For Beatles fans, fans of Rock Band, or instructors who have students who are either or both.
This NY Times article (While My Guitar Gently Beeps) provides a nice overview of the music genre of video games, the making of the Beatles for Rock Band game (to be released 09/09/09), and, in the excerpt below, some reaction to the genre. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/magazine/16beatles-t.html A psychology-related excerpt: The hostility that people have toward Rock Band and Guitar Hero, she adds, is an expression of schizophonic anxiety - "schizophonia" being the composer R. Murray Schafer's word for the split between music and its source, first coined 40 years ago to explain why an earlier generation was deeply troubled by the advent of recorded music. The way people came to terms with the phenomenon of recording, Miller explains, "was to create these really sharp distinctions between the live and the recorded. So we know what's live, and it has its particular value and authenticity; and we know what's recorded, and it also eventually has its particular value and authenticity." Music gaming disturbs people because it upends those distinctions by adding to recorded music "this component of physical bodily performance that we think of as being a hallmark of liveness." Scorn for music gaming is thus related to scorn for lip synching. Miller, who identifies the games as "rock drag," says it's no coincidence that so much of the online vitriol takes the form of homophobic slurs, or that Guitar Hero was mocked by "South Park" as Guitar Queer-o. "I want to be careful not to drag us too deep into the valley of queer theory," she said, before going on to explain that the hatred of Rock Band likely has something to do with people using their bodies in a way that fails to match expectations - they're obviously not playing music, but it sure looks and sounds as if they are - and doing so in a way that is simultaneously tongue-in-cheek and sincere. For the Beatles to embrace this transgressive and supposedly juvenile and nerdy medium in such a public way is "a benediction" that only history's most important rock group could give, Miller says. "I fully expect it may help me get more grants." -- Sue Frantz <http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/> Highline Community College Psychology, Coordinator Des Moines, WA 206.878.3710 x3404 [email protected] Office of Teaching Resources in Psychology, Associate Director Project Syllabus <http://teachpsych.org/otrp/syllabi/syllabi.php> APA Division 2: Society for the Teaching of Psychology <http://teachpsych.org/otrp/syllabi/syllabi.php> APA's p...@cc Committee <http://www.apa.org/ed/pcue/ptatcchome.html> --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([email protected])
