影视音乐外文文献及翻译教学内容.docx

1、影视音乐外文文献及翻译教学内容Hollywood Theory, Non-Hollywood Practice: Cinema Soundtracks in the 1980s and 1990sThe Spectre of Sound: Music in Film and TelevisionExperiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context Annette Davison. , Hollywood Theory, Non-Hollywood Practice: Cinema Soundtracks in the 1980s a

2、nd 1990s. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004, 221 pp. K.J. Donnelly. , The Spectre of Sound: Music in Film and Television. lLondon: British Film Institute, 2005, 192 pp. Carol Vernallis. , Experiencing Music Video: Aesthetics and Cultural Context. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2004, 341 pp. Next Se

3、ctionThe last time a collection of screen music-related books was the subject of a Screen review, the reviewer Simon Frith was moved to note each works self-defeating need to draw attention to their subjects neglect as well as the very limited manner in which the authors seemed to be engaged with ea

4、ch other.1 Judging by the books grouped together in the present review, the scholarship in the area is now much more collegiate, and the requirement on the authors to self-diagnose academic isolation seems to have become unnecessary. Annette Davison, K.J. Donnelly and Carol Vernallis share a plethor

5、a of critical references on musicimage relationships, from Theodor Adorno to Philip Tagg and many points in between. A substantial canon of academic writing on music in narrative film now exists, and it can no longer be claimed that music video is a scholarly blind spot (as Vernallis admits). Of the

6、 various media formats discussed in the books under review, only television music remains relatively under-represented academically (though Donnellys two chapters on the subject begin the process of addressing this absence). In this context, the authors task would appear to be to present alternative

7、s to existing work, or to bring new objects of study to critical light. All three studies make claims for their own originality by referencing a model of classical narrative film music practices: a conceptualization of the soundtracks role as fitting in with classical cinemas perceived storytelling

8、priorities. For all the books individual merits, the regular recourse to notions of the classical, even in the service of its refutation, raises interesting questions about the possibility (or impossibility) of doing without such a concept entirely. Thus, these works reveal the classical to be a cat

9、egory as problematic yet insistent in writing on musicimage relations as it is in other areas of screen studies enquiry. As its title suggests, Davisons Hollywood Theory, Non-Hollywood Practice: Cinema Soundtracks in the 1980s and 1990s engages with classical film music theory most explicitly. Indee

10、d, about a quarter of the book is devoted to the explication of, first, Classical Hollywood Cinema as it has been conceived academically, and second, the classical scoring practice associated with it (which Davison sees revived in the so-called post-classical Hollywood of the mid 1970s onwards). Thi

11、s provides the ground on which Davison makes her key claim: The central argument of this book is that, by operating as a signifier of classical and, indeed, New Hollywood cinema the classical Hollywood score offered those making films outside and on the margins of Hollywood cinema in the 1980s and 1

12、990s a further means by which they could differentiate their cinemas from Hollywoods, through the production of scores and soundtracks which critique or refer to this practice in particular ways (p. 59). There follow close analyses of four films whose soundtracks, according to Davison, refer to the

13、classical model at the same time as they offer an alternative. Through her sequencing of the case studies, Davison outlines possibilities of alternative practice that range from a total deconstruction of the classical soundtracks conventional storytelling functions (as witnessed in Jean-Luc Godards

14、Prenom: Carmen 1983) to the identification of a scoring practice that mimics certain aspects of the classical in its collaborative nature, yet provides a utopian alternative to it (as seen through David Lynchs Wild at Heart 1990). In between, she explores the notion of the soundtrack as a liberating

15、 force (Derek Jarmans The Garden 1990), and the potential for a compromise to be found between classical and alternative models (Wim Wenders Wings of Desire 1987). Davisons reading of each film is imaginative and very well detailed. She demonstrates a particular facility for identifying, and ascribi

16、ng a significance to, different types of sound on the same soundtrack. This is done with particular success in her readings of The Garden and Wings of Desire. Her analysis does not seek to hide her evident musical training, but, in nearly all cases, remains intelligible and persuasive to non-musicol

17、ogists such as myself (who will just have to accept the occasional use of musical notation as pretty pictures). It is questionable how much of the extremely comprehensive scene-setting undertaken by Davison in the books early sections is necessary for an appreciation of the individual film analyses.

18、 Nevertheless, her summaries of discussions about classical and post-classical Hollywood cinema and the classical film score are exemplary, and they are conducted with a thoroughness which is understandable, perhaps, in a book which takes its place in the publishers Popular and Folk Music series rat

19、her than in a screen studies collection. There remains a mismatch, however, between the concentration on Hollywood as an institutional, industrial and ideological force in the early chapters of the book, and the auteurist bent of the analysis that follows in later chapters. For example, the chapter

20、on New Hollywood cinema and (post-?) classical scoring concludes with statistical information about US cinemas growth in the overseas market during the 1980s. Yet this detail seems unnecessary in the light of the subsequent interpretation of the various non-Hollywood soundtracks as imaginative respo

21、nses to mainstream practices on the part of individual filmmakers. The division between descriptions of Hollywood as intransigently institutional, and the implicit understanding of art-house cinema as a space for the free expression of the auteur (made explicit in the celebration of Lynch in the fin

22、al case study) is made too complacently and means that Davison does not fulfil her promise to engage with institutional issues in relation to film soundtracks and scores (p. 6) in every case. In this respect, the book does not fully realize the potential of its many excellent parts. The critical ton

23、e of Donnellys The Spectre of Sound: Music in Film and Television also fluctuates somewhat from section to section, although the reader is prepared for this by the authors early claim that the book is a rumination, an investigation of some of the elusive and fascinating aspects of screen music (p. 3

24、) rather than a more strictly hypothesis-based account. Nevertheless, more concrete justification is given for the books attention to a pleasingly eclectic range of material, which includes the work of canonized auteurs such as David Lynch and Stanley Kubrick, but also makes room for a discussion of

25、 the soundtracks of Space: 1999, a whole range of horror movies, and the role of music in television continuity segments. Donnelly characterizes screen music as something more intangible than is claimed in the more classical accounts focusing on the scores overt storytelling functions. Inspired, in

26、particular, by the increasingly complex sound design of films produced for release in cinemas, Donnelly argues: While film music traditionally has been conceived as part of narration, working for film narrative, in some ways it would be better to see it as part of the films repository of special eff

27、ects (p. 2).Determined to explore screen musics more unruly qualities (at least when set against a narrative yardstick), Donnelly riffs around notions of musics ghostliness in an imaginative manner. Particularly in relation to cinema, he sees the haunting activities of the soundtrack as constituting

28、 a kind of sensuous possession of the viewer. Donnelly (somewhat contentiously given the mediums technological advances) is less willing to admit to the possessing capabilities of television soundtracks, but concentrates instead on another kind of haunting: the habitual use of familiar music in tele

29、vision that evokes the spectre of its lives elsewhere as much as it applies itself to a particular televisual context. It is the notion of screen music as always indicating another place that most usefully ties the different strands of Donnellys eclectic study together. Through this interest in the

30、elsewhere of screen music, Donnelly successfully probes areas outside the reach of classical narrative film music theory, which attends to the here and now of the soundtracks involvement in a particular fictional scenario. However, the value of the insights which ensue from this successful escape fr

31、om a more classical approach is sometimes taken for granted. Donnellys analyses as a whole lack the attention to detail which is one of the virtues of Davisons case studies. The author anticipates this criticism early on by acknowledging that the book provides a “long shot”, allowing the sort of syn

32、optic view unavailable to detailed analysis, rather than the predominant “close-up” of many preceding film music studies (p. 3). The loss, in terms of analytical depth, that this critical strategy necessitates, is not always compensated for by the books commendable breadth. For example, a relatively sustained analysis of Lynchs Lost Highway (1996) is not as convincing as it might be due to an unwillingness to provide sufficient evidence for its claims. On the films heavy use of pre-existing pop songs, Donnelly comments: Are these song appearances simple comments on the act