What Dreams Sound Like: Forbidden Planet and the Electronic Musical Instrument
2007; Volume: 18; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0897-0521
Autores Tópico(s)Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life
ResumoThe newest music instrument--sounds a human performance! --From a 1962 Clavivox advertisement We'll always be together ... Together in electric --Phil Oakey and Giorgio Moroder FRED WILCOX'S 1956 FILM FORBIDDEN PLANET IS REGARDED AS A CLASSIC OF science fiction cinema for its narrative and intertextual complexity, lush special effects, and unconventional retelling of The Tempest; however, it is also known for featuring all-electronic film score. Termed the most important science fiction soundtrack (Taylor 93), as well as a cult masterpiece (Lack 313) and of most imaginative music creations of all time.[the one that] wrote on what outer space sounded like (McGowan 110), Forbidden Planet's beautifully odd soundscape was work of experimental New York composers Bebe and Louis Barron. A married couple whose compositional methods were as unconventional as music they produced, Barrons constructed for this film a score unlike any other at that time (and arguably since). Every note of soundtrack had its origin in modular sound circuits hand-built by composers to function as semi-autonomous creatures whose short, bright lives (the Barrons referred to them as primitive life-forms [Interview 195]) were spent singing out emotional leitmotifs in service of film's soundscape. Bebe Barron was later to describe sound generating circuits as electronic nervous systems that, through music they create, convey strong emotional meanings to listeners and ultimately remind them of what their dreams sound like (qtd. in Taylor 94). Electronic Nervous Systems I begin this article with notion of Barrons' score as a product of electronic nervous systems because in this image one finds a convenient entry point into immense technological, compositional, and cultural achievement that is Forbidden Planet soundtrack. These quasi-animate circuits that were to help write book on spooky sounds of science fictional spaces are indicative of fact that, more than just a filmic/musical first from which other sf soundscapes were to follow, Barrons' score is itself a powerful cultural object of mid-century. Forbidden Planet's acoustic environment constitutes a compelling work of speculative fiction that, as this essay hopes to prove, helped make clear vital role song and sound played in development of cinematic genre. I will argue that full impact of auditory landscape in Forbidden Planet exists not just in its ability to bolster illusion of strangeness in visual landscape or even in its sounding out of characters' emotional cues or monstrous loomings (though it does this quite well). The score's evocative power also emanates from fact that tonalities making up this soundscape relate their own complementary narrative grounded in a historically shifting process of musical composition and performance. In tandem with this techno-historical analysis of Barrons' score and its place in development of instrument in sf cinema, I will examine ways in which this history dovetails with continued emergence of one of genre's more persistent tropes: specifically role new/alien technologies play in cinematic narratives of being and becoming human (and, sometimes, more than human). Through compositional and technological nature of their score--as dream-sounding product of electronic nervous systems--the Barrons also bring into sharp relief influential role music making plays in our cultural representations of technologized human and how science fiction film of mid-century, especially a film Forbidden Planet, can be perfect medium in which to conduct just such an experiment. For if, as science fiction film critic J. …
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