Rattling out of control:A comparison of U2 and Joy Division on film

This article integrates Popular Music Studies, Film Studies and Fashion Studies to offer a comparative analysis of Joy Division and U2 in the cinema. It focuses primarily on the films Control (Corbijn, 2007) and Rattle and Hum (Joanou, 1988), and looks at how popular musical performance and sub-cultural style are intertwined with the representation of city space and the construction of metropolitan identities. It does this via consideration of filmic style but in a manner sensitive to the broader sociopolitical and popular musical discourses that frame these representations. The article argues that popular music’s relationship to the cinema, and to representations of place, has been much neglected in Film Studies. As such, it considers the rock/performance/fashion/place nexus in some detail.