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THE QUEERNESS OF VIDEO GAME MUSIC

Tim Summers



 

Video game music is a significant site of queerness where normative demands are questioned, suspended or loosened. Games resist hegemonic musical logics, challenge musical value systems and use music to complicate essentialist notions of identity. This Element proposes three areas of queerness, each representing different relationships between 'queer design' and 'queer engagement', ranging from unintentionally resistive to explicit engagement with identity.


First, this Element examines musical structures that provide queer temporal alternatives to normative linear development, and interactive systems that reframe the power relationship between musical material and listener.


Second, it considers 'retro' or 'chiptune' timbres that queer notions of technological progress to be improvements, rejecting chrononormativity.


Finally, the Element discusses music that queers the self/other binary of identity. Games present ways of listening to, engaging with and understanding music that provide opportunities to challenge inherited assumptions and reductive or monolithic values, practices and identities.

 

PUBLICATION DETAILS

LANGUAGE

BINDING

EDITION

ISBN

YEAR

PAGES

English

Paperback


9781009371407

2023

84

English

eBook


N/A

2023

84

OTHER NAMES

The Queerness of Video Game Music

 

TAGS


Authors: #TimSummers

Publishers: #CambridgeUniversityPress (Cambridge University Press)

Languages: #English

Year: #Year2023


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