ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between the music documentary and the music biopic, mapping these genres through forms of representation and production. The act of ‘documenting’ music is interrogated, through the documentary in its television and filmic forms and through levels of recreation and dramatic construction in the biopic. While the documentary and the biopic are often seen as oppositional in intent and achievement, this chapter identifies strategies common to both through its analysis of narrative form. We argue that these narratives perform a mediating function: representing, defining (or redefining) and delimiting popular music. Through a stylistic analysis, we show that the performative and expressive elements of film and television – particularly interactions of set design, editing and musicianship – play a crucial role in the way these narratives are told. The analysis is made with a precise awareness of sociocultural context and with an awareness of the distinctive production and distribution/broadcast patterns of each medium. The chapter synthesises a broad range of scholarship from the fields of popular music studies, film studies and television studies and concludes with some reflection upon the ontological relationship between music documentaries and biopics.
