Abstract

This article appears in the Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics edited by John Richardson, Claudia Gorbman, and Carol Vernallis. The sound of nightclubs and club music has transformed spatial scale, frequency range, and volume levels in film soundtracks for the past twenty-five years. Across this period, spatialization is intensified, the soundtrack gets noiser, and characterization favors unbalanced psychological states. Consequently, an aural “Other” becomes progressively encoded and registered. The texture of recorded sound on film becomes affected by non-cinematic aurality, responding to approaches to microphone placement in pop music, and the role that psycho-acoustics play in shaping psychological drama. Discussion ensues to audit the noise inside the addled heads of characters in a selection of films which exemplify this transformative audiovision in cinema: Scorpio Rising, Vinyl, Scarface, Blue Velvet, La Vie Nouvelle, and Irréversible.