Lights, Music, Argument

For class this week we are reading John Wiltshire's "Why Do We Read Jane Austen?"* Wiltshire argues that film adaptations of Austen inevitably change the novels, minimize her social critique (particularly about the cult of sensibility) and re-romanticize Austen's "suspicion of the romantic" (168). As he notes, light and music make their own argument that works against Austen's skepticism. The heritage film in particular, romanticizes the past.

There is more to say about Wiltshire's specific argument, but it also seems interesting to examine a tangential line of thinking--that movies make arguments that might have little to do with the actual script or story of the movie. We all know, of course, from horror films or scary movies that is easy to create an emotional effect in the viewer. How do directors build tension? Creepy music, lingering shots of the big knife and so on. But are we aware of those effects in movies that purport to be more "realistic"? I know that I am susceptible to feeling sad or nostalgic very easily when certain kinds of music are used--I might tear up even if I'm hating the movie or know that the director is using the song ironically.

Movies--and other media of the moving image like tv and videos--are certainly the dominant form of media today. The printed word--the dominant media at the time Austen was writing--is better able to force the reader to be critical or skeptical of what is being shown. Readers proceed at their own pace , are easily able to go back and examine contradictions or connections, and--importantly--are confined to one kind of visual image (the printed word), allowing their brains more time to process. Print seems more distant from the world or the ideas it tries to convey while images seem to immerse us in that world. Of course, it took hundreds, if not thousands, of years for humans to fully develop a culture of reading and, in particular, to develop the vocabulary that accompanies critical reading.

Most people know how talk about camera angles, lighting, special effects, and soundtrack choices. That is, we've developed a way to talk about how movies are put together. But how often do we talk about the subtle emotional effects that those technical choices have on us? Do we think hard about the way movies make arguments aside from their content?


* From A Truth Universally Acknowledged. Ed. Susanna Carson. New York: Random House, 2009.