55

THE ACOUSTIC DIMENSION

NOTES ON CINEMA SOUND
BY TOM LEVIN .

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I. 'Bela Balazs,
. Theory of the Film:
' S O U N D S HAVE N O I M A G E S , ' writes Bela Balazs, and as a Character and
Growth of a New
result 'the sound engineer does nothing more than record and reproduce. Art, New York,
. . . The shape and outline of sounds cannot be changed by varying per- Dover, 1970
spectives as the physiognomy of visible things can be changed by varying (reprint), p 216.
angles.'1 Because claims such as this one made in 1945 continue to
appear in contemporary film theory2, they cannot merely be dismissed as
anachronistic or technologically naive but must be investigated in terms For example in the
work of Christian
of their philosophical presuppositions as well as their effect. Echoing the Metz, Stanley
adoring tone of much early writing on photography which is still spell- Cavell and Gerald
bound by the 'objectivity' of the indexical trace, such arguments for the Mast (see below).
'transparency' or 'neutrality' of technology invariably function to pre-
vent, or at least delay, ideological interrogation. Is the 'recording and
Stanley Cavell,
reproduction' of sound simply an unproblematically reduplicated pre- The World Viewed,
sentation or is it, as will be argued, a mediation which transforms and Cambridge, Mass,
represents its object in an altered form? Harvard
University Press,
While the fallacious and facile equation of image and 'reality' can still 1979, p 20.
be found in recent work on film-witness Stanley Cavell's neo-Bazinian
claim that 'in a photograph the original is still as present as it ever was'3
- i t is nevertheless generally acknowledged that the celluloid image, no 4
Jean-Louis
matter how analogous it is to the retinal image, is a representation Comolli,
'Machines of the
already restructured according to the formalising values of the lens, pro- Visible', in Teresa
jector, film stock, etc, all of which work to establish a set of different rela- de Lauretis and
tions and thus, in some sense, a new reality. The represented is 'read' Stephen Heath
(eds), The
and thus always transformed by its representation. Yet, while the criti- Cinematic
que of the cinematic technology has destroyed the myth of the 'innocent' Apparatus, New
representation, the recognition that, as Jean-Louis Comolli puts it, 'the York, St Martin's
Press, 1980, p 138.
most analogical representation of the world is still not, is never, its re-
duplication',4 does not seem to have been applied to the acoustic domain.
 In the ideological critique of the cinematic apparatus the focus was once
56
Bela Balazs, op cit. again on the visual at the expense of the acoustic, neglecting as a result,
to submit the reproduction of sound to the scrutiny afforded the techno-
logy of the visible. But in order to understand how sound too is trans-
6
Gerald Mast, Film/ formed in the process of its reproduction, the technology of the sound-
Cinema/Movie: A track must also be subjected to critical analysis. The following notes,
Theory of drawing primarily on the work of Theodor Adorno whose writing on
Experience, New
York, Harper and film and radio music offers a stimulating approach to such an investiga-
"Row, 1977, p 216. tion, will attempt to sketch the basic strategies of the critique of the acou-
stic apparatus in order to stimulate its further development.
Even more frequent than claims about the visual domain which col-

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7
Stanley Cavell, op lapse the distinction between photograph and the 'real' are arguments
cit.
about the acoustic sphere which equate the recorded data of the cinema
soundtrack with the 'original' sounds. Consider the following repre-
Christian Metz,
sentative remarks:
'Aural Objects', in
Yale French What we hear from the screen is not an image of the sound but the sound
Studies, no 60,
'Cinema/Sound', itself, which the sound camera has recorded and reproduced again There
1980, p 29. is no difference in dimension and reality between the original sound and the
recorded and reproduced sound, as there is between real objects and their
photographic images.
Jean-Louis (Bela Balazs5)
Baudry, 'The
Apparatus', in
There is clearly a difference between a filmed object or action (it is a photo-
Theresa Hak graph of the thing or act) and a recorded musical sound. For [the latter] is the
Kyung (ed) sound itself. There is no ontological difference between hearing a violin in a
Apparatus, New concert hall and hearing it on a sound track in a movie theater.
York, Tanam
Press, 1980, p 47.
(Gerald Mast6)
Sound can be perfectly copied... even if a photograph were a copy of an
object, so to speak, it would not bear the relation to its object that a recording
10
A not bears to the sound it copies The record reproduces its sound but we cannot
unproblematic say that a photograph reproduces a sight (or a look or an experience).
tripartite (Stanley Cavell')
distinction which
will be employed Auditory aspects, providing that the recording is well done, undergo no
only as a appreciable loss in relation to the corresponding sound in the real world: in
methodological
artifact: clearly all
principle, nothing distinguishes a gunshot heard in a film from a gunshot
boundaries heard on the street.
between the (Christian Metz8)
categories are at
best ill-defined In cinema—as in the case of all talking machines—one does not hear an
(noise can be image of the sounds but the sounds themselves They are reproduced, not
musical, music copied.
noisy, dialogue
musical, etc).
(Jean-Louis Baudry9)

Even more interesting "than the striking similarity of these quotations

11
Jean-Louis
is the fact that on the rare occasion when such a diverse group of film
Baudry, op cit. theorists seems to agree, their shared claim is mistaken! As a closer exam-
ination of the statements reveals, all of them make essentially the same
point: since a recorded soundtrack is not recognised as a recording in the
way an image is readily distinguished as a representation, sound—be it
music (the violin), noise (the gunshot) or dialogue l0 -must not be affec- 57
ted by the recording process and is therefore indistinguishable from and 12
Christian Metz, op
even ontologically identical with its 'original'. While this claim is errone- cit, p 29, note 7.
ous, as will be shown, it is based on the correct observation that there is a
difference in the relation of the 'copy' to the 'original' in the visual and
13
the acoustic domains. But why does the reproduced sound seem less like Jean-Louis
Baudry, op cit.
a copy? If, as a working definition, sound is understood as 'mechanical
radiant energy that is transmitted by longitudinal pressure waves in a
material medium (as air)' (Webster), then the materiality of a sonic event 14
Christian Metz,
consists of this entire vibrating volume. This is also the case for the Film Language,
reproduced sound. Now, whereas an object loses its three-dimension- New York, Oxford

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University Press,
ality when represented in the photographic image, the recorded sound, 1974, p 9.
considered as a volume of vibrating air waves, remains three-dimen-
sional after mechanical mediation. The difference between the copies of
acoustic and visual information is, as both Balazs and Metz recognised, 15
Christian Metz,
that the reproduction of sound suffers no dimensional loss in the process. 'Aural Objects' op
But is this sufficient to equate the copied sound with the 'original' and to cit, p 28.
argue that there is no difference at all between them? While still insisting
that acoustic reproductions are 'real', Baudry is the only one to acknow- 16
ledge explicitly that 'the procedure for recording the sounds and playing Christian Metz,
'Film Language, op
them back deforms them'.11 Metz, taken as representative of the position cit, p 8.
of the others, insists that 'the sounds of a film spread out into space as do
sounds in real life, or almost.'12 What is at stake in this concluding qual-
ification? What kind of acoustic transformations are implied in this 'or 17
The soundtrack as
almost' and why are such differences in the reproduced sound so consist- a 'realisation' of
sound as opposed
ently ignored? to the image which
is a 'representa-
According to Baudry's phonocentrist explanation it is quite simply tion' is a distinc-
that 'voice does not lend itself to games of illusion, or confusion between tion remarkably
the real and its figurativity, to which sight seems particularly liable analogous to the
(because voice cannot be represented figuratively).'13 But why should equally
problematic
figuration (read: representation) be limited exclusively to the domain of dichotomy of
the visual? Metz explains that it is because 'we experience the repre- 'performative' and
sentations of objects as reproductions by implied reference to tactility, the 'constative'
utterances
supreme arbiter of "reality"'. 14 Since, for Metz 'touch is traditionally proposed (and
the very criteria [sic] of materiality',15 as a result, anything that cannot be ultimately
touched 'cannot encompass two degrees of phenomenal reality, the abandoned)by J L
Austin. A different
"real" and the copy'.16 Once materiality is defined in terms of tactility critique of the
the intangibility of the acoustic precludes figuration, that is, any distinc- image/sound
tion between the reproduction and the 'original'. This in turn leads to distinction could
take its cue from
the conclusion that recorded sound, because in these terms it is not a Austin's discussion
copy, is identical with 'live' sound.17 of quotation as
undermining the
That acoustic reproductions are indistinguishable from their 'origi- rigid separation of
nals' is a very problematic claim. Not only is a poor recording often the terms he
recognised as a copy (even by non-musicians), but there are various non- coined.
tactile modalities in which the 'real' can be distinguished from the 'copy'
—artificial rose scent by its odour, fake orange juice by its taste, Philip K
Dick's androids by their inability to empathise, etc. Indeed, most trained
ears can easily differentiate a synthesised 'copy' of an instrument from a
58 'live' sound. What is at stake in Metz' curious statement that recorded
18
Christian Metz, sounds are 'real'? The fact that another formulation of this claim begins
Langage et Cinema, with the phrase 'for the naive ear'18 seems to confirm the suspicion that
Paris, Librarie Metz (and by extension also the other theorists cited above) have made
Larousse, 1971, p
209. false ontological generalisations from isolated phenomenological obser-
vations ('it seems real to me' becomes 'it is real').
Metz' definition of materiality as tactility leads him to claim that
19
Christian Metz, motion in the cinema is also 'real': 'the strict distinction between object
Film Language, op and copy, however, dissolves on the threshold of motion. Because move-
cit.
ment is never material but is always visual, to reproduce its appearance is
to duplicate its reality'19 (my emphases). What does this mean? It is well

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20
known that the cinematic image does not move: according to perceptual
Joseph and
Barbara Anderson, psychologists the experience of apparent motion occurs despite the fact
'Motion that the stimuli (a series of still images) themselves do not move. Unlike
Perception in real motion in which an object moving from point A to B stimulates all
Motion Pictures',
in The Cinematic
intermediate points on the retina, apparent motion is perceived despite
Apparatus, op cit, the lack of stimuli on these intermediate points.20 The experience of
pp 76-105. motion in the cinema is thus a production of a perceptual transformation.
While apparent motion is phenomenologically indistinguishable from real
motion, the fact remains that, for this effect of movement to be experi-
21
Christian Metz, enced at all, the only actual movement of the film-that of the celluloid
Film Language, op
cit. through the projector-must be rendered invisible by the cinematic
apparatus. A phenomenological observation is thus almost always blind
to the activity of the technology producing the effect to which it is res-
ponding. Such a phenomenological stance is incompatible with an ana-
lysis which seeks to understand and critique the ideological effects of the
technology.
Metz' phenomenological agenda is revealed in another symptomatic
formulation in which he claims that 'the objects and the characters we
see in a film are apparently only effigies, but their motion is not the ef-
figy of motion-it seems real'21 (my emphasis). Parallel to the opposition
of image (a copy) and sound (not copied, but 'real'), Metz here differenti-
ates between the image and movement. However, instead of the usual
claim that motion is real he writes that it seems real. This is a quite differ-
ent and much less controversial claim. The rhetorical effect of calling
cinema sound or movement 'real' instead of describing it as a convincing
representation is to render superfluous any analysis of transformations
that might have occurred in the process of reproduction. The translation
of phenomenological observations into ontological claims thus serves to
perpetuate the ideological activity of a representational practice by hold-
ing it immune from critique.
Instead of the uncritical phenomenological narrative which explains
the technological history of cinema as the successive addition of 'real'
movement and 'real' sound, an alternative approach would read this
22
Jean-Louis development in terms of a complicated alternation of supplementation
Comolli, op cit, p and lack: the advent of a new technique such as sound strengthens the
140.
impression of reality while simultaneously presenting new threats to it.
Abandoning the myopic trust in perception such an approach takes seri-
ously the mechanism of disavowal, recognising that any reality effect of 59
any fiction 23
Rudolf Arnheim,
Film as Art,
Berkeley,
always depends on its self-designation as such, on the fact that its fictive University of
character is human and recognizedfrom the start, that it presents itself as an California Press,
artificial arrangement, that it does not hide that it is above all an apparatus 1957, p 186.
of deception.22

24
The cinema, site of innumerable technological achievements which Hugo von
eliminated seeming obstacles to its 'realism' in fact owes the success of Hofmannsthal,
'The Substitute
its illusion not only to this catalogue of verisimilitude but to its artifici- for Dreams', Prosa

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ality. Bd. IV, 1921, p 45
ff.

II. 25
Theodor Adorno
and Hanns Eisler,
'In the universal silence of the image the fragments of a broken vase Komposition fuer
could talk exactly the way a character "talked" to his neighbor.'23 If for den Film,
Frankfurt,
Rudolf Arnheim the stasis and silence of the still photograph were to be Suhrkamp Verlag,
read as an Utopian dissolving of the distinctions between the live and the 1976, p 75.
inert, the near and the far, the mute and the voiced, the same image (Although first
could also be read as terrifying evidence of reification-man reduced to published in
English as
the status of a silent and static thing. A similar tension plagues the silent Composing for the
film as well: with the advent of the 'moving picture' which destroyed the Films, New York,
unity of stasis while maintaining that of silence, the 'live' quality of the Oxford University
Press, 1947, the
moving figures was immediately at odds with their 'deadly' silence. In an study was written
Utopian reading this silence could be understood as a liberation from lan- in German 'for
guage considered as the discourse of oppression: Hofmannsthal, for translation into the
American'; for
example, notes that for workers seeking refuge in the cinema 'the fact further discussion
that these images are silent is an even further attraction; they are silent of its complicated
like dreams. And deep down, without realizing it, these people fear lan- publication history
see the preface and
guage, they fear in language the mechanism of society.'24 Theodor editorial postscript
Adorno and Hanns Eisler, on the other hand, read the silence of the mov- to the German
ing figures as evidence of the decay of language and as an indictment of edition cited
above.)
the estrangement created by commodity culture: 'at the sight of the gesti-
culating masks the people recognized themselves as just such beings,
alienated from themselves and not far from being struck dumb.'25 Walter 26
Walter Benjamin,
Benjamin, who did not refrain from criticising the cinema despite his Gesammelte
conviction of its Utopian possibilities, describes the silent continuity of Schri/ien Bd.I,
Frankfurt,
the strictly discontinuous images as analogous to the sequence of autono- Suhrkamp Verlag,
mous tasks on the assembly line: 'both probably appeared at the same 1980, p 1040.
time historically. The social significance of the one cannot be under-
stood apart from that of the other.'26 In a similar vein, Guy Debord reads
27
in the very structure of the silent spectacle the fragmentation of the Guy Debord,
capitalist order: 'the world at once present and absent which the specta- Society of the
Spectacle, Detroit,
cle makes visible is the world of the commodity... the visible negation Black and Red,
of life, a negation of life which has become visible.'27 If the temporality 1977, p 37.
of the photograph is fundamentally past (Barthes' 'there then'), a trace of
60 a prior presence which is now past, then it is no wonder that the move-
28
Christian Metz, ment of these shadows might have appeared eerie-for what else but
Film Language, op spirits can be visible, moving and absent?
cit, p 7.
Because for Metz movement is simply 'real' his analysis concentrates
on the 'reality' of the moving images: 'motion imparts corporeality to
29 objects and gives them an autonomy their still representations could not
ibid, p 8.
have; it draws them from their flat surfaces to which they were confined.
Movement gives us volume and volume suggests life.'28 As usual
30 Metz immediately qualifies this claim in a footnote where he admits that
Roger Manvell
and John Hunty, the volume which is imparted by movement is 'of course minus one of
The Technique of the three spatial dimensions in which it usually unfolds I simply

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Film Music, New mean an acceptable equivalent for volume. The problem of volume is
York, Hastings
House, 1957, pp vast [!] and complex.'29 But even if it is granted that movement suggests
20-22. life by suggesting volume, how can Metz account for the fact that the
advent of movement seems to have foregrounded the artificiality of the
moving images, their lack of volume and particularly their lack ofsound?
31
Kurt London, Scholars of the soundtrack have regularly noted that the impression of
Film Music: A movement in the early cinema appeared unnatural and freakish without
Summary,
London, Faber some sort of acoustic correlate to the visual activity.30 Why?
and Faber, 1936, p According to a traditional account, film music
27.
began not as a result of any artistic urge but from the dire need of something
which would drown out the noise made by the projector. For in those times
32
Theodor Adorno there were as yet no sound-absorbent walls between the projection machine
and Hanns Eisler, and the auditorium. This painful noise disturbed visual enjoyment to no
op cit.
small extent. Instinctively cinema proprietors had recourse to music, and it
was the right way, using an agreeable sound to neutralize one less agreeable.31
33 ibid.
This seemingly plausible narrative raises as many questions as it
answers. Why, for example, did the projection noise disturb the specta-
34 cle? Was it, as Adorno/Eisler speculate, th"at the mechanical buzz was
Because the
translation of this perceived as an acoustic correlate of the technological alienation which
essay which was frightening in the silent images?32 Or was it that the live musicians
appears in functioned as an antidote to the 'dead' images? The continued popu-
Illuminations,
Hanna Arendt larity of music even when mechanically reproduced seems to indicate
(ed), New York, that the appeal of the music had more to do with the character of the
Schocken Books, sounds themselves. Why then was music so 'instinctively' agreeable?
1969, p 217-252 is
unusable, I refer Was it the 'high-art' status of certain musical genres such as the sym-
the reader to the phony which functioned to grant cultural validity to the technological
announced images? What, in short, was the effect of the acoustic supplement?
retranslation by
Joel Snyder, According to Adorno/Eisler, music rendered the terrifying spectacle of
forthcoming in the moving spectres less frightening: 'the "magical" function of music
Critical Inquiry.
consisted in pacifying'the evil spirits in the unconscious perception [of
film].'33 Appearing only two pages after a reference to Benjamin's 'The
Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility',34 this connec-
tion of music with cult ritual practice-a central concept in the discus-
sion of aura-could be read as an indication that the addition of music
has an 'auratic' effect. Consider Adorno/Eisler's claim that music
gives film a nearness similar to the film's own creation of proximity through 61
the close-up. It attempts to establish a layer of human mediation between the 35
Theodor Adorno
reeled-off photographs and the spectators. Its social function is that of and Hanns Eislcr,
cement: [film music] binds together elements which would otherwise oppose op cit, pp 61-62
(English p 59).
each other unrelated—the mechanical product and the spectators as well as
the spectators among themselves It seeks, after the fact, to breathe into
pictures some of the life that photography has taken away from them.35
36
Luigi Pirandello,
Si Gira, quoted by
The insistence that sound gives back to the photographed images that Leon Pierre-Quint,
which they lost in the process of mechanical reproduction must be read 'Signification du
against the background of a passage from Luigi Pirandello's novel Si cinema', L'Art
Cinematograph-

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Gira cited in section IX of Benjamin's essay, in which the loss of aura is ique, II, Paris
described in terms of the actor's experience in front of the camera. He is 1927, p 14-15.
overcome by an inexplicable emptiness which results from his being rob-
bed of 'his reality, his life, his voice and the sounds he makes when he
moves, only to be transformed into a mute image which flickers moment- Theodor Adorno
arily on the screen and then disappears into silence...>36 (my emphases). and Hanns Eisler,
op cit, p 29
It is no accident that the vocabularies of being (reality, life) and the (English p 20).
acoustic (voice, sound, mute, silence) are linked by contiguity: loss of
voice implies loss of being or presence and loss of presence is, for Ben-
jamin, the hallmark of the destruction of aura. Whereas Benjamin fore-
sees the re-introduction of the aura through the fabrication of the person-
ality cult of the 'star', Adorno/Eisler imply that an aura-effect, (which
one could call an 'A-effect', understood as the polar opposite of Brecht's
term) is already produced by the addition of the acoustic dimension.
In its privileging of sight over sound as the guarantor of the 'real', the
early cinema was read by Adorno and others as the latest in a series of
representational practices which manifest the epistemological privileg-
ing of the visual which is characteristic of western culture. According to
Adorno, vision is the primary modality through which the highly indus-
trialised bourgeois order gained power: where reality is defined as a col-
lection of 'things' (commodities) the eye is trained to distinguish and
identify objects and is active, selective and definite. Hearing, on the
other hand, does not differentiate in the same way and is considered pas-
sive and indefinite. In the face ef technology hearing is 'archaic'. Acous-
tic perception, Adorno/Eisler write, can be understood as a type of
regression to a pre-individualistic (cultic?) collectivity which resists the
purposive rationalisation of the commodity culture: 'one could say that
to react primarily with the unselfconscious ear rather than with the alert
eye is, in a certain sense, to contradict the later industrial age and its
anthropology.'37 If the industrial age is paradigmatically the era of tech-
nical reproduction and the constitutive feature of technical reproduction
is, in turn, its lack of a unique existence in time and place, then accord-
ing to the Benjaminian turn in Adorno/Eisler's argument, the loss of
aura in the image is symptomatic of the industrial age. Sound, if it is to
contradict this age, must somehow retain a vestige of that unique exist-
ence in time and place and indeed, just as Metz and others have recog-
nised, sound does have a different relation to time and space than the
62 image, it has a spatial dimension.
38
See, for example, While various theorists have recognised that sound adds a third
Claude Bailble, 'Le dimension to the flat screen38, Adorno/Eisler go further and relate this
Son: Programma-
tion de l'ecoute'
volumetric aspect of the acoustic to its A-efFect: 'the direct relationship
Cahiers du Cinema, to the collective which is so intrinsic to the phenomenon [of sound] itself
April 1979, no is probably related to the spatial depth, to the feeling of being encompas-
298, p 25.
sed that envelops the individual, which is common to all music'.39 What
is decisive, however, is whether this acoustic A-effect in the cinema is
39
taken as evidence for the mediated or for the wnmediated character of the
Theodor Adorno recorded soundtrack. Sound exists only in time (there is no acoustic
and Hanns Eisler,
op cit, p 30 equivalent to the freeze frame) and sound exists only in space. Indeed, if

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(English p 21). sound is understood as a volume of vibrating air then, assuming for the
moment that sound reproduction were absolutely flawless (which it is by
no means), such a 'perfect' reproduction of sound waves in a different
40
Theodor Adorno, volume would effectively constitute a different sound. As a result Adorno
'The Radio
Symphony' in argues that all symphonies become chamber pieces when heard on the
Paul F Lazarsfeld radio in the home.40 That a gunshot seems to sound the same in the differ-
and Frank Stanton ent acoustic spaces of the street and the inside of a cinema is a deception:
(ed), Radio
Research 1941, if differences remain unnoticed this is a function of a socially constructed
New York, Duell, auditory practice which emphasises the similarity of such sounds in
Sloane and Pearce, order that they can be understood (i.e. linked to a common source) by the
, 1941, p 119.
hearer. In its three-dimensionality sound thus seems more directly tied
to the space of its occurrence, its 'here and now', even when the sound is
41
mechanically reproduced. It is in this sense that Adorno/Eisler hold, in
ibid, p 61 (English
p59).
response to Benjamin, that sound contributes an A-effect to film which
was lost in the photographic process. But, whereas Metz and others go
on to conclude that sound is untransformed by the reproductive techno-
logy, Adorno/Eisler recognise that the volumetric character of the
acoustic implies precisely the opposite: thespatial specificity which gives
sound its A-effect (i.e. the fact that sounds are always different in differ-
ent spaces) means that the reproduced sound is always different from the
original. Such an understanding of the acoustic A-effect, however, is not
only far from that of the naive'phenomenologists, it remains inaccessible
to them due to the presuppositions of their methodology.
With the advent of sound the paradigmatically un-auratic images were
supplemented by not only a third: dimension but also by the A-effect
which they so lacked. The status of film music as aTesponse to a lack is
already evident, Adorno/Eisler point out, in the function of its antece-
dents, the music of nineteenth century opera and theatre which was per-
formed 'while the spectator is facing the stage without seeing any life,
when the curtain is down or during a scene change: the between-the-acts-
music. Film music represents the universalized concept of between-the-
acts-music but employed also and precisely where there is something to
see.'41 In its relation to the uncanny movement of the frozen images, film
music acts not as a duplication but as a stimulus of the motion, providing
momentum and corporeality. The pervasiveness of film music in the
early cinema cannot be explained as simply an increase in 'realism' since
the daily life scenes portrayed were in reality rarely accompanied by
strings! Rather, film music supplied the spatiality implied but not 63
realised by the animation of the image through the acoustic A-efFect 42
Rick Altman,
which was based on the (dimensional) difference of sound and image. 'Moving Lips:
The history of the development of cinema sound can thus be read as an Cinema as Ventri-
loquism' in Yale
oscillation between its difference understood as supplement and its dif- French Studies, no
ference understood as threat. In early cinema with live accompaniment 60, 'Cinema/
Sound', 1980, p
the material heterogeneity of the visual and the acoustic was further 76.
emphasised by the presence of the live performers. However, if the
musicians posed a threat to the image by foregrounding its lifelessness
this was eliminated by the use of recorded sound since the critical depth 43
Theodor Adorno
of the acoustic was not lost through mechanical mediation. Now the and Hanns Eisler,

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heterogeneity of the visual and the acoustic is contained entirely within op cit, p 72
(English p 72).
the realm of the technological. But even in the relation of recorded sound
to recorded image the imbalance remains: because of the A-efFect (the
seeming lack of mediation) sound is perceived as more present than the
image. Adorno/Eisler insist, however, that this difference be employed
as a way of foregrounding the mediated character of the visual register.
While stressing, as will be shown, that the reproduced sound is by no
means unaltered (despite the A-efFect), they point out that its lack of di-
mensional loss can be used to highlight the transformations that occur in
the photographic process. The acoustic supplement threatens to dis-
credit and even displace the visual domain it was meant to support and
strengthen!
The primacy of speech in the soundtrack today can in turn be read as a
means by which the image reasserts its hegemony over the acoustic. Be-
cause, according to the logic of the 'sound hermeneutic'42 sounds always
pose the question of their source, the extra-diegetic status of most film
music poses a threat to the image which can' be overcome by simply
diegeticising the acoustic. This is most readily effected through the
introduction of voice. By locating the source of sounds within the image
or the diegesis, sound is once again subordinated to the visual. At the
same time, by focusing attention on the image, the effect of the acoustic
'enigma' is to shift an analytic gaze away from the activity of the sound
technology which can subsequently function with even less risk of expo-
sure. The attempt to unite sound and image necessarily denies the spec-
ificity of the acoustic and the visual domains and thereby obscures the in-
compatibility of these media. In a sense, Adorno argues, cinema's inter-
nal antagonism is not to be 'overcome' in this manner but should be
recognised as an accurate symptom of a culture whose members are
alienated from themselves. The attempt to embellish the visual with the
A-efFect of the acoustic is a denial of the mediated and non-auratic status
of the image and of sound as well. Using the term in its most pejorative
sense, Edorno/Eisler insist that 'the effects in which image and music are
directly united are inevitably "auratic"-in truth already degenerate
forms of aura in which the magic of the here and now has been techno-
logically manipulated.'43 The A-efFect of the cinema is always already a
product of a fundamentally non-auratic technology which serves to main-
tain the semblance of the auratic in order to camouflage its own activity.
64 But even in the most 'auratic' match of recorded sound with a syn-
44
ibid, p 76 (English chronised image there arises a tension: the closer word and image are
P77). coupled the greater the contrast between them becomes manifest. Indeed
Adorno/Eisler claim that 'the fundamental differences between speech
and image are registered in the viewer's unconscious and the insistent
45
ibid, p 77 (English unity of the sound film which poses as the seamless re-duplication of the
P78). external world in all its elements, is experienced as fraudulent and
fractured.'44 In a 'talkie' which employs only speech and almost no
music the muteness of the image is as foregrounded, according to
Adorno/Eisler, as in a silent film. The attempt to totalise the A-effect
fails (and this is equally the case for the 'magical' use of music in film):

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'at the moment of greatest unity the relation of music and image is
antithetical'.45 Film contains the antidote to its own lie. Adorno/
Eisler conclude that montage is the only relation which does justice to the
difference of sound and image.
If the disavowal mechanism which is essential to the experience of
cinematic illusion involves the recognition of both the verisimilitude and
the artificiality of the representation, then music could be regarded as
providing both the 'realistic' components of movement and depth as
well as the necessary 'anti-realist' aspect of its non-representational pres-
ence. Just as the projection of the images must efface the differences bet-
ween them for the effect of realism to take place, so too does the cinema
depend upon the material heterogeneity or difference of sound which it
employs in the mode of negation. By diegeticising the acoustic, especi-
ally through the use of synchronous sound, cinema attempts to contain
and even repress the supplement which it at the same time requires.

m.
One of the greatest dangers posed by the hegemony of technology in the
western world-in which cinema and various other representational
technologies play a central role—is that its very omnipresence threatens
to conceal the violence of its effects. One way to attempt to break out of
this myopia of familiarity is through an investigation of the difference
posed by a non-western culture such as the orient. This could be seen as
the context for Martin Heidegger's conversation with Professor Tezuka,
during the course of which the Japanese academic suggests Kurosawa's
Rashomon as an example of the all-consuming 'Europeanization' under
46
discussion. When asked whether he is familiar with the film Heidegger
Martin Heidegger,
'A Dialogue on responds enthusiastically that although he had only seen it once, he had
Language', in On been struck by the unusual gestural economy with its emphasis on stasis.
the Way to Indeed, Heidegger continues, he had felt that Rashomon seemed to
Language, (trans
Peter D Hertz), convey something of the 'otherness' of oriental culture: why then was it
San Francisco, being proposed as an occidental manifestation? Tezuka explains that
Harper and Row while the film does reveal aspects of a Japanese 'difference' on the level of
1971, p 17.
content, the very structure of cinematic inscription, the very technology
of film is itself already thoroughly European. The very experience of the
 'other' is always already forced into the structure of the 'same' 65

The Japanese world is from the outset captured and imprisoned in the object-
ness of photography and is in fact especially framed for photography.
47
If I have listened rightly you wish to say that the Eastasian world and the See esp Martin
technical-aesthetic product of the film industry are incompatible. Heidegger, 'The
Age of the World
This is what I mean. Regardless of what the aesthetic quality of a Japanese Picture', in The
film may turn out to be, the mere fact that our world is set forth in the frame Question
Concerning
of a film forces that world into the sphere of what you call objectness. The Technology, (trans.
cinematic objectification is already a consequence of the ever wider outreach William Lovitt),
of Europeanization.46 San Francisco,

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Harper and Row,
1977, pp 115-154,
While this is only a cursory indication of the direction of Heidegger's esp p 128iT. For a
analysis of the objectification structure of representation (Vorstellwig)", detailed treatment
the above exchange already contains the central insight of the so-called of the translation
of Vorsrellen by
'apparatus critique' developed by Jean-Louis Baudry more than fifteen 'representation' in
years later: irrespective of the particular content of the image, the photo- the above essay,
graph is a representation already interpreted, selected and ideologically see Jacques
Derrida's
'framed' by its very technology. 'Sending: On
While a number of contemporary film theorists have correctly pointed Representation', in
out that because of its three-dimensionality 'sound is not "framed" in the Social Research, vol
49 no 2, Summer
same way as the image,'43 (my emphasis) this does not preclude that 1982, pp 294-326.
sound is still 'framed' in some way. Indeed, if it is recognised that the
image is not an ideologically innocent trace, then the claim that sound is
not image-like can be read as an attempt to exempt it from critical ideo- 48
Mary Ann Doane,
logical scrutiny. Conversely, the attempt to think the character of sound 'The Voice in the
Cinema: The
as fundamentally photographic may reveal ideological effects of the basic Articulation of
acoustic apparatus similar to those Heidegger and Baudry exposed in the Body and Space',
technology of the image. In fact, in an important sense the 'framing' of in Yale French
Studies no 60,
sound is remarkably analogous to that of the image since, with only few 'Cinema/Sound',
exceptions, sound in the cinema is optical. As Maurice Jaubert noted as 1980, p 39.
early as 1936

49
Maurice Jaubert,
it is well known that the sound track receives its impressions from the vibra- 'Music on the
tions of light caused by the vibrating diaphram of the microphone, itself set Screen', (1936)
in motion by the sound vibrations of the orchestra. Indeed, one can say that cited by Claudia
recording consists in the photography of sound. The director with this photo- Gorbman, 'Vigo/
graph at his command is in a position to treat sounds just as he'treats Jaubert' Cine-
Tracts vol 1 no 2,
images.*9 Summer 1977, p
77.
Despite technological advances which have led to the use of magnetic
tape in sound recording, due to the prohibitive conversion costs the play-
50
back of recorded sound in cinema remains to a great extent optical, that Rick Altman,
'Introduction',
is, photographically encoded in terms of either variable density or vari- Yale French
able area and read off the film by a lamp.50 Considered in this way, sound Studies, no 60,
is clearly subject to all the problems of transformation which beset the 'Cinema/Sound',
1980, p 8fT.
image.
The applicability of the apparatus critique of the camera to. the sound-
 1
track has been increasingly reflected in the critical literature on cinema
66
51
Alan Williams, 'Is sound. Alan Williams, for example, investigates the construction of the
Sound Recording 'listening subject' using terms adopted from Baudry.51 Yet, as indicated
Like A Language?' by Williams' conclusion that 'what is most necessary for a critical, his-
in Yale French
Studies no 60, torical account of sound practices in film will be detailed analyses of dif-
'Cinema/Sound', ferent strategies of sound use,'52 such studies almost always focus on the
1980, pp 51-66. techniques of sound production-editing, dubbing, voice-over, etc, in
short, the employment of the apparatus-and accord little or no attention
52
to a systematic examination of the technology of sound itself.
ibid, pp 64-65; this
analytical focus is Adorno, confronted upon his arrival in the USA with the technologi-
also reflected in cal reproduction and transmission of European culture, and employed at

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the excellent work the Princeton Radio Research Project, made the investigation of the
of Mary Ann
Doane, 'The Voice effects of the acoustic apparatus one of his principal concerns. Suspici-
in the Cinema: ous of the supposedly 'innocent' technology from the start, Adorno
The Articulation wanted to establish whether 'a symphony played on the air remains a
of Body and
Space', op cit and symphony? Are the changes it undergoes by wireless transmission
Rick Altman, merely slight and negligible modifications or do these changes effect the
'Moving Lips: very essence of the music?'53 This is no small issue: mediation is here un-
Cinema as
Ventriloquism', op avoidably linked to essential transformation. If familiarity has dulled the
cit. capacity to recognise the violence done to sound by recording, Adorno
argues that it is important to try to establish carefully the material altera-
tions which do occur and the specific effects of signification they entail.
53
Theodor Adorno, Because the recording process can only capture sound waves from one
'A Social Critique point (the site of the microphone) in the space which constitutes that
of Radio Music',
Kenyan Review vol sound, recording is inherently perspectival. The limitations of such
VII no 2, 1945, p acoustic perspectivism can never be fully reduced or eliminated even
210. through multiple miking, digital delay systems and many speakers. The
sampling of the sound just like that of the image (frames per second) may
54
be increased above a certain perceptual threshold but will always remain
Alan Williams, op
cit, p 53.
a more or less differentiated sample or selection, and thus a reading, an
interpretation and never the 'original' sound.54
Playback is as equally problematic as recording: although 'advanced'
55
Using a state-of- technology is rapidly eliminating the remaining 'flaws' in acoustic trans-
the-art tape mission, the cinema soundtrack lags far behind the vanguard of high
recorder, for fidelity.55 Background noise arises on the tape (hiss), in the amplifier
example, magnetic
tape is able to (thermal noise) and on the optical track (dust, scratches) creating a con-
capture 70db (with stant very low level but still audible 'current' of noise which Adorno
a DBX unit up to refers to as the hear-strip (Horstreifeny6: 'the distortion level gives film
90-100 db) of the
120 db dynamic music, much like radio, the quality of a strip: it seems, like the images, to
range of the be marched past the viewer on the screen, much more a copy of music
human ear. than the music itself.'57 Jean-Louis Comolli is right to insist that such
However in the
translation onto technological phenomena be situated historically since, as he points out,
the optical track they are 'in truth of little weight at a time when it is the whole of sound
there are dramatic reproduction, records, radios, which is affected by background noise and
losses: a new print
has a theoretical
interference'.58 However, while this may account for the fact that such
dynamic range of 'noise' was not actively perceived, the 'hear-strip' is no less (and perhaps
50 db (maximum) more) symptomatic because of its omnipresence. In fact, despite techno-
and in practice
closer to 35 db and
logical development, a certain amount of low-level noise remains an ele-
ment in contemporary recording: this is evidenced by the practice of a used print only 67
recording silence in order to add the hiss which would be notably absent 15-20 db!cf
Bailble,' Le Son:
were a piece of'blank* tape spliced in instead.59 • Programmation de
The psychological effect of the 'hear-strip' is, according to Adorno, l'ecoute', in
Cahiers du Cinema
'somewhat similar to the awareness of the screen in the movies: music no 297, Feb 1979,
appearing upon such a hear-strip may bear a certain image-like character p53.
of its own.'60 Elsewhere Adorno writes that 'the effect was like acoustic
celluloid on which the music had been printed. In sensuous terms this 56
Although in 'The
suggested that one was perceiving not the music itself but its photo- . Radio Symphony'
graph '61 The consequences of such 'musical photography' are not op cit, p 110
insignificant: when music is conveyed by the acoustic apparatus it is which was written

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in English Adorno
'photographed in degenerated colors and modified proportions'.62 While refers to the 'hear-
Adorno recognises that mechanical recording also fosters an analytic stripe', the acoustic
attitude towards music (the possibility of repeated close listening, etc)63, analogy, to the
celluloid strip
he is much more concerned with the ways in which the apparatus seems best
transforms or re-structures its material. In recorded music, he argues, conveyed by 'hear-
there is a loss of tone colour and intensity, a reduction of the overtone strip'. The
confusion caused
series, a compression of the dynamic range, an overemphasis on melody, by the former is
a de-emphasis on accompaniment, an exaggeration of contrasts, etc, all evident in Ben
of which combine to impose an 'image character' on the sound.64 •Brewster's 'The
Fundamental
That Adorno's analysis is not simply a nostalgic 'fall' story but rather a Reproach
narrative of transformation is evidenced in his insistence that changes (Brecht)', Cine-
are effected by both the process of recording and the subsequent com- Tracts, vol 1 no 2,
Summer 1977, p
bination of sound with the image.65 Far from mourning a loss with 45, where the
respect to 'live' music, Adorno's project is to understand the specificity author flags the
of the acoustic mediation in a variety of different contexts. Because film 'hear-stripe' in a
footnote and
music is heard in relation to the image, its 'distracted' mode of reception wonders whether
affects the manner of its composition. Film music cannot have structural the term refers to
depth but must be primarily surface, effect,'colour: 'the more it provides 'the range of
audible
the image with the dimension of depth which it lacks, the less it may frequencies—or
develop its own depth.'66 Thus film music is affected not only by the does Brecht mean
technology of reproduction but also by the function it serves in relation the sound strip?' It
is hopefully clear
to the image. The overall result, which is referred to as 'neutralization' from the above
gives film music the character of a digest whose material has been predi- discussion that
gested by the technology.61 The homogenisation of the sound is such that neither conjecture
is correct.
even a conservative listener, Adorno claims, is able to listen to music on
records or in the cinema which s/he would never stand for in a concert
hall. In a formulation very reminiscent of Heidegger's insight regarding 57
Theodor Adorno
the objectification caused by the very technology of photography, and Hanns Eisler,
Adorno/Eisler conclude that 'as a result of the neutralization the musical op cit, p 84
style, in the normal sense of the specificity of the materials employed, (English p 86).
becomes to a large extent inconsequential.>6S-
For an analysis of the soundtrack in cinema, Adorno insists, it is not 58
Jean-Louis
enough to consider a variety of sound practices because no matter how Comolli, op cit, p
radical and innovative they may be they are ultimately put in an appara- 133.
tus which spits them out again in a digested, blunted and convention-
alised form. In classically Brechtian fashion, Adorno/Eisler hold that an
investigation of sound 'cannot be separated from the technique of the
68 recording procedures: if the latter is thoroughly transformed the mean-
59
cfBailble,opcit, ing of the music must consequently be transformed as well'.69 It is not
April 1979, p 22 sufficient merely to interrogate the uses of sound: the imperative is 'to
and Theodor smash the mechanism of neutralization itself'.70 To change the appara-
Adorno, Der
Getreue tus it must be rethought: the first step is critical analysis.
Korrepetitor, - According to Benjamin 'the sound film did not change anything fun-
Frankfurt, damental. What remains decisive is that the acting is done for an appara-
Suhrkamp Verlag,
1976, p 371. In his tus, or, in the case of the sound film, for two of them.'71 In his analysis of
analysis of 'The the profound changes that take place in the shift from the theatrical to
Radio Symphony'
opcit, p 110
the cinematic what is significant for Benjamin is the advent of reproduc-
Adorno writes, tive technology, of which sound is just one more manifestation. Yet,

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that the hear-strip whereas the first apparatus, that of the image, has been subjected to sus-
'may not attract
any attention and tained ideological scrutiny, the 'second' apparatus, that of the sound-
it may not even track, has not. While almost exclusively limited to analyses of music,
enter the listener's Adorno/Eisler's work on the technology of the acoustic is seminal for its
consciousness, but
as an objective detailed attention to the specific effects of that second apparatus, to 'the
characteristic of material and the technicalities of transmision'.72 The critique of the
the phenomenon it acoustic apparatus which they pursued is long overdue.
plays a part in the
apperception of
the whole.'

60
Theodor Adorno,
'The Radio
Symphony', op cit.

61
Theodor Adorno,
Der Getreue
Korrepetitor, op
65 66 70
cit, p 370. This is much more Theodor Adorno ibid, p 84 (English
evident in and Hanns Eisler, P87).
Adorno's post- op cit, p 143
'Culture-Industry' (English pp
62
Theodor Adorno, work on cinema; 132-133).
71
'The Radio see especially his Walter Benjamin,
Symphony', op cit, 'Transparencie? on Gesammelte
p 132. Film', trans. 67 Schriften, op cit,
ibid, p 130
Thomas Y Levin, Bd I 2, p 489.
(English p 119).
New German
Critique, no 24-25,
63
Theodor Adorno, FallAVinter
• Der Getreue 1981-82, pp 72
68
ibid, p 84 (English Theodor Adorno,
Korrepetitor, op 199-205 and also p87). 'The Radio
cit, p 390. the excellent Symphony', op cit,
introduction by p 110.
Miriam B Hansen
in ibid, pp 69
64
ibid, p 130
ibid, p 370. 186-198. (English p 119).
 Watershed/ University of Bristol Department of Extra-IvTursI St adles

i
?
FILM SUMMER CO

Following last \ ea, s F_m Summer Scr.oo 'n Bns'.Oi, this % ear'3 s ,-eru -,»"iL focus on 'art' ar.d 'classic'
cinema. It will examine in particular the ways in which these categories have changed, and will
consider the marketing and distribution of 'art' cinema in the U.K.
Most of the teaching will be structured around small seminar groups addressing such questions as:
What is the role played by directors as authors? - Is there still a valid distinction to be drawn

Downloaded from http://screen.oxfordjournals.org/ at Northeastern University Libraries on April 5, 2014

between art and commercial cinema? - Do 'art'filmsha¥e anything in common with other cultural
forms?
There will be two feature films screened each day, including The Draughtsman's Contract,
Metropolis, Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, Hie Cabinet of Dr. Califan, Apocalypse How, A
Question of Sileace, Bom in Flamea, Fwsgea Musis and La Eegto da Jen., together with two
seminars and one presentation.
Tutors: JANE ROOT, freelance journalist (Honey, New Statesman, Leveller); works for Cinema of
Women and the British Film Institute.
STEVE NEALE, Lecturer in film studies, University of Kent; member of the editorial board of Screen;
author of numerous, articles and BFI monograph on Genre.
LIZ BIRD, Staff Tator in Sociology, Department of Extra-Mural Studies, University of Bristol.
STEVE PINHAY, Director, Watershed.
Guest Speakers: MICK EATON, film-maker.
PETER SAINSBURY, Head of British Film Institute Production Division.
The School will be held
at Watershed, with
optional accommodation
provided at Bristol
University's Wills Hall of
Residence on the
Downs.
Fee:
Residential: £110
(£88 concessions)
Non-residential: £44
(£22 concessions)
For further details and
enrolment;
Liz Bird, Department of
Extra-Mural Studies,
University of Bristol,
32 Tyndalls Park Road,
Bristol BS8 1HR
Tel:(0272)24161ext.688
THE FILM SUMMER
SCHOOL IS SUPPORTED
BY SEPT (Society for
Education in Film and
Television) and the
British Film Institute
Education Division.