Call For Writers: Movie Soundtracks

Our theme week for July 2014 will be Movie Soundtracks.

Music is a powerful tool for the expression of emotions like anger, heartbreak and lust, but it can also be used to bolster a movement, capture the feeling of a cultural milieu, expose injustices or give marginalized groups an earthshaking voice. Combining quality films with compelling soundtracks is a recipe for the creation of important works of art that speak to more than just our aesthetic.

For example, 80s teen films were often concerned with disenfranchised youth. David Bowie’s “Changes” is famously used and quoted in the classic John Hughes film, The Breakfast Club:

And these children that you spit on
As they try to change their worlds
Are immune to your consultations
They’re quite aware of what they’re going through.

The Breakfast Club is so memorable because, through both its scenes and its songs, it examines social hierarchy, gender roles, adult abuse of authority and dysfunctional homes. The Legend of Billie Jean is another 80s teen film that exposes the systemic lack of agency that youth is afforded while electing a moral-minded, charismatic young woman as the spokesperson for a movement (“fair is fair”). With Pat Benatar’s rock anthem “Invincible,” young people, especially young women, rallied around the idea of carving out spaces of power for themselves.

Waiting to Exhale uses its soundtrack with hits like “Count on Me” to emphasize the importance of female friendship, while it relies on tracks like “Exhale (Shoop, Shoop)” to express the wisdom and rich sexuality of the middle-aged women the film depicts. On the other hand, The Runaways employs “Cherry Bomb” to reveal the explosiveness of budding female sexuality.

Use of The Doors’ “The End” in Apocalypse Now encapsulates the madness of war, while The Matrix‘s use of Rage Against the Machine’s “Wake Up” is a battle cry against the invisible system that either keeps us complacent or destroys us. The Jamaican film The Harder They Come was not only famous for the way in which “Black people seeing themselves on the screen for the first time created an unbelievable audience reaction,” but for its diffusion of reggae to the world outside the Caribbean. With Jimmy Cliff’s “The Harder They Come,” the film was able to show how the oppressive forces in Jamaica could be combated with fierce individualism and tenacity.

We’d like you to write about the movie soundtracks that changed you or changed the world. Feel free to use the examples below to inspire your writing on this subject, or choose your own source material.

We’d like to avoid as much overlap as possible for this theme, so get your proposals in early if you know which film you’d like to write about. We accept both original pieces and cross-posts, and we respond to queries within a week.

Most of our pieces are between 1,000 and 2,000 words, and include links and images. Please send your piece as a Microsoft Word document to btchflcks[at]gmail[dot]com, including links to all images, and include a 2- to 3-sentence bio.

If you have written for us before, please indicate that in your proposal, and if not, send a writing sample if possible.

Please be familiar with our publication and look over recent and popular posts to get an idea of Bitch Flicks’ style and purpose. We encourage writers to use our search function to see if your topic has been written about before, and link when appropriate (hyperlinks to sources are welcome, as well).

The final due date for these submissions is Friday, July 18 by midnight.

South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut

Reality Bites

Apocalypse Now

Garden State

Pump Up the Volume

South Pacific

The Runaways

The Legend of Billie Jean

Superfly

The Harder They Come

Mary Poppins

Pulp Fiction

The Sound of Music

Rocky Horror Picture Show

The Breakfast Club

Waiting to Exhale

Hedwig and the Angry Inch

The Matrix

Fantasia

O Brother, Where Art Thou?