E-Book Overview
Music is central to any film, creating a tone for the movie that is just as vital as the visual and narrative components. In recent years, racial and gender diversity in film has exploded, and the making of musical scores has changed drastically.Hearing Film offers the first critical examination of music in the films of the 1980s and 1990s and looks at the burgeoning role of compiled scores in the shaping of a film . In the first section, "A Woman Scored," Kassabian analyzes desire and agency in the music of such films as Dangerous Liaisons, Desert Hearts, Bagdad Caf?, Dirty Dancing and Thelma and Louise. In "At the Twilight's Last Scoring," she looks at gender, race, sexuality and assimilation in the music of The Hunt for Red October, Lethal Weapon 2 and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. And finally, in "Opening Scores," she considers how films such as Dangerous Minds, The Substitute, Mississippi Masala and Corrina, Corrina bring together several different entry points of identification through their scores.Kassabian ensures that modern film criticism has a new chapter written through this book. Her important and long-overdue analysis is not to be ignored. Also includes eleven musical examples.
E-Book Content
Hearing Film
Hearing Film Tracking Identifications in Contemporary Hollywood Film Music
Anahid Kassabian
Routledge NEW YORK AND LONDON
Published in 2001 by Routledge 29 West 35th Street New York, NY 10001 Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P 4EE Copyright © 2001 by Routledge An imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kassabian, Anahid. Hearing film : tracking identifications in contemporary Hollywood film music / Anahid Kassabian p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 0–415–92853–2 (Print Edition)— ISBN 0–415–92854–0 (pbk.) 1. Motion picture music—United States—History and criticism. 2. Motion pictures and music. I. Title. ML2075 .K39 2000 781.5'42—dc21 00–044636 ISBN 0-203-90080-4 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-90084-7 (Glassbook Format)
Contents
Acknowledgments Listening for Identifications A Prologue
vii 1
1
How Film Music Works
15
2
How Music Works in Film
37
3
A Woman Scored
61
4
At the Twilight’s Last Scoring
91
5
Opening Scores
117
Tracking Identifications An Epilogue
141
Appendices
149
Works Cited
157
Videos Cited
167
Notes
173
Index
181
Acknowledgments
Incomplete though these thanks are, they go to: The ones who hung in from beginning to end: Iris Kassabian, Elizabeth Kazanjian, Patricia Clough. And the ones who read drafts—sometimes many—much to the benefit of the final product: Shaleen Brawn, Alex Chasin, Simon Frith, Regenia Gagnier, Barbara Gelpi, Miranda Joseph, David Kazanjian, Kelly Mays, Amit Rai, David Schwarz, Ola Stockfelt, Philip Tagg, and the anonymous readers of both articles and the final book. The organization: the International Association for the Study of Popular Music, which always welcomed this work, and whose members helped me refine it over the years. The institutions that financed and supported the research: Fordham University; Stanford University; the Kaltenborn Foundation; the Americ