ABSTRACT
Theories of screen music function have focused, to a large extent, on music’s contribution to audiovisual narrativity—to the ways in which films and other audiovisual media tell, spin, and sell their stories. A grasp of narratological fundamentals can thus assist students (and teachers) of screen music in various ways, and scholarship in the area offers a range of valuable tools, some of which are touched upon below. A provocative strand of recent film theory, however, has problematized screen studies’ preoccupation with audiovisual representation—a concern exemplified by screen music analysis’s tendency to focus on narrative. For what if film is not enjoyed, some or even much of the time, as the experience of an act of storytelling, or even as a form of signification? What if cinema unleashes forces of affect cueing bodily sensations only loosely related (or, indeed, entirely unrelated) to plot, symbolism, and other forms of representation? How, then, should one theorize screen music’s functions, whether in the context of the critical study of individual cultural texts or, more broadly, of texts, interpreters, and their roles in the social world?
