ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the formalism versus realism debate in film studies is relevant to the analysis of pop music. But that in looking at pop in this way we come up against a neglected concept, leisure, which is, in turn, important for the analysis of other media. 'Formalist' theories concentrate, in contrast, on the formal means of signification. Their assumption is that media images don't reflect or copy reality but construct it. Media forms are structures of meaning which bind us to an ideological account of the world; the very notion that can judge such accounts against experience is 'an ideological effect of the realist discourse'. The chapter describes the case of punk. Punk is particularly important for this discussion because of its effect on cultural theorists. Before punk, popular music was rarely a matter of theoretical concern, and among organised socialists the line, in as far as there was one, tended towards folk purism.
