Short description:

Examining one of the earliest films made specifically for young audiences in US cinema, Rock around the Clock explores the exploitation production company that made the film and the ways it represented young people, especially in terms of their association with rock ?n? roll music and culture.

Long description:

Examining one of the earliest films made specifically for young audiences in US cinema, Rock around the Clock (1956), this book explores the exploitation production company that made the film and the ways it represented young people, especially in terms of their association with rock ?n? roll music and culture.

Providing new avenues of approaching the film, the book looks at how Rock around the Clock has attracted significant scholarly attention, despite its origins as a low-budget production made by master exploitation filmmaker Sam Katzman. It challenges accounts that see the film?s young people as juvenile delinquents, using instead the label ?cultural rebels? as a signifier of youth?s ability to resurrect a moribund music industry and rejuvenate a stale youth culture. This book also questions the nature of the label ?exploitation? as applied to the film by examining Columbia Pictures? role as a resource provider for Katzman?s film, comparing Rock around the Clock to contemporaneous films with a youth focus that were produced in different industrial contexts and investigating its relationship to adaptation by asking whether the film is an example of a ?postliterary? adaptation.

Rich on archival research and industrial and textual analysis, Rock around the Clock will interest both film studies and youth cultures scholars.

Table of Contents:

Introduction. Rock around the Clock: From Exploitation to Legitimacy  1.  (Re)imagining Youth: The ?Birth? of the Teenager Under the Spectre of Rock ?n? Roll  2. Whos? Exploiting What and How (1): Rock around the Clock and Exploitation Formulas in an Industry in Transition  3. Whos? Exploiting What and How (2): Rock around the Clock between Major Studio and Independent Film Production  4. Who?s Exploiting What and How (3): Film Adaptation and the Boundaries of Exploitation in Rock Around the Clock  Coda. ?The Living End? or the Rest is History