The growing presence of popular music in film is one of the most exciting areas of contemporary Film Studies. Written by a range of international specialists, this collection includes case studies on Sliding Doors, Topless Women Talk About Their Lives, The Big Chill and Moulin Rouge, considering the work of populist musicians such as the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and Sting.

Contributors to the volume include Robb Wright, Lesley Vize, Phil Powrie, Anno Mungen, Anaheid Kassabian, Lauren Anderson, Antti-Ville Karja,
K. J. Donnelly, Lee Barron, Melissa Carey Michael Hannan and Jaap Kooijman.

Ian Inglis is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Northumbria. He is the editor of The Beatles, Popular Music and Society: A Thousand Voices (2000) and has published widely on music and cinema.

2003
208 pages
978-1-903364-71-0    £16.99 (pbk)
978-1-903364-72-7    £45.00 (hbk)


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chapter samples
Notes on contributors
Introduction

 reviews 

'Two assumptions underpin the rich collections of essays edited by Ian Inglis in popular Music and Film. In broad terms, these assumptions are, firstly, that popular music and film share important historical, technological and aesthetic ‘correspondences’ which merit examination, and secondly, that in recent decades compilation soundtracks featuring pre-recorded popular music have largely displaced composed, original, musical film soundtracks. Though mention of contemporary film composers such as Danny Elfman (Batman [1989], Edward Scissorhands [1990], Charlie and the Chocolate Factory [2005]) and Simon Boswell (Hardware [1990], Shallow Grave [1995], Cousin Bette [1998]) provides a tentative but necessary caveat to this second assumption, the essays provide ample evidence of the recent but fruitful academic exploration of the popular music soundtrack. The breadth and diversity of the essays included in this collection is impressive and suggests useful avenues for further examination of what has become a central feature of contemporary cultural production and consumption. A number of the essays are mindful of, if not entirely centred on, the commercial imperatives that have helped drive the growing synergies between popular music and film, imperatives which have led, as Lee Barron reminds us, to soundtrack albums that feature music ‘inspired by the film’, even when, as in The Blair Witch Project (1999), the film has no musical soundtrack. Equally useful are those essays, such as the one by Anahid Kassabian, that interrogate the changing aesthetic functions that the use of popular music entails. In marked contrast to Gorbman’s concept of the ‘inaudibility’ of the ‘classical’ composed film score, the soundtrack has much greater ‘audibility’, not least through its associative and often nostalgic resonance when used in films such as Lawrence Kasdan’s The Big Chill (1983), analysed by Melissa Carey and Michael Hannan. Interestingly, both they and Lauren Anderson in her examination of Sliding Doors (1997) and the New Zealand film Topless Women Talk About Their Lives (1997) emphasise the functionality of pop music within the films. While acknowledging the ‘inescapable extra-textual socio-cultural meanings’ of popular music to ‘informed’ viewers/listeners, Anderson asserts that popular music soundtracks are able to deliver ‘many of the traditional functions of film music’, such as basically serving the narrative. This may be so, but as Kassabian points out, in films such as The Matrix (1999) and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001), pop music soundtracks have the capacity to contribute to an emerging aesthetic which has less to do with conventional linearity and more to do with the repetitive, nonlinear, cycles of ‘iterative narrativity’ and sensory experiences associated with videogames, a new aesthetic and film form which techno soundtracks seem ideally suited for.

Other equally stimulating essays offer ruminations about the importance for pop music of visual performance, examined through Anno Mungen’s critique of Hendrix and the film documentary Monterey Pop (1967), a consideration of Sting’s film roles by Ian Inglis, and in Lesley Vize’s careful analysis of music and dance in Dirty Dancing (1987). The neglect of the musical biopic is addressed through effective essays by Ian Inglis and Jaap Kooijman, in an examination of two films about the The Beatles’ early career (Birth of The Beatles [1979], Backbeat [1993]) and a consideration of African-American ‘Pop Divas’ in Lady Sings The Blues (1972) and Tina: What’s Love Got To Do With It (1993).

Robb Wright asks some basic and essential questions about the dangers inherent in rejecting specially composed music and opting for pre-recorded pop music soundtracks that can date and become ‘unhip’, while Kevin Donnelly offers some fascinating reflections on film music within science fiction films, raising questions about around music’s ability to  ‘construct the future’ in ways in which the visual imagination does. It is a paradoxical tribute to the quality and diversity of the essays in this collection that leaves us aware of the neglected areas within the field. As Antti-Ville Karja’s essay on the absence of rock’n’roll movies made in Finland suggests, much more work needs to be done on important national inflections in the use of popular music in film. Nonetheless, this remains an excellent intervention in the burgeoning interest in, and understanding of, film music.’