The Alienated Male: Silence and the Soundtrack in New Hollywood

In this chapter, I explore the audible link between masculinity, silence and soundtrack by focusing on a selection of silent, alienated male characters from renowned New Hollywood films. In this discussion, the ‘type’ of silence I often refer to is that described by Paul Théberge as ‘a kind of silence that is produced when, for example, music is allowed to dominate the soundtrack while dialogue and sound effects – the primary sonic modes of the diegetic world – are muted’. I explore the specific use of silence in these texts as well as the ways in which non diegetic music and diegetic sound are used to express meanings not divulged by the male characters, due to their limited dialogue. I argue that this acoustic construction contributes to a projected sense of alienation of male characters and that it can also be linked to the blurring of gender boundaries often accounted for by the counter-culture movements taking place in America throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

All That Jazz: The Diegetic Soundtrack in Melodrama

As modern film audiences, we are well aware of the capacity of music soundtracks to perform a multitude of functions in film. Music, whether diegetic (a part of the world of the film) or non-diegetic (outside of the world of the film), has the capacity to create emotion or humour; to be narrative or symbolic; to create atmosphere or provide information about a setting; and in its various forms, music is integral in creating meaning about film characters. This chapter looks at the use of music in melodramas of the 1940s and the 1950s. Melodrama is a film genre that notoriously makes use of music for its emotional capacity and for its ability to generate meaning about female protagonists in film texts that have been historically labelled as ‘women’s films’ or ‘female weepies’. In this discussion, I am interested in the use of diegetic music in melodrama, the function of which appears more difficult to outline. Diegetic music is also crucial in providing semantic information about characters and in establishing time and place. Yet what links can be drawn between diegetic music and the representation of gender in melodrama?

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.

Talking Back: Voice in Screwball Comedy

Film had always been accompanied by sound in one form or another, but the ‘talkies’ introduced the prospect of a wider variety of film genres within mainstream narrative cinema that had not been possible during the silent era: genres that were reliant on language and verbalisation rather than mime and gesture. This development marked a change in film performance and acting style. As noted by Robert B. Ray: ‘Sound and the new indigenous acting style encouraged the flourishing of genres that silence and grandiloquent acting had previously hindered: the musical, the gangster film, the detective story, screwball comedy and humour that depended on language rather than slapstick.’ Although silent slapstick comedy remained in Hollywood, championed by the Marx Brothers, among others, the ‘talkies’ created great demand for a new generation of actors, those who could speak; it also generated a near-panic when these proved to be not that easily obtainable. Writers and directors of screwball comedy seized this opportunity, recognising that the comedy genre needed to incorporate the possibilities offered by synchronised sound.

Subversive Sound: Gender, Technology and the Science Fiction Blockbuster

This chapter considers the representation of gender in the late 1970s and 1980s in the so-called blockbuster era, focusing specifically on the science fiction genre. The aural dimension of these types of films immediately conjures up ideas of space, technology and other worlds and thus potentially appear as acoustically distinct from the experimental or avant-garde nature of New Hollywood or the loud, pervasive sounds of weaponry, shouting and male camaraderie in war films, which, as previously discussed, explored alternative representations of masculinity in mainstream US cinema. Financially, the most successful American films to emerge in the post-New Hollywood era were Hollywood blockbusters. These films, which were popular from the late 1970s onwards, saw a return to classical movie formulas and genres which, according to some scholars, also saw the re-emergence of strong male heroes and passive female characters and thus a noticeable return to binary representations of gender.

Girl Talk: The Postmodern Female Voice in Chick Flicks

In this final chapter, I revisit my discussion of the female voice in mainstream cinema to explore the aural representation of women in contemporary chick flicks. In examining this category of films, it is clear they have some evolutionary links with the screwball comedy genre discussed in Chapter 1. This is evident in the female characters we encounter in modern chick flicks who, like their screwball predecessors, are often strong, confident and quick-witted, engaging in verbal battles to achieve their ‘happily ever after’ either with their lead male character or with fellow female characters, or sometimes with both.

Brothers in Arms: Masculinity and the Vietnam War Movie

The general perception of Hollywood at this time is that studios were reluctant to make films about Vietnam because the war was so publicly contentious. Furthermore, the industry itself was still in economic crisis and attempting to appeal to younger viewers, many of whom were largely opposed to America’s involvement in the war. Drawing on Tom Englehardt to explain the impact of the Vietnam War on the American public, Steve Neale notes that the ‘defeat and withdrawal from Vietnam in the early 1970s challenged the tenets of America’s “victory culture” [and] ensured that its participation in the war remained deeply controversial’. It was, therefore, a complex task to find effective ways in which to portray this conflict. The first solution was found in the mode of allegory. At this time, a number of successful films made attempts at portraying the underlying anxieties about the conflict through allegorical depiction and indirect association.

Introduction

This book examines a range of so-called ‘male’ and ‘female’ film genres in order to uncover the ways in which film sound conveys meanings about gender. The notion of genre has played a key role in the writing of this book, partly because genre and gender are frequently so inextricably linked: action or science fiction films seem to be so often categorised (both inside and outside of academia) as ‘male’, while romantic comedies or melodramas are deemed ‘female’. Rick Altman, in Film/Genre, highlights that genre is linked to the recognition of repeated semantic codes or conventions, leading to the categorisation of film texts based on common features. Genre conventions allow filmmakers to work to particular ‘formulas’ and realise the expectations of film distributors and consumers.