Abstract
At a moment when the relationship between the subversive fringe and the politically correct is being widely debated, the role of shocking, non-mainstream music demands reconsideration, particularly in light of the ethical and political questions it poses about the representation of those who operate on the edge of society. My investigation draws on the central idea in Perry Meisel’s The Myth of Popular Culture (2010)—that low culture closely dialogues with its sources and with cultural authority—in order to analyse British dark cabaret trio The Tiger Lillies, whose work epitomises the coming together (or the violent clashing) of high and low. Their music takes us on bawdy, brash, and blasphemous journeys that pull us into a world of atmospheric beauty and distasteful sacrilege. I inquire whether their satirical repertoire condones or condemns the complex issues it exposes, that is, whether it trivialises human tragedy or can otherwise be understood as a mode of resistance to conformity and supra-imposed official norms.
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Ramalho, J.R. (2020). The Blasphemous Grotesqueries of The Tiger Lillies. In: Bloom, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33136-8_52
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