Occult Aesthetics: Synchronization in Sound Film

273 Pages·2014·2.17 MB·English

by  K.J. Donnelly

Occult Aesthetics
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THE OXFORD MUSIC / MEDIA SERIES
DANIEL GOLDMARK, SERIES EDITOR
Tuning In: American Narrative Television Music
RON RODMAN
Special Sound: Th e Creation and Legacy of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop
LOUIS NIEBUR
Seeing Th rough Music: Gender and Modernism in Classic Hollywood
Film Scores
PETER FRANKLIN
An Eye for Music: Popular Music and the Audiovisual Surreal
JOHN RICHARDSON
Playing Along: Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual Performance
KIRI MILLER
Sounding the Gallery: Video and the Rise of Art-Music
HOLLY ROGERS
Composing for the Red Screen: Prokofi ev and Soviet Film
KEVIN BARTIG
Saying It With Songs: Popular Music and the Coming of Sound to
Hollywood Cinema
KATHERINE SPRING
We’ll Meet Again: Musical Design in the Films of Stanley Kubrick
KATE MCQUISTON
Occult Aesthetics: Synchronization in Sound Film
K. J. DONNELLY

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Occult Aesthetics:
Synchronization in
Sound Film
K. J. Donnelly
1
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1
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and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Donnelly, K. J. (Kevin J.)
Occult aesthetics : synchronization in sound fi lm / K. J. Donnelly.
pages ; cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–977349–7 (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 978–0–19–977350–3 (pbk. : alk.
paper) 1. Motion picture music—History and criticism. 2. Music and occultism. 3. Sound
in motion pictures. I. Title.
ML2075.D664 2013
781.5’42117—dc23
2013017331
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface vii
Acknowledgments xi
1. Introduction: Th e Lock of Synchronization 1
2. Synchronization: McGurk and Beyond 1 4
3. Sound Montage 4 4
4. Occult Aesthetics 7 0
5. Isomorphic Cadences: Film as ‘Musical’ 94
6. ‘Visual’ Sound Design: Th e Sonic Continuum 1 23
7. ‘Pre’ and ‘Post’ Sound 154
8. Wild Track Asynchrony 181
9. Conclusion: Final Speculations 2 00
Notes 210
Bibliography 236
Index 249
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PREFACE

Th e initial impetus for this project came to me not when engaged with fi lms
or music, or when reading theorists such as Eisenstein or Chion, but
while looking out of the window. Upon moving to the seaside town of
Aberystwyth in mid-Wales in the early 2000s, I was struck, as many cannot
fail to be, by the intermittent bursts of sound and vision aff orded by jet air-
craft of the Royal Air Force. I learned rapidly that it was one of the principal
areas of Britain for air confl ict simulation. I had been told that there were
strict guidelines on how low these planes were allowed to fl y in populated
areas, but these were not adhered to. In the run up to another of Britain’s
seemingly regular punitive actions overseas, these jet planes disconcerted
me by appearing to use the building in which I was teaching (the tallest on
campus) as a target for bombing runs during my classes. On one highly
memorable occasion, I was standing in the marina when a jet came in from
the sea to land at a height that would not have cleared buildings. I saw the
pilot’s face and could even make out the intricacies of his headgear. At this
point, the jet obliquely shot upward at an angle of about 60 degrees. What
was so shocking about this incident was not the proximity of the activity,
but the fact that it initially took place in an eerie, disconnected silence, a
fraction of a second before the devastating blast of sound from the plane.
Th is was a more extreme instance of the unremitting experience of having
jet planes in the vicinity, where the key aspect of their presence was the dis-
connection between sound and image. In most cases, one hears the sound
and then has to look for the presence of the plane, which is most successful
if one looks well ahead of where the brain informs us that it might be. On
rare occasions, we might see a plane fractionally before the sound reaches
us. Th is disparity of perception dictated by the diff erent speeds of sound
and light imparted a disconcerting and uncanny aspect to the planes,
where they seemed to be lacking something essential and then appeared
to leave behind more than they should. Th e most disconcerting moments
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were those where, in a fraction of a second, one could see the plane and
anticipate its sound, but in that split second wonder if the sound was ever
going to arrive. Furthermore, this division emphasized to me the essential
and sensual diff erence between sound and image: Th e image appears cogni-
tive whereas the sound appears physical.
Th is experience was complemented and enhanced by moving to a
part of town where there was anomalous and often notably poor televi-
sion reception. Owning an antiquated TV set did not help. After getting
advice, I found that I could not plug together my old, small set with my new
home-cinema sound and video system, and that while the latter could plug
into the building’s external aerial, the TV could not and had to run off its
own mini-aerial. Th is meant that when I wanted to switch channels, I had
to change both the TV and the sound system. Th is situation led to many
moments of ambiguity, when I was not sure whether I had changed both
to the same channel. Th is happened far more often than I ever would have
imagined. Depending on what was on television, sometimes there was a
coherence between the image track and the sound track of radically dif-
ferent programs, while, less commonly, there was a seeming disjunction
that I perceived in a show with its actual soundtrack, merely because I was
anticipating such by not feeling secure in knowing whether the image and
sound were from the same channel.
Sometimes research has a long genealogy and deep roots. My grand-
mother was a tasseomancer—a tea-leaf reader—and a fanciful interest
in the unapparent and bizarre has been a characteristic of my family. Yet
this was also allied with a strong sense of practicality and understanding
that was more ‘scientifi c’ than superstitious. Th is is far from unique, but it
inculcated in me an assumption that there is a hidden world underneath
the banal surface and a desire for the specialist knowledge that might
unlock it or emanate from it. Th ese might be unfounded assumptions, per-
haps little more than prejudices. Critical theory has a generative function
in that, in its best form, it grapples with unknowables, making them into
something more tangible—although never quite making them unproblem-
atically understandable, in other words, never making them into a sim-
plistic reduction. Th eory also has something of medieval alchemy about it.
I can vividly remember the fi rst time I came across psychoanalytic theory
as an undergraduate student. Admittedly, some of Freud’s ideas had long
been ensconced in popular culture beyond the academy and the hospital,
but nevertheless, the more detailed and more outré versions still had a
signifi cant impact on me. We were required to read some of Freud’s case
studies, and I was gripped. Th ere was something absolutely compelling in
Freud’s grappling with problems that were initially beyond comprehension
[viii] Preface
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with theoretical tools that were beyond immediate logic. I sometimes think
back to Freud’s case studies in the face of so much instrumental and pro-
saic ‘research’ being completed in universities these days. Freud’s ‘research
questions’ are fairly straightforward, but his methods and his ‘research
answers’ are so far beyond, so much more imaginative than the sorts of
answers these same questions might receive if they wanted to remain fund-
able under today’s circumstances (in the UK but elsewhere too). I was never
sure whether these conclusions, or indeed the methods, were to be taken as
unassailable truths. But I was sure that there were answers that were worth
debating and a potential door being opened to diff erent ways of think-
ing. I say this because to some, in these times, the use of psychoanalysis
as a device in the study of fi lm is anathema. Some declare that it has an
‘unproven’ scientifi c status, while others suggest that its insights might
be obtained elsewhere and through other means, and others still merely
see it as an obfuscatory discourse that provides nothing concrete for the
study of fi lm or wider culture. I am far from a ‘psychoanalytic’ theorist.
However, I can see the value of such an approach and am fully convinced
that its alchemical ability to turn some base symptoms into philosophical/
theoretical gold is beyond doubt. If I wanted a simple, defi nitive answer,
then perhaps I would not value its magical operation. But I realize that the
nature of my inquiry and object of scrutiny make it unlikely that there is an
absolute and unassailable answer, and I would be happy with some concep-
tualizations that can allow us to address some of the questions rather than
supply an outright answer.
Th ere is something of the occult about ‘theory,’ particularly the form
that is being used in this book. It is in some ways closer to acts of divina-
tion than it is to instrumental ‘social’ research. An important inspiration
is Walter Benjamin’s dictum that open-minded research cannot dismiss
soothsaying from coff ee grounds.1 I might add tea leaves. And I want to
play a little along the line dividing rational ‘science’ and inquiry, and more
‘irrational,’ imaginative speculation. As psychological underpinnings and
inspiration, this study uses scientifi c, functional, neurological, and physio-
logical ideas about human beings and sound to develop its argument about
the perceptual primacy of cinema’s dynamic interplay across synchronized
and unsynchronized sections of fi lm. Th e process of synchronizing image
and sound is Pavlovian in that, in many cases, there is an expectation of one
corresponding with the other, and their relationship can be wholly defi ned
by learned associations. For example, the sound of wood blocks clashing
together is the accepted conventional sound of someone being punched
or kicked in an action fi lm, whereas the actual act of doing this involves
no such sound. Michel Chion notes that the seeming unity of sound and
Preface [ix]
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