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Music, Sound, and the Moving Image, Volume 2, Issue 1, Spring 2008,pp. 3-25 (Article)

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Film music’s emotive power – in particular its ability seemingly toengender a state of suspense or even ‘fear’ when watching a horrormovie – is well known, and is both recognised by spectators and exploitedby filmmakers. We know, for instance, that turning down the volume mayserve to alleviate some of the emotional symptoms experienced when

MSMI 2:1 Spring 08 3

This article has itsorigins in a paper givenat the ‘Sound, Music,and Moving Image’conference in September2007. My thanks areextended to theanonymous readers ofthe article and theeditors for their sugges-tions, and to DrNicholas Attfield for hiscomments.

Corporeality, MusicalHeartbeats, andCinematic Emotion

BEN WINTERS

Music’s relationship with emotion has been the subject of numerousphilosophical and psychophysiological studies in recent years. Thequestion of whether music merely expresses or actively arousesemotion in its listeners, however, gains added complexities whenconsidered in the context of film. What is going on, for example, whenwe believe ourselves to be afraid in the cinema; and how does thepresence of a musical heartbeat contribute to this feeling?

In this article I answer those questions, firstly by invoking the notionof ‘perceptual realism’ and questioning a number of comfortablegivens in film music theory (including the nondiegetic status of music),and secondly by proposing a ‘heartbeat hypothesis’ that combinesempirical and philosophical approaches to musical emotion withtheories of cinematic fiction. This hypothesis suggests that heartbeatsare effective at helping us experience ‘fictional fear’ precisely becausethe real-world emotion of fear is fundamentally about the body; thatthere is a strong relationship between our response to music and ourown ability to produce sounds (Cox’s ‘mimetic hypothesis’); and that,as a result, we may recognise and interpret certain cinematic musicalgestures in the context of our own corporeality as fear-inducing. Iexplore a number of film scenes that feature the sound of heartbeats,or heartbeat rhythms in their scores, before making some commentson the wider implications of the hypothesis for film music theory inparticular, and musicology in general.

watching a film on television, and that blocking one’s ears in the cinemais far more difficult to accomplish than the less effective method ofaverting one’s eyes.1 Yet, perhaps because of the familiarity of the effect,comparatively little attention is paid to this phenomenon in the rapidlygrowing field of film musicology: rather, studies are often content to positsome magical and ineffable link between so-called ‘nondiegetic’ filmmusic and emotion, and to sidestep interesting philosophical or cognitiveissues.2 In this article, then, I want to confront this phenomenon andtackle some of these issues head on, challenging many of our assump-tions about the narrative status of film music and sound on the way. Byinvoking philosophical models of cinematic fiction offered by KendallWalton and Gregory Currie, I will explain, firstly, what is happeningwhen we think we are experiencing an emotion in the cinema as a resultof film music or film sound, placing particular emphasis on ‘fear’. Thisapproach, broadly characterised by the notion of ‘perceptual realism’,will suggest that a number of comfortable givens in film music theory (anassumed division between the nondiegetic source of music and thediegetic source of sound; and even the concept of nondiegetic musicitself) can be questioned, thus moving the study of film music and filmsound further away from the psychoanalytical tradition of much 1980sdiscourse, and reconstituting it within the context of philosophicalstudies of cinematic fiction.

Secondly, with this broader context in mind, I will suggest how film-makers can use the sound of a heartbeat, or a musical representationthereof, to realise their narrative aims in the realm of horror andsuspense. This more specific task will invoke empirical research under-taken by Arnie Cox – which suggests that there is a strong relationshipbetween our response to music and our own ability to produce sounds(2001) – to propose a ‘heartbeat hypothesis’. In combining the philo-sophical context of Walton and Currie’s theories of cinematic fiction withthe empirical implications of Joanna Bourke’s statement that fear isfundamentally about the body – about its ‘fleshiness and precariousness’(2006: 8) – the hypothesis suggests that we are not actually afraid whenwatching films like The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) or Alien (RidleyScott, 1979), but are merely simulating an imagined, fictional emotion,the sonic expression of which we situate in the film’s diegetic world.Moreover, the presence of the heartbeat helps us achieve this by encour-aging us to equate a fictional character’s endangered corporeality with anawareness of our own sense of bodily precariousness. Once this hypoth-esis has been defined fully, I will use it to explore and interpret a numberof film scenes that feature the sound of heartbeats or heartbeat rhythmsin their scores; furthermore, I will posit that there are wider implications

4 2:1 Spring 08 MSMI

Ben Winters ♦ Corporeality, Musical Heartbeats, and Cinematic Emotion

1 As noted by RobynnJ. Stilwell (2001: 171).

2 Jeff Smith refers tothe ‘somewhat mysteri-ous’ connection betweenfilm music and emotion(1993: 146–67).

of this heartbeat hypothesis for the way we respond emotionally to musicin non-cinematic contexts that are of interest to musicology in general.

No-Thing to Fear?

In considering the notion of ‘fear’ in the cinema, a number of funda-mental issues about our relationship with the cinematic medium areraised, issues that have been discussed in existing philosophical studies offilm. In his ‘philosophy of horror’, Noël Carroll, for instance, asks howwe can by frightened by what we know does not exist; and why anyonewould ever be interested in horror if it is so unpleasant (1990: 8). Theseage-old and pertinent questions have been asked of fiction as long as ithas existed. Aside from Carroll’s own thoughts, important responses tothe first question can be found in the writings of Schopenhauer and,more recently, Gregory Currie and Kendall Walton, while a considera-tion of the second is implicit in Hume’s study of tragedy, or in theaesthetic judgements of Kant, Edmund Burke, and Schopenhauerconcerning the sublime.3 The first question is, however, of specificrelevance to a study of cinema, and to the emotion-inducing qualities thatare often ascribed to its music.

Evidently, we do not believe we are in the actual presence of a malev-olent extra-terrestrial when watching The Thing or any other similar film.How then do we explain the emotional response that many of usundoubtedly feel? This reaction includes not only elements of self-reported describable feelings (‘that chilled my blood’, ‘my heart wasthumping’, etc.) but also scientifically verifiable physiological changes inpulse rate, body temperature and respiration. Clearly, the response is notan illusion. Nor can we accept, though, that what we feel is akin to a real-world state of fear: if it were, we would surely run from the cinema andmost likely call the relevant authorities. Real-world fear, it seems,requires existence beliefs: we must believe that whatever is threateningus is not a fiction to spur us into action. Carroll’s metaphysical account ofthe effect that horror fictions have on us thus separates the response feltwhile engaging with the fiction (art-horror) from the real-life experienceof such an emotion (horror). In his formulation:

I am… art-horrified by some monster X, say Dracula, if and only if 1) I amin some state of abnormal, physically felt agitation (shuddering, tingling,screaming, etc.) which 2) has been caused by a) the thought: that Dracula isa possible being; and by the evaluative thoughts that b) said Dracula has theproperty of being… threatening in the ways portrayed in the fiction andthat c) said Dracula has the property of being impure, where 3) such



3 See Hume 1995a:183–200; and Burke1793. An excellentsummary of thesedebates can be found in Young 2005.

thoughts are usually accompanied by the desire to avoid the touch of thingslike Dracula.

(1990: 27)

While the last point is connected to Carroll’s distinction between horror(which involves an element of disgust) and mere fear, the thrust of hisargument relies on an emphasis on ‘thought’ as distinguished from‘belief ’. Carroll thus suggests it is the thought of the horror thatgenerates our emotional state, rather than the belief that it actually exists,allowing us to dissipate our anxiety by averting our eyes or preoccupyingourselves with other thoughts (ibid: 80).

These ‘thoughts’ that Carroll identifies as constituting the cause of theemotion of art-horror can, in some senses at least, be identified with anumber of concepts suggested by other thinkers concerned with thephilosophy of fiction, namely: Gregory Currie’s ‘simulation hypothesis’(1995), which explains the role of the imagination in fiction; and KendallWalton’s emphasis on ‘make-believe’ and the resulting notion of ‘quasifear’. These, in turn, could be said to have their roots in David Hume’sdescription of the passion produced by ‘impossible evils’ orSchopenhauer’s idea of the will, as a relatively unsophisticated part of usthat is unable to distinguish between imaginary ideas and real-life beliefs(see Hume 1995b: 127–8; and Schopenhauer 1995: especially 91–2).Indeed, Walton’s assessment of the nature of fiction and our emotionalresponses to it affords a central position to the power of imagination(1990). Although we may have genuine emotional reactions in thecinema and feel ourselves to be genuinely afraid, Walton argues, we arenot, and cannot be, afraid of fictional monsters. Rather, we are partici-pants psychologically in a game of make-believe; what we feel is ‘quasifear’ – that is, we believe ourselves to be ‘fictionally afraid’ (ibid: 241–9).This notion of quasi fear seems to be one on which Currie and Carrollcould also agree: that the emotion we feel in the presence of fiction – andthat we may colloquially label ‘fear’ – though betraying some of the samephysiological symptoms, is, in fact, different from the experience of real-world fear. Rather, it is born of the imagination and requires willingparticipation in the rules of the game; it is a question of thought ratherthan belief, and thus a cognitive experience rather than a perceptualillusion. When dealing with films, we might label such a concept‘cinematic-fear’.

Drawing upon Walton’s work, Currie’s simulation hypothesis is rootedin his attack on classical and psychoanalytic theory (see also Currie 1996),in which he defends the notion of perceptual realism – that the experi-ence of film watching approximates the normal experience of perceiving



the real world – from the charge that film induces the illusion thatfictional events are real. He rejects the tendency of film theory to assumethat the viewer inquires about the psychical ownership of any given shot;this, he argues, is not his experience of cinema. For him, the experienceof watching a film is like viewing the real world, not like viewingsomeone’s subjective interpretation of the real world; thus, we shouldregard the cinematic image as rendering events objectively, and onlyallow a subjective interpretation when no plausible objective explanationis available (Currie 1995: 164–96). His hypothesis therefore argues thatwe, as audience members, take on the beliefs and desires we imagine thecharacters we see on screen must have; in other words, we simulate theirresponses. These simulated beliefs are, however, run ‘off-line’, withoutprompting, for example, the flight-or-fight response induced by realfear. Crucially, though, Currie argues that ‘simulated beliefs and desiresretain their internal connections to our bodily states… The anxiety thatwatching horror movies induces in me does not cause me to call thepolice, but it does cause me to feel afraid’ (ibid: 156). This is an importantpoint, to which I will have recourse in the second part of this essay, wheremusic and emotion’s links with the body are examined.

Currie’s simulation hypothesis also threatens to overturn manyexisting philosophical accounts of musical emotion: after all, how canmusic make us afraid in a real-world sense when it either refers tosomething that does not exist (if we accept that music is in some sensesrepresentational) or has no representational content? These questionshave long been debated in wider musical contexts by Peter Kivy, aproponent of the cognitivist position that argues that we are not experi-encing an emotion when listening to music (as emotivists like ColinRadford, Jerrold Levinson, and others would argue),4 but are merelyrecognising its expression (Kivy 1989). Kivy’s position is, to some extent,supported by Currie and Walton’s arguments: since we can only befearful, rather than fictionally fearful, about something that we believe toexist, musical emotivism – like the notion that fictions produce real-worldemotions – must be wrong. Its critics, in claiming that there is no objectabout which we can be angry or happy or sad or fearful, seem to becorrect (Kivy 1989: 32): music is unable to produce the real-worldemotion of fear, either in the concert hall or in the cinema. Yet, cogni-tivists like Kivy fail to acknowledge that we may respond to this expres-sion of fear with a corresponding fictional emotion, simulating a responseand producing the reaction that emotivists are all too ready to point out.As with Walton’s explanation of quasi-fear, then, the spectator in thecinema (and indeed the listener outside of it) can be considered a willingparticipant in a game of make-believe, a game in which, in many cases,



4 Colin Radford claimedto be an emotivistregarding sad music,but not ‘angry’ music(1989). See alsoLevinson 1982.

the music plays an important part. In this game, we imagine thatsomeone in the fiction is afraid; moreover, we often recognise this as adirect result of expressive qualities of fear in the music or sound designof a film.

There are huge implications here for those theories of film music andsound influenced by psychoanalytic suture theory,5 since the idea ofsimulated emotions, game-playing, and the perceptual realism thatunderlies it, not only implies a degree of cognitive awareness of music,but also suggests that the concept of a nondiegetic music source may beunnecessary. If, as psychoanalytic accounts of film have previouslysuggested, the experience of watching cinema is supposed to create theillusion of a subjective reality – rather than approximating the experi-ence of objectively perceiving the world – then music not immediatelyapparent as diegetic becomes a problem. We are forced to ascribe it (forthe most part) to some unseen nondiegetic presence, who thus becomesa manipulative, secondary force interpreting the fiction for us. This is atthe root of Eisler and Adorno’s Marxist critique, and Gorbman’s adapta-tion of it within the context of 1980s suture theory.6 If, as Currie suggeststhough, perceptual realism is the most convincing explanation for thecinematic experience, then we can naturally ascribe all the music we hearto the world which the characters inhabit: they may not always give anindication that they hear it, but it may be there nonetheless. Althoughperceptual realism suggests that we accept the film world, as it ispresented to us, as corresponding with our everyday experience of theworld, we do not succumb to the illusion that what we are watching is real(Currie 1995: 164–98). The fiction is imagined, and this imagined worldmay be believably saturated with the sound of music. It makes little sense,after all, to imagine the worlds of such classically-conceived films as StarWars (George Lucas, 1977) or Raiders of the Lost Ark (Steven Spielberg,1981) existing independently of their John Williams scores; indeed inStar Wars, music functions exactly as Obi-wan Kenobi describes themythical ‘force’ – as an energy field that surrounds all living things andbinds the galaxy together.7 In other films, too, we might posit an omnis-cient and omnipresent narrator personality, who is acting on a lessconsciously mythic plane than the ‘force’ in Star Wars but is, nonetheless,intra-diegetic and whose musical outpourings reflect and help create thefictional world. As a result, the narrative distinction between diegetic andnondiegetic music/sound in these circumstances also becomes largelymeaningless. When music or sound is expressive of a character’s fear,then, it can be understood as emanating from that character, eventhough they may be unaware that they are producing it; when thecharacter seems oblivious of the danger, and the music or sound retains



5 See Claudia Gorbman(1987), which is alsoheavily dependent onthe Marxist-motivatedtenet of Hanns Eislerand Theodor Adorno’s1947 book Composingfor the Films (republished1994 – see References).

6 Jeff Smith argues fora redress in the balanceso that psychoanalyticalmodels of film narrationare applied only whenrationalist and cognitivistexplanations breakdown (1996). Similarly,Jerrold Levinson’ssketch of music’snarrative power isbound up with hisrejection of the inaudi-bility claim (1996).

7 In this sense, it mightfunction in a similarway to Matt Bailyshea’sconception of theWagnerian orchestra(2007).

these expressive devices, it may be understood as the product of an all-seeing (yet unseen) intra-diegetic figure, who reacts to their peril byshaping their ambient sound-world. In either case, we as spectators mayrecognise these expressive devices as located within the world of the film,simulating the fear the characters feel.

I would certainly not like to deny that our experience of cinema allowsthe presence of some extra-diegetic force – what Currie calls an impliedauthor who helps us interpret the cinematic text by reference to apersonality that seems to have created it (1995: 262). Nor do I want toreject Jerrold Levinson’s similar idea of a ‘perceptual enabler’ who is notonly vital ‘to explain how it is we are, even imaginarily, perceiving whatwe are perceiving of the story, in the manner and order in which we areperceiving it’ (1996: 252), but also expresses him/herself musically. Butequally, I would not like to suggest that such a figure is always required inorder to explain the philosophical source of music in film. If we regardthe music as expressive of someone’s real-world emotion, for example,the originator of that emotion must necessarily belong inside thediegesis, since for someone outside the diegesis who imagines thatperson’s emotion and expresses it in music, such a real-world emotionwould not be possible – s/he would not believe in the object that causes theemotional reaction. In these situations, it makes more sense for us toascribe both the source and the subject of the musical expression to thesame, intra-diegetic personality – whether a character that we see, or anomniscient, omnipresent and unseen narrator8 – rather than construct anondiegetic voice whose music fictionally expresses the emotions itimagines that intra-diegetic personality to possess. As Currie points outastutely, ‘imagining that someone imagines P tend[s] to collapse intoimagining P’ (1995: 159). Similarly, if we try to imagine a nondiegeticfigure imagining a diegetic emotion, it quickly collapses into us simplyimagining that emotion. It may seem a slight point, but if we follow itsimplications, the result is often a fictional world saturated with music,rather than a music-free world to which music is added by a nondiegeticvoice. This approach thus gives greater weight to music in constructingthe cinematic diegesis than existing accounts tend to offer. Different filmgenres and styles may admittedly demand varying interpretiveapproaches, with fantasy films that bear little resemblance to oureveryday reality (including many horror films) more easily understood inthis way than realistic contemporary drama or documentary. Yet, theimportant point is that the music commonly referred to as the dramaticscore need not necessarily originate externally to the world of the film,and need not always be distinguished (in its narrative status) from themusic and/or sound that the characters acknowledge they hear.



8 Currie classifies anarrator as ‘intra-diegetic’ (1995: 262).

It is now possible, then, to state a position that describes what is oftenhappening, philosophically, when we think we are afraid in the cinema.We are not actually afraid – of the images, dialogue, music, sound oranything else – but merely fictionally afraid. We imagine, partly throughrecognising the expressive qualities of music, that someone (a characteror intra-diegetic personality) is afraid in the fiction and is expressinghim/herself musically. As Currie’s simulation hypothesis argues, we thentake on the beliefs we imagine that ‘someone’ to have, but run them ‘off-line’, producing what I would term cinematic-fear. The recognition offilm music’s expressive qualities and the spectator’s active locating ofthem within the diegesis thus suggests that a far more cognitive-basedapproach may be warranted than the inaudible, invisible model ofclassical discourse, with its mystical connection between expression andemotion. The second part of this article aims to suggest just such anapproach for interpreting passages of film sound and music containingheartbeat rhythms, an expressive device that has a remarkable power toconvince me that I am afraid, or (at the very least) uneasy. Furthermore,I will propose an eight-point ‘heartbeat hypothesis’ that will allow us tomodel the response.

Cinematic-Fear and the Body: A CognitiveModel

I stated above that our emotional response to films – which includes notonly elements of self-reported describable feelings but also scientificallyverifiable physiological changes in pulse rate, body temperature andrespiration – is clearly not an illusion. The same is true of our responseto music, both within and outside of the cinema. Remembering Currie’sstatement that ‘simulated beliefs and desires retain their internal connec-tions to our bodily states’, we might ask: what, then, is the link betweencinematic emotions and the body, and are these responses the same astheir real-world equivalents? It seems to be a generally accepted given,after all, that a link between real-world emotions and physiologicalreactions as detected in the autonomic nervous system (blood pressureand flow, respiration) exists, although the extent to which these changesallow us to distinguish between the emotions felt is, on the other hand,far more contested (see Davidson 1994: 239).

As Robert Levenson has pointed out, this link is intuitively recognisedin the language we use to describe our emotions: we talk of our bloodrunning cold, or of our hearts pounding (1994). Furthermore, empiricalstudies bear this out and suggest that physiological responses to emotion



can indeed be detected in the autonomic nervous system, whether or notindividual emotions can be distinguished. Arne Öhman’s investigation offear and anxiety, for example, found that these related emotions resultedin both cognitive/psychic anxiety and somatic overreactivity (manifestedin sweating, flushing, shallow breathing, heart palpitations, intestinaldiscomforts, and aches and pains) (1993: 513). Moreover, studies thatexamine reactions to concert hall music – responses that are also bestunderstood in terms of fictional emotions – suggest that cinematicemotions may also result in similar physiological responses.

Carol Krumhansl’s 1997 psychophysiological9 study of musicalemotions is perhaps the most persuasive evidence that ‘the presence ofmusic produce[s] changes in physiology… [and] the physiologicalmeasures were different for the intended Sad… intended Fear… andintended Happy extracts’ (343). In measuring a number of physiologicalindicators – including pulse transmission times, respiration rates, bloodpressure, skin conductance level, and finger temperature – in responseto six selections of music ‘intuitively chosen’ to represent basic emotions,Krumhansl concluded that ‘although the question of emotion-specificphysiology remains somewhat elusive’ (ibid: 351), musical emotions are,indeed, reflected in psychophysiological measures that ‘argue against thecognitivist position’.10 Similarly, Mine Dogantan-Dack has concluded thatthere is ample evidence to suggest that music ‘affects the body internally,causing physiological changes ranging from mild to profound in listen-ers’ (2006: 450). Whether this can be compared directly with physiolog-ical responses to emotion that did not involve music could certainly bedebated;11 in any case, it seems that fictional emotions (felt in thepresence of music) do not produce such specific physiological changes inthe autonomic nervous system that they could ever be reliably arousedand differentiated through purely musical means. Rather, whatKrumhansl’s work with music and other studies into emotion haverevealed conclusively is that the presence of music does produce physio-logical changes.

In turn, Arnie Cox’s mimetic hypothesis – which holds that ‘part ofhow we understand human movement and human-made sounds is interms of our own experience of making the same or similar movementsand sounds’ (2001: 196) – allows us to understand these changes and themusic that prompts them. Cox contends that muscular-emotionalresponses are integral to our normal understanding of music because weoften imagine what it is like to make the sounds we hear. This is primarilyan unconscious imagining, and Cox points to the habit of ‘singing along’in our head with imagined instrumental music as a way of imitating, andthus understanding, the sounds of instruments. This close connection



9 Psychophysiology hasbeen defined byHugdahl as the ‘studyof brain-behaviour rela-tionships in the frame-work of peripheral andcentral physiologicalresponses.’ Cited inKrumhansl 1997: 339.

10 Ibid: 350. Asidefrom the physiologicalmeasurements involved,subjects were also askedto assess their ownemotional responses.Krumhansl acknowl-edges, however, thatthe issue of culture andits effect on theseprocesses had not beenadequately examined atthe time of writing.

11 Patrick N. Juslin andMarcel R. Zentner havepointed out that acertain amount ofdisagreement exists onthis issue (2001–2: 9).

between music and physiological response suggests that we mightinterpret the heartbeats we hear in the cinema (either encoded subtly inthe music or openly presented as recorded sound) in terms of our ownbodily sounds. Not only would we recognise the heartbeat as expressiveof fear, but, in recognising it, we would also focus our attention on ourown heartbeat. Since we tend to be particularly aware of our own corpo-reality in states of real danger, I suggest that this makes it easier tosimulate a fictional character’s fear and thus produce in us a cinematicemotion. The mimetic hypothesis might also provide an explanation forwhy we might find ourselves unconsciously ‘imitating’ the emotionseemingly being expressed, in addition to any willing participation in agame of make-believe. Cox has written of the human body’s attempts toimitate, so that the phenomenon of pupil dilation can be explained notonly as an expression of interest but could also ‘be part of how we partici-pate: one way we show interest is by unconsciously imitating and becominglike one another’ (ibid: 199). Recognising (consciously or unconsciously) thepresence of a heartbeat in the music might therefore stimulate a physio-logical reaction that attempts to, in some sense, imitate the heartbeat wehear. Coupled with other representational information in the sound orimages, this heartbeat might indeed arouse cinematic-fear.

Thus we can articulate a multi-point ‘heartbeat hypothesis’ that appliesthe empirical, cognitive-based research of Cox to the philosophicalquestion of fictional emotions, and the concept of cinematic-fear. It holdsthat, in cases where heartbeats are present alongside other representa-tional information suggesting danger, and the spectator reports feelingafraid:

1 s/he is not feeling actual fear but is merely experiencing cinematic-fear;

2 this cinematic-fear is a result of the spectator simulating the fear-inducing beliefs that s/he imagines someone in the fiction to hold,whether that someone is (a) one or more of the characters in thefilm, or (b) another intra-diegetic personality (such as a narrator);

3 this simulation is aided by the presence of a heartbeat, which (uponcloser examination) s/he might assume (a) to be expressive of thefictional state of fear held by the characters, narrator, or other intra-diegetic personality in the film, or (b) to actually emanate from thebody of one of these persons;12

4 that this heartbeat (a) will take on a generic iambic character, if it ismerely expressive of the fictional state of fear held by someone in thefilm, or (b) may also reflect the reality of a raised heartbeat, if it can



12 Indeed, in additionto a sense of ‘self ’ (asinternal sound), aheartbeat recognised asexisting outside ourbody can also be astrong indicator of thepresence of the ‘other’.

also be said to emanate from the body of one of these intra-diegeticpersons (either as recorded sound or as musicalised sound – that is,sound represented in musical form);

5 that this heartbeat draws the spectator’s attention to a character’sendangered corporeality;

6 that since the mimetic hypothesis holds that we understand musicalsounds in terms of our own bodily sounds, the presence of aheartbeat reminds the spectator of her/his own corporeality;

7 that, since we are more aware of our physiology in a state of real fear,being reminded of her/his corporeality makes it easier for thespectator to simulate a state of fictional fear; and furthermore…

8 that this may be a process over which the spectator has varying levelsof control and awareness, so that s/he may occasionally wronglyinterpret the conscious awareness of her/his heartbeat, triggered bythe presence of a heartbeat in the film, as a sign of actual real-worldfear, though s/he knows such an emotion to be impossible.

This last point may seem to offer tacit support for the idea of ‘inaudibil-ity’ and thus threaten to open the door for a return to a Gorbman-esqueposition – despite my invoking of the idea of perceptual realism, and myrejection of the monologic and manipulative nondiegetic voice. Yet, whileCox’s mimetic hypothesis might suggest that we have little control overour physiological reaction to a sound that our bodies are capable ofproducing, we may be entirely aware of that reaction and of the sonicstimulus that helps cause it. Nothing about the heartbeat hypothesisrelies on the music somehow being ‘unheard’, slipping in unnoticed tomanipulate the spectator into a state of cinematic-fear. Nor does it reallybond us to the characters in a psychological way; although it may help usto appreciate the fictional emotions they are experiencing, this is animagined, cognitive response, not a psychological illusion. Although it isevidently a well-known compositional and sound design device used byfilmmakers, we do not require a psychoanalytic model to explain theheartbeat’s effect, and it appears to work equally well whether or not it isconsciously noticed. If we hear a heartbeat and recognise it as such,ascribing it to a particular character, we are naturally drawn to consid-ering our own heartbeat and therefore share the concern expressed bythe character in a state of fictional fear for her/his own corporeal precari-ousness; indeed, an awareness of one’s own body is a fundamental charac-teristic of an emotional or, in this case, quasi-emotional state. If we do notrecognise a heartbeat, though, or are unaware of its presence in the soundmix, our recognition of it as a bodily sound may indeed be unconscious.



We may then recognise the fact that our own heart is beating faster but notlink it to the sound emanating from the speakers in the cinema. In eithercase, whether we are aware or not, the effect is the same. Furthermore, thisconscious engagement with music suggests that we may sometimes be ableto limit our involvement with a film’s emotional content to the level ofcognitively recognising the expression of fear in the music (and the rest ofthe narrative) without simulating that fear. How we respond might welldiffer according to other factors, such as our prevailing emotional state andthe context in which we are watching the scene. In other words, we canchoose not to play the game.

Applying the Heartbeat Hypothesis

In discussing the compiled score and sound design of Stanley Kubrick’sThe Shining (1980), Kevin Donnelly notes that, among the intermittentbursts of musical sounds, the sound of a heartbeat can be heard (2005:36). He goes on to mention that:

Music is related to bodily and life rhythms, through the essence of volume,beat and pulse perhaps more than timbre, pitch and harmony. The mostprimitive (and most primal) musical moments in cinema are stingers[sudden sforzando chords], which engage with the audience on the mostbasic levels.

(ibid: 95)

Music in horror films often attempts a direct engagement with thephysical… [These sounds are] tied to the intrinsic sounds of the humanbody: the high buzz of the nervous system and the deep throb of the blood-stream and heart.

(ibid: 105)

Donnelly’s comments suggest something of the power of music toconnect with an audience’s sense of corporeality and this, evidently, hasa long and distinguished history, with classic horror films like Bride ofFrankenstein (James Whale, 1935) and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (RoubenMamoullian, 1932, and Victor Fleming, 1941) springing to mind: FranzWaxman’s score to Bride of Frankenstein, for instance, features a timpanipedal E to simulate the beating of the Bride’s revived heart, while hisscore for the 1941 Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde also uses a timpani heartbeat inthe transformation scene, something that the earlier Mamoullian versionaccomplishes with recorded sound.13

Andra McCartney’s discussion of how science-fiction soundtracksindex sonic intimacy – and thus reflect and intensify urban anxieties



13 Another Classic-eraexample can be foundin Laurence Olivier’s1948 version of Hamlet,which features anirregular heartbeatwhen the King’s ghostfirst appears.

about sounds of ‘alien’ species that are associated with wilderness envi-ronments – picks up on similar concerns (2002). McCartney notes how,in Alien, the sounds of insects are used to index anxiety in the maincharacter while ‘bodily sounds’ are used to indicate danger; she drawsattention to the ‘birth’ scene, which includes a heartbeat, while theeponymous alien is constantly associated with intimate, ‘wet’ sounds(ibid: 47–8). Robynn Stilwell, too, in her discussion of the film Closet Land(Radha Bharadwaj, 1990) hints at the way that music can be empatheticand suggest bodily processes: ‘An outbreak of Taiko (Japanese)-styledrumming provides an excellent outward expression of [the woman’s]panic and kinetic mimicry of her pounding heart and racing thoughts’(2001: 177). Clearly, then, some vague idea of the connection betweenbodily sounds (particularly heartbeats) and states of cinematic-fear hasbeen noted before. What the heartbeat hypothesis now provides us withis an interpretative model for film narrative that sits in a philosophicaltradition of fiction, supported by empirical studies of emotion, and whichbalances the hitherto dominant classical-psychoanalytic models offeredby Gorbman. The following discussion suggests how the model might beapplied, with examples drawn from a number of films.

A straightforward example is provided by Alan Silvestri’s score toContact (Robert Zemeckis, 1997), in which a heartbeat rhythm is heardwhen Ellie (Jodie Foster) spots a known terrorist and his bomb on a TVmonitor. Ellie is essentially powerless and can only communicate theinformation to a colleague on the radio: clearly, her concern for theterrorist’s potential victims suggests that the music, in being expressive ofher fear, emanates from her and, as a result, we are more able to simulatethat fear and share in her suspense. Similarly, in Gattaca (Andrew Niccol,1997) – a film that is particularly concerned with awareness of the bodyin its themes of genetic engineering and bodily disguise – Vincent (EthanHawke) lives in fear of being discovered as an ‘in-valid’. In thegymnasium scenes, his audible (and false) diegetic heartbeat is heardalongside heartbeat rhythms in Michael Nyman’s music, expressing thefear that he will be discovered and allowing us to simulate that emotion.More recently, Jonny Greenwood’s score to Paul Thomas Anderson’s filmThere Will Be Blood (2007) demonstrates that the device is still muchfavoured in scenes of high tension, featuring a driving heartbeat rhythmas Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) searches for his son following anoil-well explosion: again, the music is clearly expressive of Plainview’sfear. As these are musical expressions of fear, rather than actual heart-beats (recorded or musicalised), it matters not whether they accuratelydescribe a body in a state of fear; it is enough for us to recognise them asheartbeats to allow us to simulate the character’s emotion.



The nature and source of the music is not always so clear, however, andit may sometimes be the case that the heartbeat we hear can be inter-preted as the physical sound of a heart beating, in addition to functioningas an expressive indication of a character’s fear; this might be either asrecorded sound, or as musicalised representation of that sound. In eithercase, as the heartbeat hypothesis tells us, if the spectator feels afraid, s/hemust also be simulating someone’s fear-inducing beliefs in the fiction: theheartbeat will therefore always function, first and foremost, as expres-sion. In the 1971 film The Andromeda Strain (Robert Wise), for instance, ateam of scientists search for an unknown and deadly toxin, accidentallyreleased on an unsuspecting town by a crashed space probe sent out tosearch for extraterrestrial life. With the probe under the microscope, twoof the scientists (Dr Jeremy Stone, played by Arthur Hill, and Dr RuthLeavitt, played by Kate Reid) look for answers. As the camera zooms incloser to a green patch on the probe’s surface, the electronic scorecomposed by Gil Mellé introduces an unmistakeable heartbeat.14 Thisbecomes louder as the camera zooms in closer, and ceases when it cutsaway, suggesting that the sound emanates from the green patch, whichwe later discover to be a non-organic life form. As it is entirely regular, itperhaps suggests an alien body unafraid of being probed by humanscience, entirely devoted to the task of reproduction and possiblyunaware of the threat it poses to humankind. Though the life is laterrevealed to be crystalline, and therefore without a heart or blood, itpulsates organically as it multiplies. The heartbeats could therefore besaid to fulfil both criteria in point 4 of the hypothesis: they emanate fromthe alien life, but if the spectator feels cinematic-fear, they must also beexpressive of someone’s diegetic fear. Since the scientists do not appearto be all that concerned, this fear may belong to an intra-diegeticnarrator, who believes that this is the Andromeda strain that threatens theentire planet, or even the life form itself, anticipating its possible annihi-lation at the hands of humanity (for all its outward signs of coolness). Ineither case, the heartbeat hypothesis suggests that the spectator’sconscious or unconscious recognition of the sounds as heartbeats focusesattention on her/his own fragile physiology, and s/he is better able tosimulate the emotion of fear as a result.

In Alien, the spectator is presented with a sequence that is still morecomplicated, featuring multiple uses of heartbeats and heartbeatrhythms; yet, while traditional studies of film music theory might try andcategorise these sounds as either diegetic or nondiegetic, the heartbeathypothesis suggests they are all equally important in defining the worldof the film, and are hence intra-diegetic. As Captain Dallas (Tom Skerritt)crawls about in his ship’s dimly-lit air ducts, trying to flush out the



14 The difficulty indistinguishing betweendiegetic and nondiegeticsound/music in thisfilm suggests that theseterms might be unhelp -ful. As suggested earlier,we need neither conceptto account for thefictional world we areobserving.

eponymous alien with a flame-thrower, we hear three sets of heartbeatsin the sound mix: the recorded sound of a human heartbeat; the beepingof an electronic tracker with a distinctive heartbeat rhythm; and aniambic rhythm in Jerry Goldsmith’s underscore.15 As the alien gets closer,fear mounts in the other characters who are observing. Like us, they areremoved from the immediate situation; they only have their imaginations,two dots on a screen that seem to be growing ever closer, and Dallas’sconfusion on the radio. They, too, can hear the sound of an electronicheartbeat to add to their own, and terror eventually takes hold: Lambert(Veronica Cartwright), almost sobbing, exhorts Dallas to ‘get out of there’.The electronic heartbeats of the tracking device become quicker, and weget a glimpse of the alien accompanied by the sound of an inhumanscream. The screen is overtaken with static and the heartbeats stop.

Unlike the spectator, the characters believe the alien to be real, that itposes a real threat from which they may be forced to fight or flee; we, incontrast, do not believe, but merely entertain the thought that thiscreature is a possible being – one that lives in a musicalised world. Theheartbeats, in drawing our attention both to the fear expressed in thediegesis and to our own bodies, help us to simulate their emotions. Theelectronic tracker’s heartbeat, for example, is overtly audible to bothLambert and the audience, and, as such, we are particularly aware of itas part of the narrative; while its presence and source are unquestioned,the effect it has on our mounting sense of cinematic-fear should not beunderestimated. This is one heartbeat to which we consciously attendand apply cognitive reasoning: like Lambert, we know that it signalsdanger in the diegesis in a real way (indeed it gets faster as the alienapproaches). While it is not, at first glance, expressive of anyone’semotional state in itself, it is capable of provoking a reaction. It pointsbeyond itself to information that makes us and the characters afraid forDallas’s life, namely that a terrible threat is growing ever closer; the factthat it uses a heartbeat rhythm to achieve this is interesting, since itreveals an intuitive grasp by the characters in the film (who haveconstructed this tracking machine) of the link between an awareness ofbodily sound and danger.16

While the electronic heartbeat plays a foreground role in the diegesis,the human heartbeat heard in this sequence is arguably less noticeable.It might be interpreted as an amplified version of one of the characters’own bodily sounds (Michel Chion’s category of internal sound forexample – 1994: 76), and our ability to imagine ourselves feeling theemotions of the character is thus a result of a greater awareness of ourown bodily precariousness. The most obvious candidate for theheartbeat’s source might be Dallas himself, since we also hear his



15 The sound editing isby Jim Shields.

16 Similarly, the firealarm heard in TheThing is also a heart -beat rhythm; it is usedby MacReady (KurtRussell) to signify dangerand to summon help.

breathing, but it could also be interpreted as the sound of the ship: hercomputer brain is referred to as ‘mother’ and its interface is accessed viaa womb-like room. We hear the sound of ‘mother’s’ maternal concern forher captain, a fear born of beliefs that we simulate and run off-line. Withthis interpretation, the heartbeat is fundamental to the simulation;without it, we would not easily be able to entertain the idea that ‘mother’is afraid. Curiously, the human heartbeat is relatively loud in the first halfof the sequence, but becomes far less noticeable as soon as Lambertbegins to track the alien. It disappears along with the electronic heartbeatwhen all trace of the alien is lost. This moment, which we might assumeto be the most fear-inducing point, is a point at which the audience canrelax precisely because of the absence of any heartbeat. Lambert’s fearonly starts to show when the electronic tracking device begins again inearnest, followed by a restart of the human heartbeat, now clearlyattached to Lambert’s mounting terror and growing faster as a result.The iambic rhythm in the music, which appears momentarily whenLambert first begins to track the alien, and is disguised through thepresence of a melodic line, is more covert still. It is a generic heartbeatrhythm that functions expressively to indicate the fear of the filmicworld’s intra-diegetic narrator, echoing in sympathy both the bodilysounds of the ship and the electronic sounds of the tracker.

Deciding whether the heartbeat is merely functioning expressively, orif it also describes a physical heart beating, can help in interpreting thesource of the music. In Steven Spielberg’s 2005 War of the Worlds, forinstance, we are presented with the unveiling of the aliens’ fightingmachine in a way that suggests the characters’ developing fear. Followinga diegetic crescendo of composed sound (seemingly the whine of a jetengine), the camera pulls back to reveal what composer John Williamshas called one of the most terrifying things he has seen on screen.17

Williams’s underscore begins to stir: a repetitive compound duple-metered rhythm begins in the bass (repeating quavers grouped inaccented trochees – a reverse heartbeat). This low pulsing, whichcoincides with the ‘awakening’ of the aliens as their machine stretchesfrom its lazy slumbers, could be sourced as the musicalised sound of analien physiology limbering up, like the green blob’s heartbeat in theAndromeda Strain. Yet, the accented trochaic rhythm might be betterinterpreted as an expression of the human protagonists’ mounting fear,the corporeal pulse of blood rushing around a body primed for fight orflight. This repeated pulse continues as Ray (Tom Cruise) and his fellowwitnesses flee the scene, but stops momentarily as curiosity overcomes thedesire to flee. It thus seems to belong to them; their fear seems toproduce it. With no immediate danger sensed by the characters, a sense



17 See the documentary‘Scoring War of theWorlds’ on the Region 2DVD release of thefilm, Paramount HomeEntertainmentPHE8883, 02:25. Thesound design for thefilm is by Randy Thom,Michael W. Mitchell,and Richard King.

of the sublime (the bittersweet combination of awe and fear) is suggested,and the music stops. By hearing the trochaic rhythm as a representationof the rushing blood of the autonomic nervous system, then, we arereminded both of the witnesses’ corporeality and of our own, fragile,bodies. Indeed, as spectators, we too are witnesses of a kind: as the scenecontinues, part of it is observed through a dropped video camera, thusintentionally drawing attention to the way in which we interpret theworld through cinematic means.

Ennio Morricone’s score to The Thing provides one of the most inter-esting examples to which we can apply the hypothesis because, incontrast to War of the Worlds, the heartbeat in question seems far too slowto be attributable to any human source in the diegesis (it equates toaround 25 beats a minute).18 It is heard in the film’s first scene as a dogis chased across the snows of the Antarctic by a Norwegian helicopter. Itmight be regarded at first, then, as purely expressive of someone’s fear –either the Norwegians, or the film’s intra-diegetic narrator figure: theonly persons who are aware that the dog is, in fact, the dangerous Thingin canine form (at this point the occupants of the US research station are,like the spectator, ignorant of this). Yet, the very fact that the heartbeatdoes not seem to relate to the rhythms of human physiology hints at its(secret) identity. It suggests that, in addition to this role as an expressionof the narrator’s fear, the heartbeat also describes an actual heart beating.This can only be the sound of the Thing’s alien heart: cold, incalculable,incapable of excitement or emotion, only intent on survival whatever thecost to the human race. The music thus reminds the audience of just howdifferent their own fragile bodies are, of their precariousness, and theirinability to cope with the Thing’s agenda of bodily possession (see Billson1997: 63–4). The film’s themes of paranoia, identity loss, and thebreakdown of trust between friends are certainly ripe for psychoanalysis;indeed, as Dennis White argues, in cases of body possession in horrorfilms, ‘When we see this integrity violated it is a threat to our ego’s abilityto protect itself because it dramatizes the failure of another ego to protectitself.’ (White 1971: 9). Yet, the threat here is not merely psychologicalbut also physiological: although the Thing appears to impersonate itsvictims, it has also already consumed their frail bodies in a particularlygrisly fashion; it merges with them at a cellular level, probing them in themost intimate of ways. The sound of an alien heartbeat focuses ourattention on the sounds of our own, threatened physical existence andreminds us that the Thing’s body is stronger, calmer, more focused, ableto overpower the human characters’ overexcited, fear-fuelled physiology.

Moreover, as the heartbeat hypothesis proposes, the musicalisedsound of the Thing’s heart focuses the spectator’s attention on her/his



18 This is running on aregion 2 DVD (PALcolour system) at 25frames per second. Itwould be 4% slower inthe cinema or on anNTSC disc running at24 frames per secondi.e. c.24 beats perminute.

own heartbeat, which – in contrast to the Thing’s calm, methodical,metronomic beat – is pounding away in anticipation of the danger that isthreatened. The theme returns on several further occasions, mostnotably at the ambiguous end of the film when MacReady and Childs areleft doomed to freeze to death. Each is uncertain as to whether the Thinghas survived, perhaps disguised as the other, and is merely waiting forthe fires they have started to die, and its preserving freezing process tobegin, ready to lie dormant until the next group of unsuspecting scien-tists dig it up. This rather bleak ending is compounded as the heartbeatreturns, suggesting that The Thing has indeed survived and lives to fightanother day. Indeed, the end titles finish with it as a solo, implying thatthe film world’s intra-diegetic narrator remains ‘afraid’ even after theimposition of the external frame of a credit sequence.

Interestingly, Morricone also scored a scene in the film Mission to Mars(Brian de Palma, 2000) in a way which suggests some affinity with TheThing: a slow bass guitar musical heartbeat is heard during an asteroidattack in space, clearly expressing the fear of the characters, for whom anasteroid hit would be catastrophic. Ironically, this affinity with The Thingsuggests that the heartbeat is not merely expressive but also emanatingfrom a malevolent alien life form, orchestrating the attack. Yet this is notthe case, and ultimately this same heartbeat rhythm is heard at the endof the film to signal new birth in the Universe. Indeed, Mission to Marsreminds us that cinematic-fear is not the only quasi or fictional emotionto which a musical heartbeat can contribute in the cinema. It is alsopossible that a musical heartbeat, placed in the appropriate context, cancontribute to the imagining of the excitement produced by romanticlove, for example. The associated physiological symptoms could be stim-ulated by the awareness of the body in the same way as with cinematic-fear.

As the examples discussed above demonstrate, though, the heartbeathypothesis stresses most clearly the importance of physiologicalawareness to fear states – and thus to fictional fear states in general, andcinematic-fear states in particular. By invoking bodily sounds, which mayalso include the sound of the human voice and intimate ‘wet’ sounds inaddition to heartbeats,19 film music and sound can draw our attention(consciously or unconsciously) to the fragility of our own bodies, allowingus to simulate far more effectively the fictional fear felt by the film’sprotagonists. In that sense, the use of music in The Thing is particularlyappropriate in underlining the film’s themes of bodily possession. Such amechanism evidently relies on other contextual information in the soundand visuals, and to a lesser degree perhaps on an association of ideasfrom other multimedia examples. As a cinematic code, though, it is not



19 John Williams’sscore for War of theWorlds includes anumber of humanscreams in the under-score that are designedto ‘humanise the expe-rience.’ See ‘ScoringWar of the Worlds’ onthe Region 2 DVDrelease of the film,03:50.

only fairly widespread but also, I would argue, widely understood. It thusserves to remind us that music’s relationship with the body is not onlyimportant to how we choose to perform and talk about performing music(see also Repp 1993 and Le Guin 2006), but that it also has an impact onthe games of make-believe we play in the cinema when listening to it, andthe emotional response we may have while doing so.

Conclusion: Wider Implications for Musicologyand Film Music Theory

Nor is this idea of fictional emotions limited to the cinema: heartbeats areused throughout opera and concert music repertories for similar expres-sive effect, and our reactions may also be modelled using the heartbeathypothesis. Examples in opera are usually associated with love andinclude the heartbeats found in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (Tatyana’sletter scene), Cimarosa’s I due supposti conti (in the duet ‘Nel veder quelltuo sembiante’), and Pergolesi’s Il Flaminio (in the Act 3 duet ‘Per te ho ionel core’ where Checca sings ‘tippitì, tippitì, tippitì’ and Bastiano replies‘tappatà, tappatà, tappatà’). The heartbeat rhythm of Siegfried’s deathmotif, used to powerful effect in the funeral music from Götterdämmerung,perhaps bears a closer resemblance to the film examples discussed here.In orchestral music, we might find pertinent examples in the heartbeatending of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6, Shostakovich’s Symphony No.4, or Richard Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung. As with the cinematic examplesdiscussed above, these heartbeats can contribute in the context of otherrepresentational information – in the text of opera or song, in titles ofinstrumental works, or in the programmes of tone poems, for example –to the evocation of an imagined feeling. Thus, with the heartbeat accom-paniment to the first appearance of the idée fixe in Berlioz’s SymphonieFantastique (after figure 5), we may report feeling excited partly becausewe imagine the protagonist of the symphony to be feeling fictionallyamorous. And it is the heartbeat that gives us this idea in the context ofthe symphony’s programme. We may recognise cognitively that theheartbeat expresses excitement precisely because of our physiologicalreaction to it.

What I am suggesting, then, is that the two sides of the debateconcerning music’s ability to express versus its propensity to emote mayboth be correct in parts. Music undoubtedly does cause reported feelingsof emotions and physiological changes, something that cognitivists likeKivy cannot deny; however, there can be little doubt that these responsesare not caused by real-world emotions. Like cinematic emotions, they are



fictional, and can be thought of as ascribable to an imagined fictionalcharacter – whether a protagonist in a programme of our own invention,an operatic character, or an intra-diegetic narrator figure with which wemight align a constructed version of the composer, for example. In thatsense, music is indeed, as Kivy claims, only expressive of emotion, but inmany people it also leads to the imagining of emotions in the same waythat it does in other forms of fiction, to the extent that they might believetheir emotional responses to be genuine. In Walton’s formulation, musicis a prop in a game of make-believe and, as such, there may be no fictionat all until we listen (1990: 336–41). In a supposedly ‘autonomous’ workwith no programme or text, then, we may imagine both the characterand their emotional response to a fictional object.20 Undoubtedly, musicalheartbeats are particularly useful in expressing emotions in non-cinematic music. Whether or not we, as listeners, simulate the emotionthat we believe the heartbeats to be expressing, and the extent to whichthat simulation is persuasive, may be partly a result of the effectdescribed by the heartbeat hypothesis. Music, though it may lack repre-sentational content in the traditional sense of the word, can thus beconsidered a fictional art in its relationship with emotion.

The heartbeat hypothesis above and its preceding discussion also haveimplications for film music theory that require stating explicitly, by wayof conclusion. Not only does this approach place a greater emphasis oncognitive models of interpretation, and suggest that an embodiedmusical listening may play a large part in our emotional connection withfilm music, but it also implicitly challenges Gorbman’s theory by ques-tioning the very notion of nondiegetic music, a philosophical leftoverfrom silent-era cinema aesthetics, perhaps, when a nondiegetic source forthe music was visible to the spectator. If all the ‘emotional’ music that wehear in a film can be located within the narrative world presented to us,then our understanding of that music changes: no longer would weconsider it an external, interpretative or manipulating force, consideredsubordinate (or indeed subversively superior) to other visually- oraurally-constructed narrative concerns, and of separate status to diegeticsound; rather we would see it as a key component in a complete audio-visual world, of vital importance both to the construction of the fiction,and to our simulating of fictional emotions. This runs counter to tradi-tional approaches – such as Adorno and Eisler’s book, which advocatedthe idea of a separate, distancing voice modelled after a BrechtianVerfremdungseffekt. Indeed, contrary to some prevailing film musicmodels,21 many of us experience film music in a far from subliminal way,a factor recognised and exploited by a multi-million dollar recordedsoundtrack industry. This is also borne out by the habits of those fans



20 Similar claims formusic’s fictional statushave been made byDonald Callen (1982)and Malcolm Budd(1989).

21 Donnelly’s recentwork, for example refersto film music func-tioning subliminally asa ‘system of control’(2005: 1, 4), despitearguing elsewhere thatfilm music also worksthrough ‘conscious andsemi-conscious linguisticcodes’ (ibid: 88). Simil -arly, Stilwell writes that‘musicians… mayregister the music justas subliminally asanyone else: actuallylistening to a film scoreis a feat demandingconsiderable concentra-tion.’ (2001: 183n2).

who choose to remake shortened versions of Hollywood films for broad-casting on YouTube. These ‘sweded’ movies (a term coined by the 2008Michel Gondry film Be Kind Rewind) often feature crudely sung versionsof a film’s music – in some cases reproducing cues that might otherwisebe dismissed as ‘unheard’.22 Clearly, film music is sometimes noticed asmuch as visuals and sound design by the cinema-going public, and canbe important in defining a fan’s emotional experience of a film (see alsoFranklin 2007). Where the world of film studies is perhaps understand-ably reluctant to overturn the visual bias of its discipline in this regard,musicology may confidently step into the breech, using models like theheartbeat hypothesis to better explain sound and music’s role inconstructing the cinematic object.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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22 See, for instance, therather amusing ‘StarWars (Sweded): ACardboard Hope’:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qEWhrjYg_o(accessed 20 April2008). We might alsoinvoke Blue Harvest,Family Guy’s affectionatenod to Star Wars, inwhich Peter Griffin(playing Han Solo)cannot resist singingalong to John Williams’scue ‘Here They Come’as he battles TIEfighters.

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Le Guin, Elizabeth (2006) Boccherini’s Body: An Essay in Carnal Musicology,Berkeley: University of California Press

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— (1996) ‘Film Music and Narrative Agency’ in David Bordwell and NoëlCarroll (eds.) Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, Madison: University ofWisconsin Press

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Öhman, Arne (1993) ‘Fear and Anxiety as Emotional Phenomena: ClinicalPhenomenology, Evolutionary Perspectives, and Information-ProcessingMechanisms’ in Michael Lewis and Jeanette M. Haviland (eds.) Handbook ofEmotions, New York: Guilford Press

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— (1996) ‘Unheard Melodies? A Critique of Psychoanalytic Theories of FilmMusic’ in David Bordwell and Noël Carroll (eds.) Post-Theory: ReconstructingFilm Studies, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press

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