Abstracts
Résumé
Le 17 septembre 1969, un article publié dans un journal étudiant de l’Iowa expose les grandes lignes d’une rumeur qui court depuis quelques mois : Paul McCartney, le bassiste du groupe The Beatles, serait mort accidentellement quelques années plus tôt et aurait été remplacé par un double. Depuis les années 1970, de nombreux articles et ouvrages ont été consacrés à la frénésie médiatique provoquée par cette rumeur. Certain·e·s chercheur·euse·s en ont fait l’histoire culturelle, en retraçant ses différentes itérations, alors que d’autres ont tenté d’en déterminer les racines anthropologiques ou les ancrages sociologiques. L’auteur propose ici une rétrospective de ce phénomène médiatique et culturel de plus de 50 ans et se penche sur les caractéristiques, sur les qualités et sur l’historicité du disque à microsillons qui permettent de situer son rôle dans la propagation de la théorie « Paul Is Dead ».
Mots-clés :
- conspiration,
- disque,
- États-Unis,
- médias,
- The Beatles
Abstract
On September 17, 1969, an article published in an Iowa student newspaper outlined a rumour that had been circulating for several months: Paul McCartney, The Beatles’ bassist, was said to have been killed in a car accident a few years earlier and replaced by a lookalike. Since the 1970s, many articles and books have been devoted to the media frenzy caused by this rumour. Some researchers have traced its cultural history, through its various iterations, while others have tried to determine its anthropological roots or sociological anchors. Here, the author offers a retrospective account of this fifty-plus-year-old phenomenon and focusses on the characteristics, qualities, and historicity of lp records that help situate their role in the propagation of the “Paul Is Dead” theory.
Keywords:
- conspiracy,
- lp,
- media,
- The Beatles,
- United States
Appendices
Bibliographie
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