Abstract
This chapter develops a reading of Quadrophenia through the image of the drowned scooter on the back cover of The Who’s 1973 album, and compares the presentation of the scooter in the album artwork and in the film. It offers a reading of the importance of the scooter to Mod masculinity through cultural and historical context, and then develops an analysis of Jimmy’s Vespa GS as a form of “armoured” masculinity that defends the masculine subject against the pressures (and pleasures) of de-individuation. Through the work of Klaus Theweleit, Mod masculinity is read as a late re-articulation of a clean, healthy, hygienic male body and subjectivity proposed by modernity and Modernism.
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Baker, B. (2018). The Drowning Machine: The Sea and the Scooter in Quadrophenia . In: Thurschwell, P. (eds) Quadrophenia and Mod(ern) Culture. Palgrave Studies in the History of Subcultures and Popular Music. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64753-1_11
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