Some Startling Examples
I've spoken about rape culture before, and I've also touched on victim blaming - but I haven't really spoken all that much about how enforced rape culture is into our society. I thought, because there are so many places this occurs, I would split this up into films and books, also potentially songs as a separate post too.
I remembered just how rape-ey, lots of films are when I watched this video; and although it quickly descends into a piss-take and uses lots of made up lines that could endorse rape culture in Grease after the beginning, it also shows just how messed up a genuine line from the film Grease is - "Did she put up a fight?" - you can watch the original song here, with the line still in.
Grease was released in 1978, and so, granted, it isn't the most modern example. But - Grease is a time honoured favourite - almost everybody I know, at least, has watched Grease. Most of them grew up watching Grease. And it's only when we're older that we realise things like this. It's like when you rewatch your favourite childhood show and realise all of the dirty jokes that were embedded in it. You only notice after you've been exposed.
So, let's all take a minute, and vow to ourselves that we will be on the look out for rape culture in films, and will seize the opportunity to expose it - because just because we've been exposed to it all doesn't mean other people can't experience things for the first time and work out how screwed up some of these things are.
It's no secret that I love the film "The Breakfast Club", and for a while I completely idolised John Hughes. It's only now when I watch "Sixteen Candles" by the same guy, that I realise the amount of messages that promote rape culture, and other, fucked up stuff. Remember when Jake Ryan gives his car, but more importantly - his girlfriend - to the Geek. She's passed out when Jake gives the Geek his exceedingly drunk girlfriend, with the now chilling words "have fun". The delivery makes it pretty certain that Jake is not implying that the Geek lie the girl down with a blanket, check she doesn't choke on her own vomit and in the morning offer her alka seltzer, to be honest. I mean, what a heart warming message. Not only does the movie protagonists' heartthrob endorse sex with unconscious girls, he treats his girlfriend as a possession he can pass to other people. *shudders*
Let's look at how rape culture does not only affect women. For instance the film "While You Were Sleeping", shows a woman, Lucy, who chooses a random but attractive man, Peter, off the street, rides with him to the hospital and, whilst he is comatose, pretends to be his fiancee to his family and friends, which completely disrespects them in a difficult time, whilst she is purely on a journey to get some. When he wakes up with wild amnesia, she continues the charade and they almost end up married. Because everything the man knows about her is false, it is difficult to say whether you would call any sexual activity entire consensual as she was taking advantage of a man going through a difficult time who was not informed about his situation. Either way, it's a little bit weird and is not a message that should be endorsed. There is also a scene in this film, when Peter's brother, Jack, is playing cards and says "high card gets to keep Lucy" even though all he knows at this point is that she is his brother's fiancee and he things she is sweet. It's more than a little fucked up that he things he can decide who gets to "possess" a woman without her opinion and using a completely arbitrary method to decide - again giving the idea that women are possessions to be owned. The film "Overboard" takes this amnesia idea again, with a man literally having sex with a woman under the pretense that they are married and have children. In "Revenge of the Nerds" the same thing happens, except the girl is fooled because the boy is wearing a mask.
A film that endorses rape culture does not have to contain actual sex. For example, in "This Means War", "Sleepless in Seattle" and "There's Something Wrong With Mary" to name a few all endorse stalking, and especially in the last two, because the protagonists are "nice" or "doofuses" it's acceptable. This not only endorses stalking, it gives an unrealistic view as to who rapists are, by implying it's okay if the person is nice. Considering most rapes are committed by people the victim knows this is an especially harmful message to give out. In "This Means War" the stalkers literally go so far as to film the protagonist having sex, which crosses a million boundaries.
Rape culture is rife within children's movies, especially Disney films. Granted, the original fairy tales were often worse - but then why would Disney choose tales like Sleeping Beauty in which the protagonist is literally raped to adapt for children. Sebastian endorses Eric making a move on Ariel with the words "it don't take a word" - Ariel is mute! Not incapable of understanding speech, and asking people who might struggle to give nonverbal forms of consent due to not being able to make any noises and not understanding the culture is a great time to ask someone. She can nod, you know. Sleeping Beauty is asleep. Snow White is dead. Neither can give any kind of consent and even though activities like kissing do not necessarily involve a question every time, it is pretty crucial the first few times, and is essential if the recipient is completely incapable of giving other forms of consent, such as reciprocating. In "The Little Mermaid", we know that the character literally has to kiss Eric or she will essentially die, and the fact that she passively waits for him to kiss her shows children that girls have to wait for boys to "do things to them" instead of being an active member in a sexual or romantic relationship - which teaches boys to objectify girls as things to kiss, things to have sex with, instead of people who can reciprocate.
"(500) Days of Summer" is meant to be a deconstruction of romantic comedies, but it falls into the same pitfalls that many of them do. Tom, for instance, is completely creepily crossing Summer's boundaries, despite the fact she has told him she does not want a romantic relationship with him or anyone else. When Summer literally says "We're just friends", Tom yells "Well, you're not the only one that gets a say in this! I say we're a couple, goddammit!". When they dance at a wedding, he assumes that to be them getting better, assuming that they are entitled to a relationship even when she is engaged to someone else. This film had the potential to be a massive "fuck you!" to rapey romantic comedies, but because the movie's focus is so much on Tom (there is not a single scene which involves Summer, when Tom is not also present), we obviously are expected to root for him. In fact, he finishes the movie with a new girl, Autumn, so we do not see a deconstruction and we never see it acknowledged that what he did was wrong, because he is ultimately rewarded. If you still believe it was a good deconstruction then do a little research and you discover that actor Zooey Deschannel received hatemail from people about how Summer treated Tom, despite the fact that Tom was obviously (in hindsight) in the wrong.
These films are not the only ones, by any means. In fact, many films seem to have at least one misogynistic reference. Scenes that involve rape do not necessarily endorse rape culture. Scenes that dismiss rape or show that rape is okay, scenes that make rape jokes with no one calling them out on it, where the good guys especially perform rape or sexual assault and are still considered good guys and girls. That endorses rape culture. If a film wants to talk about or show rape, it needs to show what a fucked up thing it is to do, how awful it is, why it is wrong. It should not gloss over it, because rape is too important to be glossed over.
Saturday, 26 April 2014
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory The Musical: Review
In Which I Struggle With My Love of Musical Theatre and My Hatred of This One
I love musical theatre with a passion, it's literally a massive chunk of me. Despite the fact that my music task is a lot less frivolous, I love listening to musical theatre and to be honest, if I am singing, it will be a song from musical theatre. I fall in love with the characters like that *snaps fingers* and I practically salivate all over "Once More With Feeling" which combines my two great loves - Buffy and musical theatre. It's impossible to tell you the amount of these shows I have written in my head, or directed in my head. I even have an embarrassing script for a production of "Peter and the Starcatchers" which I wrote before it actually became a stage show.
And so when, for GCSE music, my teacher announced that we would be going to see the production of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" I was absolutely ecstatic. Little did I know that but a week later, I would be using it as an example of the worst theatre show I had ever seen, in terms of things like lighting, sound and scenery in front of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and shortly after that I would be writing this. This very saddening blog post.
Despite how much I adore musical theatre, I don't get to see the shows very much at all - so I was majorly excited for this one. And I love Roald Dahl's fiction - although I do find Charlie and the Chocolate factory to occasionally come across as a little bland - and the reviews were stellar. "A lavish bonanza", "dark" and "not too sweet", I had high hopes.
The music was one of the more disappointing areas. "No one leaves the theatre, humming the scenery", and whilst I didn't, it was also the first piece of musical theatre I had ever had the privilege of watching where I left the theatre with no song stuck in my head, except "Ain't It Fun" by Paramore, which I had had stuck in my head all day. I do not even remember the songs now, writing this review, so I have to awkwardly listen to a cast recording on Spotify as I do.
The music choice was well performed, and none of the songs are bad. However, the selection isn't great. It opens with a sweet little number - Almost Nearly Perfect - which is not a bad song by any standards. However a small number sang by a child actor on a dark, with next to no movement was not the most exciting opening to a production.
By far the most interesting pieces of music in the first act were the ones in which the different children found their tickets. The songs were lively, colourful and exciting - but...they confined the staging of all of them to "inside the television", so despite their potential for a massive dance number, there was next to no movement. I must admit that of these numbers I did dislike The Double Bubble Duchess, but I'm pretty sure that was my own choice in music coming out. I have nothing against rap in musicals, but it's not my thing. In particular, the song was beautifully written and very satirical It's Teavee Time.
I didn't love the performances in the Chocolate Factory, I understand how difficult it would be to choreograph the Oompa Loompa sequences, but frankly, it was the songs that let them down here. Auf Wiedersehen Augustus Gloop is a good example of the "meh" that these songs were. About half of the song is made up of tuneless introduction singing, before actually reaching the song. In Veruca's Nutcracker Sweet we again, have disinteresting composition, although nicely performed. I was also disappointed that they used Pure Imagination, after changing Dahl's original Oompa Loompas song. If you are going to have an original score, you should have an original score and not steal songs from films.
Now, let's start on the set, because I am so interested in lighting and scenery et cetera, and in my opinion, for this play, this was the biggest downfall. The curtain lifted on the most gorgeous, intricate, almost steampunk design of a rubbish dump, in which the character Charlie climbs over to find bits and pieces he collects.
Unfortunately, this was the highlight of the set. The Bucket's house was also well done, except for the fact that in the scene where the beds moved around across the floor (it was a musical number) which made the entire set which previously had been so well done, comical and unrealistic at best.
It was inside the chocolate factory itself that really disappointed me. In terms of an arc, I had expected the first half of the story to be all dark, and then, after the Tim Burton-esque beginning, to spice up into a beautiful, colourful and intricate set. Not so. Instead, whilst we did get colour, we saw lots of scenes made up of the characters walking across a bare stage which projections on the back of the screen, which drove all too clearly the reality home that this was not real, something you want to avoid in a book, a film or musical. The scenes within the actual rooms also used relatively sparse stages - instead having the entire character of the piece determined by a few pieces at the back.
I do not say that it would both be practical to have perfectly designed sets - I instead as you to return to Matilda, another musical of another Dahl book. The set was far sparser all of the way through, in this, but it did not confine itself to the back of the stage. The 3D set aspects, which this musical was sorely lacking in, made it feel fake.
The acting was very good, but in some cases the protagonists were incredibly two dimensional. Charlie Bucket in the books is a bland good boy, and the boy who portrayed him was incredibly true to the book. However, this made it difficult for us to enjoy the plot. Indeed, my friend Kitty noted that she "wanted Mike Teavee to win because he was the most enjoyable to watch". Willy Wonka again, was two dimensional - an elusive man not quite eccentric enough to carry the storyline.
Overall, I thought that this musical was substandard, and frankly if you want to spend money on a child friendly piece of musical theatre, I would recommend "Matilda", another Roald Dahl book with a million fold better executions. This musical was certainly enjoyable, but in a kind of "well executed school play" way, and I would not recommend it.
I love musical theatre with a passion, it's literally a massive chunk of me. Despite the fact that my music task is a lot less frivolous, I love listening to musical theatre and to be honest, if I am singing, it will be a song from musical theatre. I fall in love with the characters like that *snaps fingers* and I practically salivate all over "Once More With Feeling" which combines my two great loves - Buffy and musical theatre. It's impossible to tell you the amount of these shows I have written in my head, or directed in my head. I even have an embarrassing script for a production of "Peter and the Starcatchers" which I wrote before it actually became a stage show.
And so when, for GCSE music, my teacher announced that we would be going to see the production of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" I was absolutely ecstatic. Little did I know that but a week later, I would be using it as an example of the worst theatre show I had ever seen, in terms of things like lighting, sound and scenery in front of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and shortly after that I would be writing this. This very saddening blog post.Despite how much I adore musical theatre, I don't get to see the shows very much at all - so I was majorly excited for this one. And I love Roald Dahl's fiction - although I do find Charlie and the Chocolate factory to occasionally come across as a little bland - and the reviews were stellar. "A lavish bonanza", "dark" and "not too sweet", I had high hopes.
The music was one of the more disappointing areas. "No one leaves the theatre, humming the scenery", and whilst I didn't, it was also the first piece of musical theatre I had ever had the privilege of watching where I left the theatre with no song stuck in my head, except "Ain't It Fun" by Paramore, which I had had stuck in my head all day. I do not even remember the songs now, writing this review, so I have to awkwardly listen to a cast recording on Spotify as I do.
The music choice was well performed, and none of the songs are bad. However, the selection isn't great. It opens with a sweet little number - Almost Nearly Perfect - which is not a bad song by any standards. However a small number sang by a child actor on a dark, with next to no movement was not the most exciting opening to a production.By far the most interesting pieces of music in the first act were the ones in which the different children found their tickets. The songs were lively, colourful and exciting - but...they confined the staging of all of them to "inside the television", so despite their potential for a massive dance number, there was next to no movement. I must admit that of these numbers I did dislike The Double Bubble Duchess, but I'm pretty sure that was my own choice in music coming out. I have nothing against rap in musicals, but it's not my thing. In particular, the song was beautifully written and very satirical It's Teavee Time.
I didn't love the performances in the Chocolate Factory, I understand how difficult it would be to choreograph the Oompa Loompa sequences, but frankly, it was the songs that let them down here. Auf Wiedersehen Augustus Gloop is a good example of the "meh" that these songs were. About half of the song is made up of tuneless introduction singing, before actually reaching the song. In Veruca's Nutcracker Sweet we again, have disinteresting composition, although nicely performed. I was also disappointed that they used Pure Imagination, after changing Dahl's original Oompa Loompas song. If you are going to have an original score, you should have an original score and not steal songs from films.Unfortunately, this was the highlight of the set. The Bucket's house was also well done, except for the fact that in the scene where the beds moved around across the floor (it was a musical number) which made the entire set which previously had been so well done, comical and unrealistic at best.
It was inside the chocolate factory itself that really disappointed me. In terms of an arc, I had expected the first half of the story to be all dark, and then, after the Tim Burton-esque beginning, to spice up into a beautiful, colourful and intricate set. Not so. Instead, whilst we did get colour, we saw lots of scenes made up of the characters walking across a bare stage which projections on the back of the screen, which drove all too clearly the reality home that this was not real, something you want to avoid in a book, a film or musical. The scenes within the actual rooms also used relatively sparse stages - instead having the entire character of the piece determined by a few pieces at the back.I do not say that it would both be practical to have perfectly designed sets - I instead as you to return to Matilda, another musical of another Dahl book. The set was far sparser all of the way through, in this, but it did not confine itself to the back of the stage. The 3D set aspects, which this musical was sorely lacking in, made it feel fake.
The acting was very good, but in some cases the protagonists were incredibly two dimensional. Charlie Bucket in the books is a bland good boy, and the boy who portrayed him was incredibly true to the book. However, this made it difficult for us to enjoy the plot. Indeed, my friend Kitty noted that she "wanted Mike Teavee to win because he was the most enjoyable to watch". Willy Wonka again, was two dimensional - an elusive man not quite eccentric enough to carry the storyline.Overall, I thought that this musical was substandard, and frankly if you want to spend money on a child friendly piece of musical theatre, I would recommend "Matilda", another Roald Dahl book with a million fold better executions. This musical was certainly enjoyable, but in a kind of "well executed school play" way, and I would not recommend it.
Thursday, 24 April 2014
Perfection and Pedestals
And the Demise of Celebrities
To start off with, this post is an apology. I am sorry, that I did not post yesterday. I am preparing for important exams in a week's time, I have a huge art project due in two weeks, and my choir has doubled rehearsals. I also apologise. I know this blog's content has been a little lack lustre and more importantly, text heavy. I actually had a photography based post planned for today, and I had to do maths revision, and it's dark now. I am only human, and sometimes I am a disorganised human.
And that's just it. No matter how great a person, no matter how great their morals are, no matter how great a person someone is, they will fail. Not just once, not necessarily a spectacular firework show in which they cross the line between amazing and arsehole - but instead potentially a series of failures over and over again.
Human culture has put people on pedestals - in this video actor Jack Gleeson, AKA Joffrey from Game of Thrones speaks about why celebrity culture exists more eloquently than I ever could - and these pedestals not only mean that everybody knows who they are, but also create who they are.
Most people have heard of "shipping", in which two people, (or objects or other, I don't know anymore - look at Drapple!) are wanted to be in a relationship. This originally was an outlet for fans of books and films et cetera to creatively imagine scenarios. Since then, it has been picked up by mainstream culture, and now real people have been added into the mixture. Some fans go as far as to write fanfiction about real people. This is harmless stuff - until, of course, you realise that what you are writing is an alternative version of somebody's life. What you are doing, when you partake in this activity, is you are imagining a better version of somebody else's lifestyle and ultimately a better version of the person you idolise.
Even if a relationship is real, or canon, it still becomes property of the media. Trashy magasines are notorious for this - but it happens too in respectable newspapers. If a major celebrity splits up with somebody, the public has access to this information and it is perfectly common for conversations to exist of people who have no connection whatsoever with a celebrity, offering opinions on their lives.
Some would argue that in fact, the public does not control who the celebrity is, but instead controls their image. To an extent I would agree with this. Whilst the public has so much information about celebrities, they will never know them and all they share. Fans of Youtubers such as Luke Conard, Alex Day, Tom Milsom, Alex Carpenter and several others, were shocked to find out that they had been sexually abusive, manipulative, ephebophilic and in some cases rapists, on the basis that they felt like, due to the largely personal "vlogs" and content these people had produced they knew the people. Much of their audiences had forgotten that a three or four minute video a week is not an exclusive window to the soul.
But I would argue that the public still manages to control the hidden parts of celebrities lives in just that - they force the celebrities to keep parts of their lives hidden. When I broke up with my girlfriend, I knew that just my immediate circle of friends would know and that they would not offer judgement. If a celebrity couple wanted to keep their relationship a secret, or their breakup a secret, this would take - not only concious effort, but also considerable effort to achieve. By forcing celebrities to hide aspects of their life - to devote time to keep the public from finding out - the public still control portions of their idol's lives.
Is it any wonder then, that celebrities do fail, so often do they do so spectacularly? With the eyes of the world constantly on them, it's easily to lose a sense of self. And with a life seriously elevated above reality, is it any surprise that they can lose a sense of what is considered appropriate, by us, the people firmly on the ground. We raised them above our heads, gave them a world different to our own, but we still judge them by our morals. And rightly so - no human is exempt from behaving morally - but we need to be careful about raising people, often ordinary people with no exceptional talents so high from the ground, because they only have further to fall.
But what about the celebrities who don't crash and burn into the darkness? Who somehow manage to sustain a grip on reality? When they fail, no matter how good their intentions were, we judge them far more harshly than we might judge a friend. Perhaps it is not the individuals who do this - but when a person has an audience of millions, and all of them are offering mildly negative opinions about a person, en masse this becomes a lot more difficult to cope with as an individual.
So often the difference between the dying fireworks and those who live to sparkle another day is so simple. The sparklers apologise. Not just apologise - but acknowledge that they were wrong in the first place and make an effort to change. And this isn't just celebrities. This is all of us with any amount of friends.
A while ago I posted a post on victim blaming in which I posted, not maliciously, about a tweet that Carrie Hope Fletcher left. And I wanted you to see how profusely she apologised, and it made me want to remember how human these people are. There is a difference between judging someone by the same rules as everyone else, and hating on an idol because he or she slipped out. Just as there is a difference between raising someone on a pedestal and placing someone in front of the firing squad.
To start off with, this post is an apology. I am sorry, that I did not post yesterday. I am preparing for important exams in a week's time, I have a huge art project due in two weeks, and my choir has doubled rehearsals. I also apologise. I know this blog's content has been a little lack lustre and more importantly, text heavy. I actually had a photography based post planned for today, and I had to do maths revision, and it's dark now. I am only human, and sometimes I am a disorganised human.
And that's just it. No matter how great a person, no matter how great their morals are, no matter how great a person someone is, they will fail. Not just once, not necessarily a spectacular firework show in which they cross the line between amazing and arsehole - but instead potentially a series of failures over and over again.
Human culture has put people on pedestals - in this video actor Jack Gleeson, AKA Joffrey from Game of Thrones speaks about why celebrity culture exists more eloquently than I ever could - and these pedestals not only mean that everybody knows who they are, but also create who they are.
Most people have heard of "shipping", in which two people, (or objects or other, I don't know anymore - look at Drapple!) are wanted to be in a relationship. This originally was an outlet for fans of books and films et cetera to creatively imagine scenarios. Since then, it has been picked up by mainstream culture, and now real people have been added into the mixture. Some fans go as far as to write fanfiction about real people. This is harmless stuff - until, of course, you realise that what you are writing is an alternative version of somebody's life. What you are doing, when you partake in this activity, is you are imagining a better version of somebody else's lifestyle and ultimately a better version of the person you idolise.
Even if a relationship is real, or canon, it still becomes property of the media. Trashy magasines are notorious for this - but it happens too in respectable newspapers. If a major celebrity splits up with somebody, the public has access to this information and it is perfectly common for conversations to exist of people who have no connection whatsoever with a celebrity, offering opinions on their lives.
Some would argue that in fact, the public does not control who the celebrity is, but instead controls their image. To an extent I would agree with this. Whilst the public has so much information about celebrities, they will never know them and all they share. Fans of Youtubers such as Luke Conard, Alex Day, Tom Milsom, Alex Carpenter and several others, were shocked to find out that they had been sexually abusive, manipulative, ephebophilic and in some cases rapists, on the basis that they felt like, due to the largely personal "vlogs" and content these people had produced they knew the people. Much of their audiences had forgotten that a three or four minute video a week is not an exclusive window to the soul.
But I would argue that the public still manages to control the hidden parts of celebrities lives in just that - they force the celebrities to keep parts of their lives hidden. When I broke up with my girlfriend, I knew that just my immediate circle of friends would know and that they would not offer judgement. If a celebrity couple wanted to keep their relationship a secret, or their breakup a secret, this would take - not only concious effort, but also considerable effort to achieve. By forcing celebrities to hide aspects of their life - to devote time to keep the public from finding out - the public still control portions of their idol's lives.
Is it any wonder then, that celebrities do fail, so often do they do so spectacularly? With the eyes of the world constantly on them, it's easily to lose a sense of self. And with a life seriously elevated above reality, is it any surprise that they can lose a sense of what is considered appropriate, by us, the people firmly on the ground. We raised them above our heads, gave them a world different to our own, but we still judge them by our morals. And rightly so - no human is exempt from behaving morally - but we need to be careful about raising people, often ordinary people with no exceptional talents so high from the ground, because they only have further to fall.
But what about the celebrities who don't crash and burn into the darkness? Who somehow manage to sustain a grip on reality? When they fail, no matter how good their intentions were, we judge them far more harshly than we might judge a friend. Perhaps it is not the individuals who do this - but when a person has an audience of millions, and all of them are offering mildly negative opinions about a person, en masse this becomes a lot more difficult to cope with as an individual.
So often the difference between the dying fireworks and those who live to sparkle another day is so simple. The sparklers apologise. Not just apologise - but acknowledge that they were wrong in the first place and make an effort to change. And this isn't just celebrities. This is all of us with any amount of friends.
A while ago I posted a post on victim blaming in which I posted, not maliciously, about a tweet that Carrie Hope Fletcher left. And I wanted you to see how profusely she apologised, and it made me want to remember how human these people are. There is a difference between judging someone by the same rules as everyone else, and hating on an idol because he or she slipped out. Just as there is a difference between raising someone on a pedestal and placing someone in front of the firing squad.
Tuesday, 22 April 2014
Fictional Bands I Wish Were Real
And *coughcough* Cute Fictional Band Members...
If you've hung around on this blog for a while - if so, hey ;) How are you doing? - then you probably know about my obsession for music, in particular bands. I also love reading books and watching television shows with bands in (I'm living the dream in my head because no one in my friendship group likes the same music as me) and it's always really annoying when you discover that they aren't actually real. So here is a list of fictional bands I wish were real, and the reasons why.
Where's Fluffy, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
If you're particularly careful at reading this blog, you might have noticed that - well, I've brought up the book/ very inferior but still enjoyable film "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" a few times. Namely here in which I discuss the playlist of the film briefly, and this one in which I did a short review. In the film, the characters are on a soul quest to find the elusive indie band, Where's Fluffy, but in the book the characters actually get to see the band play, (they're a punk band in the book) and we learn quite a bit about them. With songs like "Take Me Back, Bitch" and "You've Got That Just Fucked Look Yoko", they were named for "the fucking apathy of a xenophobic fucking nation oblivious to the fucking terror its leaders wreak on the rest of the world because they're too busy worrying if their cat might be stuck up a tree or something." Apparently they can actually "play instead of wail like fucking pop-punk goof offs." And they open their shows "pro-NRA, anti-choice, homophobic - to remind their listeners what's worth fighting for." They advertise their shows by scrawling graffiti in toilet stalls. I'm sorry, but tell me that you don't want them to exist. I dare you!
Sex Bob-Omb, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World
Technically, this fictional indie rock band recorded some songs as part of the film based on the graphic novels, but that doesn't stop me wishing they actually existed. With a great semi-nerdy name like "Sex Bob-Omb", a badass female drummer Kim Pine, Scott Pilgrim on bass, Young Neil (as biggest fan and understudy bass), and Stephen Stills - vocals and guitar; I can totally see why Knives loves them. Who cares if we know from the novels that they are "average" and that Ramona, Wallace and Julie hate them. My love for this band has (cough) nothing (cough) with my out of control crush on both Scott and Young Neil. No sir. With songs like LaunchPad McQuack, Erasmus the Enchanter and Herself the Elf, I can completely sold! They have to exist! In volume three, Kim says "We are here to make you think about death and get sad and stuff!!" and as a bit of an emo, to be honest, this is sometimes just what I want in a band.
Dingoes Ate My Baby, Buffy The Vampire Slayer
The music of Dingoes Ate My Baby was actually composed and performed by real life band, Four Star Mary; but the songs are mostly backing - we don't see that much of the band. I don't see why though, because what we do hear of the rock back is great, and with a logo and name as snazzy as theirs is, I don't see why they can't come to my hometown, and um, live there. If they weren't fictional, of course. And yes, I know they broke up because Oz left to go be a werewolf elsewhere, and I know that the only formal review they got wasn't great - but Willow loved them and I completely trust her judgement. I also think that Oz was one of the best characters - "I mock you with my monkey pants" and he knew a lot about amps, so he must have been good at bass, right?
Big Fun, Heathers
Sure, it was all a ploy for JD to mass murder everyone in school. But hey, they have a good name, and the song "Teenage Suicide, Don't Do It," well the title at least shares good messages right? Okay, I lied, maybe I don't wish this one was real...
The Weird Sisters, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
With songs like "Do the Hippogriff" and "Magic Works" (no shit, Sherlock), these guys were good enough that Dumbledore hired them, and I like to imagine that Dumbledore had pretty awesome taste in music. Right? Right. Among the band's instruments were a set of drums, several guitars, a cello, a lute, a double bass and some bag pipes. When performing in Hogwarts during the Yule Ball, they performed on a magically-appearing stage, which, puh-lease, I totally need that kind of the technology. They were all very hairy, apparently and wore "artfully torn" black robes - which makes them sound all kinds of awesome. To be honest, I was sold when I learnt that they played the bag pipes and the lute. Who doesn't want a sassy band like that?
Dr Teeth and The Electric Mayhem, The Muppets
God, I love The Muppets. This band debuted in The Muppets: Sex and Violence, and that pretty much sums up just how edgy this band - the band with the world's best band name - really is, despite the furriness of the players. With Dr Teeth on keyboard and lead vocals, Animal on drums (god, I love you Animal!), Sgt Floyd Pepper - the original hipster - on bass, the sexy sexy Janice on lead guitar, Zoot on saxophone and occasionally Lips playing the trumpet, this is one band I completely want to get in on. There's a reason "Muppets Treasure Island" may well be my favourite film, and it is largely due to these players.
I suppose I'll just have to continue loving these bands in my imagination...*wipes away a solitary tear*
See you later
Bella
If you've hung around on this blog for a while - if so, hey ;) How are you doing? - then you probably know about my obsession for music, in particular bands. I also love reading books and watching television shows with bands in (I'm living the dream in my head because no one in my friendship group likes the same music as me) and it's always really annoying when you discover that they aren't actually real. So here is a list of fictional bands I wish were real, and the reasons why.
Where's Fluffy, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
If you're particularly careful at reading this blog, you might have noticed that - well, I've brought up the book/ very inferior but still enjoyable film "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" a few times. Namely here in which I discuss the playlist of the film briefly, and this one in which I did a short review. In the film, the characters are on a soul quest to find the elusive indie band, Where's Fluffy, but in the book the characters actually get to see the band play, (they're a punk band in the book) and we learn quite a bit about them. With songs like "Take Me Back, Bitch" and "You've Got That Just Fucked Look Yoko", they were named for "the fucking apathy of a xenophobic fucking nation oblivious to the fucking terror its leaders wreak on the rest of the world because they're too busy worrying if their cat might be stuck up a tree or something." Apparently they can actually "play instead of wail like fucking pop-punk goof offs." And they open their shows "pro-NRA, anti-choice, homophobic - to remind their listeners what's worth fighting for." They advertise their shows by scrawling graffiti in toilet stalls. I'm sorry, but tell me that you don't want them to exist. I dare you!Sex Bob-Omb, Scott Pilgrim Vs The World
Technically, this fictional indie rock band recorded some songs as part of the film based on the graphic novels, but that doesn't stop me wishing they actually existed. With a great semi-nerdy name like "Sex Bob-Omb", a badass female drummer Kim Pine, Scott Pilgrim on bass, Young Neil (as biggest fan and understudy bass), and Stephen Stills - vocals and guitar; I can totally see why Knives loves them. Who cares if we know from the novels that they are "average" and that Ramona, Wallace and Julie hate them. My love for this band has (cough) nothing (cough) with my out of control crush on both Scott and Young Neil. No sir. With songs like LaunchPad McQuack, Erasmus the Enchanter and Herself the Elf, I can completely sold! They have to exist! In volume three, Kim says "We are here to make you think about death and get sad and stuff!!" and as a bit of an emo, to be honest, this is sometimes just what I want in a band.Dingoes Ate My Baby, Buffy The Vampire Slayer
The music of Dingoes Ate My Baby was actually composed and performed by real life band, Four Star Mary; but the songs are mostly backing - we don't see that much of the band. I don't see why though, because what we do hear of the rock back is great, and with a logo and name as snazzy as theirs is, I don't see why they can't come to my hometown, and um, live there. If they weren't fictional, of course. And yes, I know they broke up because Oz left to go be a werewolf elsewhere, and I know that the only formal review they got wasn't great - but Willow loved them and I completely trust her judgement. I also think that Oz was one of the best characters - "I mock you with my monkey pants" and he knew a lot about amps, so he must have been good at bass, right?Big Fun, Heathers
The Weird Sisters, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
With songs like "Do the Hippogriff" and "Magic Works" (no shit, Sherlock), these guys were good enough that Dumbledore hired them, and I like to imagine that Dumbledore had pretty awesome taste in music. Right? Right. Among the band's instruments were a set of drums, several guitars, a cello, a lute, a double bass and some bag pipes. When performing in Hogwarts during the Yule Ball, they performed on a magically-appearing stage, which, puh-lease, I totally need that kind of the technology. They were all very hairy, apparently and wore "artfully torn" black robes - which makes them sound all kinds of awesome. To be honest, I was sold when I learnt that they played the bag pipes and the lute. Who doesn't want a sassy band like that?Dr Teeth and The Electric Mayhem, The Muppets
I suppose I'll just have to continue loving these bands in my imagination...*wipes away a solitary tear*
See you later
Bella
Killing God: Review
Warning: Mild Spoilers
My god, was this book good. Good? Fabulous, amazing, heartbreaking, spirit warming, scary. Name an emotion, and to be honest this book probably will evoke it. Disgust? Check. Nausea? Check. Sympathy? Check. Awe? Check. Love? Check, check, check.
A quick disclaimer. Kevin Brook's book is called Killing God, yes, but it isn't at all a Christian bashing storyline. Dawn does have an issue with a cult, and she does some things that are quite Christian bashing, such as ruining an illustrated Children's bible. It also hints at a boy being abused by a priest but obviously individual characters do not amount to the entire church. This book remains respectful to all faiths, even if Dawn herself does not. It is also not a fantasy novel. Dawn does not set out, like Lyra in His Dark Materials, to actually kill God. Neither is it a story in which a girl attempts to bring down Christianity via protests and the like. It is a series of mental exercises she does - the novel is very much psychological and about Dawn herself, not so much about God.
Something horrible happened to thirteen year old Dawn Bundy, shortly before her father walked out of their house and never returned. Two years on, the thirteen year old girl that Dawn was once still lives inside her head. She is afraid to come out. To distract herself, in the past Dawn has set herself little challenges, but now she is ready to tackle the biggest one of all.
This year, Dawn Bundy wants to kill God. But how do you kill something that doesn't exist? And even after Dawn has tried so hard to bury the past, to bury the people it happened to - bad things have a nasty habit of resurfacing and her old problems - with new ones joining in for the ride - are returning to haunt her.
Firstly, let's begin with the writing style. Dawn Bundy writes the book from her perspective - and it reads like a fifteen year old girl, who isn't quite right in the head. It's not annoying, and the spelling and grammar is spectacular. But the sentence structure is so realistic. When you read this book, you would find it difficult to make Dawn seem anything less than real. She pulls you right into her head - and draws you into her world. The music she listens to, her relationship and worry for her mother, her dogs. They all become your problem.
At first the story is very vague - Dawn refers to things like "the thing" which she "doesn't want to think about" - but it quickly gains momentum. Although we briefly watch as she attempts to kill God, it is also clear to us from the language that her mental challenges are not so satisfying as they once were. It takes two popular, "bad girls" from school - Mel and Taylor - who pull her along as their little dolly whilst they dress her up, feed her alcohol and mess with Dawn's mother's mind.
The nice thing about the characters in this novel is that they are all multi-faceted, and we know that they are - but also, the author does not feel the need to expose all of the facets of each character. We see them as Dawn sees them - and so when she likes them, so do we and vice versa, no matter how arbitrary the assumption Dawn has made about them really is. And with a little digging into the plot, we see things that Dawn has realised unconciously, which we already know.
Mel and Taylor, may have an ulterior, more sinister motive, to dragging Dawn through their hoops - but they are also dredging up things in Dawn's mind that Dawn would like to keep buried.
We learn in a scary way, a slapdash way, a very realistic way about what happened to Dawn - but not only the one event that forced the thirteen year old Dawn to hide, but also all of the smaller events that lead up to it. This also forces into perspective the vague hints that were dropped at the beginning, and makes the whole book a lot more chilling.
Whilst ultimately, this book does not have a lot of action (except for the end, when there is a little), we also do have great struggles, beautiful struggles - all of which are psychological and happen within Dawn's fragile head. Through these, we see great character growth - possibly the most realistic and satisfying arcs I think a character has ever taken, in terms of growth. It is not your average coming of age story, but in another way it is by far the best coming of age story I have ever read.
The best thing about this book is that nothing is polished. Even books set in the real world have a tendency to not read like real life. This book reads like real life and the events - particularly the ending - are so true of real life that it is slightly disconcerting to read.
If you love psychological stories, coming of age stories, or even horror stories, this is probably a great choice for you. The references to rape, alcohol and drugs might make it more suitable to children over the age of about twelve - there are no overt references, and frankly I read it age thirteen (just thirteen) and there was nothing there I didn't already know existed.
Overall I would give the book a 10/10 rating, and would thoroughly recommend you read it. I have yet to find a book like it out there - although if you find one I would love to read it because of how great I though Killing God was.
My god, was this book good. Good? Fabulous, amazing, heartbreaking, spirit warming, scary. Name an emotion, and to be honest this book probably will evoke it. Disgust? Check. Nausea? Check. Sympathy? Check. Awe? Check. Love? Check, check, check.
A quick disclaimer. Kevin Brook's book is called Killing God, yes, but it isn't at all a Christian bashing storyline. Dawn does have an issue with a cult, and she does some things that are quite Christian bashing, such as ruining an illustrated Children's bible. It also hints at a boy being abused by a priest but obviously individual characters do not amount to the entire church. This book remains respectful to all faiths, even if Dawn herself does not. It is also not a fantasy novel. Dawn does not set out, like Lyra in His Dark Materials, to actually kill God. Neither is it a story in which a girl attempts to bring down Christianity via protests and the like. It is a series of mental exercises she does - the novel is very much psychological and about Dawn herself, not so much about God.
Something horrible happened to thirteen year old Dawn Bundy, shortly before her father walked out of their house and never returned. Two years on, the thirteen year old girl that Dawn was once still lives inside her head. She is afraid to come out. To distract herself, in the past Dawn has set herself little challenges, but now she is ready to tackle the biggest one of all.
This year, Dawn Bundy wants to kill God. But how do you kill something that doesn't exist? And even after Dawn has tried so hard to bury the past, to bury the people it happened to - bad things have a nasty habit of resurfacing and her old problems - with new ones joining in for the ride - are returning to haunt her.
Firstly, let's begin with the writing style. Dawn Bundy writes the book from her perspective - and it reads like a fifteen year old girl, who isn't quite right in the head. It's not annoying, and the spelling and grammar is spectacular. But the sentence structure is so realistic. When you read this book, you would find it difficult to make Dawn seem anything less than real. She pulls you right into her head - and draws you into her world. The music she listens to, her relationship and worry for her mother, her dogs. They all become your problem.At first the story is very vague - Dawn refers to things like "the thing" which she "doesn't want to think about" - but it quickly gains momentum. Although we briefly watch as she attempts to kill God, it is also clear to us from the language that her mental challenges are not so satisfying as they once were. It takes two popular, "bad girls" from school - Mel and Taylor - who pull her along as their little dolly whilst they dress her up, feed her alcohol and mess with Dawn's mother's mind.
The nice thing about the characters in this novel is that they are all multi-faceted, and we know that they are - but also, the author does not feel the need to expose all of the facets of each character. We see them as Dawn sees them - and so when she likes them, so do we and vice versa, no matter how arbitrary the assumption Dawn has made about them really is. And with a little digging into the plot, we see things that Dawn has realised unconciously, which we already know.
Mel and Taylor, may have an ulterior, more sinister motive, to dragging Dawn through their hoops - but they are also dredging up things in Dawn's mind that Dawn would like to keep buried.
We learn in a scary way, a slapdash way, a very realistic way about what happened to Dawn - but not only the one event that forced the thirteen year old Dawn to hide, but also all of the smaller events that lead up to it. This also forces into perspective the vague hints that were dropped at the beginning, and makes the whole book a lot more chilling.
Whilst ultimately, this book does not have a lot of action (except for the end, when there is a little), we also do have great struggles, beautiful struggles - all of which are psychological and happen within Dawn's fragile head. Through these, we see great character growth - possibly the most realistic and satisfying arcs I think a character has ever taken, in terms of growth. It is not your average coming of age story, but in another way it is by far the best coming of age story I have ever read.
The best thing about this book is that nothing is polished. Even books set in the real world have a tendency to not read like real life. This book reads like real life and the events - particularly the ending - are so true of real life that it is slightly disconcerting to read.
If you love psychological stories, coming of age stories, or even horror stories, this is probably a great choice for you. The references to rape, alcohol and drugs might make it more suitable to children over the age of about twelve - there are no overt references, and frankly I read it age thirteen (just thirteen) and there was nothing there I didn't already know existed.
Overall I would give the book a 10/10 rating, and would thoroughly recommend you read it. I have yet to find a book like it out there - although if you find one I would love to read it because of how great I though Killing God was.
Filler Post: Where I Stand
In Which I Update You Guys
Firstly, if you read this blog and do not come from Kids Blog Club, you might want to check out a post I wrote for those guys. It was about being shy, and how blogging ultimately can help combat that, and I'm pretty proud of it, to be honest, considering normally I'm a rambler and I can't keep to work counts. This one was almost 400 words (my upper limit) but not quite, so at last, I did it.
I also wanted to give a quick holler out to you guys! It's insane that so many people are reading this on a daily basis. I am so thankful for this, so thankful! You can follow this blog, if you are interested in getting an update whenever I post something. I do not have access to your email if you choose to do this, so there is no way I could either spam you or sell your information on. If you scroll down a little way, there should be a simple button that you can use to follow this blog via email. Another way to get an update whenever I add to this blog is by following me on Twitter; @ThatBellaFern. Heck, send me a tweet letting me know you're a reader - it would make my day! Also feel free to comment in the down. I promise that I will get back to you within twenty four hours, unless I have a really good reason.
If you want to support this blog, one of the best ways to do that is to either spread word - or, come on because nobody speaks face to face anymore! - or to press the little share buttons at the bottom of each post that give you the option to share posts via Blogger, email, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.
One other place you can find me is lurking around my Spotify account. I have one huge playlist A Few Songs in a List - but I also make playlists full of songs which I am either in the mood for or of a particular genre.
I would also, now I have shamelessly given you my details, like to let you know what I plan to do. Right now, I'm trying to work up the courage to record a song so that I can upload a video. To be honest, it's not so much the courage right now, as choosing a song. Does anyone have any ideas as to pop-punk, punk-rock or any other songs that a soprano could sing? I'm choosing at the moment, but I'm pretty sure that nobody wants to hear my rendition of "O Cessate di Piagarmi", despite the fact I got full marks on it in an exam.
I also want to try and exhibit some of my art work, textiles work and photography on this blog, but again, I am trying to find the confidence. I am also trying to find the time - as I do this, I juggle my GCSE exams and I have major end of years in about a weeks time, with part one of my Textiles GCSE due on Friday and Art coursework due on the 6th of May. Whenever I have the time to take some photos and upload them, I always seem to have my folder in the wrong place. Now, for instance. It's at school. Great.
Speaking of my poor time management and organisation, I figured it would only be fair to let you know that despite the fact that over the holidays I have been able to post up to about five posts daily, I cannot keep that up. I am going to try and get at least one post a day up, and take additional posts as they come. Also because of school uniform, I can only really post Things I Wear on the weekend, as of now.
Thank you if you got to the end of this very dry, very dull post. I hope so far Knilly Frickers has been a blog that you have enjoyed reading. If you are new, take a look around. You can use the tags at the bottom of each post to find content you are interested in.
So much love and many thanks
Bella Fern
Firstly, if you read this blog and do not come from Kids Blog Club, you might want to check out a post I wrote for those guys. It was about being shy, and how blogging ultimately can help combat that, and I'm pretty proud of it, to be honest, considering normally I'm a rambler and I can't keep to work counts. This one was almost 400 words (my upper limit) but not quite, so at last, I did it.
I also wanted to give a quick holler out to you guys! It's insane that so many people are reading this on a daily basis. I am so thankful for this, so thankful! You can follow this blog, if you are interested in getting an update whenever I post something. I do not have access to your email if you choose to do this, so there is no way I could either spam you or sell your information on. If you scroll down a little way, there should be a simple button that you can use to follow this blog via email. Another way to get an update whenever I add to this blog is by following me on Twitter; @ThatBellaFern. Heck, send me a tweet letting me know you're a reader - it would make my day! Also feel free to comment in the down. I promise that I will get back to you within twenty four hours, unless I have a really good reason.
If you want to support this blog, one of the best ways to do that is to either spread word - or, come on because nobody speaks face to face anymore! - or to press the little share buttons at the bottom of each post that give you the option to share posts via Blogger, email, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.
One other place you can find me is lurking around my Spotify account. I have one huge playlist A Few Songs in a List - but I also make playlists full of songs which I am either in the mood for or of a particular genre.
I would also, now I have shamelessly given you my details, like to let you know what I plan to do. Right now, I'm trying to work up the courage to record a song so that I can upload a video. To be honest, it's not so much the courage right now, as choosing a song. Does anyone have any ideas as to pop-punk, punk-rock or any other songs that a soprano could sing? I'm choosing at the moment, but I'm pretty sure that nobody wants to hear my rendition of "O Cessate di Piagarmi", despite the fact I got full marks on it in an exam.
I also want to try and exhibit some of my art work, textiles work and photography on this blog, but again, I am trying to find the confidence. I am also trying to find the time - as I do this, I juggle my GCSE exams and I have major end of years in about a weeks time, with part one of my Textiles GCSE due on Friday and Art coursework due on the 6th of May. Whenever I have the time to take some photos and upload them, I always seem to have my folder in the wrong place. Now, for instance. It's at school. Great.
Speaking of my poor time management and organisation, I figured it would only be fair to let you know that despite the fact that over the holidays I have been able to post up to about five posts daily, I cannot keep that up. I am going to try and get at least one post a day up, and take additional posts as they come. Also because of school uniform, I can only really post Things I Wear on the weekend, as of now.
Thank you if you got to the end of this very dry, very dull post. I hope so far Knilly Frickers has been a blog that you have enjoyed reading. If you are new, take a look around. You can use the tags at the bottom of each post to find content you are interested in.
So much love and many thanks
Bella Fern
How Music Affects Film
And Television...And Real-Life
I only really noticed this when I was sitting doing homework and Spotify was dying on my computer. The lack of the music that I have normally throughout most of my life was disconcerting at best. Thoughts of exam halls, of silent work in classrooms, or scarier things like being in an empty house after dark filled my mind, and I couldn't quell the feeling, until I had made a slap-dash playlist on Youtube and I could resume to annotating my Art GCSE work.
But it got me thinking, about why it is that I now feel that music is the soundtrack to my life. It doesn't really matter what type it is. Of course I have preferences. When I write my novel (80802 words and counting!) I like having relatively plain music, such as film scores. Right now I like the "How to Train Your Dragon" playlist by John Powell, but when I started the book, I found the fast paced guitar chords of Blue Skies songs a good way of making myself writing quicker. When I play Tetris, I listen to heavy metal, or occasionally Falling in Reverse. When I am just browsing, I put my entire playlist on shuffle. When I walk across the heath, often on my way to acting I like listening to the Blink-182 album "Take Off Your Pants and Jacket", because I feel like I'm in the opening credits of a teenage coming of age film. Think Breakfast Club. But even without the music I prefer, I always want there to be music. I'd rather have anything, from deathmetal, to bubblegum pop, to baroque (and I hate baroque music) than silence.
In fact, I often use music to write entire film scripts. I used to do it with playlists. I would take characters and make playlists of songs that would play while their story evolved. Then I would sit and listen, editing and watching the characters like my own personal movie. Now I am more likely to direct music videos. I have the most in depth ideas for the songs "Bulletproof Heart" and "The Only Hope for Me is You" by My Chemical Romance, with ideas blooming for "S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W". The nerdiest part is that the plotlines are entirely original with both canon and alternative characters, but also work as a canon prequel to both the music videos and the comic books. So far, they also do a pretty good job of explaining things.
My question is why I feel the need to fill my life with music in this way, to the extent that it feels eerie without it. Whilst it probably has something to do with my undying unhealthy love for music, it's probably been influenced by the media that I surround myself by. The majority of this is film and television, and if you notice, everything shown on the television is wrapped in swathes of music.
Whether it be a film with a majorly hyped up soundtrack - "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist", a musical - "Miss Saigon", or just clever use of music in the background - "The Amazing Spider-Man" practically everything shown to us on screen uses music of some kind.
I think it was knocked home to me the most when I watched the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Body". This episode used no music at all, to attempt to weird the audience out. "Music comforts an audience," proclaimed writer Joss Whedon, and he was right. The lack of music made the episode chilling, stilted and awkward - which perfectly summed up the emotions that the plotline evoked. However, it also proves that essentially music is necessary, if we do not want our films to come across as jarring and strange.
Most of us assume that film is mostly visual, but this could not be further from the truth! We do get a visual experience, yes, but much of the emotion is communicated via music. Films are our fantasies, and fantasies defy logic and reality. Even if a film is not "fantasy", the dialogue is polished, the events more extraordinary than your average day. They conspire with your imagination, working with the unconcious mind to give you an entire experience of illusion, which alters our emotions. Because so much of the experience does not happen in our concious mind - instead we receive a feeling in our concious mind - we often do not notice the soundtrack to a film unless it is a breakaway hit, such as Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic. If I were to say to you - hum the background music from your favourite film - no matter how familiar you were with it, you would probably struggle to recall more than a few phrases.
Nino Rota wrote the score for The Godfather, and used a lack of music to heighten intensity in the scene when Michael Corleone shoots his father's enemy. Instead we heighten panic by using the device of hearing a train screech to a halt outside. But whilst we have already established that a lack of music can be jarring, so too can cleverly composed scores. Hitchcock originally decided that his iconic shower scene in Psycho would have no music. However, a, Bernard Herrmann wrote a composition of jabbing, jarring notes which reminded listeners of dying animals. Hitchcock used the score to great success.
Sometimes, we use science to ensure music really has the effect we want it to. Films such as Irreversible used infrasound, which has been demonstrated to cause anxiety, extreme sorrow, heart palpitations and uncontrollable shivering. Infrasound has been noticed naturally occuring around areas of "supernatural activity", and is also produced prior to major storms and earthquakes. The infrasound caused the audience to feel "disorientated and physically ill", and was used in parts of the film prior to the main shocking visual sequence.
Aside from soundtracks, some movies use songs to promote a certain era, setting or clique. For instance, in the film "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", music such as "Asleep" by The Smiths shows Charlie's depression and mental health issues, whereas songs such as "Heroes" by David Bowie show how he is happier with his friends, and has ultimately grown as a person.
If you still do not believe that music affects how we view cinema, then watch this ingenious clip in which a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean which has no speech has different styles of music played over it, inducing very different emotions and feelings to the film in each one.
I hope this has been interesting or enlightening. What do you think? Can you name songs from your favourite film? I'd love to know.
Bella
@ThatBellaFern
I only really noticed this when I was sitting doing homework and Spotify was dying on my computer. The lack of the music that I have normally throughout most of my life was disconcerting at best. Thoughts of exam halls, of silent work in classrooms, or scarier things like being in an empty house after dark filled my mind, and I couldn't quell the feeling, until I had made a slap-dash playlist on Youtube and I could resume to annotating my Art GCSE work.
But it got me thinking, about why it is that I now feel that music is the soundtrack to my life. It doesn't really matter what type it is. Of course I have preferences. When I write my novel (80802 words and counting!) I like having relatively plain music, such as film scores. Right now I like the "How to Train Your Dragon" playlist by John Powell, but when I started the book, I found the fast paced guitar chords of Blue Skies songs a good way of making myself writing quicker. When I play Tetris, I listen to heavy metal, or occasionally Falling in Reverse. When I am just browsing, I put my entire playlist on shuffle. When I walk across the heath, often on my way to acting I like listening to the Blink-182 album "Take Off Your Pants and Jacket", because I feel like I'm in the opening credits of a teenage coming of age film. Think Breakfast Club. But even without the music I prefer, I always want there to be music. I'd rather have anything, from deathmetal, to bubblegum pop, to baroque (and I hate baroque music) than silence.
In fact, I often use music to write entire film scripts. I used to do it with playlists. I would take characters and make playlists of songs that would play while their story evolved. Then I would sit and listen, editing and watching the characters like my own personal movie. Now I am more likely to direct music videos. I have the most in depth ideas for the songs "Bulletproof Heart" and "The Only Hope for Me is You" by My Chemical Romance, with ideas blooming for "S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W". The nerdiest part is that the plotlines are entirely original with both canon and alternative characters, but also work as a canon prequel to both the music videos and the comic books. So far, they also do a pretty good job of explaining things.
My question is why I feel the need to fill my life with music in this way, to the extent that it feels eerie without it. Whilst it probably has something to do with my undying unhealthy love for music, it's probably been influenced by the media that I surround myself by. The majority of this is film and television, and if you notice, everything shown on the television is wrapped in swathes of music.
Whether it be a film with a majorly hyped up soundtrack - "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist", a musical - "Miss Saigon", or just clever use of music in the background - "The Amazing Spider-Man" practically everything shown to us on screen uses music of some kind.
I think it was knocked home to me the most when I watched the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Body". This episode used no music at all, to attempt to weird the audience out. "Music comforts an audience," proclaimed writer Joss Whedon, and he was right. The lack of music made the episode chilling, stilted and awkward - which perfectly summed up the emotions that the plotline evoked. However, it also proves that essentially music is necessary, if we do not want our films to come across as jarring and strange.
Most of us assume that film is mostly visual, but this could not be further from the truth! We do get a visual experience, yes, but much of the emotion is communicated via music. Films are our fantasies, and fantasies defy logic and reality. Even if a film is not "fantasy", the dialogue is polished, the events more extraordinary than your average day. They conspire with your imagination, working with the unconcious mind to give you an entire experience of illusion, which alters our emotions. Because so much of the experience does not happen in our concious mind - instead we receive a feeling in our concious mind - we often do not notice the soundtrack to a film unless it is a breakaway hit, such as Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic. If I were to say to you - hum the background music from your favourite film - no matter how familiar you were with it, you would probably struggle to recall more than a few phrases.
Nino Rota wrote the score for The Godfather, and used a lack of music to heighten intensity in the scene when Michael Corleone shoots his father's enemy. Instead we heighten panic by using the device of hearing a train screech to a halt outside. But whilst we have already established that a lack of music can be jarring, so too can cleverly composed scores. Hitchcock originally decided that his iconic shower scene in Psycho would have no music. However, a, Bernard Herrmann wrote a composition of jabbing, jarring notes which reminded listeners of dying animals. Hitchcock used the score to great success.
Sometimes, we use science to ensure music really has the effect we want it to. Films such as Irreversible used infrasound, which has been demonstrated to cause anxiety, extreme sorrow, heart palpitations and uncontrollable shivering. Infrasound has been noticed naturally occuring around areas of "supernatural activity", and is also produced prior to major storms and earthquakes. The infrasound caused the audience to feel "disorientated and physically ill", and was used in parts of the film prior to the main shocking visual sequence.
Aside from soundtracks, some movies use songs to promote a certain era, setting or clique. For instance, in the film "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", music such as "Asleep" by The Smiths shows Charlie's depression and mental health issues, whereas songs such as "Heroes" by David Bowie show how he is happier with his friends, and has ultimately grown as a person.
If you still do not believe that music affects how we view cinema, then watch this ingenious clip in which a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean which has no speech has different styles of music played over it, inducing very different emotions and feelings to the film in each one.
I hope this has been interesting or enlightening. What do you think? Can you name songs from your favourite film? I'd love to know.
Bella
@ThatBellaFern
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