Hearing hearing? Reflections on the Kubrickian soundtrack

Code, D. J. (2021) Hearing hearing? Reflections on the Kubrickian soundtrack. In: Cenciarelli, C. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook to Cinematic Listening. Oxford University Press: Oxford. ISBN 9780190853617 (doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190853617.013.21)

Abstract

This chapter approaches the phenomenon of “cinematic listening” through a combined critical consideration of “poetic” cinema and aural reflexivity. In the first instance, I draw on a longstanding, oft-neglected lineage of challenges to “narrative” assumptions about the filmic medium, exemplified (for example) in P. Adams Sitney, George Mekas, and Maya Deren. I then select examples from Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999) to suggest how a more “poetic” consideration of particular instances of “the hearing of represented acts of hearing” can refine critical understanding of particular, exceptional “narrative” moments in film. Opening out to adumbrate the relevance of this reframing to a wide variety of contemporary productions, I offer a further challenge, after Michel Chion and Kubrick himself, to the literary (and more broadly “vocal/verbal”) models that often go unchallenged in film theory and film music studies alike.

• Item Type: Book Sections
• Status: Published
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Code, Dr David
• Authors: Code, D. J.
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Culture and Creative Arts > Music
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• ISBN: 9780190853617