Wheeler, DG (2018) You’ve got to fight for your right to party? Spanish punk rockers and democratic values. Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, 41 (2). pp. 132-153. ISSN 1463-6204
Abstract
La Movida is generally considered to be a cultural phenomenon that emerged in Madrid and elsewhere in Spain in the late 1970s as a reaction against the draconian nature of the Franco dictatorship (1939-1975). This article will nuance and challenge some common misconceptions about the scene(s) in relation to Spain's Transition to democracy by advancing three interrelated arguments. First, the Franco regime was not as antagonistic to popular music as we have frequently been led to believe. Second, the dictator’s death was a necessary but not sufficient condition for an outpouring of Spanish musical creativity, centred primarily albeit not exclusively in Madrid. Third, the music, iconography and ideology associated with La Movida were at least as much influenced by Warhol and the subsequent CBGB’s scene in New York as by British punk. These claims, both individually and collectively, suggest the need to revise the critical vocabulary employed to variously celebrate or denigrate La Movida, revealing its frequent positing as a belated importation of the “swinging sixties” and/or a watered-down version of British punk to be both culturally chauvinistic and politically tendentious. My underlying hypothesis is that popular culture in Spain not only transcended mere imitation but, as a result of various socio-cultural factors, anticipated a series of debates that would only subsequently come to the fore in Anglo-American contexts.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2016, Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies on 18 August 2016, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2016.1212626 |
Keywords: | La Movida; Spain; punk; Alaska; censorship; Transition; New Labour |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Languages Cultures & Societies (Leeds) > Spanish & Portuguese (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 28 Jul 2016 08:23 |
Last Modified: | 19 Jul 2018 11:34 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/03007766.2016.1212626 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:102913 |