Cinema as Social Knowledge

Abstract

François Ribac discusses how the Beatles—within the field of popular music—gave substance to a technical and social organization that the cinema made culturally possible. Cinema, being just as much a technique as a way of organizing and hearing the world, introduced the Beatles and their sound engineers simultaneously to a nonnaturalistic use of sound and to rock “n” roll which made it possible for them to invent “a cinema for the ears.” Ribac describes how the methods and the temporality of the cinema as well as its conventions, division of labor, and the concept of the studio inspired the envisioning of a musical form that was disconnected from traditional music-making of the time.