'Yesterday once more' : an investigation of the relationship between popular music, audience, and authorial intention in Dennis Potter's 'Pennies from heaven', 'The singing detective', and 'Lipstick on your collar'

Michael. Brie, Stephen (2001) 'Yesterday once more' : an investigation of the relationship between popular music, audience, and authorial intention in Dennis Potter's 'Pennies from heaven', 'The singing detective', and 'Lipstick on your collar'. PhD thesis, University of Liverpool.

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Abstract

Critical interpretations of Dennis Potter's television drama serials have tended to take a writer-centred perspective, focusing on establishing links between the dramatist's life and work. In analysing the popular music content of these texts, critics have consistently postulated the existence of Brechtian distanciation effects on an implied viewer. Although, in order to contextualise Potter's relationship with popular music, authorial intention is discussed, this study shifts the focus towards empirical interpretations of the musical sequences in Pennies from Heaven, The Singing Detective and Lipstick on Your Col/ar, and, in doing so, problematises the application of Brechtian theory to those texts. Utilising theoretical framings drawn from television studies, film studies, literary studies, communication studies, and musicology, the thesis offers interpretation and analysis of empirical material generated in response to both quantitative and qualitative exercises, and sets out to identify, and investigate, the narratological, musicological, and psychological factors which come into play when actual viewers encounter the narratively foregrounded, lip-synched musical sequences in Potter's serials. The influence of respondent age and gender, of implied author discourse, and of genre expectation on emprirical readings are also investigated. The thesis identifies, and attempts to account for, a predisposition on the part of Potter's musically-infused period dramas to stimulate susceptible viewers to drift away from the performance, and into nostalgic memory excursions, or fabricated imaginings, experiences which often result in narrative amnesia, an inability to subsequently recall and/or recollect elements of narrative detail.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	23 Oct 2023 11:00
Last Modified:	23 Oct 2023 11:07
DOI:	10.17638/03176234
Copyright Statement:	Copyright © and Moral Rights for this thesis and any accompanying data (where applicable) are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge.
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3176234