Master of Arts / Department of English / Dean G. Hall / Salman Rushdie's 1999 novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet is ostensibly a rock
'n' roll novel, largely set in the 1960s, that traces the commercial rise of Indian rock star
protagonists Vina Apsara and Ormus Cama. As their fame and wealth rise to global
status and their stage show comes to entail a logistical complexity of military proportions,
it becomes increasingly difficult to discern the couple's earlier countercultural ideals
within their new established culture status.
I argue that despite the change from countercultural to establishment-based values
in the novel's protagonists, Rushdie does make a case in The Ground Beneath Her Feet
for the possibility of countercultural efficacy against the commodifying culture of global
capitalism (which I refer to as the "Frame"). His recipe for combating the exclusive
hierarchies produced by the Frame is a combination of the non-totalizing politics of
postmodernism and the subversive potential of uncommodified rock music.
I pay close attention to establishing the historical templates--John Lennon of the
Beatles and Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys--of the novel's protagonists in an effort to
understand the sort of countercultural alternative Rushdie is proposing. I likewise focus
on the novel's depiction of the Beach Boys' Smile album, which as a still commercially
unreleased record, reinforces Rushdie's imperative in The Ground Beneath Her Feet for
an uncommodifying counterculture and works in tandem with his portrayals of the artistic
plights of several minor characters in the novel as well.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:KSU/oai:krex.k-state.edu:2097/8851 |
| Date | January 1900 |
| Creators | Hutt, Dan |
| Publisher | Kansas State University |
| Source Sets | K-State Research Exchange |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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