ABSTRACT
Film Studies have long been characterised by a visual bias (“image first, sound later”) and a “content-oriented” approach (“What is the message?”) that, when dealing with music, have favoured “interpretation” (what music communicates) over “analysis” (the consideration of the full gamut of music’s functions). When interpretation is favoured, attention is primarily given to music that passes some meaning (“commentary”, “counterpoint”, “asynchronism”). Conversely, music that simply “accompanies” and is “synchronous” is characteristically deemed to be of lesser interest. This chapter offers a re-assessment of the formal agency of the often maligned “Mickey-Mousing”, the most extreme type of parallel and synchronous accompaniment. Mostly dismissed as a hollow and banally subservient musical mirroring of the visual action, Mickey-Mousing can, on the contrary, contribute to the audiovisual “whole” in a number of more or less subtler ways and levels. Its agency is especially important in the orientation and connection of the viewers with the filmic space, in both visual and tactile terms.
