Rancid Aphrodisiac

It has been sixty years since Rock n Roll exploded into the mainstream, yet we remain limited in our understanding of how its bawdy excesses absorbed into the annals of mass popularity in such a short amount of time. Mickey Vallee asks: what if the Rock n Roll eruption was nothing less than postwar consumer capitalism at its very best, precisely because it was taken as its very worst? Vallee explores the emergence of Rock n Rolls from an entirely new theoretical disposition in order to answer this question, drawing mainly from Lacanian cultural psychoanalysis to reveal that Rock n Roll was far more conformist than we are generally led to believe; namely, that it was conformist with emerging liberal principles of freedom from the tyranny of the state. Vallee supports this proposition with detailed analyses of familiar (and not-so-familiar) characters and texts in Rock n Roll to suggest that the disruption of our symbolic economy was symptomatic of a new cultural logic of economic freedom. While not denying Rock n Rolls role in the pre-civil rights movement, Vallee refuses the possibility to deny that Rock n Rolls symbolic efficacy ultimately coordinated a neoliberal foundation to the ideology of individualism in its rhythm, instrumentation, lyrics, and vocals, where its power was at its most effective and affective.