Critical Review Set 1, Post #4 (Miller, due 10/11)

Questions for Professor Miller:

This might not be a legit question for the purposes of the Critical Review...but I’m curious to know what prompted this interest?  I feel like professors at Brown tend to leave the answers to this question out of their work in the classroom, which is fine and understandable.  But I am asking you what energized you to examine Guitar Hero competition on the ground in 2009 and how your research interests have developed in general?  

Another question that I want to ask you but isn’t as vague and holistic is how race and class dynamics impacted the Guitar Hero and Rock Band world you accessed in 2009?  When Mike talked about the mystique attached to seeing his black female friend perform a grungy Metallica joint, the topic of racial subjectivity entered this analysis.  In general, is this scene diverse enough racially to produce moments of musical irony like this a lot?  Also, how does class, and childhood access to virtual games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band, impact the way this scene is created and the concept of access to events like the conventions (ie. GameUnicorn) and competitions you experienced that summer?

Question for the Class:

In her article Professor Miller observes the often “frantic” physicality associated with participants’ adrenaline-spiked Guitar Hero bouts, a physicality that is mediated by whatever must be done to achieve a high score and master a virtual percussive or musical arrangement.  In class we have discussed the concept of a listener’s orientation toward music (this is often a physically reactive orientation) in the context of the “countermemory” associated with whites listening to “Midnight Hour.”  How does the fact that Guitar Hero engages participants with a score-based, virtual screenplay that accompanies their musical performance affect their physical relationship/orientation with/towards the music at hand?  Furthermore, how can we use McClary’s logic that music’s resistive and sociopolitical power rests in its ability to transform and influence the body to trace the evolution of virtualized performative stuff like Garage Band?