A Theory of Film Music.docx

1、A Theory of Film MusicThe Three Regimes: A Theory of Film MusicRobert SpandeFilm music is a contingentnecessity. As Hegel described an absolute necessity and as Zizek interprets, it is a necessityin the form ofcontingency.1It has been said that film music originally appeared largely to cover up the

2、sound of the clanky machines which projected the earliest of the silent films.2The solution for this traumatic intrusion of the real, this contingency to be dealt with, was itself, contingency. Numerous else besides playing a piano could have solved this problem and ultimately did.Yet the accompanim

3、ent of film by music survived beyond the end of its means. The reason that film music survived and flourished, in that Cambrian explosion of diverse enjoyments in the late 1800s and early 1900s, was and is that it represents a flowering unfoldment3of a deeper necessity, located in the way subjects p

4、rocess reality.In both its historical and immediate form, film music exhibits the properties of avanishing mediator, a phenomenon which disappears necessarily from the field of its own effects.4Historically, the accompaniment of film by music was a solution to the problem of clanky projectors, a pro

5、blem which soon corrected itself, and the live piano player, or small orchestra with harmonium, disappeared from the film experience. What remains to this day is music wrought through virtually every film made. Thevanishing mediatoris a contingency through which rides a necessity. Yet for the necess

6、ity to flourish as such, the originary contingency must necessarily vanish.5In a more immediate sense this phenomenon still holds. We watch the film and music blares from every speaker, yet it remains, in large, unnoticed in the way that a normal musical experience, such as might be had in a concert

7、, is noticed and enjoyed. In a very necessary way, the film music becomes submerged, producing a field of effects, not the least of which is our enjoyable immersion in the movie. To remember back to the most enjoyable parts of the film rarely includes a similar remembrance of the music that accompan

8、ied them. Thus the film music often disappears from the effect (the memory) of the film/ film music complex.As such, the phenomenon of film music represents the quintessential postmodern object.6It is a chance object of this era of sciences of the real which has a more abstract structure to be reali

9、zed; an object which has stayed hidden and really only works while hidden, yet which tugs for hermeneutic scrutiny even as it is riven through the most banal of popular art.The deeper reality of film music, the necessity which found body in its lucky accident, involves the way the film tries to evok

10、e a sort of temporary and illusive film-subjectivity, which closely mimics our everyday subjectivity. To do this, the film must rely on tactics far beyond simply spinning a good yarn. The film experience must imitate in some way all three overlapping dimensions of subjective reality: the symbolic, t

11、he real and the imaginary. The method by which this is done involves very heavily the use of film music.There seems no doubt that films and film music work well together. As has been said, film without music is deadly.7There are few films that do well without it (The Asphalt Jungle is a notable exce

12、ption). There are also numerous examples of films which are ruined by their music. What I am trying to understand is that perfect fusion of diagetic reality with the traumatic intrusion of music from nowhere, seemingly from just outside the limits of the screen, the result of which as everyone will

13、agree, is the experience of being lost in a film, to have a film take you over. If one has not experienced this feeling, trust that millions have, as the affective experience of such films as E.T. and Gone With The Wind and King Kong do attest. These films rely heavily upon their nearly ideal fusion

14、 of film and film music.Movies represent a sense-system (of both meaning and sensorial phenomenon), like Morse-code and semaphore. What problematizes this analogy is the extent to which enjoyment is tied up in the film experience. We want to enjoy the film. We desire the feelings represented on the

15、screen. This is why I believe film to be comparable to the subjectivity of everyday life. We live every day drowning in words, all invented without our consent, and other representations which are rarely our own. Yet through this mess we trudge, wrapping our personality with numerous of these arbitr

16、ary significations, all the while striving toenjoy.Thus it is to the above mentioned overlapping dimensions of the symbolic, the imaginary and the real that we must return in order to understand just how film uses music to ensnare us in its delicious trap.The Three: The symbolic, the imaginary, and

17、the real (the SIR)Before diving directly into the ways that film music helps produce approximations of these three domains comprising subjectivity, it might be a good idea to try to understand them.The SIR are not discreet elements which work in concert or opposition or through any quickly described

18、 or apprehended way. They do not precede nor follow one another; they do none of them have any sort of priority or primacy over the other. They could be said to be three stones dropped simultaneously in a liquid, the interacting waves of each producing a node of negativity between them, the subject.

19、 Since we must start somewhere, lets begin with the real.The real is not, as often characterized, all that out there. It is not that which is indescribable, or undefinable, nor is it the ideal which can never be reached. The real is that which is symbolically unintegrateable to the subject. It is th

20、e domain of desire.The intertwined nature of the SIR is here nicely borne out, sinceThe real can be defined as that set of potentially signifiable objects which resist, via the imaginary, signification and integration into the symbolic of the subject.The importance of this domain is manifest in the

21、discourse of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis main objective is the disintegration of the analysands (the patients) injurious imaginary relation to the symptom,8via the integration of that real into the symbolic register.The prime example of the real is trauma, such as that produced by childhood abuse

22、, incest, or rape. Trauma is by definition that which is unintegrateable into the realm of signifiers. The real is that, the signification of which threatens to crumble the subjects world. That which is held at bay so that the consistency of the subject may continue to adhere. Yet this unknowable th

23、ing is nonetheless still there.Lacanwas famous for saying that the real always returns. It jumps out at us via contingent, unforeseeable events both internal and external. It could be the infamous freudian slip or just some chance occurrence which pulls the traumatic event back out into the limeligh

24、t.In this light it becomes eminently conceivable how something which is not present such as trauma, can still very much make its effects known, can even be seen as a cause of the subject.The symbolic is the realm of the differential. It is also the realm of Father and his Name, the realm of the Law.

25、 It can be perfunctorily equated with language and representation. Essential is the consideration of the alienating aspect of the symbolic. It is a concession to materiality of existence. An order into which the subject must enter in order to survive. Yet it is, at base, arbitrary. Perhaps it is thi

26、s fact: the concession to an order the systemiticity of which is rooted in chance, which creates the dimension of alienation, otherness with which the symbolic is so often identified. To enter it is to leave the imaginary absolute of the mirror stage. It is to be distanced forever, not only from the

27、 world of objects, but from ones self, epitomized in the way pronouns are attached identically to all. I is a signifier, separate from the real me which was there prior to symbolic thought. How indeed can this sign, which is dispensed to all, mean me, an individual so drastically different from all

28、those other Is out there?This arbitrary factor is the crux of the symbolic. We must be able to attach arbitrary signs to novel experiences and objects in order to survive in the real world. If this were not the case, each individual would be impelled to pore over his/her own psychology to find just

29、the right sound to name that four legged creature over there, or that thing over there growing out of the ground. The unfortunate result of this would be an eternal babelization of society. The cure for this dilemma would be to agree on a set of symbols which would necessarily appear to most as arbi

30、trary.In sum the symbolic field as it is sometimes called can also be readily described in relation to its two cohorts.The symbolic is that differential and penultimately9arbitrary system of signs and material marks which deny the real by way of the imaginary.As mentioned, the imaginary is the regim

31、e of Absolute. It is the realm of Mother. The realm of Love. It is not as its name suggests, the realm of imagination. It has much more to do with the word image embedded within it. It could be described as the desiring, embodied vision of the subject. Within this sphere eye and I become one.This ab

32、solute harkens back to the days when we were babies, who didnt know what we were, or what we werent. Specifically, it recalls the mirror stage, the moment when we all at some point set our selves adrift from the oneness of baby hood and tried to map that unity onto the differential nature of reality, onto objects and other subjects. Little sattelites of our self began to form around us like planets around a star, or like toys littered around a baby. The form of the imaginary is the binary relationship which is known as unity, where the other o