■ 6083 •2. 126 Pretenders, "l'recious, in pact disc. Originally released in 1979 127. Ibid. 128. Ibid. 129. Reynolds and Press, The Sex Revolts, 2-18. 130. Pretenders, "Precious." 131. Ibid. 132. Hynde, Reckless, 180. 133. Pretenders, "Precious." 134. Pretenders. "Bad Boys Get Spanked," in Pretenders 77 e. 3572-2. 1990. compact disc. Originally released in 1981 ' 86 135. Ibid. 136. Ibid. 137. Pretenders. "I'm a Mother," in Last of the Independents S' 45572-2,1994, compact disc. ' lrc «ecordss 138. Ibid. 139. Ibid. 140. Ibid. 141. Pretenders. "Brass in Pocket," in Pretenders, Sire Records 6083-2 \% compact disc. Originally released in 1979. 142 [ticker, "O Yes, They're the Great Pretenders," 56. 143. Pretenders. "Sense of Purpose," in Packed, Sire Records 9 262191 1990. compact disc. 144. Ibid. 145. Pretenders. "I Hurt You," in Learning to Crawl, Sire Records 92 3980-2. 1983. compact disc. 146. Michelle Masse, In the Name of Love: Women, Masochism, and the G* (Ithaca. NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 42. 147. Pretenders. "Tattooed Love Boys," in Pretenders, Sire Records 60»*-- 1986> compact disc. Originally released in 1979. 148. Ibid. 149. Ibid. , l3° ^ttndcrs- "977," in Last of the Independents, Sire Records 9 45 1994, compact disc. ^ 151. Pretenders. "Almost Perfect," in Break Up the Concrete, ^ Music 101009 9nns j- 152. Ibid. 't0mpact dlsc CHAPTKR 5 A Northern "Ode on Melancholy"?; The Music of Joy Division Caroline Langhorst Even decades after its sudden demise, Joy Division undeniably remains one of the most seminal proponents of post-punk. Ian Curtis's early suicide, being almost too reminiscent of the Romantic notion of the prematurely deceased and tormented artist which began with Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, and Lord Byron and extends to 1960s' icons such as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison, certainly contributed to the band's posthumous cult status, eventually leading to a fetishization of Curtis's dead persona similar to that of Byron's.1 While the continuing significance of Joy Division's artistic output cannot and should not be reduced to this tragic circumstance, at the same time, Curtis's fate undoubtedly serves as the band's most evident link to Romanticism and therefore requires at least some crit ation. As this chapter attempts to demonstrate, the Romantic context for Joy Division manifests itself on two different, yet interrelated levels: on the personal level in terms of the Romantic "mythos of the doomed young artist"2 and on the textual level in terms of the music itself. The chapter is subdivided into three parts: given Joy Division's northern Langhorst (0) ^Partment of Film Studies/Media Dramaturgy, Institute M,i,Uera,Kl Empirical Cultural Studies, Universit) otM"' dln*> Germany of Film. lint, i J* A"thor(8) 2018 aggravated by BritairA coootnkrecess; i, • »»ch eventually culminated in the infa. winter of Discontent" of 1978-1979, as well as the haunting boden of its industrial past, and a resulting sense of rootlessness, alien ahon. and despair The second part of the chapter sets out to investigate the enigmatic persona of Curtis In this regard, the myth surrounding the band will be scrunmDcd as part of a rwcnticth-century pop-cultural mythology whose sipn&en of "authenticity, death and youth"5 find its roots in the ff.Mftf oooon of the artist. This and the Byronic fetishization of Cams wiH be farther examined via a critical reading of the decidedly m\\\m iiif, pmiiij ■! of the singer as a "tortured poetic genius"* in A««»Cc«bi^,sbiopicOmiTo/(2007). Bearing Curtis's status in mind, the last part take* a closer look at the songs of joy Division. Since the baud's iWMic evokes a unique melancholy and "hollow claustrophobic landscape m a stase of deca\. where the subject is hopelessly doomed,"5 ■ bat rcceady been read through a Gothic lens (see Bibby 2007*, Lockmood 2010 Conscqucmlx. the loss of self and constant feelings of melancholy, isolation, and alienation abound both on Unknown 1979) and Closer (1980), which were released against the bsAdropofeconoMscand socii)Liiluiral strife and political change at** krgj.ilig of tbc Thatcher era furthermore, the songs are likewise uJLT^T^ ŽT*°?^ ť,Yťa' absences" that alt j^"^_lTUd1*'1 "fS J* melancholia and a recurring - ^hting Gothic's disrupts " punk inA - pachtemag of "historical atrocities potential and roni^V"" * extremes, m describes Joy 1 Given it* susci menu k uch as poets such as times confron self "-will tl Gothic clcmcr eforc be explored 0..iui£ uoihic's .o punk and Gothic both "eX Va Wn and disquietude,"* Lock^oOO jothic figuration of self-undoing-j.Hcicm readings," Romantic «k srn* xnd parallels to Romafl Uttti ■ pocm> an- ,or instance, *l oss of an ''autonomous niasculi** here alongside .. ,u,i„l>ci of other v SOUTHERN "ODE ON MKLANCHOLTf*?; THE music OF JOY DJVIsiov 85 -\Vf Gotta Get Out of This Place"?; joy Division and 1970s' Manchester The band's immediate sociocultural environment of 1970s' Manchester .onsntutes the bedrock of Joy Division's unique sound in that Itjbe urban empty spaces in their lyrics function as an analogy of psychological empty spaces."12 Joy Division was founded in the crisis-ridden rmd 1970s—first as Stiff Kittens, then as Warsaw—by Bernard Sumner (guitar) and Peter Hook (bass) who had grown up in the 1960s. By that rime, the sociocultural atmosphere had undergone a drastic change as the exuberance of the early 1960s and the colorful dandyism of early 1970s' giant rock had been substituted for a feeling of frustrated anger and a loss of direction that was fittingly articulated by the emergent British punk scene. Punk's sudden eruption, its impulsive nature, and do-it-yourself manner had— partly thanks to two influential concerts by the Sex Pistols that inspired quite a few audience members to pursue their own musical careers—by then already spread its influence from London to other parts of the country such as Manchester.13 Northern England of the 1970s was directly affected both by Britain's severe economic crisis and its own continuously detcno urban wasteland that coincided with a rise in poverty an. low standard of living.14 Furthermore, the weight of the ;no>c thai past and a certain sense of roodessness were felt by the cirv's -immunity that resulted from various migration waves :n v «ntury as well as in the 1950s and 1970s.15 This se ise tum, coalesced with the feeling of modern urban ahenarion »d *° ^flinching desire to escape the surrounding bleakness x:c: .tox at,nosphere of hard labor and lack of opportunity. . "*«d from its industrial heyday during and after the l-..d..>:r.x Roo ^ the associated labor strife of the desolate workup . v> . mneteenth century, the industrial city was undergomg '^""J"^, «*iai changes that the "Romantic" mental.* ^dh^^as. more precisely, the harsh urban reality or the das and jJJJJj^. working class were far removed fromij.uuvu floral idyll. Hence, .1 iMdfc farm ol ^^T^^X li)at is primarily defined by its o •Michael Lowy and Robert Sayi losMtv sonic tonus 01 „,K.....anucisin.' lus.lu,,.....■ h..n ly su,,» .« that the hard,^ working class, especially bn,..... solely.....<>,, ha n .ndii.tnal citfe., fo ' lUcrary expression in various ..annuls such as Incdr.ch Kngels', fcJ "d „„ < onditum »1 tk Workhui (.'/«.» /« /*/.///««n a v^J(Hl\h. Unsurprisingly, tllC such as lames Dean.20 V of already deceased idols ONMELANCHOLT1 11ii. Mtsu 01 |oy division k7 1 tholoKV Of thí twentieth century, which includes t.M|,ural inyn r» »v,,;r Gonifiers of "authenticity, death cultural mythology »>. ------- ""S '"liiiil«'r"f r"ck ""^"'^ their signifiers of "authenticity, death P1'"1,'' originate in Ronianticism's notion of the artist's tragic posi an*1 y""M' xtrcrnc, the relevance of an individualistic stance is famously '" ''S'-> Caspar David bricdrich's seminal painting Wanderer above 1 x I H). Being somewhat removed from his rationalized and artist is retarded "as an outlaw BOt IZ (1818)- Bang sencw^ ,AS ,m llllllaw *^í£5surroundings,* I " 1 ^ over i*dustr,aSour, or possibly both, ^» Qt hcr w ^eri or a troubadou , ^ hy cmotl0ns thusaiiowu h________^ ^ ,ťnnifc reason once as being guided by emotions runs „,,, encc life in the most Authentic manner."22 Hence, according to Jcnn Otter Hickcrdikc, a central role is attributed to the artittU corporeality as means of authentic expression, with death being its epitome.23 I Ins lance correlates to the Romantics' appraisal of an early death as is exem ifted both by an actual historical incident—the suicide of the English if the most pivotal I plified both by an acu,»..... It—uw ---- poet Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770)—and one of the most pivotal lit erary classics of the Sturm und Drang era, namely Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther{\774).u The following numerous dramatizations of Chattcrton's suicide in different art forms such as poetry, drama, opera (e.g. Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Monody on the Death of Chatterton," 1790, Keats's "Sonnet to Chatterton, 1815, Alfred dc Vigny's tragedy Chatterton, 1835, or Ruggero Leoncaval lo s eponymous opera, 1896), and art (Henry Wallis's painting The Death of Chatterton, 1856), followed by Keats's death in 1821 and the cult ot biography"" surrounding his and Byron's legacy, and then nnallv 1 e death of Percy Shelley in 1822 and his elegiac lament for Keats in Mona, (1821) corroborate its lasting appeal. In the twentieth century, r«*™^ then in a way "inherits the mythology of Romanticism, casting a of members in the role of tragic icon..."26 _ ^ |caturc fi|m j-~ c^r At.mo ■ ■ - of tragic icon... 9g8) iind in Both in the music video for ^f^' and legacy ^ ZontroU the construed romanticised mytn^ ^olidated vhich are inextricably intertwined ^ mainWincdJH\ ^ A "'"sm tilt iiis.au w1u1 ul"~" . . j anu Poet, or troubled young male), are further raauttaw ^ hooded Accordingly, the video contains footage of Ian rf ^ Thc ,,],„ figures are presented carrying large memorial' P' rtcr 0f Curtis {gat. Control* likewise predominantly focused upon u ^ sfaaW nghtry Sam Riley) as he is direcdy introduced in the ^ doCS .hereto.c remarks, the film was aimed at a "nostalgic ;m*^ m00d of the emphasize a certain visual aesthetic: the <■ ec 88 C LASGHORST „hp\a And in a way even intensified. Control set»s r^^ley that is focused on the po,nt,SSn^ , en Bv presents the singer as an apparently introverted^ T ahrft.1 voune person, the overall intention of portraymg him as «f W hero- and even^ 1S could argue^most «°«Pllc,tl>' foreshadcwed Notw.thitanding.b, * means a Romantic context is being constructed, even if only-at least „ this very moment-on the personal level. At the same time, the outspoke interest in and explicit foregrounding of the person to the point of fetishizauon bears a strong Byronic quality. Regardless of Lord Byron's complicated and shifting position in the Romantic canon, the apparent impossibility of separating discussion of his poetry from his public persona is repeated in the case of lan Curtis and Joy Division.31 As a result, a persistent fascination with the enigmatic myth inevitably causes a desire in the reader or listener to unveil the prevailing mystery. After applying Freudian and Marxist readings of the fetish to Byron's body, Ghislaine McDayter proclaims the failure of "many critical attempts to uncover the truth of Byron ... because what we find 'buried' is not Byron at all, but the phantasmatic embodiment of our own desire."32 More specifically, this astute observation can be applied to the cinematic portrayal of Curtis's persona in Control. Bearing this aspect of the phantasmatic in mind, the singer's primary * P^'e,ctl0n screen for the audience is visually underscored by Corbijns black-and-white aesthetic that evokes a markedly nostalgic, melancholic, and even elegiac feeling. Moreover, this stance is consistently sustained throughout the entire film. Ian's artistic influences, interests, and the composite nature nf w artistic mu bookshelf, one that features J G B 1 Tabashedly Present CUt°S, reference in the song "Atrocity Exh.b on - i ^ ^ W°M al8° °Pu I and William S. Burroughs, a book on i Wr'ters Allcn Ginsberg World War II, and a memorial poster of r* unif()ri™> another on another foreshadowing of later tragedy to ens"1 M.0rriswn that serves as of Curtis's persona as a suffering artist or^' lhc cinematic portrayal bound to succumb to his pain in the end is c" ^ case poet—who is significant scene. After stealing pills with di/yy*^'^ means of one gled out agam and starts reciting Wordsworth's «m C(Ttets> Ian is «0* (1802; wlulc glancing, lost in thought and ap,,,^ ht«t )caps u?...» U,,ly >"iaware of his a northern "ode on MELANCHOLY"?: the music of joy division 89 iundings, through a window. His spontaneous recitation and change I sUf 0d leave his astonished audience, consisting of his future wife °f hbie (pcrf. Samantha Morton) and a friend, in silent awe as if thev had I PCt expected such profundity from Curtis who is later shown composing h° own lyrics in his room. In the film, he is portrayed as an incredibly I young artist, whereas the other characters are contained within fhar dreary realm of ordinariness and one-dimensionality, merely admiring his talent while being seemingly unable to truly comprehend him. Furthermore, it is Wordsworth who is deliberately chosen in this instance, not Keats, Byron, or Percy Shelley. However, Wordsworth's contempla-' tive poem, which employs nature imagery, neither deals with inner torment, urban alienation, nor loss of identity as many of Joy Division's songs do. Instead, the gray urban environment and its accompanying sense of utter estrangement are purposely counterbalanced by the poem's discussion of simple daily joys such as watching a rainbow.33 In this case, however, the mere evocation of a natural image combined with Wordsworth's general outspoken penchant for nature and the continuing impact of childhood prove to be vital. Accordingly, the aspiring musician and poet is explicitly associated with the previously outlined Romantic notion of the sensitive and exceptionally perceptive artist who pursues a genuine relation to nature and has to struggle and work in solitude. The line, "So is it now I am a man,"34 could therefore signify the foretelling of a new stage in his life that is about to set in: the band is making progress rather quickly, as is suggested by the elliptical narrative structure, and Ian's acquaintance with Debbie also leads to an early marriage. These incidents mark the beginning of the proragonisr's Personal struggle with the artistic challenges of songwriting and, from his point of view, the monotonous and restrictive demands of everyday ljfe in Macclesfield as a husband and father. Curtis's recitation of Wordsworth's famous "the Child is father of the Man,"" on the other hand, forcefully underlines his contradictory state of mind and mood-swing-ridden, at times even infantile, behavior It also stresses the artistic necessity of not rigidly suppressing all >mPulses- As Baudelaire has pointed out emphatically, a certain degree of childishness ,s required in terms of artistic creativity, and for him, the child s perception is comparable to a state of drunkenness.36 We can conclude that the ^Piction of Curtis as a tragic and inwardly torn poet «fPP°^££ ''lack and-white cinematography to which Shaw ascribes a pottie 90 C LANCJHORST quality; live performances that present Ian's intense and potentiall whelming aura and idiosyncratic robotic dancing, or as John Orr V °VCr" shamanisric onstage projection"-'8 that was in fact influenced bv ^ •ncv tUf »vnli,-ir nnerii- reference rn WnrrUwnrt-l-i lepsy; the explicit poetic reference to Wordsworth, and his epi- first-person point of view both in "My heart leaps up..." ancj voice-over narration msemons e "Heart and Soul" or "New Dawn Fades"?: Melancholy and Loss of Self in Unknown Pleasures (1979) and Closer (1980) The Romantic context that has been established via Corbijn's myth-building in Control will be extended in this section to Joy Division's music. Since it displays both Gothic and Romantic qualities, the relationship between these terms needs to be defined. Although the two similarly problematic terms used to be distinguished from each other as the former has been deemed "a reaction against neo-classicism and a stage in the journey to Romanticism,"39 an examination of their interplay has been undertaken since the 1970s and 1980s by Robert Kiely's discussion of Gothic novels and their Romantic elements (1972), G.R. Thompson's edited collection on "Dark Romanticism" (1974), and more recendy by Michael Gamer's Romanticism and the Gothic (2000)40 and Emma McEvoy's essay "Gothic and the Romantics" (2007). In addition to the passionate appeal of Romantic poetry's and Gothic fiction's display of at times unrestrained sentiment, another prominent similarity for instance, lies in the pronounced propensity for an unstable mental condition or the ultimate loss of one's already fragile identity in Gothk fi d Qr jn some of Keats's poems. As Fred Boning remarks, "Gothic fi est that fragmentation and instability form the constitu,.„» c &ures SUS& i l- • • /-»u- r u "i"<.nt teatures of norm* subjecnvity ... Objects of horror are necessary in *i ." i dvnamic of subjectivity and otherness.""1 This is eo anxious> culture of eighteenth-century Gothic fiction by Sir H^ally tr»e of the classics Beckford, Matthew Gregory Lewis, or Ann Raddiff Walpole> William examples of the Romantic (e.g. Percy Shelley's Z as We" aS ^it& 1810) or Victorian period (e.g. Sheridan Le Fanu's ij0Zzi: A Romance, a Glass Darkly, 1872, or Bram Stoker's Dracula, \^°Je Si/«, 1864, U interrelation between the Gothic and Romanticism i» ^garding the important that Romantic poets such as Byron and Ptrc!iCc,1'ns Particularly ) Slx-11cy engaged a northern "ode on melancholy"?: the music of joy division 91 djrect]y with the Gothic.42 More notably, with regard to Joy nVsion's evocation of extreme subjective mental states and images of , ror the "Gothic in this period sees the exploration both of extreme ibiectivities and of the problematic nature of sympathy in relation to selfhood. It is the period in which we see horror take centre-stage: many of these texts are filled to repletion with violence, imprisonment, torture, murder, parricide..."43 The remaining part of this essay attempts to interweave these two possible readings (Gothic and Romantic) in relation to the overall atmosphere of Unknown Pleasures, Closer, and some of Jov Divison's iconic songs. Joy Division's music largely stands out due to its distinctive sound and its melancholy atmosphere marked by an introspective retreat into fragile and conflicted states of mind. It is this very disposition that resulted in the post-punk band being retrospectively adopted by the Gothic subculture. According to Isabella van Elferen, "this appropriation and inscription process itself has Gothic overtones. Whether in literature, film or scene, the rewriting gesture of nostalgia creates Gothic out of retrospective gloom. "** More precisely, the retrospective attribution of innate Gothic elements to bands such as Joy Division or The Velvet Underground echoes the artificial restoration of buildings such as Walpole's famous Strawberry Hill House (1749), which "in turn became icons of the Gothic novel."45 Furthermore, the haunting effect in Joy Division's music is forcefully underscored by van Elferen, Bibby, and Lockwood alike. Moreover, haunting and the related themes of speciality, the uncanny, mental instability, or even madness are all essential concepts commonly associated with the Gothic. For van Elferen then, the song "Dead Souls" serves as a prime example of the band's musical style. Accordingly, the haunting effect is called forth by Presenting "ghostly imagery to express feelings of being haunted in an empty world"46 and accompanying musical devices such as Cuius s monotonous voice and musical and lyrical repetition. Other Gothic characteristics further align as "the combination of par.- n°ia, speciality and direct address allow the listener to share the an Kt -Pressed in ids by all means a classically Gothic - haunted persona calls out directly to his audience^ Dead Souk *o >ws the rLracteristic structure of Joy Division s music as it sets foil distinctive instrumental introduction c dominated by bass and drums. Ata later point, Curtis em I'll 11 1 I 1 V'Vl'"" barks upon singing about the illusionary and uta-;r torment that is necessarily 92 c unohorst and paranoid atmosphere is further emphasized by his repetitive lv I ations of a key aspect—in this ease, several paranoia-ridden exclarn^' ^ iml v,rvintT iHt'HTccs of vocal intensity At the same rimp atl°ns^ and varying degrees of vocal intensity. At the same time, as van3??115" ., the achievement of a "musical intensification of the temporal " caused bv the presence of ghosts"48 by means of the emnlrm^ 'S'0ci8- notes ment «u u, * ..........-o—n u. tne temporal dislod ^caused bv the presence of ghosts"*' by means of the employed mu^ notion -underlmes Dernda s observaoons with regards to spectral tem. poral.u Spectralitv is also observed by Dean Lockwood in his compara. ove analysis of the hauntological effect of post-punk music and the Gothic. Considering hauntology as a form of "Gothicised temporality,"50 Lockwood also draws \ipon Jacques Dernda's concept of hauntology originally discussed in Specters of Marx (1993) as well as its application to popular culture by Mark Fisher and Simon Reynolds.51 Unlike van Elferen, however, he luxtaposes Derndean hauntology with several writings of Gilles Deleuze.52 Even prior to referring to Derrida, he applies Deleuze's and Felix Guattari's notion of the potentially subversive nature of a "'minoritarian' identity"53 in relation to the "'majoritarian' culture."54 Consequently, post-punk likewise acts in a subversive manner as it aims to "experimentally estrange the present, to put its insertion into a known trajectory into question, opening up a cartography of the 'not yet'..."55 Accordingly, he highlights post-punk's oscillating position as its proponents "are neither past nor ever fully present, but rather, in between, in peripheral vision, ghostly. The Gothic, of course, is also innmately connected to anxious presence, to strange, unstable and smulacral spaces and times."56 Overall, "Dead Souls" and the two albums Unknown Pleasures and Over present a world devoid of hope and filled with horror."57 Their "absences" ,n connection with the Fei2 MurA ^ t insanablc yearning for an unknown obi'" n°tl0n °f melancholia 38 £ point: "As Freud describes it tW. ' Urns °"t to be crucial at this .. uuwiown ob • 1 „t this . . -1 t , ■ - -u'"s out to be crucial at tm» point: "As Freud describes it, the melancholic- , • ir c the focus of its affecuon, making absence its obier't" o8" '°SS " U tV*'^ of dread' of quiet desperation,"'1 however, Joy Division's sod Thoreau's "liv«* a sincere articulation of despair, Despair, however ^ ^e considered 10 despite the songs' introspective rcireai into the'^JVac'dV acquiesce** motifs of loss of self, hope, and balance alongside f. lne'r recurrent melancholy, anxiety, isolation, and references to sh,,^'"1^ (>i alienation. *ejj <)r a ho ,rthkrn "ODE ON MELANCHOLY"?: THE MUSIC OF fOI DIVISION 93 ,d the authentic rendering of disillusionment and anguish and the '"'persistence regarding their selected subject matter in combination Sht'i Curtis's electrified movements deliberately set out to provoke the r ,re Even if the lyrics often depict a mental state close to emotional hv (e g- in "Disorder," "Insight," "New Dawn Fades," "Decades," aPd "Love Will Tear Us Apart" to name only a few), the specific manner 0" performance apdy stresses that it is rather one of being Kwcomfortably numb. Apart from the loss of emotions and hope, varying levels of extreme mental states such as despair, division, or, as pointed out with regard to "Dead Souls," blurred boundaries which may relate to a distorted perception can be found in other songs from Unknown Pleasures and Closer. Whereas in "Shadowplay," the metaphorical image of the vast ocean is used as an expression of melancholy, endless searching, and eventual futility, "Decades" discusses trauma, Weltschmerz, and cruelly crushed opportunities while "Day of the Lords," "She's Lost Control," "Passover," and "Twenty-Four Hours" deal with the loss of control and crude shattering of one's existence. In these songs, loss of control and personal balance are depicted as expected occurrences (e.g. at the beginning of "Passover" > that are nevertheless linked to an inner disunity, even turmoil, which temporarily disrupts the otherwise stated emotional numbness. The discomfort with the outer world expressed in Joy Division's music becomes most apparent via the band's gothic "rendering of melancholia through allusions to the horrors of history"62 as, for instance, in -Atrocity-Exhibition. " Finding its predecessors in punk's use of Nazi iconography and the even more provocative bearing of the experimentally inclined English group Throbbing Gristle that was co-founded by fellow Mancunian Genesis P-Orrigde, Joy Division's repeated reference to the Holocaust on multiple levels (in the song, during their earlv stages as Warsaw, and in [dation to the etymological origin of their band name' is undoubted!] "■ghly problematic.65 Moreover, in this case, the Romantic roots ot u>-Clsm (e.g. a heightened sense of nationalism, particularly ,n Gennam ^counter punk's and partly post-punk's deliberately shocking appropna-t10" of Third Reich symbols and references. However as aPtly remarks, the stance of mam punk or post punk bands with regani to ,ascism tended to be rather-a.id perhaps even precanouslv-unh „uc - -j j ..u„..u rlu-refore not generally be reduced - ..„-1 noter I to its 'ascism tended to be rattier—am. y—a and highly conflicted and should therefore noj^ ^ re shock value or .1 seemingly Postmo f Nazj iacow :ontextualizing) pop cultural vi l|lv at rhe tune of .... j 1... tlii* nilllOlliUi • man er is further complicated by the ongoing, 94 C LANGHORST ,v . ■ hevdav prevalent, British fascination with World War it '? I nAc«> dmg to Sonva O. Rose, the latter "continu2** ....., and nostalgia- since World War timbered as Britain's 'Finest Hour"'- when the country tempo* overcame its social differences and stood together. The nostalgic comp0 ncnt seems especially vital as has already become apparent with regard t0 Joy Division's use of melancholia. Furthermore, it may have been nur tured by the increasing popularity of films about World War II in general as well as wartime Britain (e.g. Guy Hamilton's star-studded Battle of Britain, 19691. Cinematic engagements with the Third Reich then dis-pla\ the same controversial ambiguity as later punk's or post-punk's use of Nazi iconography. They range from genre and exploitation fare (e.g. Salon Kim, 1976) to art cinema and have contributed to the public's cultural memory of the war period. Productions such as The Night of th Generals {1967), starring Peter O'Toole and Omar Sharif, or the Richard Burton/Clint Eastwood vehicle Where Eagles Dare (1968), are primarily focused on their male stars. Other films attempted a more critical approach to Nazism which, however, could result in a still deeply conflicted, ambiguous portrayal, via the European art cinema mode. Prominent examples include Bernardo Bertolucc, s treatment of Italian fascism in his 1970 Alberto Moravia tZITZ CinfTf !-UChm° Viscontl's The Damned (1969), or Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Vladimir M,k i a ■ \ rVtffltf '1978whereas L.liana Cavani's d^TcL r ! adaPtautl0.n unstop between a former Nazi offiVS " °f ? sad°™soch.stiC f„.___ Dirk R~— ' ship between ranaCavani^ W ,1974) S PnSOners (perr*?^ ™* one of his rř; Charlotte Ramping) in The >w rorter (19741 f "f (p f "7 ""garde) and one of his TTTheöm«dfo™erm Cinenia ae th^harlotte Rumpling) in The °S ^ '"80v ?aracter actor Bogarde both 7 CCt lmPact "Poo i9r'dolturned I, th "Potation ele-U978/.rQ«rPlc' ^PirSid^01 and 198;J laracter '"or Bogarde S A - as theA ■roafnththe W sof!1 P°P«'ar music as ■uusic of Tov Divisi°n' *c«, which is situated against the ba tT"3''*1 fem yQU R«cfcfl«^ fire, is the hrst part of Viscomi's German tl°P °f thC Li consists of the Thomas Mann adaptation Death i,, u >8y vhat fllf J Ludwtg (1973), starring Helmut Bcrgcr as the IcRcr^'"" (1971) * dent, and later delusional and reclusive Bavarian y['y lr(»ibled, deC»' K 'ndwig II and , northern "ode on melancholy"': the music of joy division 95 „. Howard as Richard Wagner. Essential motifs of Germ an Lianticism such as "the German Romantic Todessehnsucht, or 'yearnmg ■or death'"6" come repeatedly to the fore in Visconti's trilogy and The parnned's conflicted and ambivalent depiction of fascism, for instance, which make an explicit, yet still problematic and often criticized,69 reference to Wagner's Tristan and Isolde (1865).70 The repeated filmic fusion I of the isolated, alienated, and hopelessly longing individual then is para-digmatically exemplified by Gustav von Aschenbach's (perf. Dirk Bogarde) Weltschmerz and sense of paralysis in the elegiac Death in Venice, while the monarch's eventual downfall in Ludwig articulates Dark Romanticism's (and Gothic's) penchant for madness, (self-) destruction, excess, and the forces of Eros and Thanatos. Accordingly, the evocation of extreme states—in Joy Division's case "a world in which torture and murder are spectacles for entertainment"71—may be linked to Gothic's previously illustrated affinity for extremes and boundary transgressions which is at times also shared by Romantic poetry. Besides, the haunting presence of the past addressed in "Dead Souls" also constitutes an important characteristic both of Godtic fiction and of the Byronic hero who is burdened by the weight of his past and former deeds. Similar to the paralysis that is repeatedly expressed in several songs, the haunted protagonist of Byron's poem "The Giaour" (1813), for instance, is defined by the recurrent metaphor of stoniness.7' In this regard, the growing alienation from the outer world, and especially from a formerly dose relationship, in the song "I Remember Nothing" seems to be of particular interest as its portrayal of interpersonal estrangement in a crumbling relationship also bears a slight resemblance to Byron's poem "When We Two Parted" (1815): lamenting the separation from a former lover, the loss ls mourned solely by the speaker who remains until the very end caught in a dismal state of mind that is characterized by "silence and tears."73 Not lln'ike the loss of control and personal balance in the music of Joy Division, th-e personal burden of sorrow and the destroyed emotional balance are fi"thermore highlighted in Byron's poem while the other person isaccused bV the speaker of being not only reserved and forgetful, but deliberately deceitful.7* .T . „ Additionally, there are also parallels between Km Curtis and John Kaits, t^ir art, and notions of melancholy to be noted: as in the caseoCurns, Keats's contemporaries, for instance, also placed an at tunes dcrogator emphasis upon his yoi.rhfi.lnc« in relationship to his artistic express.on. Mora OSCll 01 ,----IUSS UV"Ur"Vruh i Gothic 'tendency as "vhc poet spectator-scriptor ofthc ^^Ulwcly concealed versions ot himself^ Klus characters spectraiued or entrapped ,n gothic scenario,-While in "Lamia" 118191 the temale selt » crttshed, the male subject fa, HyPtrioH is deprived of us heteronormative status: 1 hrough recurrent displays of physical and psychic shattering in pain and/or pleasure, Keats abdicates the power associated with an agential or autonomous masculine self."79 In "Ode to a Nightingale" (1819), in turn, "the poet's condition at the beginning of the poem is defined by a potentially contradictory state of heartache and numbness."80 Moreover, the constitution of an identity in Keats's poetry is also greatly shaped by the act of suffering.81 However, due to his embrace of the utterly arbitrary course of life and its hidden mysteries via his famous concept "Negative Capability," these states of mind assume an ambivalent role in Keats's body of work. Thus, melancholy and despair can also be read positively, in "Ode on Melancholy" (1819), for example, melancholy's ambiguity is exposed. Hence, "[t]he 'wakerul anguish of the soul' is to be cherished rather than escaped."82 The overall implication then "is to find ways of experiencing this melancholy at its most rarefied and extreme."83 Despite their pronounced longing to escape, Joy Division's devotion to a grave-even lugubrious—atmosphere seems to follow exactly this dictum: although at times seemingly met with a certain acceptance, often through the feeling of numbness or loss of self, their musical evocanon of melancholy Hkew.se seeks direct confrontation suffers™ **** % * Pr°,on^ "ate of oainful ANC>*lllh rN "ODE ON melancholy"* THE MUSIC OS joy division 97 ged state of be stated that, fottowmgDave Haslam's en?Ptr0ll-To conclude, u ma f despair that emanates from Manchester . upon the creative aspe ^ meUncho\y and anxiety are openly en b\ed past, *noroenr\.nicn is also of a rare genuine and poetic nature ated through ™a*c'*\ but se\dom surpassed. KdditionaWy, the pr^ { has often been emulates the rather proWematic concepts £-*f* of th;rithic - relation to ro* m,Mn this case po* Smanticism and h. G°onstratcd but a\so further inte^ned the intnc^ • • and Romantic elements is denned by a certain degree of etwee" G4°l consequence, the broader notion of Romanticism ana (lexiW''^'8 S 3 V can be said to equal the manifold appearance of the lyzed i" tnlS C?c eighteenth century as variations of both exert a signifi l It i | * gighteentn'tCllLUl y TUiauwiia i^wm v.wii a Mglllll Goth'c MllCC n (|1C present. As this essay endeavored to illustrate, the cant impact up°omanticism>s mythological implications to twentieth-re|cvance or ^.—ft™*. hcrnmes esDeciallv aDDarent in the post war Xance of Romanticism » ,uyu----^.....r_ century rock music therefore becomes especially apparent in the post wi period, particularly between the 1960s and 1980s. Notes 1. Jennifer Otter Bickerdikc, Fandom, Image and Authenticity. Joy Devotion and the Second Lives of Kurt Cobain and Ian Curtis (Basingstoke: 1'algravc Macmillan, 2014), 47. 2. John Orr, Romantics and Modernists in British Cinema (Edinburgh. Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 180. 3. Bickerdike, 43. 4. Caitlin Shaw, "Known Pleasures: Nostalgia and Joy Division Mythology in 24 Hour Party People and Control" in Cinema, Television and History: New Approaches, ed. Laura Mee and Johnny Walker (Newcasde: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 172. 5. Atte Oksanen, "Hollow Spaces of Psyche: Gothic Trance-Formation from Joy Division to Diary of Dreams," in Nostalgia or Perversion'': Gothic Rewriting from the Eighteenth Century until the Present Day, ed. Isabella van Elferen (Newcasde: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 126. 6- Dean Lockwood, "Dead Souls: Post-Punk Music as Hauntological Trigger," in Twenty-First-Century Gothic, ed. Brigid Cherry, Peter Howell, and Caroline Ruddell (Newcasde: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010), 103-107; Isabella van Elferen, Gothic Music: The Sounds of the Uncanny (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2012), 142. 7- Michael Bibby, "Atrocity Exhibitions: Joy Division, Factory ^cords, ant Goth," in Goth: Undead Subculture, ed. Lauren M. E^ Goodlad and Michael Bibby (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 234 and Mi. 8. Lockwood, 100. 10. See for example Seamus Perry, a^^^m T^^^o^. Concept," in A Companion to Romanticism, ed. Duncan i Blackwdi, 1998), 3-11; or Peter Cochran's "Romanticism" and Byron (Newcasde: Cambndge Scholars 2009), ix-li.