From Glam Rock to Cock Rock: Revis(it)ing Rock Masculinities in Recent Feature Films

After a brief general outline of the depiction of rock in film, this essay investigates the constructions of rock masculinities in the feature films Rock Star, Almost Famous, Still Crazy, and Velvet Goldmine. The essay reads the first three films as representative of the dominant strategies of representing male rock stardom in streamlined independent cinema. Despite the pretence of (comically) debunking the discourses of authenticity, rebelliousness, and gender prevalent in various forms of ‘cock rock’ through a representation of masculinities in crisis and a moralistic guidance of sympathy, these films actually rely on and support a construction of rock as a male cosmos streaked by homophobia, misogyny and a gendered conception of fandom. Velvet Goldmine, in contrast, is marked by a narrative structure and a discussion of ideas that deliberately uphold ambivalences and uncertainties on the topics of art, stardom, theatricality, love, and sexuality. Despite these differences all four films share a celebratory attitude toward rock music and, through a technique of historical distancing, convey nostalgia for an idealized state of rock. This nostalgia, however, refers to the spirit of rebelliousness and authenticity rather than the gender conceptions in the glam and cock rock spheres of the 1970s and 1980s.