Intertextuality as ‘Resonance’: Masculinity and Anticapitalism in Pet Shop Boys’ Score for Battleship Potemkin

This essay cultivates ‘resonance’ as a refinement of the overused theoretical concept of ‘intertextuality’. I refine the use of resonance to mean active, sympathetic amplification and clarification of commonalities between texts. As a case study, this essay examines Pet Shop Boys’ (PSB) soundtrack to Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin, which resonates constructions of counterhegemonic masculinities and anticapitalism. PSB sympathetically amplify, clarify and refine Eisenstein’s idealised struggle for social freedom and their idealised sympathy for various masculinities. Analysing resonances ultimately suggests gendering as collective negotiation and integration rather than individual self-expression. This case study also uniquely demonstrates resonance as something done by contemporary, active audiences. Outside of concerts, it is only experienced when fans synchronise the PSB soundtrack CD with a DVD of the film, literally resonating the two. This case study explores resonance across such audience practices (CD/DVD synching, online commentary), authorship (PSB’s music, Eisenstein’s films) and discourses (scholars, critics).