ABSTRACT
Extending Hawkins’ work on Jarvis Cocker as a ‘British Pop Dandy’ (2009), this chapter argues that a vital aspect of Pulp’s allure was the confrontation with the psychoanalytical concept of ‘perversion’. Nicola Dibben (2001) asserts that to understand the level of Cocker’s critique of his subject matter (pornography in her case) we must analyse the musical subtleties, rather than rely solely on cultural-contextual narratives. After exploring the technical forms that ‘perversion’ takes in Lacan’s seminars, I show how the music locates Jarvis’s own perverse position and its relation to ‘the gaze’ in Cocker’s highly sexualised, often pornographically inspired songs. By analysing ‘Seductive Barry’ (This is Hardcore), I develop Hawkins’ theory of ‘Cellular Groove Patterns’ by categorising the voices that denote (perverse) positions from which Cocker speaks. I analyse other songs from various periods in Pulp’s period of activity and suggest ways in which this Lacanian musico-psychoanalytical dimension can help conceptualise what we might call ‘pornosonic’ pop.
