Film Music Ex Narratio

By Thor J. Haga

Author's Note: The following article (series) is a translated edition of my term paper from the Institute for Media Studies, University of Oslo, Norway -- hot out of the academic oven from earlier this summer. It is meant to work as a show-down with the ubiquitous notion that "film is book"; that film is mere storytelling -- using film music as a point-of-departure. I know parts of it can be very scholarly and heavy-handed, occasionally demanding knowledge of basic semiology and such, but please bear with me. Hopefully, you'll be able to find at least some new and/or controversial viewpoints in there -- and I'll only be happy for feedback: positive or negative! (alternatively, print it out and use it as a cure for insomnia instead of the refridgerator manual!) Please note that English is not my native language, so I'm sorry for any grammatical and/or semantic error that might occur.

1. INTRODUCTION: DOES FILM MUSIC EXIST OUTSIDE THE NARRATIVE?

1.1 Problems of representation and "visual bias"

One need only open any given newspaper, find the entertainment pages and glance casually at the film reviews to understand that it is the story or narrative which is the most important thing for Joe Moviegoer. I'm defining "narrative" in Bordwell and Thompson's spirit: "We shall consider a narrative to be a chain of events in cause-effect relationship occuring in time and space" (Bordwell & Thompson [1979] 1993: 65) or more specifically in Claude Bremond's familiar thesis, in which the subject attains a higher degree of influence: "All narrative consists of a discourse which integrates a sequence of events of human interest into the unity of a single plot" (Bremond [1966] 1980: 390). For practical reasons, I will equate the terms "story" and "narrative" in the following, although a certain distinction exists between them.

Most commercial film reviews, then, have evolved to function as "pocket reviews" of the film's story, possibly seasoned with a value judgement or two towards the end (if you're lucky). Film has somehow become an impersonal extension of the camp fire-tradition, in which stories are communicated to a collective -- movie audience or children with barbecue sticks -- and it might seem like the experience of reading from a book or seeing a film is differentiated only by the varying means the two media offer. Most of the film medium's inherent qualities, among them its capability to present a pure, audiovisual "tableau" in the tradition of visual arts, have thus been submitted to a strict, narrative function. This is obviously the result of the classical Hollywood paradigm that institutionalized itself in the 30's, and whose rigid code of "invisible," continous presentation of a story has influenced a whole world of film makers since.

In this environment, film music has received somewhat of a paradoxical nature. First of all, one would think that non-diegetic film music -- which apparently exists without any visual source in the narrative universe -- undermines the strive for a realistic, "invisible" style. Second, there is nothing in music qua music; in the abstract grammar of music that would imply that it is capable of representing anything, much less narration. Unlike verbal language, there is nothing in a chord or rhythm that points to a referent in reality, other than the connotations we tie to various musical structures (more about this later). Danish film theorist Birger Langkjær writes:

Music is not a symbolic stand-in for something else, but rather a formal structure, which receives meaning through the power of something else, which the listener brings with him in the shape of gestalt-like schematics, that, through the listener's metaphoric projection adds expressive qualities to the music, and thereby makes the music understandable (Langkjær 1998: 44)

Öalthough music in itself is non-representational , the repeated occurence of a musical motif with representational elements in a film (images, speech) can cause the music to carry representational meaning as well (Gorbman 1987: 27)

Claudia Gorbman consequently suggests a recontextualisation of the entire parallell/contrast-dichotomy:

Is there no other way to qualify film music that does not lie between these opposites but outside them? If we must summarize music-image and music-narrative relationships in two words or less, mutual implication is more accurate, especially with respect to films of any narrative complexity. The notions of parallel and counterpoint erroneously assume that the image is autonomous. Further, it is debatable that information conveyed by disparate media can justifiably be called the same or different (Gorbman 1987: 15)

"Anchorage" is semantic interference between two different systems of expression and thus a question of mutual articulation: the text [here: the music ­ ed.] points out the pictorial elements of content because the picture in a similar process points out the textual content (Larsen 1998: 10)

So, what were these principles, exactly? Claudia Gorbman har essayed a tentative summary (Gorbman 1987: 73):

1. 'Invisibility' -- the technical apparatus that produces non-diegetic film music must remain invisible
2. 'Inaudibility' -- music must not be heard consciously, and should be submitted to dialogue, the visuals etc.
3. 'Signifier of emotion' -- music can suggest moods and emotions, but is first and foremost a signifier of 'emotion' per se
4. 'Narrative cueing' -- music should work a) 'referentially'/'narratively' -- indicate point-of-view and character/setting, and b) 'connotatively' -- interpret and illustrate narrative events
5. 'Continuity' -- music should fill "gaps"; contribute formal and rhythmic continuity
6. 'Unity' -- achieved through variation and repetition of musical material
7. One might break with any of the above rules within the boundaries of reason
 
 

1.2 Film music ex narratio?

So far, so good. One has, then, managed to argue that music has some sort of "function" in film despite the film medium's visual bias and the music medium's inherent non-representability. And one has managed to argue that it is consequently possible to form certain essential principles -- a manual -- on how this function is to be sustained. But what has happened in the process, and what the above list confirms, is that the narration has taken completely over and literally devoured elements that otherwise could have worked as autonomous qualities -- the conjuring up of emotions, atmospheric descriptions or purified symbolism, to mention three. In a process that probably would make Meyerhold turn in his grave, form is no longer considered content. How is it possible to say that an artform such as film, which in many ways is an extension of Wagner's "gesamtkunstwerk" and which is capable of so much more than simply telling a story, have to wear a narrative straitjacket at all costs?

Fortunately, I'm not alone in recognizing this curious dilemma. Russell Lack quotes Eisenstein: "Öthe plot is no more than a device without which one isn't yet capable of telling something to the spectator", and adds, "what he meant was that cinematic form was at least a powerful a determinant of the film's impact as the narrative structure" (Lack 1997: 73).

Anahid Kassabian is likewise concernced with the medium's extra-narrative and extra-visual qualities:

There is no more sense in calling a visual object of analysis a "film" than there is in calling a screenplay a "film". A film as perceived by any kind of audience -- public or scholarly -- has words, sounds, images and music. It is not merely "seen", as in "I saw the greatest film the other day", nor simply viewed by "film viewers" (Kassabian 2001: 5)

The problem is that each principle isolates one aspect of the process of the film music's functions, but only one [and they do] not allow for differences in perceiver's relations to the music, nor for how they might differ in perception of meaning and emotion when the specific scene is analyzed as an entire unit (Kassabian 2001: 41)

In the growing flora of film music theory that twines its way past the narrative dictatorship, there are many alternative interpretations -- often with a point-of-departure in reception theory and culture studies. Aforementioned Kassabian investigates film music as an instrument in identification processes. The feminist Caryl Flinn claims that film music has a utopian power that ties the spectator to "lost maternal objects" in typical freudian fashion. Royal S. Brown, originally a rigid formalist, makes some interesting comparisons between film music and myth. My goal is more generally to see whether (Hollywood) film music also offers extra-narrative pleasure, what this means and if it can be considered to be a quality in and of itself -- by using as a point-of-departure three functions located in, paradoxically, narration in Gorbman's point three and four: feelings, atmosphere and symbolism.

I have to make a passing remark that due to missing musical education, there is no music-technical terminology beyond the essential here. As a literature/film theorist said about film music:"Ödebarred from the lingua franca of music criticism, [the film analyst] decides to say nothing at all" (Carroll 1986: 73). I wish at the very least to say something, and claim my right to do so.

To be Continued in the Next Lost Issue...

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