Soundtrack Available
Essays on Film and Popular Music
Published on 3. December 2001
Book
Paperback/Softback
504 pages
978-0-8223-2797-4 (ISBN)
Description
From the silent era to the present day, popular music has been a key component of the film experience. Yet there has been little serious writing on film soundtracks that feature popular music. Soundtrack Available fills this gap, as its contributors provide detailed analyses of individual films as well as historical overviews of genres, styles of music, and approaches to film scoring.
With a cross-cultural emphasis, the contributors focus on movies that use popular songs from a variety of genres, including country, bubble-gum pop, disco, classical, jazz, swing, French cabaret, and showtunes. The films discussed range from silents to musicals, from dramatic and avant-garde films to documentaries in India, France, England, Australia, and the United States. The essays examine both "nondiegetic" music in film-the score playing outside the story space, unheard by the characters, but no less a part of the scene from the perspective of the audience-and "diegetic" music-music incorporated into the shared reality of the story and the audience. They include analyses of music written and performed for films, as well as the now common practice of scoring a film with pre-existing songs. By exploring in detail how musical patterns and structures relate to filmic patterns of narration, character, editing, framing, and mise-en-scene, this volume demonstrates that pop music is a crucial element in the film experience. It also analyzes the life of the soundtrack apart from the film, tracing how popular music circulates and acquires new meanings when it becomes an official soundtrack.
Contributors. Rick Altman, Priscilla Barlow, Barbara Ching, Kelley Conway, Corey Creekmur, Krin Gabbard, Jonathan Gill, Andrew Killick, Arthur Knight, Adam Knee, Jill Leeper, Neepa Majumdar, Allison McCracken, Murray Pomerance, Paul Ramaeker, Jeff Smith, Pamela Robertson Wojcik, Nabeel Zuberi
With a cross-cultural emphasis, the contributors focus on movies that use popular songs from a variety of genres, including country, bubble-gum pop, disco, classical, jazz, swing, French cabaret, and showtunes. The films discussed range from silents to musicals, from dramatic and avant-garde films to documentaries in India, France, England, Australia, and the United States. The essays examine both "nondiegetic" music in film-the score playing outside the story space, unheard by the characters, but no less a part of the scene from the perspective of the audience-and "diegetic" music-music incorporated into the shared reality of the story and the audience. They include analyses of music written and performed for films, as well as the now common practice of scoring a film with pre-existing songs. By exploring in detail how musical patterns and structures relate to filmic patterns of narration, character, editing, framing, and mise-en-scene, this volume demonstrates that pop music is a crucial element in the film experience. It also analyzes the life of the soundtrack apart from the film, tracing how popular music circulates and acquires new meanings when it becomes an official soundtrack.
Contributors. Rick Altman, Priscilla Barlow, Barbara Ching, Kelley Conway, Corey Creekmur, Krin Gabbard, Jonathan Gill, Andrew Killick, Arthur Knight, Adam Knee, Jill Leeper, Neepa Majumdar, Allison McCracken, Murray Pomerance, Paul Ramaeker, Jeff Smith, Pamela Robertson Wojcik, Nabeel Zuberi
Reviews / Votes
"Soundtrack Available represents a great leap forward in the analysis of film soundtracks. It is a smart, lively book that moves nicely between the detailed analysis of individual cases and broader, theoretical issues. The editors are to be commended for a collection which covers so many historical periods and national cinemas, and for staking out exciting new directions for scholarship. At the same time, this is a compelling, refreshingly jargon-free read for the non-specialist interested in film, music, or media."-Will Straw, McGill University "From Bollywood to Hollywood, Wim Wenders to Wong Kar-Wai, popular music permeates movies. Rigorous scholarship has finally begun to catch up with this phenomenon to make sense of its rich and varied cultural meanings. Wocjik's and Knight's first-rate collection is muscular, theoretically informed, historically textured, and full of exciting discoveries for all interested in the confluence of pop music, film, and identity."-Claudia Gorbman, University of WashingtonMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
North Carolina
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
36 b&w photos
Dimensions
Height: 233 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 33 mm
Weight
757 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8223-2797-4 (9780822327974)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Pamela Robertson Wojcik is Associate Professor of Film, TV, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame and the author of Guilty Pleasures: Feminist Camp from Mae West to Madonna, also published by Duke University Press.
Arthur Knight is Associate Professor of American Studies and English at the College of William and Mary and the author of Dis/Integrating the Musical: African American Musical Performance and American Musical Film, 1927-1959, forthcoming from Duke.
Arthur Knight is Associate Professor of American Studies and English at the College of William and Mary and the author of Dis/Integrating the Musical: African American Musical Performance and American Musical Film, 1927-1959, forthcoming from Duke.
Content
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Overture / Arthur Knight and Pamela Robertson Wojcik
I. Popular vs. "Serious"
Cinema and Popular Song: The Lost Tradition / Rick Altman
Surreal Symphonies: "L'Age d'or and the Discreet Charms of Classical Music / Priscilla Barlow
"The Future's Not Ours to See": Song, Singer, and Labryinth in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much / Murray Pomerance
"You Think They Call Us Plastic Now . . . ": The Monkees and Head / Paul B. Ramaeker
II. Singing Stars
Real Men Don't Sing Ballads: The Radio Crooner in Hollywood, 1929-1933 / Allison McCracken
Flower of the Asphalt: The Chanteuse Realiste in 1930s French Cinema / Kelley Conway
The Embodied Voice: Song Sequences and Stardom in Popular Hindi Cinema / Neepa Majumdar
III. Music as Ethnic Marker
Music as Ethnic Marker in Film: The "Jewish" Case / Andrew P. Killick
Sounding the American Heart: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Contemporary American Film / Barbara Ching
Crossing Musical Borders: The Soundtrack for Touch of Evil / Jill Leeper
Documented/Documentary Asians: Gurinder Chadha's I'm British But . . . and the Musical Mediation of Sonic and Visual Identities / Nabeel Zuberi
IV. African American Identities
Class Swings: Music, Race, and Social Mobility in Broken Strings / Adam Knee
Borrowing Black Masculinity: The Role of Johnny Hartman in The Bridges of Madison County / Krin Gabbard
V. Case Study: Porgy and Bess
It Ain't Necessarily So That It Ain't Necessarily So: African American Recordings of Porgy and Bess as Film and Cultural Criticism / Arthur Knight
"Hollywood Has Taken On a New Color": The Yiddish Blackface of Samuel Goldwyn's Porgy and Bess / Jonathan Gill
VI. Contemporary Compilations
Picturizing American Cinema: Hindi Film Songs and the Last Days of Genre / Corey K. Creekmur
Popular Songs and Comic Allusion in Contemporary Cinema / Jeff Smith
VII. Gender and Technology
The Girl and the Phonograph; or the Vamp and the Machine Revisited / Pamela Robertson Wojcik
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
Acknowledgments
Overture / Arthur Knight and Pamela Robertson Wojcik
I. Popular vs. "Serious"
Cinema and Popular Song: The Lost Tradition / Rick Altman
Surreal Symphonies: "L'Age d'or and the Discreet Charms of Classical Music / Priscilla Barlow
"The Future's Not Ours to See": Song, Singer, and Labryinth in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much / Murray Pomerance
"You Think They Call Us Plastic Now . . . ": The Monkees and Head / Paul B. Ramaeker
II. Singing Stars
Real Men Don't Sing Ballads: The Radio Crooner in Hollywood, 1929-1933 / Allison McCracken
Flower of the Asphalt: The Chanteuse Realiste in 1930s French Cinema / Kelley Conway
The Embodied Voice: Song Sequences and Stardom in Popular Hindi Cinema / Neepa Majumdar
III. Music as Ethnic Marker
Music as Ethnic Marker in Film: The "Jewish" Case / Andrew P. Killick
Sounding the American Heart: Cultural Politics, Country Music, and Contemporary American Film / Barbara Ching
Crossing Musical Borders: The Soundtrack for Touch of Evil / Jill Leeper
Documented/Documentary Asians: Gurinder Chadha's I'm British But . . . and the Musical Mediation of Sonic and Visual Identities / Nabeel Zuberi
IV. African American Identities
Class Swings: Music, Race, and Social Mobility in Broken Strings / Adam Knee
Borrowing Black Masculinity: The Role of Johnny Hartman in The Bridges of Madison County / Krin Gabbard
V. Case Study: Porgy and Bess
It Ain't Necessarily So That It Ain't Necessarily So: African American Recordings of Porgy and Bess as Film and Cultural Criticism / Arthur Knight
"Hollywood Has Taken On a New Color": The Yiddish Blackface of Samuel Goldwyn's Porgy and Bess / Jonathan Gill
VI. Contemporary Compilations
Picturizing American Cinema: Hindi Film Songs and the Last Days of Genre / Corey K. Creekmur
Popular Songs and Comic Allusion in Contemporary Cinema / Jeff Smith
VII. Gender and Technology
The Girl and the Phonograph; or the Vamp and the Machine Revisited / Pamela Robertson Wojcik
Bibliography
Contributors
Index