Ulteriori informazioni
"In this dynamic study, Todd Decker explores the significance of sound in four historic cycles of Hollywood combat films. Made in the decades following the Vietnam War, these movies reflect the changing public psyche, with shifting perspectives on soldiers, veterans, sacrifice, catharsis, and memorialization. What the audience hears is key to evolving narrative and political strategies, and the insightful holistic focus on all soundtrack elements—dialogue, sound, and music—reveals the complex ethical territories and representational maneuvers of films that exploit violence while simultaneously making moral statements about violence."—Miguel Mera, City, University of London
"Decker has captured the aesthetic, emotional, and narrative sorcery of modern combat films' soundscapes, and has woven engaging and articulate close analyses of the musical, vocal, and sound-effect components that illustrate the most bombastic and sensitive filmic moments. He reveals the sonic elegance behind the tragic despair."—Vanessa Theme Ament, author of The Foley Grail: The Art of Performing Sound for Film, Games, and Animation
"By undertaking a meticulous and far-reaching sound analysis of a broad array of war films, Decker reveals hidden continuities that a normal audience member could never discern. This is extremely important work, because these hidden structures are subtly shaping contemporary attitudes to war, and to violence more broadly. Decker doesn’t merely describe how music, voice, and sound work in these films (although he does do this, admirably); he also helps us understand how these films work on us. Given the extent to which popular ideas about war and ethics are formulated through cinematic experiences, this book should be required reading."—J. Martin Daughtry, author of Listening to War: Sound, Music, Trauma, and Survival in Wartime Iraq
Sommario
Introduction
PART I. THE PRESTIGE COMBAT FILM
1. Movies and Memorials
2. Soundtracks and Scores
PART II. DIALOGUE
3. Soldiers’ Talk
4. Soldiers’ Song
5. Disembodied Voices
PART III. SOUND EFFECTS
6. Nothing Sounds Like an M-16
7. Helicopter Music
PART IV. MUSIC
8. Unmetered
9. Metered
10. Elegies
11. End Titles
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Notes
Works Cited
Index
Info autore
Todd Decker is Professor of Music at Washington University in St. Louis. The author of four books on American commercial music and media, he has lectured at the Library of Congress, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, and LabEx Arts-H2H in Paris.
Riassunto
Shows how the domain of sound, a rich and culturally resonant aspect of the cinema, not only invokes the realities of war, but also shapes the American audience's engagement with soldiers and veterans as flesh-and-blood representatives of the nation. This book explores all three elements of film sound-dialogue, sound effects, music.
Testo aggiuntivo
"The measure of any study, regardless of the field, is its ability to provide new insights and approaches to critical analysis and thus facilitate greater understanding. Such new approaches are particularly important for the mechanisms of cinematic genre because of genre’s dynamic tendency to reflect a given period’s cultural attitudes. Decker’s monograph accomplishes all of this. It is a welcome addition to the literature and will not gather dust on the bookshelf of anyone who is interested in film form in general and in the film score in particular."
