Title
This chapter goes to eleven: This is spinal tap and the blurring of authenticity and fabrication
Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Title
The Routledge Companion to Popular Music and Humor
Publication Date
1-1-2019
Abstract
This chapter explores the production of This is Spinal Tap (1984)-including the creators’ interactions and immersions in parodied cultures, unorthodox approaches to production, and the actors’ musical abilities-alongside the film’s lasting impact on professional popular music and the role of humor to present, as Christopher Guest stated in a 2004 Guardian article, characters who are “not very good or successful at what they do and yet take themselves enormously seriously.” Additionally, the chapter will explore the continued collaboration between Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer in other musical-comedic collaborations as well as their continued relationship with their Spinal Tap personae, seemingly as a result of both mutual respect for one another as well as decades of legal battles regarding intellectual property.
First Page
281
Last Page
289
DOI
10.4324/9781351266642-39
ISBN
9781351266635,9781138577565
Recommended Citation
Helb, Colin, "This chapter goes to eleven: This is spinal tap and the blurring of authenticity and fabrication" (2019). Faculty Publications. 922.
https://jayscholar.etown.edu/facpubharvest/922
