Pop Shove-It, Pop Music

Abstract

James Millea focuses on the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series of video games, its use of popular music, and how this transmediality between game culture and music culture shapes the series’ “projection of authenticity.” Millea critiques the vogue for viewing the music of video games through the lens of cinema—the ways in which popular music is used in the series have a markedly different genesis, that of music videos and television and other media depicting the culture of skateboarding. The transmediality of popular music and the series’ games finds purchase in the skateboarding community through the creation of audiovisual relationships that are anything but cinematic.