Abstract
This chapter initially overviews the potential perceptual effects of various types of audiovisual (in)congruence. It highlights the challenges of measuring (in)congruence and the monodimensionality, opposition, and value often implied when binary labels are used to describe film music. A (re)definition of incongruence as a lack of shared properties in the audiovisual relationship is proposed. The incongruent perspective, a psycho-semiotic approach to studying difference in the film–music relationship, is subsequently outlined. Alongside psychological research, the perspective incorporates: poststructuralist ideas that encourage deconstructing binaries and considering how difference can defer and supplement perceived meaning; theories that recognise the active role of audiovisual difference in constructing filmic meaning; and semiotic ideas that acknowledge how film music might signify, and the role of individual perceivers and practitioners in meaning construction.
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Notes
- 1.
To retain focus, the following paragraphs are not a holistic summary of empirical research into the psychological impact of film music. Instead, they focus on studies that explicitly consider incongruence. For recent overviews of research in this area, please see Cohen (2014, 2016) and Tan (2017a, 2017b).
- 2.
For an overview of the model’s evolution see Cohen (2013).
- 3.
This model has since been presented in revised format by Lipscomb (2013).
- 4.
The label subjective congruence was previously used by Kim and Iwamiya (2008) to refer to such judgements.
- 5.
In out-of-phase conditions audio and visual components maintain an isochronous temporal relationship that is offset from the primary beat whereas in dissonant conditions the subdivisions do not resolve easily to multiples of the primary beat (Lipscomb , 2013, p. 194).
- 6.
- 7.
For more on the challenges of self-report measures and emotional response to music see Zentner and Eerola (2010).
- 8.
Cook does not suggest that because multimedia is predicated on difference that all multimedia combinations are in someway incongruent or likely to be subjectively perceived as misfitting or inappropriate. Instead his model of multimedia outlines various ways in which different types of difference might actively contribute towards perceived meaning. The model is centred around an initial test of similarity or difference in the multimedia relationship and is discussed in greater detail later in this chapter.
- 9.
For Audissino , this is a result of separatist conceptions that treat film and music individually rather than as a textual whole and because of the use of communications models that emphasise interpretation rather than formal analysis.
- 10.
The synthesis within Hegelian dialectics contrasts Derrida’s (1972/2002) writings, which distinguish différance from Hegelian difference ‘at the point at which Hegel … determines difference as contradiction only in order to resolve it, to interiorize it, to lift it up … into the self-presence of an onto-theological or onto-teleological synthesis. … Différance … must sign the point at which one breaks with the system of the Aufhebung and with speculative dialectics’ (p. 44).
- 11.
Interestingly, Dickinson’s analysis of the video nasties also draws on Chion’s (1994) notion of anempathy , which refers to film sound and music that appears to continue indifferently and with little regard for the concurrent narrative content or images. Anempathy is often associated with incongruence and this relationship will be explored further in subsequent chapters.
- 12.
As Donnelly (2014, p. 204) highlights, Eisenstein cites the work of Koffka to illustrate his argument just a few pages after these frequently cited quotes from The Film Sense.
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Ireland, D. (2018). Interrogating (In)congruence: The Incongruent Perspective. In: Identifying and Interpreting Incongruent Film Music. Palgrave Studies in Audio-Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00506-1_2
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