for the song features a typical postmodern collage, in which a range of T.V. advertisements are re-organized in order to ridicule the manic quest by advertisers to insert messages into the audience’s brain at any given opportunity, so that ‘when you have a headache this big, this is your brain on drugs.’

Look, if you had one shot to sit on your lazy butt and watch all the TV you ever wanted, until your brain turned to mush, would you go for it, or just let it slip.

The lyrics to ‘Couch Potato’ should not be taken lightly, it is a very accurate and important critique, which when one considers the space in culture where it is being inscribed is a very daring and subversive one. This cultural space as well as being the ‘heart’ of mass-media can perhaps best be described as the hangover of modern culture; if modern culture’s motto was ‘make it new’ [14] then postmodern culture’s must be ‘make it repeat’. What Guy Debord called the ‘Society of the Spectacle,[15] Theodor Roszak called ‘The Technocratic Society’,[16] Jacques Attali called the ‘Network of Repetition’[17] and Jean Baudrillard called ‘Hyperreality’,[18] although differing in their content, all allude to a degradation of ‘lived time’[19] in which we are gripped by technology and we ourselves have been placed on repeat. The rampant consumerism and media saturation feeding the ever efficient late capitalism, seems to stop at nothing in disseminating so called ‘new’ gadgets, the advertising for which exploits the easiest sense to deceive - sight: ‘The spectacle is capital accumulated to the point where it becomes images’.[20] Just as one ‘reality’ talent show has finished, a ‘new’ one has been lined up. Just as the ‘new’ Britney Spears album is ‘old’ after a week, the Take That album is released. The differences between these gadgets are minimal, but it is essential in repetitive postmodern culture to make people believe in the ‘new’, so they miss the repeat. [21]

There’s no need to go outside… you can sit around and stare at the picture tube till your brain turns into cottage cheese. You better put away your homework, Prime Time ain’t [sic] no time to think, all you do is make yourself a TV dinner, press your face right up against the screen…We’re gonna [sic] make a couch potato out of you[22]

Weird Al’s tirade against the T.V. continues its polemical increase in ‘Why Does this Always Happen to Me’, which is a style parody (sometimes referred to as Pastiche) of singer/songwriter Ben Folds. The opening lines of the verse narrate a person who is watching the television one night, when a special report interrupts the programming due to a ‘devastating earthquake in Peru’ that killed 30 thousand people. Although one can sense a slight intonation of parody, to the unaccustomed ear it most certainly could have been taken seriously, until the chorus rings out with the man heartily singing:

And I said God please answer me one question, why’d they have to interrupt the Simpsons just for this – what a drag, because I was taping it and everything, and now I’ll have to wait for the re-run…why does this always happen to me.

The second verse tells of how the narrators friend Rob had died in a car crash, but what is of chief importance is not the massacre of the ‘disembodied head’, but the fact Rob owed him ‘5 bucks’ and he is never going to see it, not to mention that now he is going to be late for work! Of course, it goes without saying that this is dramatic over-exaggeration put on for comedic effect, which as Critchley says drawing on Mary Douglas’ work, is a fundamental aspect of telling a joke. Douglas compares jokes to rites, inasmuch as a rite is a ‘symbolic act that derives its meaning from a cluster of socially legitimated symbols, like a funeral.’[23] Jokes, according to Douglas are ‘anti-rites’ in that ‘They mock, parody, or deride the ritual practices of a given society.’[24] And this is most certainly what is happening here in Weird Al’s consistent subversion of ‘socially legitimated symbols’, but it is not so much the ‘how’ that I am primarily interested in here, as much as it is the ‘why’.

The representation of life that occurs through the medium of the T.V. has been implanting its images, messages and sounds into peoples’ homes for almost 80 years, and has become an incredibly efficient and sophisticated mediator in the dissemination of not just advertising, but a new way of life. This has reached a point where ‘the spectacle is not a collection of images; it is the social relation between people that is mediated by images’. This is because it ‘monopolizes the majority of the time spent outside the production process.’[25] So, when Weird Al makes his ‘joke’, it is my view that under the surface is a very serious comment on the state of postmodern television culture, whereby peoples’ lives are becoming so saturated with mass-media that literally, the destruction of people, communities and the planet that is occurring outside of the T.V. goes largely unnoticed. This echoes Baudrillard’s sentiments that:

Death no longer has a stage…what do Chile, Biafra, the boat people, Bologna, or Poland matter? All of that comes to be annihilated on the television screen. We are in the era of events without consequences.[26]

On numerous occasions Weird Al makes reference to the television lowering ones I.Q. and when he says ‘You’re gonna [sic] lose your mind watching the T.V.’, he may not be far off the mark. It is in this context that we can see the practice of Weird Al in a new light; a one that affords him the more perilous position of being considered a serious critical artist, as opposed to a mere superficial prankster.

Weird Al in Disneyland

Disneyland exists in order to hide that it is the “real” country, all of “real” America that is Disneyland...It is no longer a question of a false representation of reality (ideology) but of concealing the fact that the real is no longer real, and thus of saving the reality principle.[27]

When Baudrillard discusses Disneyland he says that it is essential to the established order that people believe in the ‘fantasy’ of Disneyland, so that when they enter the ‘real world’ of the desolate parking lot, they buy completely into the ‘reality principle’, rather than realising that ‘the real is no longer real’. Disneyland is a mirror of ‘hyperreality’ in all of its technocratic fantasy, simulation and repetition, but because it exists within a ‘fantasy’ world, people see it as such. However, when the same thing happens in the ‘real’ world, people see it as reality. In other words, when the Backstreet Boys sing ‘You are my fire, the one desire, believe when I say’ - they really mean it. Inasmuch as they really do need the listener to believe what they say and believe that it is a real, genuine emotion and not a mask for the ‘tried and tested’ formula hiding the ‘worldwide garage sale’ that Weird Al transplants it into when he sings: ‘A used pink bathrobe, a rare mint snow globe, a ‘smurf’ TV tray’.

When ‘the real is no longer real’, hyperreality must do everything in its power to save the ‘reality principle’ – it is the lifeline of a hyperreal, postmodern culture. While this is happening, subversive artists like Weird Al must do everything in their power to destroy it. In tracks like E-bay Weird Al is doing just this, precisely because ‘simulation is infinitely more dangerous’ to the established order than so called reality, in that ‘the latter does nothing but disturb the order of things…whereas the former attacks the reality principle itself.’[28] Weird Al (as with all parody) is thus ‘stubbornly suspended between reality and fiction’[29]

Perhaps the most abstract connection into cultural theory for Weird Al is a one that Baudrillard calls the ‘pataphysics of simulacra’. It appeals to Baudrillard because he is ‘interested in whatever subverts rational or real systems.’[30] Pataphysics is a critique on the Enlightenment pursuit of rational knowledge, in its appreciation of that which lies out the reach of metaphysics – it is that which is ‘added on to metaphysics.’[31] It is located perfectly within postmodern de-centring in that ‘the pataphysical dimension is a kind of explosion within empty space.’

As pataphysics is that which is beside metaphysics, parody is the ‘theory – and practice – of that in language and in being which is beside itself.’ As such, Weird Al is a very good example of a parodic artist who practices a ‘pataphysics of simulacra’ in that he subverts what are put to us as rational and real systems, while critically reflecting on the metaphysical explanation of current socio-political issues in postmodern culture. Perhaps the best example of this is ‘It’s all about the Pentiums’, which ridicules the hierarchal late capitalist values of post-fordist computer-centric office work, taking aim at three luring factors: the suit, the car and ‘steady’ money. This can be seen best in the video, which sees Weird Al as the ‘king pin’ raucously rapping through a stereotypical office and then playing a gig to these ‘suits’, who end up frothing at the mouth from the excitement. All this as the visual accompaniment to a viscous lyrical attack:

nine-to- five chilling at Hewlett Packard, working at a desk with a dumb little placard, paying the bills with my mad programming skills…always at my P.C.…posting “me2” like a brain dead AOL- er [sic]… they call me the king of the spreadsheets

The staple rational system that the economy relies on: that people are willing to work nine-to-five at an office desk, for a capitalist conglomerate who will pay them a tiny proportion of the fruits produced by that labour. One must not question this system as it explains everything that it is necessary to know: ‘money makes the world go round.’ In subverting this system Weird Al initiates ‘the horror of ridicule…the nail in the tire [of the world]’, so that when dealing with the so called ‘reality’ of the world he can then ‘turn it back on itself’ and in doing so ‘reality is demolished’.[32] This, according to Baudrillard is the only salvation: ‘only a pataphysics of simulacra can now remove us from the system’s strategy of simulation and the impasse of death in which it imprisons us.’[33] I can think of no better artist prepared for the job.

Weird Al at the crime scene of the Death of the Author

The entire history of commercial sound recording has, until relatively recently, been concerned with developing and improving techniques for the maintenance of [the] ‘illusion’ that what we are listening to is the ‘authentic’ work and not a copy of any kind.[34]

Bennett Hogg’s usage of the term hi-fidelity refers to the loyal, faithful connotations of the word and not the usual connotations of sound quality. As such, he refers the reader to what he calls the ‘semiotic slippage’[35] of the HMV logo[36] : the obedience of the Jack Russell to its master, as a signifier for the myth that we must all obey when we listen to this music: that what we are listening to is ‘authentic’. So when Weird Al frequently gets asked ‘Have you ever considered doing ‘real’ music?’[37] It is no doubt ‘the product of thwarted expectations of a fan desiring fidelity to a beloved.’[38] In order for this myth to be purported and for the listener to believe, they must first believe in the authentic and the original, both of which have been challenged by Poststructuralist Roland Barthes in his work on ‘The Death of the Author’ and ‘From Work to Text’. Here Barthes argues that historically, critique has centred itself ‘tyrannically’ on the ‘Author-God’ and the notion of the ‘work’. The problem Barthes finds is that the ‘work’ seeks a ‘single, theological meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God)’,[39] which ‘closes on a signified’,[40] whereas the text has pluralistic meanings and ‘practices the infinite deferment of the signified’. This is one of the key reasons why Weird Al’s practice is so important in Postmodern cultural theory; it de-values the fixed ‘work’ and instead releases it into a ‘multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.’[41] This calls into question the very boundary between ‘real’ and ‘copy’ that the industry relies on, not to mention taking down what he calls ‘lots of pompous artists.’[42]

In the ending to ‘Angry White Boy Polka’ when Weird Al cites Eminem’s lyrics of ‘I’m slim shady, yes I’m the real slim shady, all the other slim shady’s are just imitating, so wont the real slim shady please stand up’ he is making an incredibly funny, ironic and pertinent statement about authenticity in music. This statement shifts the focus onto the audience in asking them critical questions about authenticity, work/text, simulation and simulacra and the current popular zeitgeist. In doing so it serves as a ‘parabasis’ of parody, where ‘the representation is dissolved and actors and spectators, author and audience exchange roles. Here, the tension between stage and reality is relaxed.’[43] Authenticity is dethroned. As such I do not agree with the idea of a ‘Double-Coded Politics’, discussed by Linda Hutcheon, in which it is said Parody ‘both legitimizes and subverts that which it parodies.’[44] This view is rooted in notions of ‘authorship’ and capitalist modes of exchange and property itself, which only re-affirms the legitimacy of the original. To follow this view would be to ignore the strength of parody’s inherent subversive potential and as such I take instead, a literal reading of the Barthesian ‘text’ and Julia Kristeva’s ‘intertextuality’[45], whereby the text is constantly fluid and ‘the originals aren’t original.’[46] However, Hutcheon herself later goes on to say (though talking about Postmodern film) and in response to Frederick Jameson’s ‘blanket condemnation of Hollywood for its wholesale implication in capitalism’[47] that postmodern practice can exploit ‘its “insiders” position in order to begin a subversion from within, to talk to consumers in a capitalist society.’[48] Weird Al’s parodic practice is thus the most uniquely positioned within postmodern musical culture to make such a subversive attack on authenticity.

The dissemination of authenticity comes from either a promotion (the ‘pop’ market) or negation (the ‘rock’ market) of what Theodor Roszak called the ‘regime of experts’, which in the current capitalist system means those that carry the symbol of money. These ‘experts’ become authorised when they enter into the commercial cycle of authentic repetition, which can effectively be mirrored by MTV and its ‘heavy rotation’. This rotation extends outside of MTV and into every channel of the spectacle, whether it be the glitz and glamour of the latest ‘must-have’ magazine, through the record company’s training programmes (reality talent shows), or even in the underground clubs and studios; everywhere we look we see the authentic experts: Simon Cowell (for the sentimental ballad) Timbaland (for the cool pop) and Steve Albini (for alternative rock). ‘Rock’ in this cycle is simply inverted and anyone seeming to subvert this ‘regime of experts’ is to be judged as ‘authentic’ (like Nirvana) while anyone following it is ‘inauthentic’ (like the Backstreet Boys.) The situation remains the same for both ‘rock’ and ‘pop’ camps – authenticity is what they are searching for. As such, when Weird Al makes his ‘Smells Like Nirvana’ parody he is showing that it is the very same search for what Simon Frith calls Rocks myth: ‘the authentic expression of a youth community’[49] that then gets sold back to a mass-audience, but in fragmented reduced form. So, instead of suits and cars being shown in the video, it is here men with long ‘straggly’ hair, ‘converse’ trainers, girls with un-shaved armpits and un-intelligible screaming: the market that has become ‘alternative’ or ‘grunge’. This then gets mimicked and copied by a mass audience who think they are being ‘cool’ and ‘authentic’ when in actuality they are (in the video) a bunch of ‘brain dead AOL-ers’, ‘suits’ eating ‘Big-Mac’s’, and crash test dummies – one of them with a sign on his rubber head that reads ‘this space for rent.’ As such, this is a prime example of a parody which directs its entire polemic to the world and simply uses the preceding text as a tool to make that critique (Weird Al is a ‘huge fan’ of Nirvana). The polemic strikes deep into the foundation structures of authenticity as it ‘systematically inverts [the authors] intention’[50] and ‘contests our humanist assumptions about artistic originality and uniqueness and about capitalist notions of ownership and property.’[51] It is therefore not hard to see why so many fans, critics and musicologists (throughout the entire musical spectrum) have reacted unfavourably to Weird Al. His attack does not spare anyone, not even the artists he is a fan of.

As well as the methods we have already discussed, one of the chief ways he attacks authenticity is in production itself: a finely honed craft in which the sonic properties of the ‘original’ are copied to an exemplary standard. In matching the production so closely, Weird Al not only forms an efficient Marxist critique on the ‘ownership of means of production’, by showing that those outside of the ‘regime of experts’ (both ‘pop’ and ‘rock’) can produce this sound, but it also reveals how production can differentiate the representation of products within the standardized market of mass-reproduced music. Revealing the ‘tried and tested’ formulas of production and marketing, Weird Al rips the mask off ‘hyperreality’ and reveals the identical nature of these commodity products – are the Backstreet Boys really that different to Justin Timberlake, or the Killers even? Decades and genre identification separate them, but only minor modifications in production techniques separate their products.

One area of Weird Al’s practice in particular which highlights this is his running joke the polka, which inverts his usual strategy by keeping the lyrics the same, but transplanting the music into a polka style. Therefore the music of Papa Roach, System of a Down and Rage Against the Machine (amongst others) is reduced to a light- hearted polka medley. In one fell swoop all of the specific, meticulous attention to genre differentiation is crushed and we begin to notice the awful way music is standardized and disseminated onto a mass audience. In the ‘popular’ imagination we have been fooled into believing that there is a wonderfully diverse palette of artists and genres for us to choose from: a hypermarket of music, when in reality only minor modifications in production techniques separate their products. This hypermarket of glitz, glamour and pseudo-differentiation is constantly being subverted by Weird Al. Throughout his career he has transplanted signifiers of ‘luxury’ and abundance into both figurative and literal rubbish; no better an example of this is his latest single ‘Whatever You Like’, which is promoted as shiny and glitzy, but has the lyrics: ‘I’ll take you out for dinner anywhere that you please, like Burger King or “Maccy [sic] D’s” and baby you can have whatever you like, I said you can even have the large fries.’

Weird Al in the ‘network of repetition’ on repeat

It is always very interesting to analyse the reaction by the established order to an attack and let’s make it clear, this is a very threatening attack at the mainframe of the established order. Jacques Attali talks about the subversion produced by ‘Free Jazz’ and other improvising art forms and while he is correct that these are violent noisy attacks, they are largely ignored by the mainstream.[52] While it could be argued that this is their intention, I tend to believe that for an attack to be successful it should bring with it a threat to the established order, so that change is eminently possible. This means entering directly into the ‘network of repetition’ at its ‘heart’ and risking being placed on repeat.

Weird Al Yankovic has experienced this risk first hand by constantly inscribing his subversive attack into the network of repetition, meaning he must constantly stay ahead of the game in order to avoid the co-optation of this subversive attack. The established order will always seek to co-opt an attack[53] as can be seen broadly by the various ‘spoofs’, ‘pranks’ and imitative jokes disseminated by the network of repetition’s mainframe in recent years. Hollywood films like Scary Movie, spoofs of Oscar nominated movies at the Oscars[54] and the explosion (and dilution) of the ‘fake’ interview (which Weird Al was one of the first to inject into popular culture [55]) are such examples of the attempt to co-opt (and tame) the dangerous polemical element of the parodic subversion. More specifically this reaction was evidenced in the ‘authentic’ E-Bay company disseminating a host of parody themed adverts, which used similar techniques to Weird Al in picking a popular song and making humour of the range of somewhat un-important and materialistic items one could buy on E-bay[56] – what Weird Al called the ‘worldwide garage sale’. The idea being that if the established order makes fun of itself it authorises the production of such a message and more than that, by removing the polemical element from the parody it reduces it to ‘only entertainment’ with no deeper meaning. As such when that audience then listens back to Weird Al they might assume the same and ignore all elements of subversion.

This subversion can now be located as a branch of Attali’s ‘noise’, but not in the improvisational ‘composition’ aspect, but through the backdoor (so to speak.)When Attali says that ‘repetition produces information free of noise’, [57] he means figuratively as well as literally and as such authentic ‘hi-fidelity’ is designed to disseminate a specific message, which is 100% faithful to the cause, free from outside noise. Weird Al’s interference can be located as noise because it is a ‘resonance that interferes with the audition of a message in the process of emission.’[58] As such, contrary to popular opinion his music is less repetitive than that which it parodies. However, as we have discussed, there always lies the danger that noise will be converted by the established order into silence, in that noise ‘does not exist in itself, but only in relation to the system in which it is inscribed.’[59] Therefore, it must constantly re-invent itself in order to still be recognized by the system and its listeners as noise. Weird Al has consistently done this, by developing his theme and content over the years; however, whether his practice becomes remembered as ‘only entertainment’, or as a threatening cultural critique will depend on two factors: 1. audience reception, which demands critical listening, rather than absorption. 2. Weird Al’s response to the established order’s attempts at co-optation of his subversive critique. The signs look good for an increase in subversion, as his recent online release of the James Blunt parody ‘You’re Pitiful’ shows; ignoring orders from Blunt’s record company and exclaiming in defiance: ‘I’m not going to let some suits tell me what to do.’[60] The track was released, subversion spreads.

Weird Al in retrospect.

A career that has spanned some 25 years, Weird Al has been at the ‘heart’ of postmodern musical culture and has proved to be a vital injection of subversion in this dominant musical order. As such, this artist should be thought of as a critical thinker and practitioner of postmodern criticism (alongside Baudrillard et al.) As a critical practitioner of popular music, Weird Al has put into practice some of these postmodern theories and used the tools of Parody to do so; whether it be the critique of the various avenues of ‘the spectacle’, the undermining of the ‘author’, the injection of subversive ‘noise’ into the ‘network of repetition’, or the ‘simulation of the simulacra’: perhaps best located as a ‘pataphysics of simulacra’. His work comments on some of the most important and serious issues of our time and as such I simply do not believe him when he says that: ‘There's enough of people that do unfunny music.’ [61] Of course his work is funny, but his best work: tracks like ‘Couch Potato, ‘Why Does This Always Happen To Me’, ‘I Can’t Watch This’ and ‘Jerry Springer’ (amongst many others) use humor as a tool to make very serious critiques of postmodern culture. As such he is far more accurate and truthful when he says that he is here to ‘pop the bubble of pretentiousness that pervades the music industry.’[62]




[1] Simon Dentith, Parody, (London: Routledge, 2000)18.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Dentith, Parody, 6.
[4] Richard Dyer, Only Entertainment (London: Routledge, 2002.)
[5] Douglas Kahn, Noise, Water, Meat (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2001) 103.
[6] Jean Baudrillard, Simulation and Simulacra (Michigan: The University Of Michigan Press,1981)
[7] Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text (London: Fontana Press, 1977)
[8] Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy Of Music (Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, 1985)
[9] Baudrillard, Simulation and Simulacra, 13.
[10] Simon Critchley, On Humour (London: Routledge, 2002) 1.
[11] REM, Stand
[12] Weird Al, Spam
[13] Dyer, Only Entertainment, 1.
[14] Daniel Albright, Modernism and Music: An Anthology of Sources (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) 8.
[15] Guy Debord, The Society Of The Spectacle (London: Rebel Press, 2006)
[16] Theodor Roszak, The Making Of A Counter Culture (London: Faber and Faber, 1970)
[17] Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy Of Music (Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, 1985)
[18] Jean Baudrillard, Simulation and Simulacra (Michigan: The University Of Michigan Press,1981)
[19] debord
[20] Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 18.
[21] MCT
[22] uhf
[23] Critchley, On Humor, 5.
[24] Ibid.
[25] Debord, Society of the Spectacle, 8.
[26] Baudrillard, Simulation and Simulacra, 164.
[27]Ibid, 12-13.
[28]Ibid, 20.
[29] Giorgio Agamben, Profanations (New York: Zone Books, 2007) 48.
[30] Jean Baudrillard, Art and Artefact (London: Sage Publications, 1997) 41
[31] Agamben, Profanations, 49.
[32] http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=569
[33] Baudrillard, Simulation and Simulacra, 154.
[34] Bennett Hogg ‘Who’s Listening?’, in Annie J.Randall, Music, Power, and Politics (London: Routledge, 2005) 214.
[35] Ibid, 215.
[36] pic?
[37] http://www.avclub.com/articles/weird-al-yankovic,14163/
[38] Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation (London: Routledge, 2006) 4.
[39] Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, in Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text (London: Fontana Press, 1977) 146.
[40] Roland Barthes, ‘From Work to Text’, in Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text (London: Fontana Press, 1977)
[41] Roland Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’, in Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text (London: Fontana Press, 1977) 146
[42] http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2004/08/20/tem_weirdal20.html
[43] Agamben, Profanations 50.
[44] Linda Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism (London: Routledge, 2002) 97
[45] reference
[46] Quote?
[47] Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism, 109
[48] Ibid.
[49] Simon Frith, 'The magic that can set you free: The ideology of folk and the myth of the rock community',Popular Music, Vol. 1, Folk or Popular? Distinctions, Influences, Continuities (1981) 160.
[50] Agamben, Profanations, 46.
[51] Hutcheon, The Politics of Postmodernism, 89.
[52] Attali, Noise, 140.
[53] Ibid.
[54]
[55]
[56] youtube
[57] Attali, Noise, 106.
[58] Ibid, 26.
[59] Ibid.
[60] online interview.
[61]
[62] http://hub.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070702/NOISE02/707040313/1104/HUB