Voicing the Cinema

"Over the past three decades, the study of the film soundtrack has developed into a rich scholarly discipline, characterized by diverse approaches and methodologies drawn from such disciplines as musicology, music theory, film and media studies, and sound studies. Yet, despite the diversity of approaches, the logic of the soundtrack and the relationship among its various components remains underexplored and undertheorized. The voice has long been an object of focus of many theoretical approaches to sound in cinema. But because of the way it relates to meaning and hierarchy, "voice" is also a useful metaphorical conceit for thinking about relations within the soundtrack. "Voice" can have multiple meanings when considering the integrated soundtrack and its position in the history of film music and sound. This volume builds on existing scholarship on music and film sound, with particular attention to the concepts of the voice in cinema, vococentrism, and the integrated soundtrack. What is the cinematic significance of the singing voice? How do music and dialogue interact in cinema? To what extent, if any, is silent film vococentric? Is vococentrism still a useful category to apply to conetmporary postclassical film? These are some of the questions the essays in this volume will address"--

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.