Ontological, Formal, and Critical Theories of Film Music and Sound

2013 ◽  
pp. 187-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Buhler
Keyword(s):  
Film Studies ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Film Music ◽  
Developmental Model ◽  
Interpretive Research ◽  
Critical Theories

This chapterexamines film music and sound theories. It charts some major trends in interpretive research on the soundtrack, using Francesco Casetti’s model of the development of film theory. It explains that Casetti’s developmental model of film theory traces the progressive academic institutionalization of film studies in shifts from an ontological paradigm to a methodological paradigm to a field paradigm, and suggests that the goals of ontological theories have antecedents in formalism. This chapteralso highlights critical theories’ focus on how music and sound can bear particular cultural and ideological values in a film.

Stereotypes and Jewish Musical Topics in East German Film: Ambiguities and Allosemitism in Hotel Polan und seine Gäste

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tina Frühauf
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Film Music ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Jewish Family ◽  
National Socialist ◽  
German Film ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
East German ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract The miniseries Hotel Polan und seine Gäste tells the story of three generations of a Jewish family of hoteliers in Bohemia from 1908 to National Socialist persecution. Produced by GDR television in the early 1980s, the series was subsequently broadcast in other European countries and met with a mixed reception. Later on, scholars evaluated it as blatantly antisemitic and anti-Zionist. This essay seeks to re-evaluate these prerogatives by centring the analysis of the miniseries on a close reading of its music—a method not often used in Jewish studies, but a suitable lens through which to interrogate the employment of stereotypes, especially in film, and in light of textual sources from the Cold War era often being reflective of ideologies rather than facts. Employing critical theories of cultural studies and film music, it seeks to identify stereotypes and their dramatic placement and to analyse their operation. It asserts that story, image, and sound constitute both synchronous and asynchronous agents that perpetuate various stereotypes associated with Jews, thereby placing Hotel Polan in the liminal space of allosemitism. Constructed through difference from a perceived norm, Hotel Polan ultimately represents a space in which the egregious stereotype and the strategic employment of types meet. Its deployment of Jewish musical topics specifically shows that it is less their dramatic function that is of relevance, but the discourse that they have the power to enable.

Deleuze and Lola Montès

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Rushton
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
World Today ◽  
Film Interpretation ◽  
The World ◽  
Time Image

Gilles Deleuze represents the most widely referenced theorist of cinema today. And yet, even the most rudimentary pillars of his thought remain mysterious to most students (and even many scholars) of film studies. From one of the foremost theorists following Deleuze in the world today, Deleuze and Lola Montès offers a detailed explication of Gilles Deleuze’s writings on film – from his books Cinema 1: The Movement-Image (1983) and Cinema 2: The Time-Image (1985). Building on this foundation, Rushton provides an interpretation of Max Ophuls’s classic film Lola Montès as an example of how Deleuzian film theory can function in the practice of film interpretation.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Jordan Schonig
Keyword(s):  
Film Studies ◽  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Gestalt Psychology ◽  
Film Criticism ◽  
Philosophical Intuition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Generic Structures ◽  
Temporal Flow ◽  
Film Form

The Introduction examines why “movement” is often invoked as a term in film criticism and film theory but is rarely analyzed as an aspect of film form. The reason for this is twofold. First, because film theory has largely examined movement only as a defining property of the cinematic medium, movement is rarely singled out in film criticism. Second, because film theory has inherited the philosophical intuition that form is primarily spatial rather than temporal, formal analysis in film studies tends to break up the temporal flow of film into static units, such as in shot breakdowns and frame analyses. In film studies, then, “form” and “movement” are conceptually incompatible. As a means of thinking motion and form together, the Introduction proposes the concept of “motion forms,” generic structures, patterns, or shapes of motion. The Introduction then explores the philosophical roots of the motion form in phenomenology and Gestalt psychology, and explains how such a way of thinking about cinematic motion differs from other phenomenological approaches in film studies. Finally, the introduction outlines the six chapters of the book, each of which investigates a particular motion form that emerges throughout the history of cinema.

scholarly journals Ecological Citizens with a Movie Camera: Communitarian and Agonistic Environmental Documentaries

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (11) ◽  
pp. 307
Author(s):  
Hedemann
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Visual Rhetoric ◽  
Research Method ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Interpretive Research ◽  
An Inconvenient Truth ◽  
Ecological Citizenship ◽  
Movie Camera

Environmental documentaries attained wider public and academic attention, especially in the aftermath of Al Gore’s prominent documentary on climate change An Inconvenient Truth. Making environmental documentaries is a cinematic form of political advocacy. However, there is a lack of research on the broad range of such films from Germany. While earlier works tended to an accusatory style, newer environmental documentary seems to be more constructive and aiming at spreading information about feasible alternatives. This article pursues three objectives: first, to gain a deeper understanding of the shift from accusatory to constructive documentaries; second, to connect film studies to the political change-making role and therefore to theories of ecological citizenship; and third, to explore the question of what citizenship with a movie camera means. The accusatory and constructive style are associated with agonistic and communitarian ecological citizenship. A sample of two films from the German context, namely Leben ausser Kontrolle produced by Bertram Verhaag in 2004 and Voices of Transition produced by Nils Aguilar in 2012, is analyzed comparatively. The interpretive research method combines methods of studying audio-visual rhetoric with the framing approach from social movement studies.

Serge Daney, Zapper: Cinema, Television, and the Persistence of Media

October ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 157 ◽  
pp. 107-127
Author(s):  
James Tweedie
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Media ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
New Wave ◽  
Digital Revolution ◽  
The Status ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Small Screen

The essay considers Serge Daney's transition from a film critic schooled in New Wave cinephilia to a television critic fascinated by the possibilities of the small screen and the status of cinema as an old medium. Looking in the “rear-view mirror,” Daney challenges foundational film theory that situates cinema at the forefront of technological and cultural modernity, and he introduces the language of belatedness, aging, and delay into his writing on the “adult art” of film. In the 1980s, Daney began to chronicle the experience of watching cinema on television, with old and new media spiraling into each other and the critic engaged in a process of archaeology focused as much on absent or damaged images as the imaginary plenitude of the screen. Tweedie's essay frames the critic's work as a key reference point for film studies in the late twentieth century because it counters both the modernist euphoria of theory produced decades before and the enthusiasm surrounding the digital revolution in the years just after his death, with new media in the vanguard once occupied by cinema. Instead of recomposing this familiar narrative of innovation, succession, and obsolescence, Daney constructs a retrospective and intermedial theory of film, with the act of watching cinema on television revealing both the diminution and the persistence of its most utopian ambitions.

Spectator Engagement and the Body

Film Studies ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-96
Author(s):  
Lorraine Yeung
Keyword(s):  
Film Studies ◽  
Film Music ◽  
The Body ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Philosophical Framework ◽  
Film Sound

This article investigates the emotive potency of horror soundtracks. The account illuminates the potency of aural elements in horror cinema to engage spectators body in the light of a philosophical framework of emotion, namely, the embodied appraisal theories of emotion. The significance of aural elements in horror cinema has been gaining recognition in film studies. Yet it still receives relatively scarce attention in the philosophical accounts of film music and cinematic horror, which tend to underappreciate the power of horror film sound and music in inducing emotions. My investigation aims both to address the lacuna, and facilitate dialogue between the two disciplines.

Psychoanalysis, Apparatus Theory, and Subjectivity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Buhler
Keyword(s):  
Film Theory ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Grand Theory ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
The Social ◽  
Film Spectatorship ◽  
Systemic Oppression ◽  
Lacanian Theory

One of the aims of critical theories has been to reveal the systemic oppression that flows from the social structures of power, and critical theories have most typically turned to psychoanalysis to provide the theory for how these social structures work and reproduce themselves through the formation of their social subjects. Chapter 8 examines the influential film theory that derived from the intersection of semiotics, Marxism, and psychoanalysis called “apparatus theory.” This grand theory proved contentious but very influential, especially the concept of suture, which provided a model for film spectatorship and subjectivity. This chapter concludes with a section on neo-Lacanian theory and uses it to explicate the soundtrack theory of Michel Chion.

Theories of the Soundtrack

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Buhler
Keyword(s):  
Film Theory ◽  
Classical System ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Audiovisual Media ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
Multimedia Object ◽  
Descriptive Models ◽  
Over Time

This book is concerned with summarizing and critiquing theories of the soundtrack from roughly 1929 until today. A theory of the soundtrack is concerned with what belongs to it, how it is effectively organized, how its status in a multimedia object affects the nature of the object, the tools available for its analysis, and the interpretive regime that the theory mandates for determining the meaning, sense, and structure that sound and music bring to film and other audiovisual media. Beyond that, a theory may also delineate the range of possible uses of sound (and music), classify the types of relations that films have used for image and sound, identify the central problems, and reflect on and describe effective uses of sound in film. This book does not provide an exhaustive historical survey but rather sketches out the range of theoretical approaches that have been applied to the soundtrack over time. For each approach, it presents the basic theoretical framework, considers explicit and implicit claims about the soundtrack, and then works to open the theories to new questions about film sound, often by putting the theories into dialogue with one another. The organization is both chronological and topical: the former in that the chapters move steadily from early film theory through models of the classical system to more recent critical theories; the latter in that the chapters highlight central issues for each generation: the problem of film itself, then of image and sound, then of adequate analytical-descriptive models, and finally of critical-interpretative models.

M-Learning Apps for Film Studies

2019 ◽  
pp. 265-291
Author(s):  
Jeanny Vaidya
Keyword(s):  
Film Studies ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Academic Discipline ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Film Noir ◽  
Learning Support ◽  
Film Interpretation ◽  
Delivery Options ◽  
Basic Approaches ◽  
Evaluation Techniques

While there are many educational apps for traditionally taught subjects such as mathematics and science, more specialized curriculum has largely been left unexplored in terms of m-learning. Film studies, an academic discipline that deals with the theoretical, historical, and critical underpinnings of film, is one such subject that has very few mobile applications. This chapter explores creating a mobile application to teach basic approaches to film interpretation and in addition, considers a heutagogical approach in design. Benefits of m-learning include increased delivery options for multimedia, context-based learning support, and the prospects of a more fulfilling learning experience. This chapter provides direction for implementation and evaluation techniques for an introductory film studies module on film noir, which can be integrated into a mobile format to make film theory more relevant and accessible.

Affect, or Postmodern Sentimentalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Burnetts
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Film Studies ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
Stanley Cavell ◽  
Contemporary Film

Chapter Four provides a wider theoretical basis for the ‘sophistication’ and self-consciousness that characterises post-classical or postmodern forms of sentimentality in US film culture, with particular attention paid to notions of ‘excess’ and distanciation. It accounts in particular for the influence of key modernists like Adorno, Benjamin and Brecht on taste categories that persist in contemporary film studies, with particular reference to the ‘ideological stoicism’ that is alleged to predominate in critical film culture. The discussion will provide context for a discussion of the ‘affective’ turn in film theory, around which the contributions of Gilles Deleuze and Stanley Cavell loom large in their centralisation of a film-as-thought paradigm.

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