Monocentrism, or Soundtracks in Space

This chapter investigates how the introduction of stereo complicated Hollywood’s vococentric practices. It also reveals how sound technicians developed mixing techniques that preserved the salience of dialogue in multi-channel soundscapes. The author refers to such techniques as monocentrism and illustrates monocentric norms by analyzing the climactic scene from The Martian (2015). The chapter then examines how technicians often play with these norms in order to change the meaning of a given sequence. To demonstrate this phenomenon, the author analyzes the Louis and Bebe Barrons’s score to Forbidden Planet (1956) and argues that MGM’s rerecording engineers mixed the musical effects so that they panned to different locations within each theater, which thereby invited audiences to interpret these sounds as the voices of the film’s invisible monsters.