Since its inception, Television as a medium has enjoyed a hand-in-hand relationship with social commentary. Though it is sometimes easily dismissed as mere entertainment, television programs have a surprising amount of sway in the point of views that we as a society so doggedly cling to. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., a famed cultural critic and public intellectual, argues that the Black urban sitcoms of the 1970’s, specifically Good Times, represented both the greatest potential for representing Black life in television’s history and also the greatest failure. This is mainly because while the show was not only an extension of the American nuclear family in pursuit of the American Dream, but also an accurate depiction of Black family life and issues in an urban and for the most part poor area of an inner city, metropolitan area. However, that show’s particular failure stemmed from its devolution of one of the character’s role to something of a minstrel character, a buffoon that was a reminder of racist propaganda, as well as portrayal of the ghettos as a place where life was tough but manageable, which is incredibly false if one would ask any person that grew up in such conditions. By analyzing the “Vanessa’s Rich” episode of The Cosby Show, it is apparent that this more contemporary urban situational comedy does prove itself in myriad ways that it is capable of painting African Americans in a positive light, yet certain aspects of the show do tend to highlight what might be considered a “failure” in cultural and racial sensitivity.
Before going in an in-depth analysis of the television episode, the viewer must acquaint herself with the documentary in reference. In Marlon Riggs’ documentary Color Adjustment, the viewer is asked to reexamine and recognize the amount of racial subliminal subtexts were present through the popular shows of the time, such as Amos and Andy, The Nat King Cole Show, I Spy, Good Times, Roots, and The Cosby Show. The documentary outlines almost half a century’s worth of race relations by analyzing the racial myths and stereotypes perpetuated on prime time entertainment. To explain it in brevity, Color Adjustment attempts to show how African Americans were slowly allowed to join in the various portrayals of the American family and American Dream that were prevalent and central to the networks’ agenda of keeping viewers entertained in between commercials, only so far as their presence adhered to the strict ideals already in place of a wholesome, nuclear American family and their pursuit of the American Dream. However, one cannot overlook how prime time television networks managed to absorb and integrate divisive racial commentary and conflict into a more conventional and auspicious mode as a nightly sitcom.
To start, we should review the different aspects of the “Vanessa’s Rich” episode. Decrypting the visual and aural elements is necessary to understanding the points of both potential greatness and potential failure in The Cosby Show’s portrayal of the Black American family. With regards to form, the plotline of the episode rotates between Cliff’s problems with his television remote (as well as his contention with the cooking show that his wife insists on watching), Vanessa’s refusal to accept her social-economic status without a fight (literally), and Theo’s difficulties in teaching Rudy how to play checkers. This formula accomplishes a few things: first, that the show is foremost a comedy, so important socio-economic issues are sandwiched between more light-hearted vignettes about life with the Huxtable family; and second, that the television writers of that show exhibited an amazing skill of making a story about something boring and commonplace seem downright interesting compared to real life. On a side note, one interesting thing that separates sitcoms from other forms of drama and such on television is the way that the camera works during dialogue; most of the time, the camera cuts back and forth between the people on the screen, at a medium shot range, and never breaks the axis of action. However, there are rarely any establishing shots, mostly due to the back and forth nature of the comedic medium, but also to highlight the characters’ opposing views in light-hearted manner.
Aesthetically speaking, it is easy to say that this family is well off; The Cosby Show takes place in an upper-middle class neighborhood, with actual houses (contrary to the projects of other shows, like Good Times), nice cars, nice clothing, and—as the viewer learns—extremely expensive paintings. All these things are incredibly nice, yet the Huxtable family represented an ideal for the American people, an imaginary Middle; though it was an African American family, they were held as a racial norm, a class norm, an aspirational ideal of what the “good life” is, and how one could attain it: work hard; have the right values and morals; have the right kind of aspirations and desires and in the end, it will be all right. Before The Cosby Show, Americans were bombarded with mostly negative images of the black family, but this program represented a kind of hope that such a positive all-American family could diminish feelings of racism.
The music, dialogue, and effects are all there to provide an extra helping of Black culture with a side of socially acceptable things white people like. For instance, the jazz interludes that precede each cut to and from commercials are clearly a reference to African American culture, seeing as how Jazz (in all its forms) is credited almost exclusively to African American musicians in the early twentieth century. However, as opposed to rap music and b-boy culture that started around the same time that The Cosby Show aired, Jazz was socially acceptable by white people. At the same time, the dialogue appealed to all kinds of people; while Bill Cosby himself had, at times, a slight vernacular twinge of English that most African Americans could identify with, yet his television co-star wife had refined English that any white person outside of the Deep South would recognize as that of a college-educated woman. Lastly, the laugh track, which had become a core part of the American sitcom, is central to keeping the audience on point, by allowing viewers to know explicitly when something is “funny” in the context of the show. By analyzing the different ways that the programs on television seek to establish common ground for the consumer to attach themselves to, we realize that television does have a large amount of sway over the mindsets of our society as a whole. However, Henry Gates, Jr. does make a good point in Color Adjustment, in that images and sound are only one part in a larger formula for social behavior, and that they cannot be given this magnitude of importance; African Americans are not “free” if they control these images of the American family and pursuit of happiness, and more importantly, these images do not have the autonomy to liberate our culture from the transgressions of the past.
The greatest potential of The Cosby Show that is referenced in the episode, “Vanessa’s Rich,” is comprised of a few major tenets: the powerful seduction of the well-to-do Black family; the reaffirmation of the American Dream and hardcore middle class family; and a depiction of a city family that was nuclear and solid. For the first point, the Huxtable family is the family that almost everyone wishes they grew up in. Let’s be honest, if your family being “rich” is your largest concern, then I’m pretty sure almost everyone in America would be more than happy to switch places with you. This was especially potent during the 1980’s when the show was first aired, as the American economy was not doing too well; the worsening polarization between the rich and poor was becoming readily apparent, and many African Americans were experiencing especially trying economic times. This dream of the happy, the harmonious, and the successful Black family was really a watershed moment in American prime time network television. This television family was like a mythic sanctuary, a shield against social crisis and the troubles of the “real world.” Little things, like Rudy complimenting Theo on being a good teacher, or Vanessa stressing over the alleged importance of winning over the respect of two of the most popular girls in school, are really what make this show appealing to people of all races and creed, and all work together to promote a positive image of the African American family.
There are, however, some points of contention to the positive images of life in an African American family that The Cosby Show projects. For instance, the show suffers from the “buffoon” syndrome, where the main character acts outrageously on purpose, usually reinforcing bad Black stereotypes, to gain marginal comedic effect. Bill Cosby’s dancing and rhyming in “Vanessa’s Rich” are all charming on the surface, yet wholly unnecessary and somewhat detrimental to the pristine image that the show as a whole has projected. In addition, the two television shows that Cliff and Claire Huxtable fight over are extreme parodies of their respective genres as well as intrinsic Black culture and contribute to The Cosby Show’s failure to present African Americans in a sensitive way. With the cooking show, the emphasis on chicken and beans in conjunction with the announcer’s unintelligible Southern drawl would be considered crossing the line if the show had been produced by anyone other than an African American. Yet, the mother of the family, who is also a partner in a prestigious law firm, finds the show entertaining to watch; this is, at best, unrealistic, and at worst an example of The Cosby Show’s failure. On the other hand, the music show that Cliff would rather watch is also a poorly executed representation of Black culture. The show boasts the same Ebonics-laden voiceover as the other TV show, and is, at the very least, racially and culturally insensitive given the context in which this program operates. The greatest failure of The Cosby Show, as presented in the episode “Vanessa’s Rich,” is the show’s inability to escape from the use of a minstrel character and borderline insensitive characterizations that have plagued other contemporary African American entertainers.
In the end, the episode “Vanessa’s Rich” from The Cosby Show is representative of how the show itself is really a monument to how far African Americans have progressed in prime time network television. The image of a well-to-do Black family is a powerful and progressive idea, one that has entertained America for decades and is only now getting the respect cultural significance it deserves. Though there are a few shortcomings in the episode that could contribute to a sort of failure to accurately and fairly portray the modern African American family, the program does manage to present itself as a significant foray into our culture and society that paints the life in a Black family as positive and worthy of attaining the American Dream.
Friday, June 10, 2011
Monday, June 6, 2011
The Sound and its Fury: Classical Hollywood Practice in Rear Window and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The Sound and its Fury: Classical Hollywood Practice in Rear Window
and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Although the natural progress of classical Hollywood narrative has both been revered and disregarded over the film industry’s long history, comparatively few films have experimented extensively with audio. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) and Michael Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), the soundtracks are elevated in their roles from a mere background contribution to become significant narrative devices. Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind both support Claudia Gorbman’s principles of classical Hollywood sound and music: the former, through the use of continuous diegetic sound that creates universal continuity; and the latter, through the vibrant use of varied narrative levels of music and sound that establishes ontological and illocutionary boundaries (and crosses them) in addition to engendering an empathic response in the viewer.
To begin, it is necessary to define classical film music: Gorbman posits that classical Hollywood music seeks to anchor the film’s meaning, highlight the spectacle happening onscreen, and create a pleasurable bonding experience for the audience (“Classical” 166). She outlines seven principles of film music that composition, mixing, and editing strive to create. The source of the music strives to be invisible, as well as figuratively inaudible, i.e. subordinate to the dialogue and visuals. Also, the music should be a signifier for emotion—by changing tonality or tempo to match what is happening on-screen—as well as serve as a form of narrative cueing, by punctuating or reflecting actions of the characters (“Classical” 169). Continuity and Unity merely refer to the idea that music should strive to construct a contiguous narrative whole, with the use of formal and rhythmic continuity or repetition and variation of motifs to aid in the reconstruction of the story. Finally, Gorbman is careful to note that violation of any one of the principles of film audio does not preclude a film from being classified as Classical, so long as it serves to uphold any other principles (“Classical” 183). On a secondary note, there are some unconventional terms that require elucidation. First, the realms of the extradiegetic (the ontological level of narration), the intradiegetic (the level of the story as it unfolds), and the metadiegetic (embedded narratives within the diegetic world) are used as technical terms to explain narrative hierarchy (Campora 124). Second, film audio is comprised of music, which refers to the melodic (or dissonant) soundtrack of the movie, while film sound strictly refers to diegetic noises (either through foley or other means of audio manipulation).
Of course, it is also important to note that Rear Window and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are two very different films, both with regards to narration as well as sound. Rear Window at heart follows the tenets of David Bordwell’s idea of a “classical” narration with a clearly defined linear storyline of “beginning-middle-end.” Eternal Sunshine is definitely less so, as it relies mostly on nonlinear narration and forces the viewer into a surreal point-of-view in order to explore the fragmented psyche of a heartbroken man. However, both these films support and uphold principles of Classical film music as set forth by Gorbman. Both are comparable due to the way sound functions as a bridge between the illocutionary and the ontological; in Rear Window, the world of the intradiegetic apartment of the protagonist is crossed with the metadiegetic sound of the apartments surrounding it, while in Eternal Sunshine, the lines become blurred with the aural overlap between the real world (intradiegetic) and dream world (metadiegetic). In essence, Rear Window can be analyzed using Campora’s terminology, where the intradiegetic world of LB Jeffries (James Stewart) is where much of the narrative takes place, and the audience is forced to experience everything from the protagonist’s point of view; likewise, the metadiegetic worlds of the neighbors that Jeffries is privy to exist outside of his immediate reality, and is only able to be seen and understood through his perspective, his windows and his camera. Despite some superficial deviations from the classical paradigm, the use of ambient sound to create specific emotional atmospheres as well as modulation of existing sound is also important in understanding Gondry’s film in a classical sense.
The invisibility and inaudibility of Rear Window’s soundtrack has been argued to be both classical and less-than-classical (Weis 108). However, evidence suggests that the music present in the film subordinates itself to the dialogue just enough to be considered a work of classical Hollywood practice. Though the myriad songs and tunes that echo through the courtyard and through the windows of LB Jeffries’ apartment seem to dominate the soundstage, instances where the music is notably muted while the camera is “inside” Jeffries’ apartment and louder “outside” is indicative of the film’s classical sound design. However, the soundtrack remains insistent on itself by reminding the audience of its existence, such as around 1:03:00, where Jeffries’ and Lisa Freemont’s (Grace Kelly) conversation is underscored by the party across the courtyard, yet it remains merely part of the background atmosphere and carefully avoids overshadowing Jeffries’ and Lisa’s romantic conversation. “Underscoring” in this film heavily permeates the fabrication of the diegetic world of Rear Window; Hitchcock deliberately used this sort of asynchronous sound instead of redundantly showing the origin of the sound (Weis 109). This disassociation between sound and image, particularly through the use of “underscoring” and layering as opposed to consecutively processed sound is crucial to helping the audience establish a cohesive world within the film. Hitchcock went through great lengths to draw the audience into the film without creating any situations where important dialogue would be drowned out by diegetic music or noise.
The soundtrack of Rear Window also follows Claudia Gorbman’s principles of signifying emotion and cueing narrative action (“Classical” 169). There are quite a few scenes where the music reflects the emotions of the protagonist—or deuteragonist, e.g. person of secondary importance, or foil to the main character, in Lisa’s case. For instance, at around 25:00, Lisa’s theme can be heard as she sets the dinner plates and plates the food; however, the tonality of the song changes to a minor key, reflecting the hurt look on her face as Jeffries tells her sarcastically that the dinner is “Perfect… as always.” Another example can be seen even earlier, at around seven minutes in, where Jeffries is surveying the courtyard as usual and is suddenly attacked by the urge to scratch his leg beneath his cast; as he feels relief from using the scratching stick, the music relieves itself as well and slows in tempo and vitality. This use of connotative narration reinforces the fact that Rear Window utilizes techniques from classical Hollywood practice in order to create a believable and unified movie world.
In Rear Window, Hitchcock also used the sounds and music to create a sense of continuity and unity throughout the movie. For instance, since the movie relies heavily on shot/reverse shot editing, the omnipresent audio that floats throughout the apartment complex’s courtyard serves to create an audial, and therefore spatial, whole. The musical scores that seem to overlap each other throughout the movie serve as a counterpoint to the lack of interaction between the neighbors, juxtaposing the multiple intermingled and prevalent audio presences with their seemingly antagonistic relationships with each other. Additionally, transitions between scenes are also significant with regards to audial continuity. The use of “background” sounds such as city traffic, kids yelling and laughing, as well as an undisclosed woman singing scales create seamless transitions between scenes and diegetic songs. Moreover, motifs that are repeated multiple times, such as Dean Martin’s “That’s Amore” for the newlyweds, or the whistling of the dog-owning couple, or even the development of the “Lisa” song serve to aid the “construction of formal and narrative unity” (“Classical” 169). All of these attributes of continuity and unity are brought full circle by the music in the beginning and end credits; the music begins disguised as a non-diegetic jazz piece, which fades in quality and ends in a commercial, where it is revealed to be merely the radio playing in the studio apartment of the piano composer. To bring the narrative full circle, the effect is reversed in the very last minutes of the film, where the composer plays a recorded version of the “Lisa” theme, which builds from scratchy and tinny diegetic music into a non-diegetic and studio-produced soundtrack.
Claudia Gorbman’s tenets of invisibility and inaudibility with regards to Eternal Sunshine require slightly more forethought in explanation. It should be noted that the music does indeed overtake or is foisted upon the viewer with more emphasis than the dialogue in more than a few places within the film (which comes with the territory, since Michael Gondry was and is a respected music video director). That being said, these exceptions to the rule of “inaudibility” only serve to reinforce other tenets of the paradigm. For instance, at around twenty four minutes in, the crescendo of music swells over the dialogue and bubbles over Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and his friend, Rob Eakin’s (David Cross) conversation. While this particular example happens to violate the idea of “subordination to the voice,” the audience backseats the concern since the “spectator’s attention focuses on the action, the sound, or the very narrative change that the music is helping to dramatize” (“Classical” 172). In this case, the shrieking of the violins to induce suspense transform into an oboe of dejection when Joel reads a card that explains that Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) has erased all her memories of him . The same principle applies to the much of the dialogue within the metadiegetic plotline of the story, especially due to the distortion of the sound when Joel’s memory is being slowly wiped away.
Despite Eternal Sunshine’s anticlassical narration, the use of emotional signifiers and narrative cueing attests to the classical status of the film’s audio. Generally, most music (when it appears, as silence is given just as much emphasis as sound) within the film appears to add an emotional layer to the narrative that is happening on screen. For example, at around 42:30, Joel and Clementine have a particularly heated exchange about Clementine’s supposed ability to raise a child. The music, however, with its plucking cellos and awkward timing, only serve to align the audience with Joel’s perspective, reinforcing his confusion and reluctance to argue. Other examples can be seen even earlier in the film: at around five minutes in, when Joel and Clementine meet aboard the train for the “first” time, the cautious and tip-toeing oboe that interacts with the polka-like enthusiasm of the clarinets reflects the attitudes that the two characters possess onscreen, respectively, as well as start up only when the two are interacting, as opposed to the stark silence of their solitude. On the other hand, the specific distortion of music and sound is used in connotation with the loss of Joel’s memory; when things on screen begin to blur or disappear entirely, the audio begins to fade into static and become muddled. This use of forced sound perspective to imply spatial and ideological distance only serves to reinforce the shifting perspectives that happen onscreen. In these cases, Gorbman proposes that the music in a standard narrative film works “[invite] the spectator to contemplate,” and “[help] to make a spectacle of the images it accompanies,” as well as providing an extra dimension of emotional connotation (“Unheard” 68).
In addition to emotional layering, narrative cueing and continuity is utilized through the use of sound bridges, especially Campora’s idea of “sonic metalepsis.” A metalepsis, as contextualized by Campora, is a transgression of the boundaries between the ontological (separate realities entirely) or illocutionary (separate temporalities/spaces in similar realities). A perfect example of an ontological intrusion happens around 32:35, where Joel (and therefore the audience) hears the two Lacuna employees speaking to each other while he is recalling his trip to the “memory specialist”; their voices permeate into Joel’s immediate reality, even though their dialogue happens on a completely different level of the narrative. The same thing happens around 54:32, where Joel realizes what is happening, and intensely regrets his decision to remove his memories of Clementine—his wails of anguish are overlapped with “Something” by The Willowz, which reveals that his apartment has all but been taken over by the stoned Lacuna employees. Though Campora’s argument about sonic metalepsis emphasizes its alleged anti-classical and nonconventional use in a multi-strand narrative, his last paragraph on the matter explains that the sound bridges that shift between the intradiegetic and metadiegetic levels of the film are visibly and audibly marked (as opposed to art cinema) to reduce narrative complexity (128). A sound bridge by any other name is still a sound bridge—it still acts formally in the same way, by providing visual and rhythmic continuity between shots and filling the gap within scene or shot transitions. Ultimately, sonic metalepsis only reinforces Gorbman’s principle of narrative cueing through the use of shifted character subjectivity (point-of-view), supplying formal demarcations, and establishing setting and characters (169).
In Eternal Sunshine, Gondry sticks closely to Gorbman’s principle of unity through the use of specific motifs and recurring bits of music. For instance, the same dissonant orchestral piece plays when Joel and Clementine try to escape the looming and inexorable destruction of his memories, which leads to a sense of pressure and deadline within the audience. The example used earlier, where the oboe and clarinet engage in a sort of hesitant dialogue, is used again around 1:05:40, but is instead transposed for an entire string ensemble; the added depth of the characters’ agitation in holding together Joel’s fragmented psyche is reflected in the staccato’d strokes of the cellos and violins. Finally, the theme “Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime” by Beck is played at the chronological “beginning” of the movie seventeen minutes in, and reflects the intense sorrow that Joel feels when Clementine breaks up their relationship; however, the theme is played again at the end of the film, where they both hesitantly decide to rekindle their relationship. Much like Rear Window, this repetition and variation of musical themes “contributes much to the dramaturgy and [clarity] of [the film’s] formal” structure (Gorbman 183).
In the end, Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind both support Claudia Gorbman’s principles of classical Hollywood sound and music: Rear Window, through the use of continuous diegetic sound that creates universal continuity; and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, through the vibrant use of varied narrative levels of music and sound that establishes ontological and illocutionary boundaries (and crosses them) in addition to engendering an empathic response in the viewer.
Campora, Matthew. "Art Cinema and New Hollywood: Multiform Narrative and Sonic Metalepsis in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." New Review of Film and Television Studies 7.2 (2009): 119-31. Print.
Claudia Gorbman, “Classical Hollywood Practice,” in Critical Visions in Film Theory:
Classic and Contemporary Readings ed. Timothy Corrigan et al (Boston: Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 2011), 165-185.
Claudia Gorbman, “Identification,” Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music
(London: BFI, 1987) 64-69.
Weis, Elisabeth. The Silent Scream: Alfred Hitchcock's Sound Track. Rutherford [N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1982. Print.
and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Although the natural progress of classical Hollywood narrative has both been revered and disregarded over the film industry’s long history, comparatively few films have experimented extensively with audio. In Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) and Michael Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), the soundtracks are elevated in their roles from a mere background contribution to become significant narrative devices. Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind both support Claudia Gorbman’s principles of classical Hollywood sound and music: the former, through the use of continuous diegetic sound that creates universal continuity; and the latter, through the vibrant use of varied narrative levels of music and sound that establishes ontological and illocutionary boundaries (and crosses them) in addition to engendering an empathic response in the viewer.
To begin, it is necessary to define classical film music: Gorbman posits that classical Hollywood music seeks to anchor the film’s meaning, highlight the spectacle happening onscreen, and create a pleasurable bonding experience for the audience (“Classical” 166). She outlines seven principles of film music that composition, mixing, and editing strive to create. The source of the music strives to be invisible, as well as figuratively inaudible, i.e. subordinate to the dialogue and visuals. Also, the music should be a signifier for emotion—by changing tonality or tempo to match what is happening on-screen—as well as serve as a form of narrative cueing, by punctuating or reflecting actions of the characters (“Classical” 169). Continuity and Unity merely refer to the idea that music should strive to construct a contiguous narrative whole, with the use of formal and rhythmic continuity or repetition and variation of motifs to aid in the reconstruction of the story. Finally, Gorbman is careful to note that violation of any one of the principles of film audio does not preclude a film from being classified as Classical, so long as it serves to uphold any other principles (“Classical” 183). On a secondary note, there are some unconventional terms that require elucidation. First, the realms of the extradiegetic (the ontological level of narration), the intradiegetic (the level of the story as it unfolds), and the metadiegetic (embedded narratives within the diegetic world) are used as technical terms to explain narrative hierarchy (Campora 124). Second, film audio is comprised of music, which refers to the melodic (or dissonant) soundtrack of the movie, while film sound strictly refers to diegetic noises (either through foley or other means of audio manipulation).
Of course, it is also important to note that Rear Window and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are two very different films, both with regards to narration as well as sound. Rear Window at heart follows the tenets of David Bordwell’s idea of a “classical” narration with a clearly defined linear storyline of “beginning-middle-end.” Eternal Sunshine is definitely less so, as it relies mostly on nonlinear narration and forces the viewer into a surreal point-of-view in order to explore the fragmented psyche of a heartbroken man. However, both these films support and uphold principles of Classical film music as set forth by Gorbman. Both are comparable due to the way sound functions as a bridge between the illocutionary and the ontological; in Rear Window, the world of the intradiegetic apartment of the protagonist is crossed with the metadiegetic sound of the apartments surrounding it, while in Eternal Sunshine, the lines become blurred with the aural overlap between the real world (intradiegetic) and dream world (metadiegetic). In essence, Rear Window can be analyzed using Campora’s terminology, where the intradiegetic world of LB Jeffries (James Stewart) is where much of the narrative takes place, and the audience is forced to experience everything from the protagonist’s point of view; likewise, the metadiegetic worlds of the neighbors that Jeffries is privy to exist outside of his immediate reality, and is only able to be seen and understood through his perspective, his windows and his camera. Despite some superficial deviations from the classical paradigm, the use of ambient sound to create specific emotional atmospheres as well as modulation of existing sound is also important in understanding Gondry’s film in a classical sense.
The invisibility and inaudibility of Rear Window’s soundtrack has been argued to be both classical and less-than-classical (Weis 108). However, evidence suggests that the music present in the film subordinates itself to the dialogue just enough to be considered a work of classical Hollywood practice. Though the myriad songs and tunes that echo through the courtyard and through the windows of LB Jeffries’ apartment seem to dominate the soundstage, instances where the music is notably muted while the camera is “inside” Jeffries’ apartment and louder “outside” is indicative of the film’s classical sound design. However, the soundtrack remains insistent on itself by reminding the audience of its existence, such as around 1:03:00, where Jeffries’ and Lisa Freemont’s (Grace Kelly) conversation is underscored by the party across the courtyard, yet it remains merely part of the background atmosphere and carefully avoids overshadowing Jeffries’ and Lisa’s romantic conversation. “Underscoring” in this film heavily permeates the fabrication of the diegetic world of Rear Window; Hitchcock deliberately used this sort of asynchronous sound instead of redundantly showing the origin of the sound (Weis 109). This disassociation between sound and image, particularly through the use of “underscoring” and layering as opposed to consecutively processed sound is crucial to helping the audience establish a cohesive world within the film. Hitchcock went through great lengths to draw the audience into the film without creating any situations where important dialogue would be drowned out by diegetic music or noise.
The soundtrack of Rear Window also follows Claudia Gorbman’s principles of signifying emotion and cueing narrative action (“Classical” 169). There are quite a few scenes where the music reflects the emotions of the protagonist—or deuteragonist, e.g. person of secondary importance, or foil to the main character, in Lisa’s case. For instance, at around 25:00, Lisa’s theme can be heard as she sets the dinner plates and plates the food; however, the tonality of the song changes to a minor key, reflecting the hurt look on her face as Jeffries tells her sarcastically that the dinner is “Perfect… as always.” Another example can be seen even earlier, at around seven minutes in, where Jeffries is surveying the courtyard as usual and is suddenly attacked by the urge to scratch his leg beneath his cast; as he feels relief from using the scratching stick, the music relieves itself as well and slows in tempo and vitality. This use of connotative narration reinforces the fact that Rear Window utilizes techniques from classical Hollywood practice in order to create a believable and unified movie world.
In Rear Window, Hitchcock also used the sounds and music to create a sense of continuity and unity throughout the movie. For instance, since the movie relies heavily on shot/reverse shot editing, the omnipresent audio that floats throughout the apartment complex’s courtyard serves to create an audial, and therefore spatial, whole. The musical scores that seem to overlap each other throughout the movie serve as a counterpoint to the lack of interaction between the neighbors, juxtaposing the multiple intermingled and prevalent audio presences with their seemingly antagonistic relationships with each other. Additionally, transitions between scenes are also significant with regards to audial continuity. The use of “background” sounds such as city traffic, kids yelling and laughing, as well as an undisclosed woman singing scales create seamless transitions between scenes and diegetic songs. Moreover, motifs that are repeated multiple times, such as Dean Martin’s “That’s Amore” for the newlyweds, or the whistling of the dog-owning couple, or even the development of the “Lisa” song serve to aid the “construction of formal and narrative unity” (“Classical” 169). All of these attributes of continuity and unity are brought full circle by the music in the beginning and end credits; the music begins disguised as a non-diegetic jazz piece, which fades in quality and ends in a commercial, where it is revealed to be merely the radio playing in the studio apartment of the piano composer. To bring the narrative full circle, the effect is reversed in the very last minutes of the film, where the composer plays a recorded version of the “Lisa” theme, which builds from scratchy and tinny diegetic music into a non-diegetic and studio-produced soundtrack.
Claudia Gorbman’s tenets of invisibility and inaudibility with regards to Eternal Sunshine require slightly more forethought in explanation. It should be noted that the music does indeed overtake or is foisted upon the viewer with more emphasis than the dialogue in more than a few places within the film (which comes with the territory, since Michael Gondry was and is a respected music video director). That being said, these exceptions to the rule of “inaudibility” only serve to reinforce other tenets of the paradigm. For instance, at around twenty four minutes in, the crescendo of music swells over the dialogue and bubbles over Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and his friend, Rob Eakin’s (David Cross) conversation. While this particular example happens to violate the idea of “subordination to the voice,” the audience backseats the concern since the “spectator’s attention focuses on the action, the sound, or the very narrative change that the music is helping to dramatize” (“Classical” 172). In this case, the shrieking of the violins to induce suspense transform into an oboe of dejection when Joel reads a card that explains that Clementine Kruczynski (Kate Winslet) has erased all her memories of him . The same principle applies to the much of the dialogue within the metadiegetic plotline of the story, especially due to the distortion of the sound when Joel’s memory is being slowly wiped away.
Despite Eternal Sunshine’s anticlassical narration, the use of emotional signifiers and narrative cueing attests to the classical status of the film’s audio. Generally, most music (when it appears, as silence is given just as much emphasis as sound) within the film appears to add an emotional layer to the narrative that is happening on screen. For example, at around 42:30, Joel and Clementine have a particularly heated exchange about Clementine’s supposed ability to raise a child. The music, however, with its plucking cellos and awkward timing, only serve to align the audience with Joel’s perspective, reinforcing his confusion and reluctance to argue. Other examples can be seen even earlier in the film: at around five minutes in, when Joel and Clementine meet aboard the train for the “first” time, the cautious and tip-toeing oboe that interacts with the polka-like enthusiasm of the clarinets reflects the attitudes that the two characters possess onscreen, respectively, as well as start up only when the two are interacting, as opposed to the stark silence of their solitude. On the other hand, the specific distortion of music and sound is used in connotation with the loss of Joel’s memory; when things on screen begin to blur or disappear entirely, the audio begins to fade into static and become muddled. This use of forced sound perspective to imply spatial and ideological distance only serves to reinforce the shifting perspectives that happen onscreen. In these cases, Gorbman proposes that the music in a standard narrative film works “[invite] the spectator to contemplate,” and “[help] to make a spectacle of the images it accompanies,” as well as providing an extra dimension of emotional connotation (“Unheard” 68).
In addition to emotional layering, narrative cueing and continuity is utilized through the use of sound bridges, especially Campora’s idea of “sonic metalepsis.” A metalepsis, as contextualized by Campora, is a transgression of the boundaries between the ontological (separate realities entirely) or illocutionary (separate temporalities/spaces in similar realities). A perfect example of an ontological intrusion happens around 32:35, where Joel (and therefore the audience) hears the two Lacuna employees speaking to each other while he is recalling his trip to the “memory specialist”; their voices permeate into Joel’s immediate reality, even though their dialogue happens on a completely different level of the narrative. The same thing happens around 54:32, where Joel realizes what is happening, and intensely regrets his decision to remove his memories of Clementine—his wails of anguish are overlapped with “Something” by The Willowz, which reveals that his apartment has all but been taken over by the stoned Lacuna employees. Though Campora’s argument about sonic metalepsis emphasizes its alleged anti-classical and nonconventional use in a multi-strand narrative, his last paragraph on the matter explains that the sound bridges that shift between the intradiegetic and metadiegetic levels of the film are visibly and audibly marked (as opposed to art cinema) to reduce narrative complexity (128). A sound bridge by any other name is still a sound bridge—it still acts formally in the same way, by providing visual and rhythmic continuity between shots and filling the gap within scene or shot transitions. Ultimately, sonic metalepsis only reinforces Gorbman’s principle of narrative cueing through the use of shifted character subjectivity (point-of-view), supplying formal demarcations, and establishing setting and characters (169).
In Eternal Sunshine, Gondry sticks closely to Gorbman’s principle of unity through the use of specific motifs and recurring bits of music. For instance, the same dissonant orchestral piece plays when Joel and Clementine try to escape the looming and inexorable destruction of his memories, which leads to a sense of pressure and deadline within the audience. The example used earlier, where the oboe and clarinet engage in a sort of hesitant dialogue, is used again around 1:05:40, but is instead transposed for an entire string ensemble; the added depth of the characters’ agitation in holding together Joel’s fragmented psyche is reflected in the staccato’d strokes of the cellos and violins. Finally, the theme “Everybody’s Got to Learn Sometime” by Beck is played at the chronological “beginning” of the movie seventeen minutes in, and reflects the intense sorrow that Joel feels when Clementine breaks up their relationship; however, the theme is played again at the end of the film, where they both hesitantly decide to rekindle their relationship. Much like Rear Window, this repetition and variation of musical themes “contributes much to the dramaturgy and [clarity] of [the film’s] formal” structure (Gorbman 183).
In the end, Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind both support Claudia Gorbman’s principles of classical Hollywood sound and music: Rear Window, through the use of continuous diegetic sound that creates universal continuity; and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, through the vibrant use of varied narrative levels of music and sound that establishes ontological and illocutionary boundaries (and crosses them) in addition to engendering an empathic response in the viewer.
Campora, Matthew. "Art Cinema and New Hollywood: Multiform Narrative and Sonic Metalepsis in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." New Review of Film and Television Studies 7.2 (2009): 119-31. Print.
Claudia Gorbman, “Classical Hollywood Practice,” in Critical Visions in Film Theory:
Classic and Contemporary Readings ed. Timothy Corrigan et al (Boston: Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 2011), 165-185.
Claudia Gorbman, “Identification,” Unheard Melodies: Narrative Film Music
(London: BFI, 1987) 64-69.
Weis, Elisabeth. The Silent Scream: Alfred Hitchcock's Sound Track. Rutherford [N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 1982. Print.
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