This chapter examines the concept of vococentrism proposed by Michel Chion and developed at length by David Neumeyer. The first part looks at the system of vococentrism as it was codified in the early 1930s to replace the original rule of mimetic synchronization, with its emphasis on the act of recording. Vococentrism was by contrast focused on placing the voice in a narrative representation. Vococentrism essentially reconciled the soundtrack to the continuity system, transformed music into its customary role of underscore, and ensured that the soundtrack served as the voice of narrative. The second part examines vococentrism in the age of intensified continuity, David Bordwell’s term for the stylistic system that has dominated filmmaking since the 1980s. The author concludes that whereas intensified continuity has given greater emphasis to the face in the visual field, it has displaced the voice from its central position on the soundtrack. Intensified continuity has ushered in the end of vococentrism, which in a sense recognizes how marks of identity and subjectivity in contemporary cinema have given way to figures of gesture and affect.
{"title":"The End(s) of Vococentrism","authors":"James Buhler","doi":"10.5406/j.ctvz0hcn6.19","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/j.ctvz0hcn6.19","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the concept of vococentrism proposed by Michel Chion and developed at length by David Neumeyer. The first part looks at the system of vococentrism as it was codified in the early 1930s to replace the original rule of mimetic synchronization, with its emphasis on the act of recording. Vococentrism was by contrast focused on placing the voice in a narrative representation. Vococentrism essentially reconciled the soundtrack to the continuity system, transformed music into its customary role of underscore, and ensured that the soundtrack served as the voice of narrative. The second part examines vococentrism in the age of intensified continuity, David Bordwell’s term for the stylistic system that has dominated filmmaking since the 1980s. The author concludes that whereas intensified continuity has given greater emphasis to the face in the visual field, it has displaced the voice from its central position on the soundtrack. Intensified continuity has ushered in the end of vococentrism, which in a sense recognizes how marks of identity and subjectivity in contemporary cinema have given way to figures of gesture and affect.","PeriodicalId":193833,"journal":{"name":"Voicing the Cinema","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133992585","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The generic dissonance between romantic comedy and horror film in The Uninvited (1944) is explored through a focus on the character and placements of the “Serenade to Stella by Starlight.” The essay describes the tension between this songlike theme, the sound of the piano, and the identification of the Serenade more closely with its composer (the male lead) than with the woman he wrote it for.
{"title":"Some Thoughts on Genre, the Vococentric Cinema, and “Stella by Starlight”","authors":"David Neumeyer","doi":"10.5406/j.ctvz0hcn6.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/j.ctvz0hcn6.13","url":null,"abstract":"The generic dissonance between romantic comedy and horror film in The Uninvited (1944) is explored through a focus on the character and placements of the “Serenade to Stella by Starlight.” The essay describes the tension between this songlike theme, the sound of the piano, and the identification of the Serenade more closely with its composer (the male lead) than with the woman he wrote it for.","PeriodicalId":193833,"journal":{"name":"Voicing the Cinema","volume":"93 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129054029","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
From Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear in Risky Business (1983) to John Cusack blasting a love song on his boombox below his girlfriend’s bedroom window in Say Anything . . . (1989), characters “breaking into soundtrack” are some of the most iconic moments in teen films of the 1980s. This essay examines these sequences as a discrete mode of musical performance with aesthetic conventions and narrative functions that are largely consistent throughout the decade. The author argues that teen characters tend to break into soundtrack at strategic moments in the narrative in order to try out potential identities and to express strong, often subversive feelings without negative consequences. These performances allow teens to test the waters without committing to a course of action. That the music is all commercially available popular music only highlights the fact that these are appropriated, rather than spontaneous, songs that can be tried on like a new outfit. Thus, in these films, teens break into soundtrack in order to try out different voices as they search to find their own.
{"title":"Breaking into Soundtrack in 1980s Teen Films","authors":"Cari McDonnell","doi":"10.5406/j.ctvz0hcn6.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/j.ctvz0hcn6.10","url":null,"abstract":"From Tom Cruise dancing in his underwear in Risky Business (1983) to John Cusack blasting a love song on his boombox below his girlfriend’s bedroom window in Say Anything . . . (1989), characters “breaking into soundtrack” are some of the most iconic moments in teen films of the 1980s. This essay examines these sequences as a discrete mode of musical performance with aesthetic conventions and narrative functions that are largely consistent throughout the decade. The author argues that teen characters tend to break into soundtrack at strategic moments in the narrative in order to try out potential identities and to express strong, often subversive feelings without negative consequences. These performances allow teens to test the waters without committing to a course of action. That the music is all commercially available popular music only highlights the fact that these are appropriated, rather than spontaneous, songs that can be tried on like a new outfit. Thus, in these films, teens break into soundtrack in order to try out different voices as they search to find their own.","PeriodicalId":193833,"journal":{"name":"Voicing the Cinema","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124086306","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Australian director Peter Weir’s career has spanned five decades, working in both Hollywood and Australia. One typical trait in his films is the subject matter that typically falls outside of Hollywood spectacle, choosing to focus on characters and introspection. Another trait is the use of preexisting art music in nearly all of his films. Weir’s use of art music spans more than 400 years, drawing on a wide range of composers such as Albinoni, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Vaughan Williams, Glass, and Górecki, among others. One genre, the piano concerto, is used particularly effectively in Weir’s films. The second movement of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor,” is used in two films, Picnic at Hanging Rock and Dead Poets Society. In The Truman Show, the second movement of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 is used, in each case sounding a “voice of innocence” to the respective characters, a wordless voice that the characters are unable to articulate themselves. This musical voice protests the repressive structures that these characters confront, and the play between soloist and orchestra in these slow movements serves as a particularly apt musical metaphor for their highly regimented lives and their dreams of escaping the control.
{"title":"Peter Weir and the Piano Concerto","authors":"E. Heine","doi":"10.5406/j.ctvz0hcn6.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/j.ctvz0hcn6.15","url":null,"abstract":"Australian director Peter Weir’s career has spanned five decades, working in both Hollywood and Australia. One typical trait in his films is the subject matter that typically falls outside of Hollywood spectacle, choosing to focus on characters and introspection. Another trait is the use of preexisting art music in nearly all of his films. Weir’s use of art music spans more than 400 years, drawing on a wide range of composers such as Albinoni, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Vaughan Williams, Glass, and Górecki, among others. One genre, the piano concerto, is used particularly effectively in Weir’s films. The second movement of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor,” is used in two films, Picnic at Hanging Rock and Dead Poets Society. In The Truman Show, the second movement of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 is used, in each case sounding a “voice of innocence” to the respective characters, a wordless voice that the characters are unable to articulate themselves. This musical voice protests the repressive structures that these characters confront, and the play between soloist and orchestra in these slow movements serves as a particularly apt musical metaphor for their highly regimented lives and their dreams of escaping the control.","PeriodicalId":193833,"journal":{"name":"Voicing the Cinema","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121542657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In his overview of Kurosawa Akira’s works, preeminent scholar of Japanese culture and film, Donald Richie, harshly evaluates the director’s 1975 film Dersu Uzala. Citing an increased emphasis on style over “a dynamic sense of character,” Richie argues that “Kurosawa has produced for the first time in his long and outstanding career a rather lifeless film.” Yet what is missed in Richie’s otherwise well-thought-out critique is Kurosawa’s increased concerns about the depictions of environments natural and urban through the film’s sound design. Produced in the early 1970s in the wake of serious environmental problems that plagued Japan’s rapid postwar recovery, the problematic relationship between humans and nature would have figured heavily in the minds of Kurosawa and his audience. In other words, listening to the meticulously crafted soundscapes of Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala allows scholars to reevaluate its importance within Kurosawa’s career and Japanese history more generally.
{"title":"Listening to Soundscapes in Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala (1975)","authors":"Brooke Mccorkle","doi":"10.5406/j.ctvz0hcn6.14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/j.ctvz0hcn6.14","url":null,"abstract":"In his overview of Kurosawa Akira’s works, preeminent scholar of Japanese culture and film, Donald Richie, harshly evaluates the director’s 1975 film Dersu Uzala. Citing an increased emphasis on style over “a dynamic sense of character,” Richie argues that “Kurosawa has produced for the first time in his long and outstanding career a rather lifeless film.” Yet what is missed in Richie’s otherwise well-thought-out critique is Kurosawa’s increased concerns about the depictions of environments natural and urban through the film’s sound design. Produced in the early 1970s in the wake of serious environmental problems that plagued Japan’s rapid postwar recovery, the problematic relationship between humans and nature would have figured heavily in the minds of Kurosawa and his audience. In other words, listening to the meticulously crafted soundscapes of Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala allows scholars to reevaluate its importance within Kurosawa’s career and Japanese history more generally.","PeriodicalId":193833,"journal":{"name":"Voicing the Cinema","volume":"244 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124243120","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In the silent cinema there was no soundtrack, nor indeed sonic accompaniment that was consistently applied to particular moving pictures in their various exhibition spaces. Least of all was there an established sound hierarchy in which “voice” occupied a particular place—central or otherwise. Rather, “silent cinema” was initially dominated by the notion of moving pictures as “attractions,” though, over its thirty years, it allowed for diverse representations of voice and vocality courtesy of a variety of cinematic systems, which might or might not have involved the creation of actual sound. This chapter outlines the many manifestations of cinematic “voice” in the silent cinema: onscreen speaking to which the audience is deaf, but which Isabelle Raynaud notes emanates from a screen world that is “hearing”; intertitles; bodily gesture; typed words on the screen; live voices in the theater variously describing the moving pictures, reading out title cards, lip synching dialogue or song, and so forth. The author draws on Brian Kane’s recent reconceptualization of “voice” as Phoné to theorize voice in the silent cinema in a way that moves beyond notions of vocal silence and audience deafness. For Kane, voice as Phoné “is distinct from three other terms with which it is often described”: echos, topos, and logos—roughly speaking, sound, site, and meaning. What Michel Chion describes as “elastic speech,” but which we can expand to silent cinema “voice,” might therefore be better conceptualized as a series of techniques necessitating a constant movement between different manifestations of echos, topos, and logos, created via various technologies or techniques (techê). Because echos is sometimes entirely absent in the silent cinema, the author argues that “apprehension” is more apt than “listening” as a description of how silent cinema’s representational systems for voice become intelligible to the viewer.
{"title":"Apprehending Human Voice in the “Silent Cinema”","authors":"Julie Brown","doi":"10.5406/j.ctvz0hcn6.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/j.ctvz0hcn6.5","url":null,"abstract":"In the silent cinema there was no soundtrack, nor indeed sonic accompaniment that was consistently applied to particular moving pictures in their various exhibition spaces. Least of all was there an established sound hierarchy in which “voice” occupied a particular place—central or otherwise. Rather, “silent cinema” was initially dominated by the notion of moving pictures as “attractions,” though, over its thirty years, it allowed for diverse representations of voice and vocality courtesy of a variety of cinematic systems, which might or might not have involved the creation of actual sound. This chapter outlines the many manifestations of cinematic “voice” in the silent cinema: onscreen speaking to which the audience is deaf, but which Isabelle Raynaud notes emanates from a screen world that is “hearing”; intertitles; bodily gesture; typed words on the screen; live voices in the theater variously describing the moving pictures, reading out title cards, lip synching dialogue or song, and so forth. The author draws on Brian Kane’s recent reconceptualization of “voice” as Phoné to theorize voice in the silent cinema in a way that moves beyond notions of vocal silence and audience deafness. For Kane, voice as Phoné “is distinct from three other terms with which it is often described”: echos, topos, and logos—roughly speaking, sound, site, and meaning. What Michel Chion describes as “elastic speech,” but which we can expand to silent cinema “voice,” might therefore be better conceptualized as a series of techniques necessitating a constant movement between different manifestations of echos, topos, and logos, created via various technologies or techniques (techê). Because echos is sometimes entirely absent in the silent cinema, the author argues that “apprehension” is more apt than “listening” as a description of how silent cinema’s representational systems for voice become intelligible to the viewer.","PeriodicalId":193833,"journal":{"name":"Voicing the Cinema","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130432435","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-01DOI: 10.5622/illinois/9780252043000.003.0015
This essay contributes to ongoing scholarly debate about the concepts of diegetic and nondiegetic music renewed by Robynn Stillwell’s proposal of a “fantastical gap.” More specifically, the author interrogates Ben Winters’ notion of a “nondiegetic fallacy” wherein Winters asserts that the viewer’s comprehension of manifestly unrealistic elements in cinema apply equally to consideration of the soundtrack. Rather than assume a priori that music belongs to a register external to the diegesis, we should consider the possibility that music has an ontological existence in each film’s peculiar universe irrespective of whether the characters within that world can hear it. Although the “nondiegetic fallacy” seems defensible from an ontological perspective, the author contends that Winters neglects the “principle of minimal departure,” an axiom used to explain why viewers assume certain continuities between their real-world experience and the fictional worlds they encounter. Without this heuristic, viewers would be unable to comprehend any cinematic fiction insofar as they’d have to track a potentially limitless set of questions about the way each unique filmic universe operates. This chapter also argues that Winters’s nondiegetic fallacy ignores music’s role as part of an integrated soundtrack. As shown in an analysis of The Fallen Sparrow, the premises of the nondiegetic fallacy apply equally to offscreen or subjective sound. By examining the vococentric nature of the soundtrack and its attendant principles of maximal sonic clarity, the author defends the utility of the diegetic/nondiegetic distinction by showing its necessity to spectators’ comprehension of film characters’ actions and motivations.
{"title":"Once More into the Breach","authors":"","doi":"10.5622/illinois/9780252043000.003.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252043000.003.0015","url":null,"abstract":"This essay contributes to ongoing scholarly debate about the concepts of diegetic and nondiegetic music renewed by Robynn Stillwell’s proposal of a “fantastical gap.” More specifically, the author interrogates Ben Winters’ notion of a “nondiegetic fallacy” wherein Winters asserts that the viewer’s comprehension of manifestly unrealistic elements in cinema apply equally to consideration of the soundtrack. Rather than assume a priori that music belongs to a register external to the diegesis, we should consider the possibility that music has an ontological existence in each film’s peculiar universe irrespective of whether the characters within that world can hear it. Although the “nondiegetic fallacy” seems defensible from an ontological perspective, the author contends that Winters neglects the “principle of minimal departure,” an axiom used to explain why viewers assume certain continuities between their real-world experience and the fictional worlds they encounter. Without this heuristic, viewers would be unable to comprehend any cinematic fiction insofar as they’d have to track a potentially limitless set of questions about the way each unique filmic universe operates. This chapter also argues that Winters’s nondiegetic fallacy ignores music’s role as part of an integrated soundtrack. As shown in an analysis of The Fallen Sparrow, the premises of the nondiegetic fallacy apply equally to offscreen or subjective sound. By examining the vococentric nature of the soundtrack and its attendant principles of maximal sonic clarity, the author defends the utility of the diegetic/nondiegetic distinction by showing its necessity to spectators’ comprehension of film characters’ actions and motivations.","PeriodicalId":193833,"journal":{"name":"Voicing the Cinema","volume":"23 22","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132938796","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-01DOI: 10.5622/illinois/9780252043000.003.0014
J. Staiger
Media scholars (and audiences) routinely make useful comparative analyses of films and television series. The problems of grouping texts are well known. This essay proposes a multidimensional approach to this critical activity, one that focuses on formulas, affects, and inflections. Narrative formulas and affects propel our sense of a genre; however, inflections such as stars, target audiences, locales, time periods, verisimilitude, taste markers, or performance styles can radically twist the base into something more complicated. One of the most important sorts of inflections is use of sound: aural effects, voice, and music. Such a multidimensional approach to grouping texts helps to resolve many anomalies in genre categorizing: for instance, the generic category of the musical. Scholars have tended to describe the musical based on Hollywood films created between 1930 and 1960. During this period, most musicals use a standard romance formula and vary the space and time to form several common “subgenres.” The author argues that, from the 1960s, artists begin to turn to other narrative formulas such as the male quest story (Tommy), horror (Sweeney Todd), the fallen-man melodrama (All That Jazz, Pennies from Heaven), and the bio pix (Hamilton). What the musical “is” is inflecting a narrative formula with a particular musical treatment—bursting into song or dance not necessarily provoked by a reasonably motivated diegetic event such as a nightclub act. Such an inflection of musical treatment could be applied to any narrative formula and has been. This essay explores this argument focusing on the comic/horror romance film Zombieland (2009) but with other examples to illustrate the viability of the critical approach and the functions of sound.
{"title":"Sound and the Comic/Horror Romance Film","authors":"J. Staiger","doi":"10.5622/illinois/9780252043000.003.0014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5622/illinois/9780252043000.003.0014","url":null,"abstract":"Media scholars (and audiences) routinely make useful comparative analyses of films and television series. The problems of grouping texts are well known. This essay proposes a multidimensional approach to this critical activity, one that focuses on formulas, affects, and inflections. Narrative formulas and affects propel our sense of a genre; however, inflections such as stars, target audiences, locales, time periods, verisimilitude, taste markers, or performance styles can radically twist the base into something more complicated. One of the most important sorts of inflections is use of sound: aural effects, voice, and music. Such a multidimensional approach to grouping texts helps to resolve many anomalies in genre categorizing: for instance, the generic category of the musical. Scholars have tended to describe the musical based on Hollywood films created between 1930 and 1960. During this period, most musicals use a standard romance formula and vary the space and time to form several common “subgenres.” The author argues that, from the 1960s, artists begin to turn to other narrative formulas such as the male quest story (Tommy), horror (Sweeney Todd), the fallen-man melodrama (All That Jazz, Pennies from Heaven), and the bio pix (Hamilton). What the musical “is” is inflecting a narrative formula with a particular musical treatment—bursting into song or dance not necessarily provoked by a reasonably motivated diegetic event such as a nightclub act. Such an inflection of musical treatment could be applied to any narrative formula and has been. This essay explores this argument focusing on the comic/horror romance film Zombieland (2009) but with other examples to illustrate the viability of the critical approach and the functions of sound.","PeriodicalId":193833,"journal":{"name":"Voicing the Cinema","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121465846","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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