ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the author examines some of the ways in which film music works, but the author begins by setting remarks in the framework of a more general comment on popular culture. 'Popular culture' describes culture in capitalist societies and the most common way of looking at popular culture is therefore in terms of the production and consumption of commodities. The recurring twentieth-century question has been what is the relationship of 'art' and the market place; the recurring answer has been in terms of the opposition between high culture and mass culture – the place of popular culture in this couplet is unclear. One reason for this is that the high/mass culture typology actually muddles two issues, production and consumption. The most systematic theoretical approach to film music begins by distinguishing its diagetic use and its non-diagetic use. The important point here, as Claudia Gorbman has made clear, is that in pratice music straddles this apparently clear divide.