Conclusion

Representations of gender have varied greatly during this sustained period of film. Furthermore, it seems that while stable, hegemonic – or stereotypical – notions of gender have arguably always been embedded in American mainstream cinema (including the idea of the strong, silent male and the chatty verbose female), these depictions have frequently been challenged and the audio element of the audiovisual cinematic experience has been key to these subversions. An important contributor to this operation of sound is the ‘acoustic remainder’, discussed in Chapter 2, a hermeneutic category arguably applicable to all films discussed here. The idea of quoting famous lines of film dialogue has become a particularly cherished meta-cinematic practice – a form of entertainment for film enthusiasts. Likewise, the film audience can ‘take away’ musical underscoring (who might repeat the song by playing a recording of the same song at home), thereby extending the sonic life of the film and its messages, potentially eternally. In this way, key sounds such as film dialogue and film music can ‘remain’ with audiences, and thus associative ideas about gender and sound are potentially able to do the same.