ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author treats musical reflexivity as a means of perpetuating assumptions about music that in turn serve the unique narrative goals of individual films. Characters use music commonly to experience emotional depth and pursue affective intensity, to express interiority and escape reality, to create social bonds, and to play with their roles in society. Thus, reality and unreality of musicianship are not the targets but rather how filmmakers frame music as a means of personal sincerity and striving for forms of transcendence. This focus on self-awareness in both musical and social/psychological terms has further implications for organizing concepts and scope of the project. Furthermore, analyses of musical moments tend to be biased toward on-screen performance, which is only one means by which film engages assumptions about music's social, expressive, and quasi-spiritual power. Characters also select recordings, react to musical stimuli, interpret its significance for others verbally, employ sound technologies, make playlists, compose, engage memories through music.
