Introduction

Put in simplest terms, this thesis is an examination of classical music and

Hollywood film. It discusses an area of study that resides at the intersection of several
related, overlapping fields, including semiotics, intertextuality theory, popular
musicology, film studies, film musicology, and popular culture studies. This
multidisciplinary study focuses on three pieces of classical music: the ‘Introduction’ to
Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra; Richard Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’
from his opera The Valkyrie; and the ‘Liebestod’ from Wagner’s opera Tristan and
Isolde. Appropriate aspects of the above theory are developed and filtered through these
case histories. This thesis proposes that these compositions, and the role they play in
popular culture, have considerably evolved since they were composed in the late
nineteenth century. In fact, Strauss’s and Wagner’s respective music have evolved to a
stage well beyond that apparently assumed by most media academics, including both
musicologists and film scholars. Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra and Wagner’s ‘Ride
of the Valkyries’ in particular are good examples of a previously unidentified media
phenomenon: the ‘metaleitmotif’, a self-referential iconic particle of popular culture.
To the best of my knowledge, the approach to these texts in this thesis is new, in
that an investigation into the use of repertoire classical music and film, and how one
affects the other, has never been undertaken. Although this thesis is heavily grounded in
the methodology of structuralist, semiotic textual analysis, the particular combination of
semiotic and textual analytic approaches is new to all three of the theoretical disciplines
that support this thesis: classical music is rarely analysed as popular music, and film
music is rarely analysed as popular music video. The texts in all three case histories are
comprised of canonical repertoire classical music and Hollywood1 film, and this
multimedia textual combination is analysed through aspects of the following three
theoretical lenses: intertextuality theory, popular music and music video theory, and film
music theory (as an adjunct of film theory). All three of these theoretical disciplines can
be brought to bear on exactly the same media texts, but naturally from radically
different, if not opposing, ideological backgrounds. This thesis will follow the

1
With the exception of Fellini’s 8½, European and Asian cinematic texts were excluded for reasons of economy, although several
Australian films are analysed.
 2

trajectories of each theoretical axis until they meet up with each other at a locus defined
by Umberto Eco as the “metasemiotic” culture (1986: 210), which I have requalified as a
‘metasemiotic aesthetic’.
The emphasis on each of these theoretical bases is for the most part equally
weighted. Unlike most examinations of music used in film, this thesis is careful to avoid
the privileging of the visual that characterises many books on film music (such as
Gorbman, 1987; Flinn, 1992; Evans, 1975; Prendergast, 1977). My approach to the
subject involves an evenly distributed theoretical contribution from both film theory and
musicology, placed carefully in a symbiotic pop culture theoretical context. In that way,
this thesis becomes as much an investigation of the use of film in music as of the use of
music in film. As this thesis will argue, the cross-fertilisation of film, music and music
video and the recontextualisation of classical music as popular suggest the potential for
audiences to perceive and consume film music in this way, thus allowing this evenly-
weighted multidisciplinary approach to offer a more sensitive assessment of current
media reality (definitions for the terms ‘classical music’, ‘popular music’, ‘pop music’,
‘popular culture’, and ‘pop culture’ will be given shortly).
While this combination of theoretical approaches and their respective balances
might be understandably new, given the relative youth of popular musicology and cross-
disciplinary studies, the neglect of this area within its component theoretical fields is
puzzling. Film music theory would seem an obvious place for a discussion of classical
music used in film, and yet film music scholars are generally more interested in composed
film music, and the political relationship between the visual image and music composed
specifically to accompany it. Those popular musicologists who have written on the
relationship that music has with contemporary visual image (e.g., Goodwin, 1993a; Straw,
1993; Walser, 1993; Negus, 1996) are naturally interested in composed popular music and
its relationship with film image, and the relationship between music and image in popular
music videos. In spite of the close relationship between classical music and popular music
in these contexts, classical music has not been addressed there. Of course, classical
musicologists are generally not interested in film at all, and many view the entire idea of
combining classical music with Hollywood film with suspicion and distaste. Many popular
culture academics seem to feel that there are much more interesting areas to mine, which is
 3

perhaps understandable given the wealth of cultural material demanding attention from this
recently established discipline. In addition, the established, ‘high-culture’ role of classical
music in society (and the impressive body of academic work that reputation brings with it)
somehow conspires to disqualify this media combination from intellectual attention. As a
result, the classical music and film media combination seems to have fallen through the
cracks of the combined media studies platform, and this thesis is a very small step towards
addressing that neglect.
An important caveat must be made at this early stage. This thesis is not based on
quantitative research, but rather my own reading of the musical and visual image/film texts
under examination here. At various points throughout this thesis I have made inferences
about how audiences read texts/intertexts. While the readings I make from these texts are
demonstrably supported by extant theory, the inference that these readings are true for all
audiences should not made. I wish to emphasise here that, in the absence of empirical data
in support of these, such observations have the status of reasonable assumptions, but
assumptions nonetheless, and they would require further work within a different
disciplinary matrix to advance their status beyond the hypothetical. It is my hope that that
my close readings of these texts, through these three theoretical lenses, might suggest the
potential for reading other texts in ways perhaps not previously considered.
In order to maintain a tight focus in this thesis, various other trajectories of
theoretical inquiry were deliberately not pursued in reaching these conclusions. Marxist
aesthetics, and Marxist contributions to narrative theory, were not brought to bear upon
either visual image or music. The nature of the texts chosen for analysis has largely
suggested the most suitable theoretical parameters. The two primary texts of this thesis
are Hollywood films and classical music. Hollywood films are largely classic realist
texts:
. . . it is at any rate arguable that for cultural reasons spectators of films have a strong inbuilt
tendency to regard the sequences of images films offer them as ‘realistic’, or want to understand
them as such. (Williams, 1980: 2)

Classical music, and film music composed in a classical style, are also realist in
narrative2 (Bruce, 1985: 11; Gorbman, 1987: 3-7), as will be examined later in Chapter

2
Classical music is essentially a realist text, when examined in terms of narrative (in its widest definition). The ‘meaning’ of
classical music is derived from the combination of its various component parts (melody, harmony, timbre, tempo, instrumentation,
 4

3. Intertextuality theory, which provides the base theoretical context of this thesis, is
essentially a realist ideology. It suggests that textual elements are combined according to
a natural, hegemonic order and reality, for particular reasons, and that the resulting
fusion is thus historically ‘knowable’, explainable, and aesthetically justifiable.
At the same time, an effort has been made to avoid the intertextual analysis trap
articulated by Barthes in Image – Music – Text:
. . . to try and find the ‘sources’, the ‘influences’ of a work, is to fall in with the myth of filiation; the
citations which go to make up a text are anonymous, untraceable, and yet already read: they are
quotations without inverted commas. (1977: 160)

I will argue that the mediation of multimedia technology has rendered many intertextual
references particularly conducive to identification and explanation, which, depending on
the background of the audience, makes the intertextual analysis of film/music texts not so
much an exercise in ‘trying to find the sources’, as in the identification of the (technically
and narratively) apparent. In addition, with his notion of “metasemiotics”, Eco (loc.cit.)
makes a convincing argument that the very recognition and genealogy of certain references
constitute a primary component of aesthetic appeal.
In excluding Marxist and Brechtian aesthetics from consideration in this thesis, I
am subscribing to Wagner’s notion of the Gesamtkunstwerk, or the fusion of art forms
into a cathartic whole. Thus, the seemingly contradictory combination of classical music
and contemporary visual images (especially of, say, explicit sex and graphic violence) is
analysed as fusion rather than juxtaposition, because juxtaposition rarely takes into
account the narrative complexities of the relationship between music and visual image.
Musical narrative is more complicated than many theorists assume, and its richness
suggests that mere media juxtaposition involves a neglect of in-depth musicological
analysis. The ideological implications of narrative congruence and the application of
metasemiotic intertextuality to the ‘problem’ of postmodernism are problematic, but
fully reconciling these notions with Marxist aesthetics is beyond the scope of this thesis
and offers interesting avenues for further research.

etc.), all working together towards a single aesthetic goal. Musical resolution is achieved through the hegemony of the tonic (or
dominant key), which the listener accepts without question.
 5

From within this Aristotelian, realist aesthetic ideology, this thesis offers, among
other things, an attempt to pick up the gauntlet thrown by Claudia Gorbman at the end of
her book Unheard Melodies:
As any filmgoer notices who lingers to watch closing credits for music, the movies are using more
and more recorded popular music. This tendency is due in large part to the meteoric rise and
influence of the music video in its kaleidoscope of forms. The changing status of music in films is, in
turn, producing an altered system of relationships between music and image . . . A semiotic
phenomenology of the evolving relationship between music and image, and, overall, of changes in
the “diegetic effect” or disposition of representation, needs to emerge. (1987: 162-3)

At this point, several problematic terms are already overdue for some clarifying
definitions. The distinction between ‘popular music’ and ‘classical music’ is crucial to this
thesis. In his book Key Concepts in Popular Music (1998), Roy Shuker outlines how
difficult it is to properly define ‘popular music’, claiming the term was first used in 1855 in
connection with William Chapple's Popular Music of the Olden Times (226). The issue of
term definition figured largely in the work of Adorno (1990) and Adorno and Horkheimer
(1977) and has been debated ever since. Shuker suggests that many authors “take a
common-sense understanding of the term for granted”, going on to offer three of the more
respected attempts at definition (1998: 227-228). These include “definitions placing an
emphasis on ‘popular’”, “definitions based on the commercial nature of popular music, and
embracing genres perceived as commercially oriented”, and “identification by general
musical and non-musical characteristics” (ibid).
For the purposes of this thesis, popular music is defined in a fairly restrictive,
generic fashion, following the categories of term definition outlined by Shuker, cited above.
Following Shuker (ibid) and Middleton (1990), popular music is defined as Western music
composed in the twentieth-century along fairly standard generic aesthetic paradigms, whose
fluid genres can be historically perceived as being attractive to large audiences (through
calculated commercially oriented mass-production and marketing), and directed primarily
towards youth (Hebdige, 1979; Longhurst, 1995: 115-116, 210-216; Negus, 1996: 8-18,
{citing Adorno, 1977, 1990; Riesman, 1990; Hall & Whannel, 1964}, etc.). While
acknowledgment must be made of the contentiousness of this matter, the musical genres of
jazz, country, folk, and blues are excluded from the definition of popular music in this
thesis, following the work of authors such as Beadle (1993), and Goodwin (1988, 1993a,
1993b). The term ‘pop music’ used in this thesis is merely a short form of popular music,
 6

again following extensive use of this convention in Beadle (ibid), and Goodwin (ibid).
Confusing distinctions within popular music between particular genres, which separate
‘pop’ music from ‘rock’ music or ‘hip hop’ music, are not made in this thesis.
Classical music is also used in a narrow, restrictive way in this thesis, although
hopefully this also articulates a common-sense understanding of the term. ‘Classical music’
is used to refer to canonical music composed in, or in the style of, the sixteenth to the late
nineteenth century, encompassing aesthetic paradigms such as those found in the
Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras. Classical music can be historically
perceived as being attractive to smaller, elite audiences, and traditionally is mass-produced
and marketed with an emphasis more on musical aesthetics and cultural cachet than wide-
spread commercial appeal. Clearly, this definition excludes some music while it includes
others, but some working definitions are required to give the thesis focus.
Under these tight definitions, the notion of context for popular and classical music
becomes a little clearer. Traditionally, classical music can be perceived as largely operating
in the cultural and social contexts of the concert hall, the opera house, the up-market
specialist record store or record store section, with the trappings of wealth, education and
sophistication. On the other hand, popular music (especially since the onset of ‘rock 'n’ roll’
music in the 1950s) can generally be perceived as operating more on youth-oriented radio
stations, dance clubs, pubs and bars, and across mass media such as television and film.
These are by no means exclusive characteristics, and many exceptions can be quickly cited.
The definition of popular culture used in this thesis is again suggested by Shuker:
Popular culture was historically a term applied during the nineteenth century to the separate culture
of the subordinate classes of the urban and industrial centres [citing Storey, 1993]. This culture had
two main sources: a commercially oriented culture, and a culture for, and of, the people (often
associated with political agitation). While some subsequent uses of popular culture reserve it for the
second of these, the term became more generally associated with the commercial mass media: print,
aural, and visual communication on a large scale, including the press, publishing, radio and
television, film and video, telecommunications, and the recording industry. (1998: 87)

The term ‘pop culture’ used in this thesis is merely a short form of popular culture, in
keeping with the current connotation of ‘pop’ with the lighter and more disposable elements
of that culture. Popular culture is understood to be the context for popular music: popular
music is the music of popular culture.
Given these definitions, several questions drive this research to its conclusions on
the combination of classical music and visual image in popular culture:
 7

1. Is classical music perceived and consumed in a predominantly visual pop culture

context differently from its original historical context? If so, how?
2. What theoretical paradigm best explains the relationship between sound and image
suggested by the popularity of classical music in Hollywood film?
3. How are these films changing the role that classical music plays in popular culture, and
how is classical music contributing to the role that film plays in pop culture?
4. How is it possible that music written over 100 years ago can work so well with films
made in the 1990s? Why are certain pieces of classical music so effective in seemingly
incongruous films, and what are the mechanics of that relationship?
These questions will be addressed throughout the first three theory chapters and the
following three case history chapters. Ultimately, the following conclusions are reached:
1. Classical music can be perceived and consumed in popular culture as intertextual
reference. Arguably, a common form of musical-film intertextual reference is what I
will term the multimedia tmesis, defined as the media-transparent insertion of one
media text into the diegesis of another media text. The audio-visual tmesis has textual
precedents in both film and music respectively.
2. Intertextuality thus offers a useful theoretical paradigm to explain the close relationship
between film and musical texts. Intertextuality is a profound component of twentieth-
century popular culture, and supports and explains much of the cross-media interaction
of pop culture. Intertextuality can be a conscious, self-referential mode of media
consumption, and as a result Umberto Eco describes a “metasemiotic” (loc.cit) culture
or aesthetic where this is considered normal consumption behaviour.
3. Much classical music can be seen as having been successfully recontextualised as
popular music. This has arguably occurred through the contextual placement of
classical music in pop culture texts, and the treatment of classical music as popular
music in terms of music video sound-image politics and popular music ideology.
Classical music has moved to embrace popular culture in the same way and to the same
degree that pop culture and pop music have embraced classical music. In addition, in
their mediation through Hollywood film visual imagery, certain pieces of classical
music have achieved the status of ‘metaleitmotif’, in which the music can
communicate connotations of its contextual film in addition to its original musical
 8

and/or narrative connotative information. Music that has reached the status of
‘metaleitmotif’ can be seen as a self-referential iconic particle of popular culture, which
builds on the respective strengths of both original music and new visual context.
4. Music written in 1896 can fuse seamlessly and effectively with visual images created in
1996 due to the perception of narrative congruence between the composer’s original
narrative intentions and the music’s narrative application in the film in question.
Narrative congruence provides the mechanics by which new filmic, visual material is
enhanced by established musical narrative and, following Gorbman’s “mutual
implication” (1987: 15), older musical material is enhanced and refreshed by new film-
mediated images. Narrative congruence is another form of intertextuality, and can
generally be drawn back beyond the art of the composer to original, pre-historical
narrative roots.
In short, this thesis offers a detailed account of how certain examples of classical
music have established themselves in popular culture. I will show how, no matter how
remote their analogues, they have tended to retain narrative congruence within certain
broad structural parameters. In other words, these pieces of classical music have directly or
indirectly reflected the narrative structures of their original use, either seriously or in ironic
or comedic modes. In general, the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, the ‘Introduction’ to Also sprach
Zarathustra, and the ‘Liebestod’ from Tristan and Isolde appear always to have retained
substantial components of their original meaning, no matter how casually appropriated, or
how ignorant the act of appropriation might be of that original.
As with many theses, this research grew out of a personal interest in music, film,
and popular culture, and the trajectory of my personal interest in this subject is illustrative
of the direction in which this thesis proceeds. I had been immersed in classical music since
a young age, primarily through Anglican Church choirs, with supportive parents. In 1981,
at the impressionable (under)age of 14, I saw John Boorman’s film Excalibur, and was
struck by both the music of the film (weighted heavily with Wagner), Boorman’s startling
visual images, and the peculiar combination of the two, which I felt was unusually potent.
As a result of my interest in this film and its music, my mother bought me an unofficial
soundtrack album, which featured classical music drawn from several popular Hollywood
films: Excalibur, 10, and Ordinary People amongst others. I learnt that the music from
 9

Excalibur was in fact from Wagner’s The Ring tetralogy and from Tristan and Isolde, and
my interest grew: what specifically was it about this music that I found so effective? I
found the ‘Prelude’ and ‘Liebestod’ on an album in my parent’s collection, and was
interested that playing a Deutsche Grammophon recording of the ‘Prelude’ could evoke the
same visual images as the unofficial soundtrack album to Excalibur – and yet, these were
two completely different recordings derived from completely different cultural contexts.
Why did Tristan and Isolde work with Excalibur so well, given the differences in age,
composer, and context? When I researched the legend behind Tristan and Isolde, I
recognised the thematic similarity with the Arthurian legend of Lancelot and Guinevere in
Excalibur, and realised that the relationship between musical texts and visual/literary texts
was worth further investigation.
Throughout my undergraduate and Masters degrees, it became apparent that
there had never been an accurate or detailed assessment of the role that classical music
plays in popular culture, and in popular film in particular, in spite of its apparently high
profile. Theory on this subject was negligible, and the area apparently failed to register
on any kind of intellectual agenda, at either the University or the public level.
In fact, not only was very little published about the combination of film and
classical music from either discipline, but that very little had been written about the
different ways in which such a multimedia text could be culturally consumed by a wide
range of audiences, including those equally informed by classical musicology as by
popular music, film, and pop music video. Context, I realised, was absolutely crucial to
the understanding of both music and film, a point recognised by many musicologists.
Many writings that glance off the subject of classical text recontextualisation evoke the
spectre of ‘postmodernism’ with a clearly disparaging tone. Authors such as Umberto
Eco (1986), and more recently authors such as Mark Davies (1997) and Rob Owen
(1997) have indirectly addressed postmodernist issues with the suggestion of new,
generationally-based modes of media text consumption, but this burgeoning ideology
has never been applied to classical music and film media text combinations. Without a
doubt, the seemingly arbitrary combination of hallowed classical repertoire music with
visual images of contemporary sex, death, and violence in Hollywood film would be
seen by many cultural critics as yet another symptom of the postmodernism malaise
 10

currently afflicting late twentieth-century culture. I hope this thesis might suggest a step
towards an alternative perspective.
This thesis follows a simple binary pattern. In the first half, the first three chapters
deal with each of the three theoretical axes in turn. In each of these three theory chapters,
the theory in question is subject to a literature review and analysis, followed by a
theoretical summary. Shortcomings in the theory are then addressed, and new developments
to the theory are proposed, in order to accommodate the questions and texts at hand. The
second half of this thesis examines, in turn, the three case histories outlined above. The
methodology employed is semiotic textual analysis. In conjunction with the intertextuality
theory outlined in Chapter 2, the musical semiotic analysis is based on work by Tagg
(1979, 1982, 1987, 1992a, 1992b), Goodwin (1988, 1992, 1993a, 1993b), Frith (1984,
1985, 1988), Gorbman (1987), Huckvale (1988, 1990, 1994), Bruce (1985, 1993, 1994),
Flinn (1992), Kalinak (1992), and Walser (1993). Visual text semiotics are largely based on
Barthes (1957, 1964, 1970, 1977, 1981, 1985), and Eco (1986).
In Chapter 1, the theoretical axis of intertextuality is examined. Originally a literary
theory applied to novels, poems and other texts by authors such as Kristeva (1980),
Riffaterre (1978, 1983, 1990), and Genette (1980, 1982), intertextuality has been
subsequently applied to pop culture texts by scholars such as Fiske (1987, 1989a, 1989b),
Eco (1986), Goodwin (1988, 1992, 1993a, 1993b), and McQuail (1994). Even though
music has been patently intertextual since its very beginning, a close examination of the
role that intertextuality plays in music – and vice versa – has never been undertaken, and
certainly not in a pop culture context. This thesis argues the existence of a particular
example of common, late twentieth-century technologically-mediated intertextuality that
has never been adequately identified or examined: the multimedia tmesis, which is the
transparent (and usually diegetic) technical insertion of a media text into another media.
The relationship between intertextuality and Barthes’s notion of “myth” is also reviewed.
Chapter 2 examines popular music theory, and related music video theory. This
thesis supports the argument that classical music has been successfully recontextualised
as popular music, and thus popular music and music video theory is in fact not only an
appropriate parameter, but more relevant to the upcoming case histories than classical
musicology. In addition, popular musicology offers far more sophisticated theoretical
 11

tools for the analysis of the metalanguage of music. In particular, Philip Tagg’s sign
typology of music (1992a) and Andrew Goodwin’s book chapter on synaesthesia (the
interpersonal translation of one sense into another) and Image Musicology (1993a) are
outlined and analysed in detail. The work of cognitive psychologists, who specialise in
musical cognition and musical ‘imaging’, is reviewed but ultimately discarded as
contextually irrelevant.
In Chapter 3 film music theory, the last of the three theoretical axes, is explored.
Although classical music is almost entirely neglected in film music literature, several
theoretical perspectives offer valuable insight into the relationship between music and
filmed visual image, and popular culture. Three issues are singled out for particular
attention. Musical narrative has received much attention within this field, and the
extensive literature is reviewed and summarised. Further developments to musical
narrative theory are offered, including the concept of the ‘metaleitmotif’, in which a
piece of music may also communicate accumulated connotations from the film in which
it is used. Theoretical work on narrative congruence is also identified as being
particularly useful, and again this notion is developed in this thesis to include the
contextual material offered by related media forms such as film and television visual
image. Claudia Gorbman’s theory of “mutual implication” (1987: 15), in which music
affects associated visual image to the same extent that visual image affects associated
music (independently termed ‘The Letter Example’ by Tagg {1992a: 19}), is also
extended beyond Gorbman’s original applied parameters, though not beyond her original
definition. Finally, theory regarding musical diegesis is reviewed, in anticipation of
identifying diegetic sources for classical music in case history texts.
Chapter 4 traces the evolution of the first case history text, Richard Strauss’s
‘Introduction’ from his tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra. Starting with the sixth
century B.C. religion of Zoroastrianism, the narrative congruence of Strauss’s work is
examined with its subsequent media recontextualisations, through to its most recent uses
in texts such as The Simpsons. Also sprach Zarathustra is analysed in detail through all
three theoretical axes. The intertextuality of Also sprach Zarathustra is established
through a review of Strauss’s and Nietzsche’s respective literary/narrative sources. As a
piece of classical music, Also sprach Zarathustra is assessed through Tagg’s typology of
 12

anaphones and genre synecdoche (1992a: 22). Five subsequent pop culture performances
of Strauss’s music in film texts then follow in chronological order: Stanley Kubrick’s
2001: A Space Odyssey, Martin Scorsese’s Casino, Amy Heckerling’s Clueless, and two
episodes of Matt Groening’s The Simpsons. These audio-visual combinations undergo
textual analysis as intertextuality and as popular music video. The chapter ends with
conclusions drawn about the recontextualisation of Also sprach Zarathustra in popular
culture, mediated through film’s visual image.
Chapter 5 explores the extensive role that Richard Wagner’s ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ has played and continues to play in popular culture. Following the same
overall format as the previous case history chapter, this chapter begins with an
examination of the music’s narrative roots in Teutonic mythology, as preparation for a
continued investigation into the narrative congruence of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ through
the years. A full musicological analysis of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ follows, again using
Tagg’s typology of anaphones and genre synecdoches. The success of Wagner’s
intertextuality is then traced through narrative congruence in nineteen visual texts,
chronologically ranging from D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation in 1915 to Trey
Parker and Matt Stone’s South Park in 1998. The chapter concludes with cumulative
observations about the role that ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ might play, as a result of its
heavy visual representation in popular culture, as a ‘metaleitmotif’, a self-referential
iconic particle in Eco’s “metasemiotic” (loc.cit) culture.
The last case history chapter, Chapter 6, is concerned with Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’,
the final aria from his opera Tristan and Isolde. Once again, a similar chapter structure is
followed, and the three theoretical axes of intertextuality, music and film are brought to
bear on the static musical case history text. The intertextual narrative roots of both
Tristan and Isolde and the ‘Liebestod’ are delineated first, followed by a musicological
analysis of Wagner’s efforts to render this emotionally complex narrative material into
music. Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ is then analysed chronologically through six visual texts:
Christmas Holiday, Aria, Reversal of Fortune, Species, Romeo + Juliet, and Heaven’s
Burning. Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ is a fascinating case history as it offers a piece of music
on the verge of becoming a metaleitmotif, which allows conclusions regarding the nature
of pop culture recontextualisation to be drawn.
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The conclusions of the thesis are offered in the last chapter, as summarised above.
The recontextualisation of classical music as popular music is reiterated, drawing on the
evidence presented in detail in all three case history chapters. The importance of narrative
congruence between music and visual image is stressed, particularly in the evolution of
music towards the status of metaleitmotif in popular culture. Finally, the operation of Eco’s
“metasemiotic culture” (1986: 210) and the metasemiotic aesthetic is again underlined.
Through the synaesthetic, audio-visual fusion of classical music and Hollywood film, the
full complexity of a metasemiotic aesthetic is proposed, along with implications regarding
the fundamentally intertextual nature of pop culture. The suggestion is made, based once
again on the consistency of the evidence presented in the case histories, that metasemiotic
analysis is viable and useful, and could be seen as a rich, integral, and flourishing aspect of
late twentieth-century popular culture.
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Chapter 1 ~ Intertextuality, Popular Culture, and the ‘Metasemiotic Aesthetic’

In its widest definition, intertextuality refers to the use of or reference to a ‘text’

in the course of another given text. These texts can be films, television programs, novels,
poems, top 40 hits, operas, or even cultural texts such as a company board meeting or
Bondi Beach (Fiske, 1989a: 17). The existence of intertextuality in popular culture
(indeed, in all culture) is undeniable, and dates back to the invention of discourse. In the
arts, clear evidence of intertextuality can be found in films by semiotically saturated
directors such as Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs), Martin Scorsese
(Casino), and Oliver Stone (Natural Born Killers); in popular television programmes
such as South Park, The Simpsons and Seinfeld; and in popular music and videos by
groups such as Garbage, Radiohead, U2, and R.E.M. However, this widest definition of
intertextuality is patently unwieldy, and this thesis is concerned with only a small,
simple and overt example of intertextuality in popular culture: the use of pre-composed
classical music in Hollywood film. This basic intertextuality has its equivalents in other
media: the diegetic use of old (and not so old) film clips in movies, popular music
videos, and television shows; and the use of music ‘samples’ in popular music.
Formal intertextuality theory does not directly address such a straight-forward
and obvious example of intertextuality, although it is clearly the correct theoretical
context. This is clear from the recent body of work in which formal intertextuality theory
has been applied to more sophisticated examples of practical cultural intertextuality,
under the auspices of media and popular cultural studies. Formal intertextuality theory –
and its subsequent application to media and cultural studies – will support an analysis of
the function of this specific kind of intertextuality in popular culture media, as it
supports other applications in the media and popular cultural fields.
The absence of references to basic examples of intertextuality such as the
music/film combinations discussed in this thesis gives rise to the issue of terminology.
Because of the very intertextual nature of academic literature and theory itself, the
choice of terminology when discussing intertextuality is crucial in establishing – and
avoiding – various theoretical trajectories. The terminology used to describe an
intertextual reference and the text in which the reference is found says much about the
 15

relationship between these two texts: be it antagonistic; value-infused; supportive;

transformative; or what Thaïs Morgan calls “the anxiety of influence” (1989: 240), from
Harold Bloom’s book of the same name. Morgan wryly points out that “the Anglo-
American literary critic must be wary of ideological axe-grinding when adopting one or
more or the current theories of intertextuality for his or her own use.” (ibid). While this
is invariably solid academic advice, this work seeks not so much to manipulate
intertextuality theory as to ground itself in the mere existence of intertextuality, and to
identify a simple form of intertextuality that may have been missed in the headlong rush
towards more complicated intertextuality issues. Nonetheless, ideological and
terminological care is still required in order to avoid as many theoretical pitfalls as
possible.
Every theorist who writes about intertextuality uses different terms to describe
the two components of an intertextual text. Gérard Genette describes the ‘host’ text as
the “hypertext” and the cited, fragment text as the “hypotext” (1982: 11), in his
definition of “hypertextuality” – one of his five sub-categories of intertextuality (ibid: 8-
11). Michael Riffaterre uses Roland Barthes’s term “intertext” when discussing the role
of the textual fragment, defining an intertext as “one or more texts which the reader must
know in order to understand a work of literature in terms of its overall significance”
(1990, 56). In her excellent review of intertextuality literature and theory, Morgan uses
the phrases “anterior text” and “posterior text” (1989: 240) when discussing the two
paradigms of “influence” and “inspiration” (ibid) in intertextuality theory. Cleverly
using the metametaphor of a flowing river, Morgan explains that the metaphor of
influence stresses the superiority of the anterior text as the unmuddied source of the
artistic material in question. This is contrasted to the metaphor of inspiration, which
claims that the posterior text is a ‘new & improved’, stronger art than its predecessor
(ibid).
Following thus in the ideological footsteps of Barthes, Kristeva and Riffaterre,
the terms ‘text’ and ‘intertext’, used to describe the posterior, host text and the cited,
anterior text respectively, offer the least ideological baggage. In addition, Barthes,
Kristeva and Riffaterre have written more specifically on the semiotics of intertextuality,
 16

and thus on matters that relate to the operation of clearly recognisable intertexts such as
the classical music and film issues under discussion in this thesis.
While the terms ‘text’ and ‘intertext’ serve to identify the two elements of
intertextuality, both are used to describe the operation of general literary forms within
literature; the mechanics of allusion, of parody, of quotation, and other subtle references.
Neither term adequately identifies the technically flagrant insertion of extra-textual
material into a given text, such as classical music into film, and neither term hints at the
multimedia nature of this kind of intertextuality. This kind of intertext seems to be
receiving increasing favour in the rapidly growing cross-pollination of multimedia in
popular culture, as our twentieth-century appetite for self-referentiality grows stronger
every day. In the spirit of intertextuality’s literary theory roots, I will call this particular
kind of intertext an intertextual tmesis, or a multimedia tmesis.
In grammar, a tmesis is “the separation of parts of a compound word by an
intervening word or words” (Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary). To paraphrase: a
grammatical tmesis is the insertion of a whole, different word into the text of a given
word (“any-blooming-where” is the given example). Thus, in a popular culture
intertextuality context, an intertextual tmesis is the multimedia insertion of concrete
textual material into the body of a given text. In popular culture and intertextuality
theory, an intertextual tmesis requires the technical editing of previously-produced
multimedia cultural material into the diegesis of the text in question. This definition
provides a tight technical definition for a specific kind of reference, and the grammatical
term ‘tmesis’ communicates some of the connotations this intertext presents, such as its
obviousness and its colloquial application. In film and television, an intertextual tmesis
can be the diegetic use of a clip from an earlier film or television show or the use of a
recognised piece of music. In popular music, intertextual tmeses are usually ‘samples’;
snippets of lyrics, bass lines, melodies, dialogue or sounds from previously released
musical material or from other pop culture sources. The technical purity of the clip is
crucial here: this is not allusion, parody or pastiche (defined by Fredric Jameson as
“blank parody . . . without any of parody’s ulterior motives” {1991: 197}), but the actual
17
18
 19

celluloid or original version of the intertext is physically edited or represented within the
text.
To offer some examples: current pop-rock artist Frank Bennett singing a cover
version of Radiohead’s hit single ‘Creep’ in the style of Frank Sinatra is a popular music
intertextual allusion (on several levels); having a direct, pre-taped sample of Sinatra
singing would have been an intertextual tmesis. The band Matthew Trapnell With
Trapezoid sample a spoken word interview with Ella Fitzgerald in their song ‘Ella’s
Uncle’ in exactly this way. When Cary Grant looks out the rear window of a public bus
 20

in Hitchcock’s film To Catch A Thief, Hitchcock is making an intertextual allusion to his

21
 22

earlier film Rear Window; but when Oliver Stone has Juliette Lewis and Woody
Harrelson watching violent scenes from De Palma’s film Scarface3on the television
during a scene in Natural Born Killers, it is an intertextual tmesis (see Illustration 1).
The intertextual tmesis could fit into two of Genette’s categories of
intertextuality, but both terms offer several flaws. In providing a narrow definition of
“intertextuality”, Genette’s example of “quotation” (1982: 9) could be adapted for this
particular use in a film and music context (Stam, Burgoyne & Flitterman-Lewis, 1992:
206); however, the term “quotation” is perhaps the most over-used trope in
intertextuality literature and its use here would serve only to complicate the issue of
terminology and ideological connotation. Genette’s second category of intertextuality,
which he called “paratextuality”, addressed the issue of epigrams, illustrations and
footnotes and their relation to the text (1982: 9). This term does not specifically identify
the multimedia implications of intertextuality, however, and as such, Genette’s term is
far too general to be of any practical use in this thesis.
Intertextual tmeses have an admittedly narrow definition, and are comprised of
simple examples of intertextuality – intertextual tmeses as defined above would be
correctly considered the most obvious and facile of all intertextual examples. But
perhaps because of this simplicity and facility, the operation and implications of
intertextual tmeses have been neglected in intertextuality literature, specifically, how the
evolution and continued use of a given intertextual tmesis might alter and affect our
perception of that tmesis – and its textual source – in popular culture (and thus in
cultural reality, as defined by Barthes).
This omission is due to the fact that formal intertextuality theory is a literary
theory, and theorists such as Roland Barthes, Michael Riffaterre, Jacques Derrida, Julia
Kristeva, and Gerard Genette approach intertextuality in literature from semiotic and
postmodern theory analysis perspectives. These theorists use novels, poems, and other
forms of literature as their case studies, although the theory is written in such a way as to
easily accommodate a freer definition of ‘text’. Practical theorists, such as Denis
McQuail, John Fiske, James Goodwin, Gino Moliterno, and Umberto Eco have done just

3
Oliver Stone co-wrote the screenplay for Scarface.
 23

that, applying formal intertextuality theory to specific texts such as film, music, and
television, in more general cultural, media, and communication studies contexts.
While Barthes, Riffaterre, Derrida, Kristeva, and Genette are generally credited
with the establishment and development of intertextuality theory: (Moliterno, 1995: 199;
Morgan, 1989: 240; Goodwin, 1994: 9), and although the term was only coined in the
1960s (Moliterno, 1995: 199) the use of intertextuality in art and literature can be traced,
predictably, back to the ancient Greeks (Worton & Still, 1990: 14). This comes as no
surprise, as intertextuality theory recognises that all texts are composed of other texts by
definition, at the most fundamental level of artistic construction/creation. Barthes states
that “any text is an intertext; other texts are present in it, at varying levels, in more or
less recognisable forms: the texts of the previous and surrounding culture. Any text is a
new tissue of past citations” (1981: 39), while Kristeva, citing Mikhail Bakhtin, claims
that “any text is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and
transformation of another” (1980: 66). Intertextuality is thus an inherent characteristic of
all texts at their most fundamental level, and this must also apply to texts such as film
and music.
The theory of intertextuality, as expounded by Riffaterre, Barthes, Genette and
Kristeva, is concerned with the relationship between intertextual references and the
basic, vague, undefined cultural archetypical forms from which those references can be
ultimately traced. Theoretical intertextuality does not identify the etymology of a
specific television programme clip alluded to or spoofed within the diegesis of a given
film; rather it is concerned with generalised textual references, or references to textual
forms. Fiske uses Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ video (commonly viewed as a pastiche and
parody of Marilyn Monroe’s ‘Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend’ routine in the film
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) by way of demonstrating this difference:
The video’s intertextuality refers rather to our culture’s image bank of the sexy blonde star who plays
with men’s desire of her and turns it to her advantage. It is an elusive image, similar to Barthes’
notion of myth, to which Madonna and Marilyn Monroe contribute equally and from which they
draw equally. The meanings of Material Girl depend . . . upon its intertextuality with all texts that
contribute to and draw upon the meaning of “the blonde” in our culture. (1987: 108)

“Barthes’ notion of myth” is a central tenet of the idea of intertextuality, and is

worthy of an extended investigation. In Mythologies (1957), Barthes proposes a “theory
of mass culture as an intertextual system” (Morgan, 1989: 156), in which he seems to
 24

define myth quite clearly, as “a system of communication . . . a message” and “a type of

speech.” (1957: 109). But Barthes’s “notion of myth”, while often cited in mass
communications and popular culture studies, is often misappropriated. Barthes himself
does admit that originally he used the term “myth” in its original form (1957: 11),
meaning “a traditional narrative usually involving supernatural or imaginary persons and
embodying popular ideas on natural or social phenomenon” (Australian Concise Oxford
Dictionary), but he quickly transformed the word to refer to a specific, political
phenomenon observable in popular culture: the use of semiotics to reinforce or
communicate political hierarchical values to the ‘bourgeoisie’ or common worker. To
separate the politics from the semiotics throughout Mythologies is not a simple task:
only in his final, explanatory essay in Mythologies, does Barthes outline the semiotic
mechanics of mythology in a step-by-step fashion. But for Barthes the process of
mythology remained inherently political, and all of his examples – from ‘Soap Powders
and Detergents’ to ‘The New Citroën’ – are ultimately drawn to political conclusions.
However, the ‘notion’ of myth that most people, including academics such as
Fiske, have drawn from Barthes’s work, involves cultural myths without a political
agenda. This use of the term ‘myth’ seems to have in fact returned closer to myth’s
original, dictionary meaning: as a narrative embodying popular ideas on social
phenomena. What Barthes has contributed to this definition is the concept of
connotation: in an ironic twist that Barthes himself foresaw (1957: 126), the very term
‘myth’ has undergone mythologisation, and ‘Barthesian’ (Flinn, 1992: 98) semiotics
now carries the very strong flavour of ‘myth’s’ original definition.
In short, Barthes’s myths operate as follows: all manifestations of popular culture
– newspapers, music, films, novels, sporting events – are constructed from other texts
(and are therefore inherently intertextual) and thus are considered a metalanguage, or
second system of language, and thus are open to semiotic evaluation. As such any given
example of pop culture will have a system of signifiers: a signified and a signifier; a
denotation and a connotation. Our pop culture example thus communicates in two ways:
by the way in which the communication is offered (a denotation-connotation
dichotomy), and by what it communicates: it offers a message, it tells us a story about
ourselves.
 25

But the term ‘myth’ carries its own connotative baggage through its dictionary
definition, which Barthes originally used and acknowledged. Because the term ‘myth’
has its own connotations, Barthesian myths – or semiotics, or metalanguage – suggest a
certain genealogy. They suggest a primordial, direct connection back to the ancient
explanatory myths of Genesis, Assyria, Babylon: fundamental truths which explain to us
why things work as they do. Myths evoke a social recognition beyond scientific
explanation – ‘myth’ is a visceral word that suggests truths basic and fundamental
beyond articulation. This connotation is attached to Barthes’s ‘notion of myth’ through
Barthes’s own semiotic process. The result is that Barthes’s ‘notion of myth’ refers to
the idea that popular culture myths, or mythological icons, share a heritage and a
function that can be traced back thousands of years into history: that ordinary everyday
phenomena such as movie stars can, by being infused with a second-level of meaning
applied by pop culture self-referentiality, fulfil the same social role and the ancient
myths of the Upanishads or the Old Testament. Amongst other benefits, this endows
modern popular cultural icons with profundity and an intellectual depth that they might
otherwise struggle to attain.
This particular relationship between myth and popular culture is discussed in far
greater detail and clarity by Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero with a Thousand
Faces (1968), The Masks of God (1976), and The Power of Myth (1988). Campbell is
considered by many to have been the world’s foremost authority on comparative
mythology and modern mythology. Campbell devoted his academic life to identifying
modern, pop culture manifestations of ancient myths – in effect, reaching similar
conclusions as Barthes from completely the opposite direction. Campbell was
particularly fond of metasemiotically-saturated films such as George Lucas’s Star Wars,
by virtue of their saturation in myth: for example, he recognised that the character of
Ben Kenobi represented an ancient tradition of the mythological Japanese sword and
martial arts master (1988: 145). Whereas Campbell saw mythology as popular culture,
Barthes saw popular culture as mythology. Barthes was fond of relating his work on
mythology to Freudian psychology (1957: 113-114), and Campbell drew parallels
between his mythological analysis to Jung’s idea of unconscious archetypes (1988: 51):
the key is that both ‘notions of myth’ were consistent with accepted theories of human
 26

psychology. Campbell’s works provide an almost impossibly rich elaboration on the

connotation employed by Barthes’s use of the term ‘myth’.
As a result of this strong connotation, Mythologies’ primary importance is
usually seen in addressing everyday components of popular culture such as the face of
Greta Garbo, not only as texts with intertexts, but as mythological archetypical icons.
For example, in ‘The Face Of Garbo’ (Barthes, 1957: 56), Garbo’s facial features imply
“an archetype of the human face” (ibid), and offer “a sort of Platonic Ideal of the human
creature” (ibid). Barthes establishes here the face of Greta Garbo in the film Queen
Christina as archetypical image in Fiske’s ‘cultural image bank’, suggesting that Garbo
represents a recent manifestation of a cultural mythological icon. The next logical step is
that subsequent uses of the image of Garbo’s face will also invoke this Archetype – and
the use of a clip of Garbo from Queen Christina will logically invoke not only Garbo as
cultural archetype, but also Queen Christina as a vehicle for cultural archetypes.
Barthes is suggesting a clear circle of theoretical relationships between icons,
myths, archetypes and intertextuality. Garbo’s face is an icon, and as such has become
myth. The myth of Garbo’s face is an archetype, and evoking that archetype in
subsequent texts is intertextuality. The next possible step in this process, which I shall
suggest in this thesis, is that the regular invocation of intertextuality might produce new,
altered icons – icons which have accumulated meanings and connotations from the new
contexts in which they are used.
Julia Kristeva’s theories on intertextuality have built upon Barthes as a primary
departure point, going on to stress the plurality and constant evolution of intertextuality
theory, and how the audience must appropriate whatever theoretical and ideological
tools are necessary in order to read intertextual texts in a productive way.
For practical purposes, Kristeva’s most valuable contribution to the debate on intertextuality is
the idea that an intertextual citation is never innocent or direct, but is always transformed,
distorted, displaced, condensed or edited in some way in order to suit the speaking subject’s
value system. (Morgan, 1989: 260)

In an interview with Waller, Kristeva herself describes the process of intertextuality “as
indicating a dynamics involving destruction of the creative identity and reconstitution of
a new plurality” (Waller, 1989: 281-282) (emphasis added), and the idea that
 27

intertextuality is a dynamic and not an object or a piece of text is crucial to her

arguments.
The notion of intertextuality as dynamic allows the theory to be applied across a
wide range of texts, including film, television and popular music, and not just to
literature, novels and poetry as has been traditional in this field. Kristeva stresses the
importance of content in postmodernist intertextuality (ibid, 282), continuing to add that
. . . the final meaning of this content will be neither the original source nor any one of the
possible meanings taken on in the text, but will be, rather, a continuous movement back and forth
in the space between the origin and off the possible connotative meanings. (ibid, 282)

Worton and Still paraphrase and expand upon this idea:

. . . the reader inescapably strives to incorporate the quotation into the unified textuality which
makes of the text a semiotic unit. The reader thus seeks to read the borrowing not only for its
semantic content but also for its tropological or metaphoric function and significance. Inevitably
a fragment and displacement, every quotation distorts and redefines the ‘primary’ utterance by
relocating it within another linguistic and cultural context. (1990: 11)

This dynamic of transformation, where the combined text-intertext transcends its

component parts to become more than their mere sum, will prove particularly valuable
when applied to and cross-referenced with film music theory. There it finds articulation
and consonance in Claudia Gorbman’s theory of “mutual implication” (1987: 15), a
process involved in the combination of sound and image.
Michael Riffaterre fully supports Kristeva’s dynamic of intertextual
transformation. Riffaterre bases his theories of intertextuality upon the assumption that
the audience (readers of literature through his examples) is able to make intertextual
connections between texts, and interpret texts in an intertextual manner. He describes the
reader as “the only one who makes the connections between text, interpretant, and
intertext, the one in whose mind the semiotic transfer from sign to sign takes place”
(1978: 164). In fact, Riffaterre states that the audience’s previous knowledge of the
intertext’s source is of lesser importance in the reading process, as the mere presence of
the intertext fragment transforms the current text in a manner adequate to satisfy the
audience. Riffaterre states:
In my description of the characteristics specific to literary communication, I remarked that in it,
reality is a substitute for the text. This property demands that we drop the traditional viewpoint
of the commentators; indeed, it follows that the referent has no pertinence to the analysis. No
advantage is to be gained by comparing literary expression to reality or by evaluating a work of
literature in terms of such a comparison. (1983: 15)
 28

Elsewhere Riffaterre states that “readers . . . sense empirically that the overall
significance {of the text in question} depends less on referentiality . . . than on a relation
between form and content, or even on a subordination of content to form” (1990: 56). In
other words, it is the overall form of the new text as a whole which is important to the
audience: not necessarily the way the reference works within the text, nor even the
source of the reference (which the audience might not recognise at all). The new,
transformed text has the most significance: this transformed text receives the most
attention from audiences, who absorb it in the ‘reading’ process and then move on.
Intertextual meaning lies “in the relation between text and reader, and not between text
and author, or text and reality” (1983: 25).
Riffaterre divides intertextual references into ‘explicit’ (obvious and easily
tracked) and ‘implied’ (obscure allusions) categories (1978: 117), and outlines a three-
way relationship between the text, the intertext, and the interpretant or third text (being
the resulting transformative combination of the text and the intertext). Intertextual
tmeses would thus fall into the ‘explicit’ category of intertextual references. Riffaterre
analyses the nature and artistic contribution of intertexts in great detail, thereby
illustrating the large number of intertexts that can be found in certain texts. For example,
a poetic phrase such as “miroir sans tain, an important motif in modern French poetry”
(1978: 32) requires at least nine intertexts by seven poets for adequate decipherment:
poetry by Hérodiade, Desnos, Eluard, Verlaine, Milosz, Leiris, and Péret (ibid, 32 – 39).
Gerard Genette echoes Riffaterre’s statements on the primacy of the intertext
fragment over the importance of audience perception, although he approaches the
subject from a radically different angle (Morgan, 1989: 270). Genette supposes that the
audience constructs meaning from a text based on that text’s genre, and thus both the
text and the intertext must belong to the same genre if any meaning is to be
communicated (1982; 12-13). Genette uses Homer’s The Odyssey, Virgil’s The Aenid
and James Joyce’s Ulysses as examples to illustrate this point: “Joyce raconte l’histoire
d’Ulysse d’une autre manière qu’Homère, Virgile raconte l’histoire d’Énée à la manière
d’Homère; transformations symétriques et inverses” (ibid). Furthermore, Genette
 29

believes that a specific intertextual reference must be a parody, since imitating a text
invariably requires a mere generalisation of that text:
On ne peut parodier que des textes singuliers; on ne peut imiter qu’un genre (un corpus traité, si
mince soit-il, comme un genre) – tout simplement, et comme chacun le savait d’avance, parce
qu’imiter, c’est généraliser. (1982: 92)

Morgan summarises these two approaches by concluding that, for both Riffaterre and
Genette, “the intertext (hypotext) need not actually be discovered in order to achieve full
understanding of the text (hypertext) in question” (1989: 270). Thus the fact that the
audience may not recognise the intertext does not in any way affect the existence of the
intertext; that is to say, the intertext exists regardless of audience recognition.
Genette also echoes Kristeva and Riffaterre in his belief that the existence of an
intertext in a text transforms that text into a textual creation that alters both the text and
the intertext. In fact, Genette suggest that the term ‘intertextuality’ should be replaced by
the term ‘transtextuality’ which he defines as “tout ce qui met en relation, manifeste ou
secrète, avec d’autres textes” (1982: 7) (“everything, be it explicit or latent, that
connects one text to other texts”4). Genette goes on to subdivide intertextuality into five
separate categories (including metatextuality and paratextuality) in an effort to simplify
this increasingly complicated issue (ibid: 7-12), an effort Morgan says only “produces a
new thicket of theoretical coinages whose overlappings serve only to further obfuscate
the reader’s path. . .” (1989: 269).
One term introduced by Genette that does illuminate pop culture intertextuality is
his metaphor of the palimpsest. The palimpsest is a document or manuscript which has
been at least partially erased, in order to accommodate another, newer text, but which
still shows some trace of its previous text. The term has come to describe any situation
in which an original text or version can be seen glimpsed through its current
manifestation5. In literary theory, Genette employs the palimpsest to describe texts “où
l’on voit, sur le même parchemin, un texte se superposer à un autre qu’il ni dissimule
pas tout à fait, mais qu’il laisse voir par transparence” (1982: 451) (“in which one sees,
on the same parchment, the superimposition of one text onto another which the
parchment does not completely hide, but permits us to glimpse through its

4
Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine.
 30

transparency”). Writing from a literary context, Morgan states that “the idea that the
other texts can be seen transparently through the centering text is highly dubious” (1989:
271), but in a popular culture context this concept makes a lot of sense. Genette’s
palimpsest can be seen as a literary precursor to the multimedia tmesis: the technical
virtuosity and high calibre of technical intertext quotation/re-creation make this idea of a
transparent intertextual reference not only plausible but easy to demonstrate through
numerous case histories. In popular culture, the superimposition and insertion of
intertexts are not only apparent but often blindingly obvious through the text’s (film,
music) high degree of transparency.
Genette’s palimpsest thus supports the proposal that multimedia tmeses are a
form of intertextuality. Multimedia tmeses are transparent because the diegesis of the
text is never obscured by the intertext, and vice-versa – the intertext is never obscured
by the text. For example, when scenes from Carol Reed’s film The Third Man are shown
diegetically on a living room television set in Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth, the
film The Man Who Fell To Earth is not interrupted or obscured: the diegetic scenes from
The Third Man are merely part of the scenery. Thus both The Third Man, as the intertext
and The Man Who Fell To Earth, as the text, are transparent: we can see each clearly
through the other. In the beginning of Jerry Maguire, directed by Cameron Crowe in
1996, Jerry Maguire is shown watching an episode of Hawaii Five-0 on a hotel
television set. Again, neither Hawaii Five-0 nor Jerry Maguire are obscured. As texts,
both are clearly visible, running concurently (see Illustration 2).
This also holds true for popular music: in the same way, when the quotation “We
begin bombing in five minutes” from U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s infamous press
conference is ‘sampled’ in the song ‘See the Light, Feel the Heat’ by Air Force One (the
actual recording of the quotation is incorporated into the song), neither the quotation nor
the song are obscured (Hebdige, 1987: 144-145). The quotation is obviously taken from
the press conference in question, as Reagan’s voice is distinctive and clearly reproduced
(Reagan was apparently joking and unaware that he was being taped at the time). During
the time Reagan’s voice is heard, however, the rest of the song ‘See the Light, Feel the
Heat’ is not interrupted or obscured, with the bass line and rhythm instrumentals

5
Gore Vidal recently used the term palimpsest as the title of his autobiography, refering to a psychological definition of the term
 31

continuing during the time the quotation is heard. The sample is an integral part of the
song. Countless other examples could be cited here, such as the Matthew Trapnell With
Trapezoid song ‘Ella’s Uncle’ cited earlier. Perhaps the best example in recent years of
the tmesis in popular music has been Vitro’s 1998 song ‘Mentally Dull [Think Tank
Remix]’ from Chef Aid: The South Park Album (1998). This track features ‘lyrics’
entirely derived of spoken quotations from the television program South Park. The
sampled dialogue in the song, all recognisable from first season episodes, is presented in
such a way that the natural rhythm and tone of the voices complements the heavy bass
line laid underneath (the chorus of the song is “Oh my God, they killed Kenny! You
bastards!”). The technical definition of multimedia tmeses further reinforces this
paradoxical idea of clarity (of image) through transparency (of textual layering or
insertion).
To briefly summarise: from this formal literary theory we can extract several
theoretical statements regarding intertextuality which can be appropriated for use in
popular culture intertextuality:
i) intertextuality is inherent in all texts, and its obvious presence in pop culture
texts should hence be no surprise (Barthes, Kristeva, Riffaterre);
ii) intertexts share a common theoretical similarity with icons, myths, and
archetypes (Barthes);
iii) intertextuality is a dynamic process/operation rather than a single object or
chunk of text (Kristeva);
iv) the fact that the audience may not recognise the intertext does not affect the
existence of the intertext (Riffaterre, Genette);
v) the presence of an intertext in a text transforms that text and causes a
transcendence of that text: the text in question is subsequently greater than the
mere sum of its two parts (Kristeva, Riffaterre);
vi) the text/intertext relationship can, in certain textual circumstances, be likened to
the palimpsest: intertexts can be visible through the transparent text (Genette).

which describes the practice of remembering one’s memories of an event, rather than remembering the actual event itself.
 32

Using at least these six rules, formal literary intertextuality theory has been
applied at length and with great success to popular culture and its multitude of texts. The
application of this theory is unanimous in its assumption that intertextuality is an
intrinsic characteristic of the media and of all popular culture media texts, regardless of
whether audiences actually recognise the intertexts or not. Rowe states that
. . . ‘intertextuality’ is no longer a term that can be used simply to identity an elementary
characteristic of language that is ordinarily disguised, repressed, or erased by ideology.
Intertextuality is itself the mode of production in our postmodern economy . . .” (1989: 231).

Morgan states that “Indeed, culture itself, or the collection of signifying practices in a
society, is radically intertextual.” (1989: 246).
On a simpler level, McQuail discusses how “intertextuality is not only an
accomplishment of the reader but also a feature of media themselves, which are
continually cross-referencing from one medium to another. . .” (1994: 238). Fiske writes
of vertical, horizontal, and inescapable intertextuality in his book Television Culture
(1987: 108), and his terminology and theory can be easily adapted from television to
film and popular music theory, which will each be examined in some detail for the
balance of this chapter. Film theory is rich in intertextuality and intertextual tmeses, and
helps to explain the mechanics of music – both popular and classical – as intertexts
grounded in film’s textual context.
Popular music theory and music video theory also provide valuable contributions
to intertextuality and multimedia tmeses, and have a specific, direct relationship with the
combination of classical music and film. The combination of music and film in
contemporary films is such that, if audiences are indeed consuming these classical
music/film sequences as music video, rather than as film-with-a-soundtrack, then music
video theory is able to shed valuable light upon the operation of classical music and film
imagery in the same artistic context. Music video theory allows us to examine the
combination of classical music and film imagery from a musical perspective (that is,
with visual imagery supporting the hegemony of the music, rather than the other way
around). This appropriation of music video theory is in part justified by the common
practice of the multimedia tmesis in both music video and popular music, which allows a
parallel to be drawn between the texts of music and of film. In particular, the use of the
 33

multimedia tmesis in both popular music and music video lends credibility to music
video theory in the subsequent theoretical synthesis.
Umberto Eco has written specifically on the operation of intertextual references
in films such as Casablanca and Raiders of The Lost Ark in his book Travels in
Hyperreality (1986), and detailed studies have been made of the intertextual references
in the film canons of directors such as Akira Kurosawa (Goodwin, 1994).
Eco’s short essay about Casablanca, entitled “Casablanca: Cult Movies and
Intertextual Collage” (1986), establishes the popular culture intertextual context into
which this thesis is ultimately placed. This context is called the “metasemiotic culture”
(1986: 210). Metasemiotics, which roughly means ‘the semiotics of semiotics’, suggests
three related axioms: first, that today’s audiences are familiar with the process (if not the
vocabulary) of semiotic analysis; second, that as a result the very semiotic elements of a
film are subjected to semiotic analysis; and thirdly, that the audience recognises the
semiotic elements as being semiotic in nature. Eco continues to describe metasemiotic
culture as composed of an audience of “instinctive semioticians” (ibid) and culture
producers (and director/writers) such as Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who are
“semiotically nourished authors” (ibid).
Like Fiske, and Roland Barthes before him, Eco discusses the pervasiveness of
intertextuality in modern popular culture in his essay on Casablanca, and intertextuality
as a means of consuming film, television and music has grown increasingly popular in
the fifteen years since Eco’s essay was first published. In it, Eco reviews the cult-film
status of Casablanca, and compares its unconscious intertextuality with the deliberate,
conscious intertextuality of modern films:
What Casablanca does unconsciously, other movies will do with extreme intertextual awareness,
assuming also that the addressee is equally aware of their purposes. These are “postmodern”
movies, where the quotation of the topos is recognized as the only way to cope with the burden of
our filmic encyclopedic expertise. (1986: 209)

Eco goes on to cite three examples of modern intertextual reference, which he

calls “quotations” (ibid): the quotation of Eisenstein’s ‘Odessa Steps’ sequence (from
The Battleship Potemkin) in the film Bananas6; the quotation of The Fastest Gun In The
West gun-fight draw scene in Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark; and the quotation

6
The Odessa Steps sequence has been referenced since Bananas, notably in Brian de Palma’s 1987 film The Untouchables.
 34

from Lucas’s The Empire Strikes Back, in the character of Yoda, in Spielberg’s film E.T.
the Extra-Terrestrial. (1986: 209-210).
Eco dissects the latter example from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in some detail, in
order to identify the extent to which intertextual awareness is required to fully appreciate
the reference. Three stages of intertextual recognition are possible: recognition of the
character Yoda from The Empire Strikes Back, which implies the audience has actually
seen The Empire Strikes Back; recognition of the connection between Spielberg and
Lucas through such films as the Indiana Jones trilogy (which Spielberg directed and
Lucas wrote and executive-produced), implying that the audience has actually seen or
heard of any or all of the three Indiana Jones films; and recognition that the same person
– Carlos Rambaldi – designed both E.T. and Yoda for Spielberg and Lucas respectively
in his (Rambaldi’s) capacity as ‘creature effects designer’. This final example, Eco
states, presupposes a common practice in which “cult has become the normal way of
enjoying movies” (1986: 210).
Eco calls this general, culture-wide consumption of films ‘metasemiotic’ in
nature, yet concludes with an accusation that director/writers such as Spielberg and
Lucas render their films semiotically uninteresting by way of their calculated
semiotic deliberation. In this final opinion Eco seems mistaken and unusually short-
sighted, but in Eco’s defence, intertextuality in popular culture has only increased in
complexity and volume since 1984 when this essay was written. But Eco’s comments
are succinct, and if his projected vision is somewhat lacking, his recognition of the
metasemiotic context in which pop culture is certainly defendable. Intertextuality is now
a very common element in film, television, and music, but this does not mean it is
uninteresting or unworthy of study.
Robert Rosen also identifies metasemiotic culture as the paradigm for media
consumption in the late twentieth-century, particularly amongst Generation X audiences
(1997: 55-59). In his discussion about the implication of digital technology on the film
industry, Rosen also discusses the phenomenon of the cult film (his example is Repo
Man), and he reaches the same conclusion as Eco about the instinctive semiotic nature of
pop culture audiences:
 35

. . . we’re dealing here with a whole generation of people who are receiving things in pieces – here-
there-here-there – and then making the leap to the whole, with a different kind of narrative. Is it a
better or worse narrative? . . . It’s simply a different one . . . (1997: 57)

Rosen explicitly connects this to the self-consciously intertextual nature of modern film,
citing for example George Lucas’s conscious referencing of Riefenstahl’s Triumph of
the Will in Star Wars, and Scorsese’s acknowledgment of the films of Michael Powell
(1997: 59). Rosen believes this ability to create and consume texts in terms of
fragmented intertextuality constitutes a “paradigmatic shift” to a “new aesthetic” (1997:
57) regarding media texts, echoing Eco’s thoughts on metasemiotic culture. Combining
Eco and Rosen’s respective terms, a more accurate expression for the entire
metasemiotic ideology of pop culture media texts (of which the metasemiotic
consumption of films is one part) might be the ‘metasemiotic aesthetic’.
Where the deliberate intertextuality of modern popular culture, and of
‘metasemiotically nourished’ films such as Apocalypse Now, 2001: A Space Odyssey
and Romeo + Juliet becomes interesting, is in how a metasemiotic pop culture audience
might recognise and perceive an ongoing evolution of those references and tmeses (the
first two of these films were made before 1984, and have become benchmark films for
the creation of musical pop cultural icons/tmeses). Eco claims that audiences recognise
the semiotics of cinema as cinema semiotics, or, in other words, audiences can recognise
intertextual references as intertextual references. This self-referential, obvious reference
is the intertextual tmesis; an intertextual reference that proudly announces, through its
technical insertion into a film, its ingrained intertextuality.
In turn, of course, the use of the reference becomes self-conscious, and audience
recognition becomes a part of the reference. At this point a reference becomes
metasemiotic, where the recognition of the reference is actually what is being
referenced. This is commonly described as and explained away as an ‘in-joke’ by film
and music critics, but considering that it is such a wide-spread and effective practice, the
metasemiotic reference is far more profound, with deeper implications for popular
culture than the term ‘in-joke’ suggests.
While Eco supposes that the way in which we consume and perceive Casablanca
explains our appreciation of films such as Raiders of The Lost Ark, he feels that “Raiders
does not explain Casablanca. At most it can explain the new ways in which Casablanca
 36

will be received in the next years” (1986: 210-211). Not at most: while Casablanca will
doubtlessly evolve as well, Raiders (and Apocalypse Now and others) have become new
archetypical film classics, largely for the way in which they consciously articulate
intertextual archetypes. Films such as Apocalypse Now and 2001: A Space Odyssey are
new metasemiotic film classics, and might well explain how films in the present and
near future will be enjoyed, with their conscious and deliberate use of metasemiotic
intercultural references and tmeses. And if metasemiotics is indeed the manner in which
many films are made in the late twentieth century, then these films could well become
benchmark film classics, from which relevant metasemiotic film theory can be
extrapolated.
These new metasemiotic classics might also explain the new ways in which the
individual intertextual elements of these films, for example, the music of Apocalypse
Now, and others could be received in the next years, as well as in more recent films such
as Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 interpretation of Romeo and Juliet. The active, recognised self-
referential metasemiotic nature of these films suggests that the individual component
parts that comprise their metasemiotic intertextuality will continue to have lives of their
own in Eco’s metasemiotic culture. These intertextual elements, constantly being cited
in subsequent films, will transform/transcend and evolve, and causing with them the
evolution of the relationship and roles that those component parts play with their film’s
narratives and pop culture at large. Clearly, metasemiotic aesthetics also extends beyond
cult films into generic Hollywood films, as well as into music and television.
This is the final stage in the process that Barthes outlines between icons, myths,
and archetypes, as mentioned earlier. The repetitiously-cited intertextual references
produce new icons: old, archetypical references in contemporary settings and contexts.
Thus Eco’s metasemiotics is an application of Barthes’s iconic and archetypical cultural
mythology to intertextuality theory – the next stage in Barthes’s semiotic system.
Eco claims that audiences who do not recognise intertextual quotations are not
capable of enjoying the scenes in which they appear, whereas those who do recognise
them “feel as if they all belonged to the same little clique” or “simply feel smart” (1986:
109). As suggested by Riffaterre and Genette, this is not strictly true: I shall argue that
intertextuality is now so ingrained as a context for the consumption of pop culture texts,
 37

it is possible that metasemiotic audience members who encounter quotations they do not
recognise merely file the quotations away for later enjoyment once the source of the
quotation can be positively identified.
Eco’s statements about the consciously intertextual nature of popular culture are
supported by numerous other cultural theorists such as McQuail, Fiske, Goodwin, and
Moliterno, all of whom recognise that a) popular culture is itself composed of
intertextual references; b) the production of popular culture is defined by
institutionalised intertextuality; and c) that the audience for whom this popular culture is
created is capable of participating in its latent intertextuality.
Fiske has applied formal intertextuality theory to popular culture, and to
television in particular, but is careful to place his definition of intertextuality in the
theoretical realm of Roland Barthes and of Joseph Campbell. Although these two
mythology scholars have taken radically different approaches to the role that myth plays
in culture, both have written on the archetypical nature of mythological icons, which
Fiske calls our “culture’s image bank” (1987: 109), as referenced above. According to
Fiske, it is the relationship between our images of these general cultural icons and the
images of the texts in questions that constitutes intertextuality, not the relationship
between the text in question and the text being parodied, stolen, quoted, or alluded to:
“allusion to a specific text is not an example of intertextuality for its effectiveness
depends on specific, not generalised, textual knowledge” (1987: 108). This appears
simplistic, as an allusion to an intertext within a given text is recognisably intertextual,
but Fiske goes on to acknowledge this fact in a subsequent discussion of intertextual
images (1987: 116).
Fiske defines horizontal intertextuality as “relations . . . between primary texts
that are more or less explicitly linked, usually along the axes of genre, character, or
content” (1987: 108). This is thus intertextual reference that moves from film to film, or
film to television, or music to music video, for example. Genre is a popular mode of
transportation here. While Fiske devotes most of his attention to genre as an instrument
of intertextuality, he does flesh out his discussion by using actor/character Mr. T, and
predictably, Madonna as examples of intertextual reality defined along a horizontal axis.
Mr. T exists as a metasemiotic intertextual construction through his roles in television
 38

programmes (The A-Team), the film Rocky III, various animated cartoon programmes,
talk show guest spots, and television advertisements (1987: 109). Madonna, an even
more prolific and high-profile example, is “a web of intertextual meanings crossing all
media boundaries, . . . ‘she’ is a sign formed by television, film, records, the press, and
the publicity industry” (ibid). Using Madonna as a case history, Fiske outlines in detail
how the text of ‘Madonna’ has been constructed by the industry and the artist as
inherently intertextual, and how her popular culture audience consume that text in a
consciously semiotic – and even metasemiotic fashion. Madonna’s intertextual image
make-overs are consciously constructed and consumed, and her next semiotic image
presentation is often as eagerly anticipated as her next musical or film release.
Further examples of culture’s metasemiotic nature from Fiske include how our
consumption of adventure movies set in anonymous third-world countries is affected by
contemporaneous news reports regarding political violence in real third-world countries
(ibid). Thus, while horizontal intertextuality seems to encompass the concept of the
multimedia tmesis, the term ‘horizontal intertextuality’ is too vague to be of any
practical use in this thesis. Vertical intertextuality is of even less use as a concept, as it
occurs “between a primary text . . . and other texts of a different type that refer explicitly
to it . . . such as studio publicity, journalistic features, or criticism, or . . . gossip and
conversation” (1987: 108).
The closest that Fiske comes to discussing the concept of the tmesis is with
respect to the multimedia use of popular culture images, addressed in only one
paragraph of his chapter on intertextuality, in which he briefly raises the issue of
postmodernism. Citing Stuart Hall, Fiske notes that:
The twentieth-century’s massive development of the means of reproducing and circulating
images has pushed representation into the center of the cultural arena. . . . Images are made and
read in relation to other images and the real is read as an image. . . . the images are what matter,
they exist in their own flickering domain and never come to rest in a firm anchorage of the real.
Postmodernism posits the rejection of meaning in its affirmation of the image as signifier with no
final signified; images exist in an infinite chain of intertextuality. (1987: 116)

Fredric Jameson also comments on the reign of the intertextual image in postmodernist
culture, stating that “. . . the remarkable current intensification of an addiction to the
photographic image is itself a tangible symptom of an omnipresent, omnivorous and
well-nigh libidinal historicism” (1991: 198), historicism being defined earlier as “the
 39

random cannibalisation of all the styles of the past, the play of random stylistic allusion.
. .” (ibid, 197).
Fiske and Jameson imply a modern world of rogue multimedia intertextuality, of
intertexts gone mad, devoid of meaning or signification. Fiske suggests a way of treating
multimedia intertextuality in the twentieth-century that will provide maximum flexibility
and derive the most accurate reading of meaning:

. . . we need to shift our focus from the text to its moments of reading; points of stability and
anchored meanings (however temporary) are to be found not in the text itself, but in its reading
by a socially and historically situated viewer. Such a meaning is, of course, not fixed in a
universal, empirical “reality”, but in the social situation of the viewer. (1987: 117)

Thus Fiske is advocating an emphasis on cultural context, and suggesting that the
meaning offered by texts and their intertexts can be found in the cultural context in
which those texts are contemporaneously read. This concept has resonance with
Barthes’s mythological archetypes, which also suggest that contemporary cultural
manifestations of myth (which are continually reinventing themselves) are where textual
meaning can be derived. Ultimately, Fiske is suggesting a transcendent reading of texts
in which manifest intertexts are contained, which concurs with Kristeva and Riffaterre as
outlined above. In this way, the cumulative whole of the transformed text is greater than
the sum of the text and the intertext contained therein, with this new ‘flavour’ or
connotation of meaning being heavily rooted in and indeed derived from the given
contemporary cultural context. Eco suggests that currently this context is defined by its
metasemiotic nature.
It seems clear from their writing that Fiske and Jameson both recognise the
existence of Eco’s metasemiotic culture, which is saturated in intertextuality and
composed of audiences capable of instinctual intertextual decoding. Fiske delights in
dissecting the most diverse and disparate elements of popular culture in terms of
intertextual elements, such as his analysis of Sydney’s Bondi Beach as a text (1989a:
17). Jameson describes metasemiotic culture when discussing intertextuality and film in
modern culture in his analysis of Kasdan’s film Body Heat as a 1981 remake of
Garnett’s 1946 film The Postman Always Rings Twice:
 40

... our awareness of the pre-existence of other versions, previous films of the novel as well as the
novel itself, is now a constitutive and essential part of the film’s structure: we are now, in other
words, in ‘intertextuality’ as a deliberate, built-in feature of the aesthetic effect. . . (1991: 199)

Indeed, the use of film as a text in which intertexts appear – as tmeses or

otherwise – raises particular issues of interest. While films, as texts, are as intrinsically
intertextual as literature or poetry, film also lends itself to multimedia intertextual tmeses
in a manner not available to media such as the novel. The technical parameters of film
and the manner in which film is projected allows film to be effectively used both as text
and intertext. Films as intertexts are common, with films, television programme and
music videos playing diegetically in cinemas attended by the film’s characters, or
playing on television sets in the character’s living rooms. Again, Stone’s Natural Born
Killers makes constant and effective use of this brand of tmesis, as does Roeg’s The
Man Who Fell To Earth. Film is also effective as a text, in that the realised, diegetic
world of film allows for the incorporation of much intertextual material, and multimedia
tmesis. As an art form of sound and vision, film is able to incorporate multimedia tmesis
of every variety: video, fine art, literature, and music.
In addition, films are made in a tighter intertextual manner than other media: in
Language and Cinema, Christian Metz states that, “consciously or not, films are
determined in large measure in relation to each other . . . They react to one another, they
cite one another, they parody one another, they ‘surpass’ one another. . .” (1974: 171).
Combining the theories of Fiske, McQuail, Eco, Metz, Goodwin and Moliterno
with latent assumptions and derived information from film & entertainment industry
magazines such as Screen, Sight & Sound, Entertainment Weekly, and Variety, the
Hollywood film industry is revealed as one of institutionalised intertextuality; that is,
intertextuality is built into them, as Eco points out with his descriptions of Spielberg and
Lucas, from the very stage of conception. This is a characteristic of the entire film
industry so axiomatic that it rarely receives articulation, other than in passing references
such as those from film critics: a recent review of the film Independence Day states
“Independence Day counts on our access to archives of popular culture for full
enjoyment, another characteristic of the decade of aesthetic recycling. . .”
(Schwarzbaum, 1996: 38). A film such as Robert Altman’s The Player (1992), which is
inherently and consciously intertextual on multiple simultaneous levels, even reveals
 41

how motion pictures are conceived, pitched, and approved solely in intertextual terms of
other films and film genres; thus proposed films are described as “Out of Africa meets
Pretty Woman” or “Ghost meets The Manchurian Candidate”. Reader points out that

The very concept of a (Hollywood) star is an intertextual one, relying as it does on

correspondences of similarity and difference from one film to the next, and sometimes too on
supposed resemblances between on- and off-screen personae. (1990: 176)

The film Star Trek: First Contact relies on its audience being familiar, one way or
another, with the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation for full
comprehension and enjoyment. Similar lists of examples could continue ad infinitum. In
fact, the existence of Hollywood ‘franchise’ films, such as Star Trek, Batman, Jaws, Die
Hard, Rocky, Star Wars, Under Siege, Lethal Weapon, Friday the 13th and Alien are
based on institutionalised intertextuality. Franchise films are those which form part of a
series, usually identified with a number (e.g., Part V) after their titles. The James Bond
films comprise the oldest and longest-running franchise: to date, nineteen Bond films
have been released, with the twentieth franchise entry The World Is Not Enough,
expected in 2000. Friday the 13th spawned some nine films, culminating with Friday
the 13th Part VIII: The Final Chapter. The fourth Star Wars film, called Episode I: The
Phantom Menace (the first part of a three-film ‘prequel’ series) was released in 1999,
with two more prequels to go; Batman IV was released in winter 1997, as was Alien IV.
The Hollywood term ‘franchise’ is appropriated from the fast-food industry, and
the manner in which Die Hard IV (for example) works as a franchise film is exactly the
same way in which McDonald’s Restaurant operates as a franchise restaurant. Both
franchises give the public the same, loved product every time (Bruce Willis in Die Hard,
McDonalds’ Big Mac hamburger) in slightly different settings (Die Hard’s locales,
McDonald’s restaurant locations and Big Mac variations like the McMalibu Burger),
and audiences will continue to buy the product (attend the films, eat the food) in vast
quantities. In franchise films (usually films in the action, science-fiction, or horror
genres), the product must involve at least one if not all of three elements: a predictable
conflict scenario; a recognisable actor/character; and a particular visual style.
Franchise films hold a particular status to the movie-going public, as franchise
films are anticipated on a regular, annual/bi-annual basis, until such time as the franchise
 42

concept is exhausted and/or low box-office returns fail to justify future productions.
Turning a film into a franchise is recognised as the most profitable way of producing
movies, especially as a franchise implies the kind of continual audience recognition
which can be translated into massive product tie-in sales (merchandising) which is
where films can stand to make billions of dollars. Many films and film concepts are
initially conceived in terms of franchise potential: the 1994 film The Crow was
conceived as a franchise vehicle for actor Brandon Lee (Kennedy, 1996: 14), which
means that the film’s producers would have cast Lee in sequels to The Crow, on a
(bi)annual basis. This might eventually have given Lee the same pop culture status as
other franchise actors like Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger,
Steven Segal, and Sigorney Weaver. Lee’s accidental, on-set death in 1994 prevented
this, but the franchise continued in the 1996 sequel The Crow: City Of Angels, with a
new actor (Vincent Perez) in the title role. Successful franchise vehicle roles for actors
guarantee a place in popular culture as well as fame and fortune: Stallone’s franchise
roles of Rocky and Rambo, from the Rocky films (Parts I through VI) and the Rambo
films (Parts I through III) respectively, have become an integrated part of popular
culture and are familiar to millions of people in all corners of the globe.
All successful films are immediately considered for studio franchise treatment:
the success of Jurassic Park started a franchise that continues with The Lost World,
released in 1997. Baz Luhrmann, who directed a successful contemporary reading of
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in 1996, recalls with amusement the attempts of studio
executives to extract a franchise concept from Shakespeare’s play, a franchise which
Luhrmann sardonically agreed in principle to direct, in spite of the fact that every single
one of Romeo + Juliet’s major characters die in the film:
When he [Luhrmann] was asked to sign up for the sequel rights, he said ‘Well, you don’t really
need that – I mean, Romeo and Juliet die in the end,’ Luhrmann recalled with a laugh. “But the
executive then said to me, ‘Yeah, but what about the other characters?’ I said, ‘Well, Tybalt? He
dies too.’ He then said to me, ‘Well, how about Mercutio? He’s a great character!’ I said, ‘Well,
he dies as well. I mean, they all die. It’s a tragedy.’ He then said, ‘Well, you never know. What
about the parents, later on?’ So I just gave up at that point.” (Giammarco, 1996: A1)

Sequels alone do not make franchises. Many films have a sequel, but lack the
audience support and recognition required to establish an ongoing franchise operation.
Franchise films involve more than one sequel, which indicates many things: a
 43

commitment from the film studio/producers to create and maintain ongoing audience
interest in the film series as a whole; a belief that the concepts behind the film are
sustainable over several sequels; and, crucially, a belief that audiences will participate in
a franchise’s success by returning to watch franchise films as they are produced. This
involves institutionalised intertextuality as a basic level. Establishing a franchise of films
implies the audience’s ongoing recognition of the film’s characters (as in Die Hard or
Alien), an audience’s recognition of a given visual style (such as Tim Burton’s gothic
vision of Batman), and an audience’s willingness to accept slight variations of a standard
dramatic situation (Alien films always pit Sigorney Weaver’s character against Aliens
with seemingly insurmountable odds, etc.), all from film to film, sometimes with several
years between the release of sequels. More than sixteen years elapsed between the third
and fourth instalments of the Star Wars film franchise, and yet the film was a massive
financial success, if perhaps a critical disappointment. A movie franchise suggests a
great faith in popular culture’s metasemiotic nature.
Hollywood is not of course the only film industry to incorporate intertextuality
into its products at the institutional level: James Goodwin has written extensively on the
intertextuality of Akira Kurosawa’s films, many of which are derived from
Shakespeare’s plays and filtered through traditional Noh theatre (1994). Goodwin also
supports his thesis by claiming that “. . . manifest intertextual structures are to be found
in the films of directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Wells, Stanley Kubrick, and
Woody Allen” (1994: 13), reinforcing once again the notion that Hollywood films are
patently and deliberately intertextual.
Two of the characteristics of Eco’s metasemiotic audience are their underlying
assumptions that a) a large part of popular culture is inherently intertextual and b) not
recognising the reference means they have yet to experience the intertext as source, or as
text. It is possible to watch or hear an intertextual reference in film or music and
recognise it as a reference without identifying the actual reference. This is often
communicated through the tone of the text – the detection of irony or sarcasm, or the
presence of a textual fragment that does not blend seamlessly into its text – which might
alert the audience to the fact that an intertextual reference of some kind is being made.
One possible reaction to an unrecognised reference is to mentally file the reference
 44

away, in the hopes that one day its source will be revealed or personally experienced.
This holds particularly true for multimedia tmeses, which announce their intertextual
nature with clear technical manifestations – the graininess of stock news footage, or the
hiss of an old vinyl recording. The audience may suspect that the textual fragment is
intertextual, and could passively await confirmation of this suspicion (by seeing/hearing
the fragment in its original media context), sometimes for years.
Television programs like The Simpsons are particularly fraught with references
that might go unrecognised, often due to the sheer volume of references packed into a
short amount of time. The Simpsons is arguably the most deliberately intertextual
television program to date.
The key to (The Simpsons’) sublime humour is its intertextuality; the more media literate you are,
the more pleasure can be derived. It endlessly plunders icons and images from TV and films of
the past 20 years: MTV, CNN, the Terminator films, A Clockwork Orange and Apocalypse Now
have all been drawn upon . . . . (Flew, 1992: 13)

This precise characteristic of The Simpsons – the progressive relationship between

intertextual reference recognition and audience pleasure – comprises part of the show’s
power, and in fact episodes of The Simpsons can evolve into media literacy competitions
for the audience, who attempt to recognise as many of the intertextual references as
possible. Some references are missed altogether, doubtlessly, but others are recognised
as empty intertextual references, or references without meaning: we might suspect it is a
reference, just not what the reference is. For example, the episode ‘Homer the Vigilante’
(#1F09) of The Simpsons featured a secret buried treasure: the race to the treasure by the
townspeople was presented in a stylised, particular way and featured several stylised
characters who were diegetic non sequiturs, never to be seen again after the race’s
conclusion. This race was also accompanied by idiosyncratic music which appeared
entirely out of context with the episode’s preceding scenes. The race sequence was
clearly an intertextual reference and yet for me, the source of the reference remained a
complete mystery for the entire three years it took to write this thesis. Then, in early
1999, I came across an internet website on The Simpsons that identified the race as a
reference to a similar scene in Stanley Kramer’s 1963 film It’s A Mad Mad Mad Mad
World. The website identified all of the reference’s component parts in detail, and for
me the reference flooded with meaning and became empty no longer.
 45

While Eco states that metasemiotics has become an acceptable way for audiences
to consume semiotically-saturated Hollywood films, the same is true for many other
aspects of popular culture, and in particular for popular music. Both popular music and
music videos are, like film and its literary precursors, fundamentally/profoundly
intertextual – music is, after all, a finite system of notes and tones. But both popular
music and music videos are intertextual on a more overt level as well, in exactly the
same way as film. In short, popular music and video also exhibit the multimedia tmesis.
Literature on popular musicology and music video theory addresses the issue of
the multimedia tmesis from a limited number of theoretical contexts, as popular music
theory is still in relative infancy. One result of this is that, unlike film theory,
musicology theory does not concentrate on applying literary intertextuality theory to
music. More common are historical approaches to popular music intertextuality, such as
Jeremy Beadle’s 1993 book Will Pop Eat Itself?, which is subtitled “Pop Music in the
Soundbite Era”. Musicological approaches to intertextuality tend to be either
postmodernist or anti-postmodernist in nature (is the intertextual reference merely
pastiche and thus a manifestation of postmodernism in popular and television culture?),
or as a side effect of new technologies in the popular music industry (are computers,
samplers, and sequencers altering the nature of popular music in line with a political
and/or economic agenda as prescribed by Theodore Adorno, Marx, etc.?). A prolific
scholar in the field of popular music, Andrew Goodwin refers to popular music
intertextuality within both contexts in respective works:
Postmodern analyses often present this idea (of Baudrillard’s simulacrum) via a one-dimensional
account of changing notions of history in pop music, tending to use all instances of quoting from
pop’s past as though they were simple examples of “pastiche” (see Goodwin, 1988). . . . In fact, it
can be shown that music television’s intertextuality and its articulation of popular cultural history
are often anything but blank.
Consider, for example, the variety of ways in which music video clips “quote” from other texts.
This practice is pervasive in music television and is usually labelled “pastiche”. (1992, 159)

And from a music technology perspective:

One interesting consequence of this (computer) technology has been the incorporation of
“nonmusical” sounds into pop, especially in rap and hip hop music, and what one might call the
“media-ization” of pop production. John Pareles (1990) has pointed out that contemporary rap
music mirrors television in many respects, including the actual presence of sound-bites in the
music itself. . .” (1992, 79)
 46

Popular music and music video studies easily support intertextuality theory, in
spite of the dearth of literature on the subject, and if there are few works that outline the
cultural implications of intertextuality in popular music and video, then this thesis is a
step toward rectifying this situation. While authors such as John Fiske have addressed
the intertextual nature of Madonna videos, as we have seen, these studies operate on a
basic level and do not isolate any specific intertextual elements – a flaw that extends
from cinema studies into popular music studies.
In popular music, the most common form of the multimedia tmesis is the sample.
A sample can be a fragment of lyric or a musical line taken from another artist’s work; a
dialogue extract from a film, television programme, news report or other cultural text (a
‘sound-bite’); or a sound effect from a patently non-musical source (such as a baby’s
cry, for example). Many samples are musical in nature and are taken from earlier,
admired (black) artists: James Brown is widely acknowledged to be the most sampled
artist in popular music7, particularly rap and hip hop music (the drumbeat from James
Brown’s song ‘Funky Drummer’ has been sampled by Public Enemy, George Michael,
Pop Will Eat Itself, and Coco, Steel & Lovebomb to name but four {Beadle, 1993: 152,
176}). This practice of sampling was introduced in the early 1980s with the advent of
new musical technologies such as the digital sampling music computer (Goodwin, 1992:
78), and there were years of copyright lawsuits between artists as a result. Three
prominent examples might include the hip hop band PM Dawn’s sampling of the
melodic line from Spandau Ballet’s song ‘True’ in their 1984 hit single ‘Set Adrift on
Memory Bliss’ (with Spandau Ballet’s permission); the sampling of the instantly
recognisable opening guitar line from Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ in Credit To
The Nation’s 1992 single ‘Call It What You Want’, as well as the use of the famous
distorted guitar chord which opens The Smith’s ‘How Soon Is Now’, in Soho’s 1990
single ‘Hippy Chick’. Hundreds of other examples are possible.
As a visual extension of an aural form, the sample can also be found in music
videos. Often the musical samples are matched with their visual components, if
applicable: to revisit an earlier example, the music video for Big Audio Dynamite’s song
‘E=mc2’ contains film clips from the Nicolas Roeg movies (Don’t Look Now, The Man

7
Jeremy Beadle discusses the sampling of James Brown at length in Will Pop Eat Itself? (1993); pages 176 to 178.
 47

Who Fell To Earth, Insignificance {Goodwin, 1992: 163}) that match the spoken
dialogue samples in the song8 (Goodwin, 1992: 163). The band members of Spandau
Ballet appear in PM Dawn’s music video for ‘Set Adrift on Memory Bliss’ to lip-sync
their sample, in the spirit of ironic self-depreciation.
Samples can also be purely visual in music videos, however, and in this respect
they are very similar to the description of multimedia tmeses in film, although these

8
This is an excellent example of a fascinating phenomenon in music video, in that when film/TV dialogue is sampled in a song, the
corresponding visual clips are so expected in the song’s video, that a dialogue sample is almost a visual sample even on radio – a
purely aural format. This area of synaesthetic cross-over will be examined in more detail in the following chapter on music video
image.
 48

visual references are not necessarily diegetic in the same way. Visual samples, which
again can be film or television clips, or any other visual representation from Fiske’s
‘cultural image bank’, can be used as non-diegetic images to accompany the music,
along side studio-filmed footage of the lip-synching artist. Many examples can be cited
for both diegetic and non-diegetic samples of film clips in popular music videos:
diegetic examples would include the video for Metallica’s song ‘Hero Of The Day’
which shows a young man watching a spaghetti western on the television (a parody of
Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) as well as talk shows (parodies of
The Price Is Right); whilst non-diegetic examples would include videos for The Red Hot
Chili Pepper’s hit single ‘Under The Bridge’ which incorporates famous footage of the
underwater atomic bomb test off the Bikini atoll, as well as for Michael Jackson’s video
for ‘Man In The Mirror’ (a video-montage of news story clips), in which exactly the
same footage of the atomic explosion is also used9.
In this way the existence of Eco’s metasemiotic audience can be postulated
through popular music and music videos as well as through Hollywood films. This is
especially apparent in the case of video-clip montages such as Michael Jackson’s ‘Man
In The Mirror’, as mentioned above, where a recognition and understanding of the
myriad of visual clips that comprise the music video contribute towards a reading of the
video as a text.
In music video that uses non-diegetic visual images, an ideal balance of technical
delivery is possible between text and intertext: both the music and the visual image are
‘pure’, in that both are derived directly from their respective cultural source with no
technical or interpretative distortion. Music video is rare in achieving this state,
however, and a balance of source purity is not always achieved, or as obvious,
particularly in film/music combinations. The authenticity and purity of the texts
becomes problematic, especially with the increasing sophistication of digital music and
visual image computer
manipulation. When addressing classical music and film, the ‘purity’ and authenticity of

9
This particular film clip tmesis, in which several U.S. battleships are dwarfed by the unprecedented size of the explosion geyser, is
a popular way of evoking the historically grounded mythology of annihilation, armaggedon, or the loss of humanity’s scientific
innocence. It was used to great effect in the opening credit sequence of the 1998 remake of Godzilla, and can also be found in videos
by the Wu Tang Clan.
 49

the classical music in question becomes problematic, both on an ideological plane (when
considering musical connotation) and on a technical plane (establishing musical
pedigree is much more difficult than with the cleaner technical delineation of film
footage). How can the authenticity of the music be established? Leaving the ideological
concerns of this issue for the subsequent chapter, intertextuality issues can be settled
with purely technical definitions. Music used either as text or intertext in these
circumstances are not ‘cover’ versions, transposed for peculiar instruments, or
orchestrated versions of the music in question – they are invariably the same
interpretations of the music that one might find on CD at the local record store.
Determining this purity is often done by ear, relying on the audience’s familiarity with
the music in question. As with film text/intertexts, the interested audience usually knows
when a musical text/intertext has been doctored in some way, and this is likely because
it is the very purity of the music that forms a large part of its appeal as a text/intertext. A
mutated, doctored text/intertext defeats its own purpose by mutating, by extrapolation,
its own references and cultural connotations.
The technical purity of the text-tmesis combination raises the problem of
ideological balance between film studies and popular music studies. When confronted
with a film-music combination where both the music and the visual image are of pristine
technical quality, how does one determine which is the text and which is the intertext?
An apparent assumption for many film theory scholars, particularly in film music theory
(such as Gorbman {1987}, Flinn {1992} and Kalinak {1992}), is that film acts as the
text and music acts as the intertext. This is not necessarily the case. While it would be
simple to designate the film the text and the musical reference the intertext, our fifth
statement about intertextuality, derived from Kristeva and Riffaterre, is that the
combination of text and intertext produces a transformed art form. In the case of
multimedia intertextuality, neither film nor music can make an undisputed claim to the
textual context into which the other is placed. This is a situation peculiar to the use of
popular (and classical) music in film, brought on by the technical purity of the music in
question, and popular culture’s practised ability to associate popular music with a
disparate range of visual images. Taken as artistic wholes, the film runs its full length
without interruptions, whilst the music is invariably offered only in clips or edited
 50

sections, which suggests a film/text, music/intertext relationship; and yet, the sheer
repetition and re-use of the same music in a growing number of different films suggest
that the music can act as a text, and the visual image is the intertext. At this point the
limitations of intertextuality theory as a tool to examine the combination to text and
tmesis intertext are reached.
The answer to this problem is to approach the matter from both theoretical
perspectives; from a film perspective which designates film as the text and music as the
intertext, and from a music perspective which designates music as the text and film
images as the intertext. These approaches will be addressed in the following chapters on
film music theory and music video image, respectively.
 51

Chapter 2 ~ Synaesthesia, Popular Music Theory and Music Video Phenomenology

Since their entrance into popular culture with the American birth of cable-
television channel MTV (Music Television) in August 1981, music videos have been the
subject of much theoretical analysis. There are compelling reasons for introducing this
theory to the current discussion. As an inescapable and high-profile element of popular
culture, music videos suggest that audiences may approach the combination of music
and visual image in ways that differ from those assumed by film music scholars.
Because audiences may approach films – or parts of films – in the same way as they
approach music video (particularly the soundtrack), then music video theory can shed
valuable light onto the new evolution of sound-image relationships.
The primary difference between film music theory and music video theory is that
the analysis of music video inverts the usual assumptions about the politics of sound and
image: music video theory assumes the primacy of the sound over the image. This,
obviously, stands in contrast to film music theory, where the image is considered
primary, and the sound is perceived in relation to the hegemony of the image. Lull
makes this distinction clear:
Just what is music video? It reverses the normative aesthetic and semiotic relationship between
picture and sound in television and film, in that the visuals are there to enhance the sound rather
than the other way around (that is, a “visual track” accompanies the sound rather than a “sound
track” accompanying the visuals). (1992: 11)

This difference results in several lines of reasoning not found in film music studies,
especially regarding synaesthesia, and theoretical work devoted to the mechanics of
sound-image relationships, an area sorely lacking in film music studies. These areas will
be examined at length in the first half of this chapter.
This body of theory suggests that the use of classical music in film is affected in
a particular manner. The metasemiotic audience’s potential for music video fluency,
combined with the way in which classical music is deployed and cited in film, results in
classical music becoming recontextualised as popular music. As the second half of this
chapter examines, the contextual distinction between classical music and popular music
continues to collapse, and classical music is currently being employed, produced and
consumed as popular music (and as popular music video). This of course potentially
alters the perception and reality of classical music, popular music, and Hollywood film.
 52

Music video is comprised of the combination of (usually) three texts: music,

lyrics, and visual image. Occasionally the lyrical content is negligible or absent, but
music and visual image remain standard elements. In spite of this, much music video
theory is centred around the analysis of lyrical content, the most infamous example
being Kaplan’s (1987) book, Rocking Around The Clock: Music Television,
Postmodernism and Consumer Culture. As Walser notes, “lyrics have been granted
disproportionate significance” (1993: 40). Bernard Sumner, lead singer for the band
New Order, remarks “People are so pious about lyrics”, suggesting instead that people
should “Bow down before the tune. The tune is God” (quoted in Lester, 1999: 59). Other
approaches to music video analysis include discussing music videos as the apotheosis of
postmodernism (Kaplan, 1987; Straw, 1993; Goodwin, 1988, 1992, 1993b; Beadle,
1993); music video as television culture (Grossberg, 1992, Frith, 1988, Frith &
Goodwin, 1990), and music video as media economy (Grossberg, 1993; Negus, 1996;
Beadle, 1993). Goodwin also divides music video literature into categories such as
“advertising. . . visual art . . . dreams . . . nihilistic neo-Fascist propaganda . . .
metaphysical poetry . . . shopping mall culture. . .” (1993a: 3). Only recently has the
musical element of music video been stressed (Goodwin, 1993a; Bjornberg, 1994;
Walser, 1993; Negus, 1996; Tagg, 1992a, 1992b), and this is due to the extreme
difficulty in writing directly about music and musical affect.
An acknowledgment of the barrier presented by written language’s relationship
with music opens an overwhelming majority of popular music and music video
literature. Goodwin poses the problem in Barthesian terms, claiming that “. . . the
problem with music is that it appears to be all code and no message” (1993a: 2), and
going on to state that “clearly the central problem for cultural commentators is the
notorious difficulty of finding the appropriate conceptual tools for analysing music”
(ibid). Philip Tagg is particularly articulate on this point:
One reason for this apparent lack of interest [in systematic musical analysis] is the
epistemological impotence stemming from traditional musicology’s concentration on
intramusical processes and its neglect of structures relatable to music’s role in society as a
symbolic system. (1992b: 1)

Elsewhere Tagg reminds us that “The musicologist’s eternal dilemma is the need to use
words about a non-verbal, non-denotative art” (1982: 48). Jackendoff, a cognitive
 53

psychologist, offers this bio-acoustic perspective:

Musical representations do not lead ultimately to the constructions of conceptual structures. Since
it is the presence of conceptual structures that make verbalization possible, the musical response
in large part cannot be verbalized . . . [it] is less describably yet phenomenologically more
immediate and intuitive. (1989: 237)

McClary and Walser, who remind us that “though the point has often been made, it is
still easy to forget that music is an especially resistant medium to write or speak about”
(1988: 278), point out that most music analysis involves inventing theory from scratch:
Thus to try to make the case that a particular configuration sounds mournful (something that may
be obvious to virtually all listeners, especially those not perverted by musical training) is to have
to invent a philosophical argument for meaning in music and to try to reconstruct forgotten codes
out of centuries of music. (1988: 283)

Elsewhere Walser explains that:

We can use language to describe musical processes or effects, but we usually find that
propositional statements about music are clumsy compared to the efficiency of the music itself,
and the feeling persists that much remains unaccounted for, no matter how lengthy the
explanation. (1993: 39)

Tagg (1979, 1982, 1992a) and Goodwin (1993a) have managed to transcend these
metalinguistic problems with some degree of success: Goodwin’s account of
synaesthesia offers valuable insight into how music and image might be connected, and
both he and Tagg (1992a), have offered the only concrete sign typologies of music
available in the literature. Both of these concepts can be profitably applied to the
combination of classical music and Hollywood film.
It is a premise of music video theory that pop music has always been a visual
medium, and this observation offers an important contribution to this thesis. One of
Goodwin’s (1992, 1993a) important contributions to music video theory was the
elaboration of this idea. Goodwin claims analyses of pop music which treated the visual
as a new, alien element were patently ignoring pop music’s genealogy, history and
heritage: “Pop has always stressed the visual as a necessary part of it apparatus – in
performance, on record covers, in magazine and press photographs, and in advertising”
(1993a: 8). Frith and Goodwin’s introduction to On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written
Word explains that “. . . pop is a visual medium every bit as much as it is an aural one . .
.” (1990: 40) and this was subsequently echoed by Schwichtenberg:
. . . the combination of music and visuals has been around for some time and is culturally
ubiquitous. In fact, music, as a primary experience, has always been represented visually in one
form or another. In everyday life visual imagery extends music experience through concert
 54

performances, album covers, packaging on tapes and compact discs, pictures in music magazines,
and in television shows and commercials. (1992: 118)

Keith Negus widens the scope of music video image to include film visual image:
Ever since sound was added to film in the cinema and the world’s first talking picture, The Jazz
Singer, was screened in 1927, the electronic mediation of music with moving images has been
integral to the way that a large amount of recorded popular music has been experienced around
the world. (1996: 86)

which makes the connection between music video and film in such a way that explicitly
supports one of the underlying arguments of this chapter.
If popular music has always been visual, music video theory next proceeds to an
analysis of what visual images are associated with – or integrated with – their respective
music. The musical ‘track’ or ‘song’ is the primary text, which rarely changes
fundamental musical form (minor cosmetic musical changes notwithstanding) regardless
of its industrial format: radio, CD, tape, or music video10.
. . . the 3-minute musical single – remains the video’s raison d’etre, its unalterable foundation, its
one unconditional ingredient. A single can exist (technically, at least) without the video, but the
reverse is not the case. As if in evidence of this, music videos, almost without exception, do not
make so much as a single incision in the sound or structure of the song. However bizarre or
disruptive videos appear, they never challenge or emancipate themselves from their musical
foundation, without which their charismatic indulgences would never reach our eyes. (Berland,
1993: 25)

Straw concurs with this observation:

. . . the videoclip is one among a number or permutations of the basic single-song unit which
circulate within the field of rock music today; dance mixes, instrumental versions and excerpts
used as part of motion-picture soundtracks are other examples of this. (1993: 9)

Allan, who is writing about Hollywood musicals, also makes this point:
In virtually all music video works, the sound track comprises a single piece of music. Call it a
song, a number, a tune, or a cut, it is almost always a complete and unified segment of music.
(1990: 4)

Later in her article on musical cinema, Allan admits that “. . . the starting point for the
production of a [music] video must be the music – the song, the lyric, the arrangement,
the performance, the production, the recording” (1990: 7) before stating that “although
the music in videos typically has a diegetic source, its uniform sound quality refers back
to its status as a recording that binds together the image” (1990: 8).

10
The 1999 music video for Jennifer Lopez's single 'If You Had My Love' is the first video I have ever seen that offers a musical
text which is radically recomposed/remixed compared to the song's radio/CD version, as it actually pauses to switch between
 55

The musical content is thus rarely an overt textual variable in music video
analysis. What is a variable is the visual imagery that accompanies the musical track: it
can be concert footage, a staged, lip-synched performance video, or a non-narrative free-
flow of seemingly unassociated images. Occasionally it will be more than one of the
above. For example, Underworld’s track ‘Born Slippy’ is offered in two video versions –
one contains scenes from the film Trainspotting, which featured the song on its
soundtrack, and the other is restricted to surreal images of Karl Hyde (Underworld’s
lyricist and occasional guitarist) listening to a walkman. Radiohead released at least two
different video versions of their single ‘High and Dry’, one for the UK market, and one
for the American market.
These video images are usually (and understandably) organised into categories
according to visual content or visual style. Goodwin organises the use of intertextuality
in music videos into six categories: Social Criticism, Self-Reflexive Parody, Parody,
Pastiche, Promotion, and Homage (1993a: 161), whereas Schwichtenberg divides all
videos into three broad categories: performance, narrative, and conceptual (1992: 123).
Bjornberg offers an even more simplistic typology, which divides music videos into
either “Narrative” or “Epic” categories (1994: 68-69). This typology is assumed by
Burns, who discusses the differences between “concept” videos and “documentary”
videos (1994: 72-73).
In all of these video types, the “conceptual” (Schwichtenberg, 1992: 123) and
“epic” (Bjornberg, 1994: 69) offer the most difficulty to music video theorists, and thus
often generate the most profitable theory. Conceptual/Epic music videos combine music
with what may seem to be arbitrary imagery, or simple stories that seem to have no
narrative connection with the musical and/or lyrical elements of the track, and thus
conceptual video theory is invariably applicable to most combinations of classical music
and visual image. Examples of conceptual/epic videos would include Spiderbait’s clip
‘Calypso’; Howie B’s ‘Music For Babies’; New Order’s remix of ‘Blue Monday’; and
‘Footprint’ by Disco Citizen.
Schwichtenberg explains that the conceptual video:
“expresses” tempos, riffs, and melodic structure, often in a montage of images. . . . Conceptual

genrically-defined versions of the song within the same track (i.e., from dance into salsa into R&B interpretations, etc.). It should be
observed, however, that the musical novelty of this video serves to identify it as the exception that proves the rule.
 56

music videos use this stylized editing technique to develop a concept based on the
interrelationships among music, editing, and images. As such, conceptual videos are associative
(rather than causal, like narratives) because they present sets of images loosely related through
the dynamic interplay of music and movement. This type of visual music proffers suggestive
resonances to be linked together in our musical experience of a concept. (1992: 124)

In developing this argument, Schwichtenberg later states that

Visual fragments are related as metaphorical equivalents for a “feeling” evoked by “moving”
music. The music and the image contribute to the loose association derived from metaphor. . . .
Thus the metaphorical relations between images structured according to musical and visual
rhymes and rhythms play a suggestive role in soliciting multiple meanings from us, the
viewers/audience, that resonate with our experience. . . (ibid)

Bjornberg, in elaborating upon ‘epic’ videos, uses the phrases “circular” and “with
‘dreamlike visuals’” (1994: 68) to describe videos of the same type, citing as examples
Snap’s video for ‘Rhythm Is A Dancer’ and Bryan Adam’s ‘Thought I’d Died And Gone
To Heaven’. These descriptions – particularly Schwichtenberg’s – can be applied
directly to an analysis of classical music in Hollywood film, which often results in a
combination of music and visual imagery that would at first seem random and arbitrary.
As Goodwin (1993a) et al. suggest, even seemingly arbitrary images may have deep
roots in the accompanying musical content. Popular music and music video analysis
offers some of the elementary conceptual tools required to inspect the mechanics of
these relationships in any kind of detail. As can be expected from a recently established
academic field, these theoretical tools are admittedly basic, but even as such they are far
superior to those offered by film music theory, which neglects cultural-musicological
perspectives entirely.
Alone amongst popular music and music video theorists, Philip Tagg’s work
with music semiotics and typologies offers concrete theorisation into the specific
relations between music, musical imagery, and musical affect. This is perhaps
unsurprising given that Tagg writes primarily as a musicologist, whereas Goodwin et al.
are working from sociological and cultural studies backgrounds.
Tagg’s sign typology for music offers four main categories of signs: anaphones,
genre synecdoche, episodic markers, and style indicators (1992a: 22). Anaphone and
genre synecdoche are the two typologies applicable to music video and visual image in
particular, whereas episodic markers and style indicators are more intramusical in
content. Tagg defines ‘anaphone’ as “a neologism analogous to “analogy”. . . anaphone
 57

means the use of existing models in the formation of (musical) sounds” (ibid). Musical
anaphones are divided into four categories: sonic, kinetic, tactile, and composite. Sonic
anaphones offer a “structural homology with paramusical sound” (ibid), kinetic
anaphones are similarly associated with paramusical movement, and tactile anaphones
refer to paramusical touch (ibid). Composite anaphones offer a combination of any of
the preceding three categories.
Sonic anaphones are described as
. . . the quasi-programmatic, ‘onomatopoeic’ stylisation of ‘non-musical’ sound, e.g. Schubert’s
babbling brooks, Baroque opera thunder, William Byrd’s bells, Jimi Hendrix’s B52 bomber . . .
[and] Vangelis’s sampled rain sounds. (1992a: 23)

Tagg is quick to point out that “the structural homologies between ‘real’ and ‘musical’
brooks or between ‘real’ and ‘musical’ thunder stem partly from musical convention,
partly from the state of development in sound technology” (ibid). The connection to
visual image seems obvious here: sonic anaphones are “structural homologies” (ibid)
and as such suggest a visual image of that anaphone’s physical source. Kinetic
anaphones work in a similarly straightforward manner, by evoking “the relationship of
the human body to time and space” (1992a: 24), as well as the movement of animals,
objects, and “the subjectivised movement of objectively stationary objects or beings”
(ibid). Tagg’s examples of this include the outlining of ocean waves by the gestures of
human hands.
Tactile anaphones offer a similar structural homology with touch. Tagg cites the
familiar sound of “romantic string underscore” during film romance scenes as a classic
example of this anaphone (1992a: 23). More current examples might include Kurt
Cobain’s screamed chorus in Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and Thom Yorke’s
screamed lyrics at the end of Radiohead’s ‘Climbing The Walls’, both of which operate
as tactile anaphones for sheer physical and emotional violence. Part of Cobain’s and
Nirvana’s appeal was doubtlessly in their anaphonic articulation of a generation’s
inarticulated screams of social/emotional frustration, a point of identification arguably
picked up by Radiohead. This application of the tactile anaphone parallels the use of
Gorbman’s concept of mutual implication and Altman’s audio dissolve, as outlined in
the next chapter.
Tagg’s second example of tactile anaphones is even more telling: in a more
 58

detailed analysis of Bernard Herrmann’s music for the shower murder scene in
Hitchcock’s Psycho, Tagg describes the tactile anaphone as “sharp, unpleasant and
piercing, the glissando acciaccaturas connotable with the initial resistance offered by the
skin as the knife point plunges into the body” (1992a: 25). This description outlines an
extremely specific visual image to a particular musical example, which is rare if not
isolated in the rest of popular music, music video, and film music theory. What is
suggestive about this choice of example, however, is the implication that the particular
combination of film music and specific film visual image might provide concrete,
crystalline examples of visual image association on a scale of unprecedented technical
purity. Film can provide the musical anaphone’s visual image. It is precisely this process
that works so effectively and so profoundly with the classical music and film texts to be
examined in the following case histories.
Tagg points out that the aforementioned musical example from Psycho is a
composite anaphone, {being simultaneously sonic, tactile, and kinetic (ibid)}, and that in
fact most anaphones are composite in nature. Kinetic anaphones all imply sonic and/or
tactile sensations, sonic anaphones also imply movement, and so on.
Genre synecdoche is Tagg’s second category of musical signs, which he defines as
. . . a set of musical structures inside a given musical style that refer to another musical style by
citing one or two elements supposed to be typical of that “other” style when heard in the context
of the style into which those “foreign” elements are imported. (1992a: 25)

Just as linguistic synecdoche involves a part being substituted for a whole, so does
musical genre synecdoche involve a connotation from a musical fragment back to the
genre from whence that fragment was extracted. While Tagg uses ‘pastoral’ chords in
Baroque music as a genre synecdoche for “the presumed idyllic pastorality” (1992a: 26)
of sheep, shepherds and meadows, this category has clear implications for the
combination of classical music to contemporary visual images.
In fact, Tagg’s continual use of film music for examples is revealing. While Tagg
clearly sets his research in a popular music context, the empirical research behind his
sign typology used “ten previously unheard title tunes from film and TV” (1992a: 22)
without any identification as to whether these tunes were popular or ‘classical’ in nature.
More telling is Tagg’s use of Herrmann’s Psycho music (complete with full musical
notation) in order to illustrate a composite anaphone, and his extensive documentation of
 59

film love scenes to demonstrate his example of tactile anaphones – eleven films are
cited, from King Kong to The Onedin Line (1992b: 9). This inarticulated assumption,
that conclusions drawn from the empirical evidence of film music can be accurately
applied to popular music, serves to further underline the connection between popular
music and film music and their respective theoretical works.
The operation of Tagg’s musical anaphones is similar to Negus’s concept of
“repeated semiotic particles” (1996: 94). Negus argues that
. . . music video can be approached as being composed of a series of repeated semiotic particles.
Such particles combine music, image and words in particular ways that mediate music in a
manner that allows for various contexts and accompanying activities . . . (ibid)

This description of musical, visual, and lyrical semiotic elements combining in a way
that favours all three texts equally and which allows free play over a wide range of
contexts, is the popular music theory equivalent to Gorbman’s “mutual implication” (in
film music) (1987: 15) and Altman’s “audio dissolve” (in film musicals) (1987: 63),
both of which will be analysed in the next chapter.
Tagg’s sign typology of music also serves to flesh out Goodwin’s statement
about the intrinsic visual quality of popular music, by offering specific structural
homologies to relate music to visual image. And yet, Tagg explains that anaphones
communicate through “synaesthesis” (1992a: 23, 26) without explaining how this
connection actually works, or what the mechanics of synaesthesia involve. This
question, which bears answering in order to avoid any accusations of tautology, plagues
the majority of music video literature (see Grossberg, 1993; Berland, 1993; Bjornberg,
1994).
Andrew Goodwin first employed the term ‘synaesthesia’ in music video studies
(1993a: 50), but the term was widely introduced into popular culture by neurological
physician Dr. Richard Cytowic (1989, 1993) to describe a condition whereby certain
people are able to experience phenomenological input with more than one sense. People
with synaesthesia are thus able to taste colours and shapes, see flavours, and so on.
Goodwin took this term out of Cytowic’s clinical definition and applied it first generally
to a media-cultural context, and secondly to a specific translation of senses. This is not
obvious through Goodwin’s explanation:
. . . this is the phenomenon of synaesthesia, the intrapersonal process whereby sensory
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impressions are carried over from one sense to another, for instance, when one pictures sounds in
one’s “minds eye.” This concept is key for understanding music television, since video clips build
on the sound track’s visual associations. (1993a: 50)

However, Cytowic takes some pains to show that clinical synaesthetic experiences,
when they involve the visualisation of sonic phenomena, are expressed only in the most
basic of geometric forms:
For all the talk about seeing, feeling, and tasting fantastic things, careful observation shows that
what synaesthetes actually sense is always quite simple. For example, they never see a landscape
while listening to Beethoven or feel an oriental lacquered box when eating clam chowder. Rather,
they see blobs, grids, cross-hatchings, and geometric shapes . . . All these are generic perceptions.
(1993: 121)

In spite of this rather pointed denunciation of making specific connections between

music and visual image, Goodwin’s use of the term synaesthesia is redeemed somewhat
through its (inarticulated) recontextualisation: Goodwin is suggesting that synaesthesia
is not so much the generator of visual image from music as the dynamic process by
which music connects with a visual image. Synaesthesia does not justify the choice of
visual image, however, and we are still left with the question: where does the visual
image come from? Goodwin suggests that music’s visual image in inherent in the music
itself. There are three categories of music-image synaesthetic connections, according to
Goodwin, and the parallel with Tagg’s sign typology is striking.
Symbolic synaesthesia “exists where a musical convention has been established”
(1993a: 58). Examples include the use of “the well-known theme tune from the film The
Big Country” in respective clips by the groups Yes and 808 State/M.C.Tunes; “in each
case the theme suggests familiar iconography deriving from the Hollywood genre of the
western” (ibid). This category is equivalent to Tagg’s genre synecdoche. Again,
Goodwin’s use of a film music reference strengthens the connection between these two
field of theoretical research, as described above.
Iconic synaesthesia is “. . . not visual (as is usual in semiotics and semiology),
but rather one that involves onomatopoeia. . .” (1993a: 58). Goodwin cites examples
such as “guitars emulating police sirens” (ibid) and “drumming that signifies machinery
through its timbre and/or rhythms” (ibid), which clearly align this category with Tagg’s
sonic anaphones (which use ‘guitars emulating B52 bombers’ as an example {1992a:
23}). Goodwin also points out that “this process may also involve mass-mediated
intertextuality. . .” (1993a: 59), echoing Tagg’s reference to Vangelis’ samples (1992a:
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23).
Finally, Indexical synaesthesia occurs when “. . . a causal link is “seen” in the
“mind’s eye” – that is, the musician’s movements create the sounds, and that is what we
see” (1993a: 59). Examples cited by Goodwin include the sound of ‘scratching’
synaesthetically evoking images of a hand ‘scratching’ a record stylus over a vinyl
record (1993a: 59). This correlates exactly with Tagg’s category of kinetic anaphone –
Tagg even cites the example of “the sort of movement the human hand makes when
outlining rolling hills” (1992a: 24).
Interestingly, tactile anaphones are not specifically identified in Goodwin’s
typology, probably due to the difficulty in synaesthetically relating this
phenomenological material to visual image without relying heavily on film music
references, as does Tagg. In spite of this oversight, the correlation between Tagg’s and
Goodwin’s typologies indicates a consensus on the raw machinery that connects sound
and image in music video. These concepts can also be found in classical musicology:
Jean-Jacques Nattiez states that “Turning to a characterization of music according to its
possibilities for extrinsic symbolization, we can establish a division into three large
fields: the spatio-temporal, the kinetic, and the affective” (1990: 118, emphasis mine)
– going on to cite supporting studies by Francès, Goblot, and Imberty (1990: 118-119).
Identifying further details on how precisely this synaesthetic machinery operates
does not seem possible on any kind of universally applicable level, however, since
Goodwin’s music video synaesthesia – and film music synaesthesia, by extension – is
mediated by culture rather than biology or psychology. Walser addresses this cultural
contextualisation directly:
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Like genres and discourses, musical meanings are contingent but never arbitrary. There is never
any essential correspondence between particular musical signs or processes and specific social
meanings, yet such signs and processes would never circulate if they did not produce such
meanings. Musical meanings are always grounded socially and historically, and they operate on
an ideological playing field of conflicting interests, institutions, and memories. If this makes them
extremely difficult to analyse, it does so by forcing analysis to confront the complexity and
antagonism of culture. (1993: 29)

A review of sound-image research in the fields of cognitive psychology and

neuropsychology, and musical cognitive sciences in particular, makes this quite clear, as
Walser notes in passing (1993: 32). Cytowic provides a brief history of the theories of
synaesthesia mechanics (1989: 67), before proceeding claim that “the synesthesic
mechanism does seem to occupy an intermediate place in the range of concrete to
abstract, one-on-one to one-on-many, and therefore simple to complex brain
mechanisms’ (1989: 90). Cytowic claims that the mechanics of synaesthesia “involves
temporal lobe-limbic structures” (1989: 91) coordinated from the brain’s hippocampus
(1989: 175). While Cytowic carefully and consciously tries to avoid the analogy of
‘crossed-wires’ to explain synaesthetic associations, he eventually discusses the
mechanics of synaesthesia in terms of neuroanatomical brain circuitry (1989: 147) and
“the functional organization of cognitive functions” (ibid).
Cognitive psychologists such as Jackendoff (1989), Jackendoff & Lerdahl
(1990), McAdams (1987), McAdams & Bigand (1993), Wright & Bregman (1987),
Butler & Brown (1994), and Warren (1993) have written extensively on the cognition
and perception of music and musical forms, but all of this literature is written solely in
self-referential terms. This of course is necessary for the research to have universal
human application – an obvious requirement for both psychology and neuroanatomy –
but it results in the kind of self-referential language that simply cannot be successfully
applied to any field outside its own. In short, musical cognitive neuropsychology
discusses the intrapersonal translation of music into musical images, not of music into
visual images. A brief example of this kind of writing will suffice to illustrate this point:
In the previous example, the asynchrony of onset of a source image is a cue that contributes to the
ability to separate it from other concurrent source images, even if these are merely sinusoidal
source signals. As was implied in the discussion on fusion, a complex tone without modulation
can, under certain conditions, be perceived as a composite of many sinusoidal ‘sources’.
(McAdams, 1982: 289)

While many books and articles in this field discuss the cognitive visualisation of
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music, using such promising titles such as McAdams’ ‘Spectral Fusion and the Creation
of Auditory Images’ (1982: 279), most opt for standard scientific forms of graphic
representation: Warren uses charts (1993: 45, 51, 52), as do Peretz (1993: 214),
McAdams (1993: 150) and Dowling (1994); while standard musical notation is favoured
by Butler & Brown (1994: 199), Cook (1994: 74), and McAdams & Bigand (1993: 244).
Other methods used by McAdams include configurations employing three-dimensional
axes for scaling (1993: 168), photographs of hands clapping & their spectrograms (1993:
185), schematic illustrations (1993: 186), and oscilloscope traces (1987: 20). Most
imaginatively, Saariaho uses calligraphic paint smears (1987: 106), to represent the “first
sketches of the global form of Verblendungen for orchestra and tape” (ibid) – a
composition by the author. The gulf between cultural cognition and clinical cognition is
also clearly revealed in the analysis of this empirical evidence. Butler and Brown clearly
state that their “purpose in this chapter is to examine these tonal patterns as perceptual
objects and as cognitive processes” (1994: 193), instead of concrete, ‘real-world’ visual
images. In an extraordinary example, McAdams and Bigand seem puzzled and
fascinated that a person could sit in a concert hall and somehow, magically, be able to
cognitively distinguish between the random noise of an orchestra’s warm-up and the
subsequent performance of classical music (1993: 7-9). How, they wonder, is this
possible, given that the soundwaves hit the human ear-drum in an identical manner
under both circumstances? It seems obvious to the cultural and media theorist that this
confusion completely neglects an appreciation of a concert’s cultural context: we as
audience members have been culturally conditioned to distinguish between warm-up
scales and rehearsed phrases in the orchestra pit and the subsequent performance – and
we know that the (musically silent) arrival of the conductor is one of the signs that
indicates this transition. Surely this psychological distinction affects our cognition of
sound. Wright & Bregman make similar comments regarding talkative concert-goers
(1987: 65). Cognitive psychology does not incorporate a socio-cultural context in their
work on bio-acoustics (working as it does on a near-biological level, socio-cultural
implications are not a part of cognitive psychology’s intellectual mandate), and thus
research in this field is of very limited application to this thesis.
Cognitive psychology throws into sharp relief the larger cultural context from
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which synaesthetic images are drawn. As Cytowic concludes in his chapter on Art and
Synesthesia, “We see what our culture tells us to see” (1989: 259). This thesis must thus
necessarily focus on the cultural context from which both its musical and film texts are
taken, often called Western art culture (Tagg, 1987: 283-285). Walser claims that
“Ultimately, musical analysis can be considered credible only if it helps explain the
significance of musical activities in particular social contexts” (1993: 31). The social
context of Western culture obviously includes popular culture, as Goodwin demonstrates
through empirical research:
These examples of synaesthesia suggest a number of sources for the iconographies stored in
popular cultural memory: (a) personal imagery deriving from the individual memories associated
with the song; (b) images associated purely with the music itself (following Tagg’s research),
which may work through either metaphor or metonymy; (c) images of the musicians/performers;
(d) visual signifiers deriving from national-popular iconography. . . and (e) deeply anchored
popular cultural signs . . . (1993a: 56)

Music-visual synaesthetic images are thus culture-specific, and music-visual image

connections are culturally-grounded: they produce culture-mediated media.
Having reached this point, however, and given a particular cultural context, we
are still faced with the issue of determining what – and why – certain images get
associated with certain kinds of music. While cognitive psychology and clinical
neurology (synaesthesia) suggest from their scientific contexts that these images are
generic, media and cultural studies contexts suggest that there is an area where specific
visual-musical synaesthetic cognitions can be identified and analysed. This of course is
when popular culture provides the images ready made on a wide scale through mass
media, connecting the music and the cognitive image though film and music video.
Obviously these must be layered upon, and reinforce, existing cognitive image-
structures, but Goodwin is adamant that:
. . . these visual associations already exist. In other words . . . video imagery attempts to tap into
visual associations that exist prior to the production of the clip itself, in the internal sign systems of
the audience. (1993a: 57-58)

In addition to the application of synaesthesia to music video studies, Goodwin

has also written at length on the relationship between musical narratives and visual
narratives, and how narrative is linked with the production and consumption of music
videos. Goodwin’s point is that music video, and music video image, must be analysed
according to musical logic and musical narratives, rather than lyrical narratives or
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cinema-code visual narratives. “Therefore, if we resituate music video clips within the
context of pop music narratives, we can begin to see a different structural logic at work”
(Goodwin, 1993a: 77).
Goodwin proceeds to outline a typology of music video narratives, dividing
music videos into three kinds of relationships: illustration; amplification, and
disjunction. Illustrative videos “refer to those clips in which the visual narrative tells the
story of the song lyric” (1993a: 86) which will “often involve the effort to signify a
mood, as opposed to telling a story” (1993a: 87). Amplified videos occur “when the clip
introduces new meanings that do not conflict with the lyrics, but that add layers of
meaning . . .” (ibid), and disjunctive videos offer a combination of sound and vision in
which “the imagery has no apparent bearing on the lyric” (1993a: 89), and in which “the
visual narrative may either flatly contradict the lyrics or perhaps unintentionally
undermine them” (ibid).
It is clear from these definitions that Goodwin has, astonishingly, fallen into the
same textual analysis trap that he suggests Kaplan falls into; namely, to judge music
video image on the basis of whether it conforms to the song’s lyrics. Goodwin only
partially acknowledges this error:
. . . we also need to think about how the imagery might illustrate the music (cutting on the beat,
emphasizing syncopations. . . ), amplify it (setting up its own, complimentary, visual pulses and
timbres), or create a disjuncture (for instance, when low-budget clips are badly made or, simply
through lack of technical resources, fail to respond to the feel of the music itself). (1993a: 89)

before devoting one paragraph to the application of his narrative typology to the
perceived star iconography of the band in question.
Goodwin’s error seems to be threefold at this point, in his failure to directly
apply visual image to the actual music of his chosen clips. First, by allowing the lyrics to
take precedence over the music: the disjuncture category clearly implies that the lyrics
are primary, and that the narrative of the visuals is to be gauged according to how they
match up to the lyrical content. Second, by not applying in some way or form, the
concept of mutual implication to video clips, which, as we will see, is a wide-spread
concept in popular music and film studies which goes under many theoretical names
(Tagg’s “tactile anaphones” {1992a: 22), Negus’s “repeated semiotic particles” {1996:
94}, Altman’s “audio dissolve” {1987: 63}). Third, by not applying his own concept of
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synaesthesia thoroughly to video clips. This might result in an analysis of disjuncture as

just an extreme example of amplification. If the ‘mood’ of a video clip is heavily
amplified, the result might seem like disjuncture unless the actual music was interpreted
synaesthetically and anaphonically. Goodwin himself starts to make this point (1993a:
87), but then seems to get sidetracked into lyrical content, and the role that the lyrics
play in communicating mood.
Of course, music is just as adept as lyrics at communicating mood, if not more
so. While this seems obvious, the subject is under-theorised owing to the difficulty in
writing about mood-communicating elements of music such as timbre. Timbre is a term
that suffers greatly in metalinguistic treatment. In an article about musical copyright,
Pareles confirms that “European music notation doesn’t take timbre into account . . . the
English language has remarkably few words to describe sounds” (1989: 12). Goodwin
claims that there is “no way of talking about timbre in traditional Western musicological
terms that even begins to be adequate to its role in establishing musical meaning in pop”
(1993a: 57), and Walser states that “Of all musical parameters, timbre is least often
analysed, but its significance can hardly be overstated . . .” (1993: 41). Most of the other
theorists in this field avoid the term altogether.
Perhaps the best discussion of musical timbre and semiotics is Roland Barthes’s
article entitled ‘The Grain of the Voice’ (1977: 179-189). Here Barthes attempts to
identify an element of communication in vocal performance beyond that of mere notes
and tones. This element, the ‘grain’, is “not – or is not merely – its timbre; the
significance it opens cannot be better defined, indeed, than by the very friction between
the music and . . . the particular language” (1977: 185). Musical grain is the raw, pure,
unadulterated communication of music – the physical viscerality of music. Vocal grain
is described “as though a single skin lined the inner flesh of the performer and the music
he sings (1977: 182). In his elaborate comparison of vocal performances by Panzera and
Fischer-Dieskau, Barthes is attempting to articulate an element of music that is
unmusical, yet inherent in the music all along – an expression of personality, a musical
texture, or an expression beyond musical affect – a pure synaesthetic experience.
Barthes’s description of a ‘single skin’ recalls pop music efforts to describe the singular
effect of combining two or three texts in one, of mutual implication and, as we will see,
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audio dissolves.
Visual timbre is a concept that applies Barthes’s ‘grain’ to music video, and the
mutually-implied combinations of sound and image. Visual timbre suggests that visual
image might infuse music and musical characteristics with a visual effect – that musical
grain might have a visual aspect. Perhaps visuality is the adjunct of timbre that Barthes
struggled to express by stating that musical grain was not merely timbre (1977: 185).
Visual timbre could thus allow the musicologist and the media/cultural theorist to
discuss products of synaesthesia that might otherwise escape articulation. The
characteristic of visual timbre in music video and sound/vision combinations plays the
same role as timbre in music, and mise en scène in film. If, as Goodwin suggests, visual
codes are inherent in music mediated by popular culture (popular music, film music,
etc.), then visual timbre is the ineffable phenomenological quality that music
communicates to an audience through its inherent visuality. The Australian Concise
Oxford Dictionary defines timbre as “the distinctive character of a musical sound or
voice apart from its pitch and intensity”. To paraphrase this definition, visual timbre is
the distinctive character of music video apart from its separate musical and visual
elements – but arising from their close fusion. To paraphrase Barthes, visual timbre is as
though a single skin lined the inner flesh of the music and the images inextricably
associated with, and deriving from it.
Barthes’s musical grain, applied as a visual concept, can thus be used to analyse
the effects of sound-vision fusion. Barthes acknowledges that musical grain can apply to
popular music as well as classical music (1977: 188), and this in fact achieved by Dave
Laing in his analysis of the ‘grain’ in ‘God Save The Queen’ as performed by the Sex
Pistols (1985: 54-56). If musical grain is inherent in music and yet beyond all standard
musical notation and emotion (Barthes, 1977: 182), and if musical grain can be
expressed visually, then perhaps one of the distinguishing marks of an effective sound-
image combination (be it classical or popular music) is that combination’s success in
articulating that inherent grain. As Barthes suggests that musical grain can only be
communicated viscerally, and since visual timbre would likely be received in the same
way, then perhaps the term can be used to identify (but not explain) specific
combinations of sound & image that are particularly effective and which establish such a
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presence in popular culture.

A model pattern of theory begins to emerge from all of these music theory
sources. Music and visual image are deeply inter-related and connected. Both classical
and popular music are inherently visual. The assumption that popular music is visual is
common enough that is arguably functions as an unconscious expectation for all music
in pop culture audiences. Synaesthesia is the unconscious mechanism that connects these
sounds and images on a neuropsychological level, and synaesthetic connections are
communicated through music-visual functions such as narrative, composite anaphones,
and genre synecdoches. The resulting synaesthetic fusion of sound and vision allows
music to communicate something of its ineffable quality; a grain, or visual timbre. The
fused results of synaesthetic connections are mediated through culture, in this case
Western art culture, which includes twentieth-century popular culture.
This model applies to classical music consumed in a pop culture context as well
as pop music consumed in a pop culture context. In fact, in popular culture, classical
music is commonly recontextualised as popular music. This idea has existed in
musicological literature for many years. Tagg writes:
When Rossini’s Overture to William Tell or some other classical “pop number” is . . . divorced
from its classical, ecclesiastical, aristocratic, haut bourgeois or art music context, then it is to be
regarded as popular music . . . (1979: 23)

This phenomenon is readily apparent in the commercial world, however, in both

the film and music industries, and can be observed on both sides: in pop culture as
viewed through film and pop music film soundtracks, and in the classical music
industry.
For years the classical music industry has been promoting the sale and
consumption of classical music as popular music, as a response to the steady and widely-
documented decline of classical music sales. The economic decline of classical music
has been so profound over the two decades, in fact, that many journalists and industry
leaders have anticipated the death of classical music as a commercial art form. This
theme recently appeared in two New York Times articles, respectively entitled ‘A Once
Proud Industry Fends Off Extinction’ (Kozinn, 1996) and ‘The Decline and Fall of the
Classical Empire’ (Holland, 1996). On the other side of the Atlantic, Norman Lebrecht
has written When The Music Stops: Managers, Maestros and the Corporate Murder of
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Classical Music (1996a) and explained ‘Why classical music is hearing its death knell’
in London’s The Guardian (1996b). The symptomatic promotion of classical music as
pop music is seen by many as a clear marketing tactic to rejuvenate what is perceived to
be a dying industry.
The most apparent manifestation of classical music’s successful contextual
metamorphosis into popular music, and the ultimate subject of this thesis, is the common
use of classical music in contemporary Hollywood film soundtracks. In Hollywood
films, classical music is now employed not as composed film music, but rather in the
same way that popular music is used in film. Films with aggressive pop music scores,
film credits, and pop music film soundtracks are culturally considered pop music
contexts, and thus the presence of classical music in these contexts effectively
recontextualises classical music as pop music.
Pop music and film have maintained a particular political relationship during
their long, fruitful, and ongoing association. Whilst Goodwin et al. argue convincingly
that popular music is inherently visual, many film makers, directors and film critics
further this observation by pointing out that most popular music is in fact cinematic. The
association between popular music and film, which, after all, stretches back to The Jazz
Singer, the very first sound film in history (Negus, 1996: 86), is extraordinarily rich and
has reinforced popular music’s inherent visual codes. Thompson is quite blunt: “Pop and
film have been together from the beginning” (1995: 34). Many of rock’s enduring visual
images — many of them star-image related — have derived from film, from The Who’s
Tommy and David Bowie’s The Man Who Fell To Earth, to Talking Heads’ Stop Making
Sense and Spike Lee’s use of Public Enemy in Do The Right Thing (Sinker, 1995: 107-
117). Again, this area of research has received very little academic attention. Director
Martin Scorsese, in a preface to Celluloid Jukebox, one of the few texts specialising in
this subject, writes:
The subject of popular music in motion pictures has been largely neglected in film studies –
which is surprising, given its overwhelming importance. . . . Music has always been a key source
of inspiration to me – it has the power to bring entire sequences to life. . . Since the advent of
sound, motion pictures and popular music have enjoyed an intimate relationship. (1995: 1)

Popular music in film also fulfils a similar role to composed film music: their
roles as signifieds are equivalent. Romney & Wootton compare on equal footing, “the
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repertoire of memorable pop moments in film” to “the more traditional canon of musical
epiphanies on screen – Dirk Bogarde’s sodden expiry to Mahler in Death in Venice. . .”
(1995b: 2). Pop music is slightly more complicated than composed film music in that
pop music can bring with it to the film screen an already-established field of visual
associations, whereas film music is composed specifically to work with its film, one way
or another. Romney & Wootton point out that “radical incongruity” (1995b: 5) can also
be extremely effective when combining popular music and visual image, citing the
infamous use of Stealer’s Wheel’s ‘Stuck In The Middle With You’ in Quentin
Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.
Successful combinations of popular music and film can be remarkably potent.
Director/actor Tarantino, who is famed for his shrewd use of popular music in his films,
states:
If a song in a movie is used really well, as far as I’m concerned, that movie owns that song, it can
never be used again. And if it is used again . . . You know, they used ‘Be My Baby’ in Dirty
Dancing and it’s like, that’s Mean Streets’ song, how dare you use ‘Be My Baby’. If you use a
song in a movie and it’s right, then, you know, you’ve got a marriage. Every time you hear that
song you’ll think of that movie. (Interview in Romney & Wootton, 1995a: 131)

When pressed for another specific example, Tarantino readily suggests a well-known
scene in the pilot episode of Miami Vice, which uses “. . . that Phil Collins song, ‘In The
Air Tonight’ – whenever I hear that song I see them [Crockett & Tubbs] driving at night,
getting ready to blow somebody away” (interview in Romney & Wootton, 1995a: 140).
Tarantino here is explaining the effects of a strong example of synaesthesia.
The intertextual nature of the use of popular music in film is well established.
Romney & Wootton claim that “nowadays, no use of pop in film can signify without
being filtered through our knowledge of the cultural codes which govern no longer just
film, but pop itself” (1995b: 2). More importantly, Romney & Wootton comment on and
uphold the likelihood that audiences are proficient at recognising pop music intertextual
references, and that this likelihood drives the use and choice of music in film by
directors who rely on this intertextual proficiency:
A more complex historical and cultural knowledge is addressed by Robert Zemeckis’
extraordinarily successful Forrest Gump. When Zemeckis uses a Doors song in a Vietnam
sequence, he is not merely using it to tell us the date. Rather, he is drawing on an audience’s
knowledge of Michael Herr’s now enshrined claim, in his book Dispatches, that Vietnam was ‘a
rock `n’ roll war’; their knowledge of that premise’s illustration in Apocalypse Now; their further
knowledge of the further elaborations of the ‘rock war’ myth in Good Morning, Vietnam and
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Oliver Stone’s war cycle. Every number in Forrest Gump – which boasts a staggeringly long
playlist – comes loaded with a cultural overdetermination that belies any notion of a song’s
‘innocent’ use. (1995b: 5)

Elsewhere, Romney & Wootton even claim that the use of popular music in film is so
widespread and accepted, that film is beginning to adapt in order to better accommodate
popular music’s different textual ideology:
With film-goers becoming as literate about the shorthand language of pop video as they are about
more traditional movie language, cinema has come to cater increasingly to the new tastes which
that shift has nurtured. Many films now contain – some are even composed predominantly of –
song-anchored sequences that are effectively videos-within-the-film, in which narrative needs are
subjugated to the rhythms and iconography of the hit. (1995a: 139)

Director Kevin Reynolds supports this deliberate incorporation of music video ideology
in film, in an interview about his 1997 film 187:
Music to me is 50% of the telling of any movie. I knew the kind of sound that I wanted for the
picture, so we set about trying to create a soundtrack with no composed music whatsoever and
used Massive Attack for our model and selected a lot of tracks that felt emotionally appropriate
for the scene. Some of the scenes are actually designed to the music. I had (done it before) but I’d
never been able to keep the music and use it in the final version of the film. This time we got to
and it was great. (quoted in Mock, 1997: 37)

Johnson and Poole cite a similar example, pointing out that Peter Weir deliberately
edited segments of his film Gallipoli in order to fit the music of Albinoni’s Adagio
(1998: 135). This practice has precedents back to 1968, when Stanley Kubrick applied
the same music-image ideological reversal with classical music in 2001: A Space
Odyssey:
For example, Kubrick’s use of [Johann Strauss II’s] “The Blue Danube” in the space station
docking scene meant that he had to cut the film to the contours of the music instead of the other
way around. (Mulhall, 1993: 6)

These comments also reinforce the importance of applied popular music and music
video theory to film texts.
In the same way as pop music, the frequency with which classical music is
currently incorporated into film (and the manner in which it is incorporated) serves to
emphasise – and act as an indicator of – classical music’s contextual equivalency with
popular music. Popular music has always been used in films, for as long as popular
music has existed, and of course classical music has also always been used in film, for as
long as films have existed, as outlined in the previous chapter. The relationship between
classical music and film has arguably been different from that of popular music
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however, until recently.

Whereas tracks of popular music used in film were usually featured elements of
the diegesis, and credited as such, classical music was often employed as a guilty,
inexpensive, and anonymous way to score a film. Usually uncredited, this classical
music would likely be in the public domain, and thus not present a problematic
copyright or royalty issue. As a result, the use of classical music as film score could be
(and often was) regarded with some degree of disdain by both audiences and film
composers (see following chapter). Over the last thirty years, however, classical music
seems to have been used more overtly (and played at higher volume in new Digital
Sound, Dolby, and THX-enhanced format cinemas), perhaps partly inspired by the
cross-over success of classical music in other commercial-art fields. Longer clips of the
music in question are often used. To reflect this, classical music is credited like popular
music in films, and has also successfully made the transition to film soundtrack pop
music marketing, where classical music clips are included onto the multi-million dollar
pop music soundtrack CD market. The contextual distinction between classical music
and popular music can thus be seen as dissolved for all practical purposes – both in pop
culture’s embrace of classical music, and in classical music’s embrace of popular
culture.
The connection between pop culture, pop music, and film soundtracks is well
established and the focus of widely-practiced marketing practice commonly called
“synergy” (Doty, 1988: 79) whereby large, multinational conglomerate entertainment
corporations will cross-market products in associated mass media.
Since A Star Is Born [1976] and Saturday Night Fever, many promotional campaigns have been
built on this cross-promotional model. Publicity for Flashdance (1983), Footloose (1984), Top
Gun (1986), and Dirty Dancing (1987) has included substantial music industry tie-ins, as well as
adding music video and videocassettes to the marketing network. (Doty, 1988: 76)

Innumerable examples of 1990s films could be mentioned here to update this point:
Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump, Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty, and Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet
are but three examples of recent films with extensive pop music soundtracks, cross-
promoted in this fashion. In films with a prominent amount of popular music, such as
those mentioned above, this music will be found scrupulously cited in the film’s credits;
name, songwriter, artist, and the record company which granted its use ‘courtesy of . . .’
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or ‘with permission’.
Over the last several years, in increasing numbers, classical music is being cited
alongside pop music in film credits as an equal, and this is the clearest indication of pop
culture’s contextual appropriation of classical music. The citation of popular music in
film credits plays a clear role in marketing popular music, as it identifies particular songs
(or fragments of songs) for the motivated buyer. Arguably, this serves to promulgate a
given piece of popular music in popular culture, playing a role in the cycle of synergetic
cross-marketing, including exposure like radio play. If legal citation of classical music is
not necessarily a justification for the inclusion of classical music credits, then the point
of providing details for classical music in films would seem to be pointing towards the
promulgation of classical music in popular culture. If some of the audiences for these
films are youth, then youth are arguably one of the target audiences for this
promulgation. Classical music credits will identify the name of the music and its
composer, as well as the orchestra or solo artist and usually the record company which
produced the particular track used. These credits scroll up the screen (or, in the case of
Fincher’s Se7en and Cronenberg's eXistenZ, down the screen) in exactly the same way,
and occupying the same celluloid space, as popular music credits. This homogeneity of
citation more than anything else acts as a visual affirmation that classical music and
popular music are contextually indistinguishable.
In this way, Mozart’s ‘Symphony No. 25’, performed by Capella Istropolitana
courtesy of Naxos of America, appears alongside Garbage’s ‘#1 Crush’, performed by
Garbage courtesy of Almo Sounds Inc./Mushroom Records UK Ltd., on the soundtrack
credits for Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. Similarly, Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A-
minor (K622), Horn Concerto No. 1 in D (K412), and Piano Trio in C (K548) appear
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alongside Hole’s ‘Rockstar’, Portishead’s ‘Glory Box’, and Stevie Wonder’s

‘Superstition’ in Stealing Beauty, and the citation for Elgar’s ‘Pomp and Circumstance’
enjoys the same screen credit time as KC and the Sunshine Band’s ‘Get Down Tonight’
in Forrest Gump. This practice of citing classical music alongside popular music has
clear benefits for the classical record companies, who are thus given the opportunity to
appear as that music’s definitive – if not sole – interpretation.
This might well be the motivation behind the marketing of back-catalogue
classical music as film soundtrack music, by classical music record labels. EMI Records
has released a series of thirty CDs called ‘Mini Classics’, most of which are pointedly
connected with popular films and television advertisements (see Illustration 3). Mozart’s
Clarinet Concerto (Adagio movement) is offered “as used in the film Out of Africa”,
Bizet’s ‘The Pearl Fisher’s Duet’ is advertised “as used in the film Gallipoli”, and
Mussorgsky’s ‘A Night on the Bare Mountain’ is promoted “as used in the Maxell tape
TV ad”. The popularity of this music – and thus its connection with popular culture – is
repeatedly stressed. Elgar’s ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ is presented “as popularised by
the Last Night of the Proms”, Johann Strauss II’s ‘The Blue Danube’ is described as “the
most popular waltz ever written”, and Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons is included as “one of
the most popular pieces of classical music of all time”. The illustrations on these CD
covers are also unmistakably contextualising the music contained therein with the pop
culture references cited in the tag lines. Mozart’s music from Out of Africa depicts two
African elephants shown in profile against the setting Serengeti sun, and the Bizet used
in Gallipoli has a black-and-white archive photograph of World War II soldiers charging
the enemy. Most interesting for this thesis is the Mini Classic CD of Wagner, which
includes ‘Ride of the Valkyries’: the CD tag line states “as used in the film Apocalypse
Now”, and the accompanying illustration depicts three heavily armed military
helicopters. Wagner’s music has been recontextualised as popular film music, and as the
theme music for Apocalypse Now.
This desire to sell classical music as pop music to the pop music audience does
not stop at mere film credit citation, however. As classical music is being used and cited
in films in the same way as popular music, so is it being actively marketed, promoted
and potentially consumed in the same way as popular music. In fact, classical music
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used in a film is often included on that film’s pop music soundtrack CD, as if it were a
pop music single. This can be seen, for example, on the pop music soundtrack for
Lynch’s Wild At Heart, which presents Richard Strauss’s ‘Im Abendrot’ performed by
Jessye Norman next to Powermad’s track ‘Slaughter House’. Similarly, the pop music
soundtrack for Stone’s Platoon, which features such 1960s staples such as ‘White
Rabbit’ by Jefferson Airplane and ‘Tracks Of My Tears’ by Smokey Robinson, also
contains Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings in G-minor, and Delibes’ Lakmé duet
‘Dôme Épais’ can be found alongside Chris Isaak’s ‘Wicked Game’ in the soundtrack to
Scott’s True Romance. More recently, the pop music soundtrack CD for Fincher’s
Se7en, which is largely composed of dark, heavy industrial rock music such as ‘Closer
To God’ by Nine Inch Nails & Trent Reznor, and ‘The Heart’s Filthy Lesson’ by David
Bowie, also offers the ‘Air’ from J.S. Bach’s Suite No. 3 in D-major, BWV 1068.
Nor is this a case of placing classical music in a little-known format where it
would receive little to no commercial interest. Pop music film soundtracks are
phenomenally successful, particularly in the last 15 years. Films such as Nichol’s The
Graduate and Hopper’s Easy Rider set the standard for commercially successful
compilation pop song soundtracks in the 1960s (Romney & Wootton, 1995b: 18; Doty,
1988: 74), and the practice was confirmed by the unprecedented success of Saturday
Night Fever in 1977 (Doty, 1988: 76). Recently, films such as Jackson’s The Bodyguard
(1992) have produced pop soundtracks that have reached well over triple platinum (or
three million) in sales (ibid). Other high profile film soundtracks in recent years include
those for Burton’s Batman Returns (double platinum); Newell’s Four Weddings And A
Funeral; Boyle’s Trainspotting (gold), Stiller’s Reality Bites (double platinum),
Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (triple platinum), and Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet. As of May
1997, the soundtrack for Romeo + Juliet had ‘gone quintuple platinum’, or sold over 5
million copies worldwide (Mengel, 1997: 15). On February 1st, 1997 Billboard
magazine reported four soundtracks in the Top 10 Pop Album Chart: Evita, Romeo +
Juliet, Space Jam, and The Preacher’s Wife – Evita and Romeo + Juliet holding the
second and third slots respectively (Entertainment Weekly #364, Jan. 31, 1997: p. 59).
The soundtrack to Titanic (1997), which is comprised of James Horner’s film score
music composed in a classical style plus a hit single ballad by Celine Dion, has sold over
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10 million copies to date, making it the fifth most popular film soundtrack of all time.
Classical music is often used to accompany the trailer or preview of a Hollywood
film, even if that music is not subsequently used in the film itself. Again, by being
mutually implicated with an advertisement shown either on television or in the cinema,
classical music is being recontextualised in popular culture. The trailer for Heston’s
1993 film Needful Things was edited to the rhythms of Grieg’s ‘In The Hall Of The
Mountain King’ from the Peer Gynt Suite, but Gustav Holst and Carl Orff are easily the
most popular classical composers for trailer scores, even if both were twentieth-century
artists composing in an earlier classical style. ‘O Fortuna’, Orff’s opening chorus to
Carmina Burana, has been much over-used: in trailers for Bushwacked, Cliffhanger,
Glory, Hamlet (1991), Highlander III, Jingle All The Way, The Nutty Professor (1996),
The Professional, Serpent’s Lair, Shadow of the Wolf, Warlock, and Waterworld (see
<http://www.filmmusic.com/music/trailers.html>); as film music for Boorman’s
Excalibur and Stone’s The Doors; and for television advertisements for Old Spice
cologne, Michael Jackson’s HIStory World Tour, and the television series American
Gothic. Holst’s suite The Planets has yielded trailer music for the film Persuasion (from
‘Jupiter’), Meteor Man (from ‘Mars’), Christopher Columbus: The Discovery (‘Mars’),
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (‘Mars’), and Star Trek:
Generations (‘Neptune’) (ibid). The choral section of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony also
maintains a high profile in pop culture, recently appearing in trailers for The Waterboy,
Blown Away, all three Die Hard movies, Killing Zoe, The Rock, and Sudden Death
(ibid), as well as in the jazzed-up theme music to recent television sitcom Suddenly
Susan. In advertisements, it can be heard in Foxtel’s 1999 cinema ads for The History
Channel, a 1999 television ad for Lay’s Potato Chips, and in SBS’s 1998 television ads
for the Japanese Manga series Neon Genesis: Evangelion.
1998 Television ads for Sony Playstation feature a chorus from Fauré’s Requiem;
Dolmio spaghetti sauce uses Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana; land developers
Creekwood/Forest Lake use Ravel’s Bolero. At a 1998 screening of the film Elizabeth, all
three of the movie ads screened before the trailers had classical music soundtracks:
Bellini’s ‘Casta Diva’ (from his opera Norma) was heard in a sexually provocative ad for
Jean Paul Gautier perfume; Delibes ‘Dôme Épais’ (from Lakmé) was employed by British
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Airways; and Handel’s Zadok the Priest was used in an ad for Jacob’s Creek Pinot Noir.
Notably, none of the above mentioned films, television shows, or advertisements
have anything to do with classical composers, either as topics, themes, or biographies –
all are firmly rooted in a pop culture context. The effective combination of Fauré’s
Requiem with an astonishingly ironic monologue delivered by a bizarre progression of
socially-marginalised characters in the advertisement for Sony Playstation (surely the
apotheosis of fin de siècle pop culture) deserves special note here (Video Clip 1).
A less obvious, but no less prevalent manifestation of pop culture’s contextual
acceptance of classical music is the incorporation of classical music into popular music
by pop musicians. This practice has occurred in pop music since its beginnings. Robert
Walser has written at length about the incorporation of classical music, musical styles,
and traditions into Heavy Metal music, outlining a tradition of appropriation and
recontextualisation that spans from The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
to Led Zeppelin, Ozzy Osbourne, and Bon Jovi (1993: 61-63). Walser also recognises
that:
Classical musics are alive and omnipresent in mass culture, despite the best efforts of proponents
of cultural apartheid . . . Mass mediation ensures that there can be no absolute separation of
“high” and “low” culture in the modern world; classically trained composers write film scores
that draw upon their conservatory studies but succeed or fail on their intelligibility and
meaningfulness for mass audiences. Classical music surely no longer signifies as it did originally,
but neither are its meanings ahistorical or arbitrary. It is available to culturally competitive groups
who claim and use its history, its prestige, and its signifying powers in different ways. (1993: 63)

Other genres of popular music employ classical music in this way. The pop band
Enigma has built an entire career, spanning three successful CDs, largely on the strength
of combining Gregorian chant with contemporary hip hop bass beats and underlying
rhythms. Malcolm McLaren had a hit single in 1984 with his track ‘Madam Butterfly’,
which used extensive vocal extracts from Puccini’s opera of the same name, again
accompanied by contemporary bass, drums and rhythm. More recently, drum & bass pop
artist Endorphin based two extremely successful 1998 pop singles on the melody and
musical structure of Erik Satie’s classical composition ‘Gymnopédies’, which Endorphin
called ‘Satie’11. Coolio’s 1997 song ‘See U When U Get There’ is built upon the bass
line and chord progression of Pachelbel’s ‘Canon’, as is ‘Altogether Now’ by The Farm
(1990) and ‘Rain & Tears’ by Aphrodite’s Child (1968) (Evans, 1999: 2). The Justified
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Ancients of Mu Mu have sampled Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ (Beadle, 1993:

119), and both Orbital and The Beloved have sampled the same Gregorian chant
sequence from a recent release entitled A Feather on the Breath of God, which features
chants composed in the twelfth century by Abbess Hildegard of Bingen (Beadle, 1993:
200). Pavarotti has also contributed sung opera lines (or similar music sung in an
operatic style) to Passengers, a film soundtracks side-project by the members of the
band U2.
Classical music has also embraced popular culture in a similar manner,
effectively meeting popular culture’s pursuit of the classics half-way. The classical
music industry has invested heavily in classical music CD compilations marketed around
contemporary and demographically-attractive elements of popular culture such as film.
Films arguably have the cultural distinction of being perceived as current and
contemporary and thus offer the classical music industry an easy, pre-constructed way to
recontextualise classical music in popular culture, thus negating traditional (and highly
subjective) classical music associations of being ‘stuffy’ and ‘boring’, etc. While some
classical CDs are marketed with titles such as The Idiot’s Guide To Classical Music
(Kozinn, 1996) (which are styled after the popular ‘Idiot’s Guide To . . .’ series of
computer self-help books), much more prolific are compilation CDs of classical music
found in the soundtracks of numerous Hollywood films.
Every classical music label operates at least one such series: Deutsche
Grammophon offers Mad About Movies and Mad About Movies (The Sequel); and EMI
has released Movies Go To The Opera, Son Of Movies Go To The Opera, and Madison
Avenue Goes To The Opera (which features music used in television advertisements),
amongst others. EMI has also released a two-CD collection entitled Movie Classics
through its sublabel Seraphim Records. Naxos has released an extensive CD series
called Cinema Classics, which is also the name of the series offered by Belart, a sublabel
of Polygram using music from Philips Classics and Decca. Telarc’s contribution to this
genre is Classics Of The Silver Screen. Not to be outdone, RCA Victor has produced
Classics At The Movies, Opera Goes To The Movies, Classics Go Hollywood and TV
Classics, and even smaller labels such as Silva Screen Records and Curstyle Masters

11
Remixes of the song ‘Satie’ included the ‘Chemical Satie Radio Edit’ and the ‘Remember Satie Radio Edit’.
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Classics have released CDs called Diva! Lesley Garrett: A Soprano at the Movies and
Classical Film Themes, respectively. London Records, a sublabel of Decca, offers a
twenty-CD collection called ‘Pavarotti’s Opera Made Easy’, one of which is entitled My
Favourite Opera In The Movies. The repertoire of music on all of these CDs is
remarkably similar: Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, Strauss’s Also sprach
Zarathustra, Puccini’s ‘Nessun Dorma’, and Delibes’s ‘Dôme Épais’ are recurring
favourites. The liner notes for Deutsche Grammophon’s Mad About Movies are typical
of this approach and clearly indicate the industry’s marketing strategy:
Turn down the lights, get out the popcorn, and let MAD ABOUT MOVIES thrill you with the
most memorable classical music from Hollywood’s hottest hits. Superstar singers, great
orchestras and stellar soloists offer top-notch performances, captured in superb all-digital sound.
(Barbero, 1993)

The use of phrases such as “hottest hits” and “superstar singers”, coupled with the pop-
culture-accessible CD cover art, clearly positions these releases in the popular music
field – and positioned as far away as possible from the perceived mustiness of
stereotypical classical music marketing.
To reinforce this marketing approach, EMI’s The Movies Go To The Opera also
contains liner notes in a very casual, conversational tone:
You asked for it! Angel Records' good friends, the record dealers of North America, tell us that
listeners in unprecedented numbers have asked for help in identifying the wonderful melodies
they've been hearing lately at the movies. It seems that filmmakers have taken to scoring their
new films with excerpts from opera – borrowing freely from the arias and duets, overtures and
intermezzos of Puccini, Verdi, Mascagni, Wagner and Bizet, to name but a few. For opera lovers
in the audience it's a welcome development, long overdue. For many other movie-goers, it's a
delightful new experience – they're becoming aware of this music for the very first time, and
wanting to hear more! (Scrimm, 1988)

This informal language is deliberately chosen to position the product in contemporary,

pop culture context, outside of the classical music context and its pejorative connotations
of class, complexity, and elitism.
The other consistent element in the marketing and cultural positioning of these
kinds of CDs is the assumption that consumers are first-time classical music buyers.
Once more, this reinforces the notion that purchasers of these CDs are pop music
consumers, not classical music cognoscenti. Scrimm, above, states: “For many other
movie-goers, it's a delightful new experience – they're becoming aware of this music for
the very first time, and wanting to hear more!” (ibid); a sticker affixed to RCA Victor’s
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CD Opera Goes To The Movies proclaims “You know more about classics than you
think!” and inside his ‘Opera Made Easy’ series, Pavarotti’s “Personal Note” reads:
Opera is now everywhere and for everyone – it is no longer just for the fortunate few. Opera can
be heard on television, in the movies, and even in the parks . . . . So come . . . Andiamo!. . . let me
introduce you to my world, the world of Opera . . . made easy! (Pavarotti, 1994)

The back cover of RCA Victor’s Classics At The Movies outlines three easy steps for the
nonmusical or pop music consumer to enjoy this kind of classical music:
Welcome to the Classics . . .
Step One: If you’ve seen the films Amadeus, Die Hard, Fatal Attraction, or Moonstruck, you’ve
heard and enjoyed classical music. From Hollywood blockbusters to television commercials to
the music at the mall, Mozart, Bach and their pals are all around us . . .
Step Two: The RCA Victor Basic 100 collects together critically acclaimed recordings to create
a series that covers all the essential pieces you’ll need in your classical music collection . . .
Step Three: If you’re like a lot of people who’ve always enjoyed classical music but never knew
how to start listening to it (or, in fact, how to buy it), why not send away for The RCA Victor
Beginner’s Guide To Classical Music, an entertaining and informative guide through some of
the world’s most popular music. (Eagle, 1991)

Other liner notes adopt a similar approach, discussing the music in very simple, non-
musicological terms, and clearly assuming no previous knowledge of classical music.
These CDs seem specifically aimed at the pop music audience. This approach is
evidently successful: the liner notes for EMI’s Son of The Movies Go To The Opera
claim that The Movies Go To The Opera “quickly took its place as No. 1 Best-Selling
Classical Album in the nation [U.S.A.] and held that position for a remarkable 27 weeks.
Almost two years later, it is still a best-seller . . .” (Scrimm, 1990).
Occasionally a film soundtrack featuring all classical music will cross-over into
the pop music market on the basis of its film’s commercial success in popular culture. A
number of Academy Award-winning film biographies of classical musicians have
enjoyed this kind of cross-over success. Forman’s Amadeus was instrumental in
exposing Mozart’s music to an unprecedented pop music/pop culture audience, and
interest in/sales of Mozart recordings rose accordingly. More recently, Hicks’ 1996 film
Shine has transformed classical pianist David Helfgott into a household name, as well as
Rachmaninoff’s third Piano Concerto, which features prominently in the film. The
soundtrack to Shine, which excerpts the Rachmaninoff concerto, has enjoyed high
profile marketing in the pop music department of large record stores such as HMV,
Virgin Records, and Tower Records around the world, where it was presumably
considered (if not purchased) by pop music consumers.
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Less commercially successful examples of this film genre would include

Girard’s 1993 film Thirty-Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, and Corbiau’s Farinelli
(1994), both of which attempted to resituate Gould and Farinelli, respectively, in a
context compatible with popular culture. To do this, Farinelli emphasised promiscuity,
heaving bosoms, alcohol abuse and the ravages of excess, whereas Thirty-Two Short
Films About Glenn Gould was directed with an innovative, fragmented narrative
structure similar to pop music videos. Immortal Beloved, a 1994 film about Beethoven
directed by Bernard Rose, clearly relied on the box-office appeal of popular actor Gary
Oldman (best known for his portrayal of Sex Pistol’s bass guitarist Sid Vicious in Cox’s
Sid and Nancy) in the lead role to establish a pop culture context. All three of these films
also produced film soundtracks comprised of the appropriate classical music:
Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical/Romantic eras, respectively.
Another obvious example of this growing trend in classical music marketing is
the success of The Three Tenors, who head the top of the income list for all classical
musicians. Pavarotti earned an estimated $12-16 million dollars for the 1995-96 season,
and Domingo and Carreras earned an estimated $10 million each (Lebrecht, 1996b: 6).
Each artist earned $1.5 million dollars (U.S.) each per night on their recent Three Tenors
tour. As of November 1996 The Three Tenors had sold approximately 1.6 million copies
of their recent album, which was at least in the same league as the 11 million copies of
‘Jagged Little Pill’ sold by pop artist Alanis Morissette, but far beyond 29,000 copies of
‘Appalachia Waltz’ sold by Yo-Yo Ma, who nonetheless was Number 1 on the Billboard
Classical Chart (Kozinn, 1996) at that time. Originally a warm-up concert for the World
Cup, the Three Tenors concert tours have become indistinguishable in form, logistics,
promotion, economics and spirit from concerts by leading pop artists such as U2, The
Rolling Stones, and R.E.M. Similar observations can be made about violinists Nigel
Kennedy and Vanessa Mae, both of whom are actively involved in recontextualising
their classical music as popular music. Currently, a Finnish quartet of classical cellists
going by the name of Apocalyptica are being engaged to play Metallica songs as a
warm-up band for the Sex Pistols and Sepultura (punk and speed/thrash metal music,
respectively), where audience members mosh and stage-dive to their music.
Apocalyptica have sold over 100,000 copies of their CD in Europe and Asia (Connors,
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1997: 7). Finland’s National Opera Orchestra has also recently become internationally
renown through the exploits of violinist Linda Lampenius, who now plays on a white
electric violin wearing next to nothing, in order that her supermodel looks and figure
keep the audience interested. Australian cross-over/classical string quartet Fourplay have
released a CD of pop cover tunes, including an impressive version of the Beastie Boy’s
‘Sabotage’, which enjoyed success on Australia’s national ‘alternative’ pop music radio
station, Triple J.
Furthermore, classical music’s successful attempts to cross over to the popular
music audience can also be seen in the popularity of (and marketing strategy behind)
Chant (called Canto Gregoriano in England) a collection of pure Gregorian chant
recorded by the Benedictine monks of Santo Domingo de Silos. Initially a surprise hit,
Angel EMI records quickly positioned the CD as a pop record, establishing prominent
point-of-sale displays of the CD in the pop and rock sections of large departmentalised
record stores such as HMV, Tower, and Virgin Records, and placing advertisements on
MTV and in Rolling Stone magazine. This cross-over marketing strategy was immensely
successful, selling over 2 million copies (double platinum) of the CD in 1994, eventually
reaching the number three slot in the Billboard Top 200. Angel EMI also released a
‘video’ accompaniment to the CD, which featured footage of surf, meadows, flying
seagulls, and other visual images associated with meditation and ‘new-age’ iconography.
This videotape, which, like the CD, featured surreal, unconventional cover art in order to
promote its pop music context, was also sold and actively promoted in the popular music
departments of major record chain stores, particularly at Christmas that year.
The success of Chant in turn generated a slew of related Gregorian chant
recordings, several of which were also very popular with the pop music-buying
demographic: Abbess Hildegard of Bingen’s A Feather on the Breath of God was
perhaps the best-known example of this recent trend. Re-releases of Hildegard of
Bingen’s chants were also marketed under the titles Vision and Canticles of Ecstasy –
this latter recording incorporating contemporary rhythms in order to appeal to the pop
music rave, ambient & trance subcultures (ecstasy being this subculture’s primary drug
of choice). In all cases, Gregorian chant (a rather austere form of classical music by any
standard) was successfully sold to the usual consumers of popular music by
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positioning/marketing the music in a pop music context – including associating the

music with pop culture imagery.
One of the best incorporations of pop culture imagery and paraphernalia in order
to recontextualise classical music as popular would have to be a 1997 classical music
compilation CD called Earquake, recorded by the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, who
have concentrated on music famed for its loud dynamics. This CD actually contains two
yellow foam ear-plugs stuck into the CD jewel case spine, “for your neighbor”, and the
cover depicts a young man holding a sleek ‘ghetto-blaster’ being blown into outer space,
presumably by the volume of the Earquake CD. The jewel case sticker reads:
Steel plates, rocks, anvils, heavy metal chains, sirens, cannons and a 140 piece orchestra come
together IN THE LOUDEST CLASSICAL MUSIC of all time!

Finally, in this respect, particular note must be made of a compact disc from EMI
sublabel Angel called Heavy Classix, which represents an obvious example of classical
music being marketed and sold as pop music. This 1991 compilation of classical tracks
is clearly produced and marketed for a particular sub-genre of pop music: heavy metal
music. This cover of this compact disc features an ironic representation of the
stereotypical Wagnerian diva, Brünnhilde, who looks to weigh about 300 pounds and is
complete with full body armour and a massive horned helmet to visually reinforce the
‘heavy metal’ connection which it promotes (see Illustration 4). The modern pop culture
visual stereotype of Brünnhilde as an obese woman (unfortunately reinforced by
sopranos such as Rita Hunter) also has its roots in Wagner’s music: popular culture has
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conflated the weight of the Valkyrie and the horse on which she rides into one 300
pound female package12.
The music offered on the disc Heavy Classix has been chosen on the basis of its
high volume dynamics and themes of war, terror, insanity, the occult and the Devil, all
of which are supposed to appeal to fans of similar elements in heavy metal music. These
tracks include ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ from Wagner’s Die Walküre; ‘Mars, the
Bringer of War’ from Holst’s The Planets, and Berlioz’s ‘Hungarian March’ from The
Damnation of Faust. To further the appeal to the heavy-metal music market, the inside
track listing on this CD has been entirely translated into German, regardless of the
music’s original language of composition. Tchaikovsky’s ‘1812 Overture’ is thus
offered as “Ouvertüre 1812” in order to use the Germanic umlaut so attractive to heavy-
metal fans (see Walser, 1993, for a discussion on the use of Germanic and Celtic
traditions to assert authenticity in heavy metal music).
The specificity of the target demographic here is quite remarkable. This appears
to be a concentrated effort by a classical record company to attract a pop music
subculture who are traditionally positioned at the opposite end of the musical/cultural
spectrum. Once again, the liner notes emphasise the positioning of classical music as
pop music:
Where do many heavy metal bands get their inspiration?
Listen to the introduction of Metallica’s “Am I Evil” and you’ll recognize “Mars, the Bringer of
War” from Holst’s The Planets Suite. You’ll also recognize passages from intros and pieces
rearranged/interpreted/borrowed by the likes of Deep Purple and Rainbow, not to mention
soundtracks from your favourite films and TV commercials.
With Heavy Classix, EMI Classics has compiled the original heavy metal thunder. Fifteen head-
banging compositions including the 1812 Overture, Romeo and Juliet, and naturally, Wagner’s
Valkyrie. Sixty-six minutes of the loudest music ever written. There’s enough high-volume
histronics on Heavy Classix to keep the most demanding fan of thunderous music satisfied. This
is probably the sort of stuff that had nineteenth century headbangers lined-up around the block for
the best seats.
Performed by the world’s finest orchestras under the direction of the cream of contemporary
conductors, this is the classical album everybody should have – even if they think they don’t like
classical music. (Heavy Classix, 1991)

The recurring presence of classical music in this pop culture context graces

12
This stereotype is endemic in pop culture. For example, in the film Robin Hood: Men In Tights (1993), Marion’s maid is portrayed
as a ‘comically’ fat, German-accented woman named Brünnhilde whose heavy weight is constantly played for laughs.
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composers like Wagner and Strauss with a particular cultural cachet, given the
commercial success and high cultural profile of pop music. While a consumer of pop
music (say on a compilation pop music film soundtrack) may never mistake the pop
music of Powermad for the classical music of Richard Strauss, the mere juxtaposition of
the two – the commercial sanctioning of classical music’s recontextualisation – is what
is important.
The implied focus on a young purchasing demographic in these marketing
exercises suggests a youth audience for the recontextualisation of classical music as
popular music. The connection between recontextualised classical/pop music and youth
audiences is made explicitly in Kirsten Krauth’s review of the 1998 LOUD Festival, an
Australian arts festival which specifically targets audiences between the ages of 12 and
25:
The intention of LOUD, EP Brandon Saul says, is to “file down the distinction between popular
culture and high arts”. Yeah, but young people already see films, watch videos, listen to music
and surf websites that blend high/pop culture; those distinctions aren’t significant any more.
(1998: 3)

Krauth’s comments support Rosen’s notion of a “new aesthetic” (1997: 57), and
contributes to the overall vision of Eco’s “metasemiotic culture” (1986: 210), as outlined
in Chapter 1.
The need to apply popular music theory to classical music case studies thus
seems apparent. If popular culture audiences are watching, listening and purchasing
classical music in the same way as popular music and pop music video, then all of the
attendant theoretical processes of synaesthesia and musical sign typologies that shape
the reality of pop music should also come to bear on classical music, and particularly
classical music as it is associated with visual image in popular culture. The combination
of classical music and contemporary film can be analysed as a classical music ‘video’:
just as pop music is visual as much as aural, so classical music is becoming more visual.
These visuals are specific in content: they are the associated scenes of Hollywood films.
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Chapter 3 ~ Film Music Theory

The field of film music theory would seem to provide the most obvious source of
theory concerned with the use of pre-existing music in Hollywood film, be it classical or
popular music. While one text edited by Romney & Wootton (1995) examines the use of
pop music in film, no equivalent work exists for classical music and film. The entire
body of literature on film music is notable for its failure to address this subject in
anything other than a passing, often historical note, and certainly no mention is made of
the special relationship classical music might have with film, with their possibilities of
congruent narratives, historical recontextualisations, and potential for ironic,
metasemiotic referentiality.
Before this can be examined, however, some definitions need to be clarified.
There is much confusion in film music literature regarding the use of terminology,
particularly with the word ‘classical’. In musicology, ‘classical’ music refers specifically
to an age of musical composition that dates approximately from 1780 to 1820, spanning
composers Mozart to Beethoven. As such, the Classical Age followed the Baroque Age
(Vivaldi, Handel), and was in turn succeeded by the Romantic (Wagner, Liszt).
However, today the term ‘classical’ music is most often used in a colloquial, diluted
form, to distinguish the music of all these ages from twentieth-century forms of music
such as jazz and popular music (in its myriad forms). For the purposes of this thesis, and
simplicity (and as previously outlined in the Introduction), the term classical music will
be used in its popular, colloquial sense, referring to music composed in, or in the style
of, the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Romantic Ages.
In film music literature ‘classical’ is used in a different sense, which reflects the
minimal influence of formal musicology in film music studies, and the failure to address
the role that repertoire Baroque, Classical, and Romantic Age music plays in film music.
For film music scholars and critics, ‘classical’ is often used to describe film score music
composed specifically for a given film in a ‘classical’ style, which in fact means the
music sounds like it might have been composed by a Romantic Age contemporary of
Wagner, Liszt, or Strauss (Kalinak, 1992; Brown, 1988; Flinn, 1992; Evans, 1975;
Bazelon, 1975).
Classical music is most often mentioned in film music theory as an historical
note, as it was commonly used as accompaniment to silent films (Manvell & Huntley,
1957: 16-17; Evans, 1975: 5; Prendergast, 1977: 10; Bazelon, 1975: 13-14). Max
Winkler is often cited (and indeed cites himself) as the inventor of ‘cue-sheets’, which
suggested appropriate piano music for general themes, such as ‘storms’, ‘witches’, and
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‘marriages’; the music included liberal selections from Beethoven, Wagner, Berlioz,
Ravel, and others (Gorbman, 1987: 35, 85; MacKay, 1992: 14; Brown, 1988: 170;
Prendergast, 1977: 8). These cue-sheets evolved into the Motion Picture Moods for
Pianists and Organists: A Rapid Reference Collection of Selected Pieces Adapted to
Fifty-Two Moods and Situations, compiled by Ernö Rapée in 1924 (Gorbman, 1987: 85;
Brown, 1988: 171) and considered at that time “the definitive lexicon of film-musical
connotation” (Gorbman, loc.cit.). Classical music composed by Wagner, Beethoven,
Grieg, Chopin and Mendelssohn made up the staples (ibid). The most common citation
of this nature (as well as one of the first well-known instances of Wagner being
employed as film music) is D.W. Griffith’s use of Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in
The Birth of a Nation (1914), to accompany the ride of the Ku Klux Klan (Gorbman,
1987: 35; Huckvale, 1994: 135-136; Brown, 1988: 171-172; MacKay, 1992: 14; Evans,
1975: 9; Prendergast, 1977: 13; Bazelon, 1975: 15; Manvell & Huntley, 1957: 21;
Lindgren, 1963: 135).
On the rare occasions when classical music does warrant a mention in the
literature, the tone is consistently contemptuous. This dates back to the very beginning
of film music theory, which was largely written or heavily influenced by film score
composers such as Hanns Eisler, and often written as primers or textbooks for young
students of film music composition. Eisler, like his colleagues, held very clear opinions
about the use of classical music in film, and these opinions subsequently shaped a whole
generation of Hollywood film composers. In his seminal work Composing For The
Films (1947), written in collaboration with Theodor Adorno, Eisler outlines the use of
‘stock music’ as one of his nine “Prejudices and Bad Habits”:

One of the worst practices is the incessant use of a limited number of worn-out musical pieces
that are associated with the given screen situations by reason of their actual or traditional titles.
Thus, the scene of a moonlight night is accompanied by the first movement of the Moonlight
Sonata, orchestrated in a manner that completely contradicts its meaning, because the piano
melody – suggested by Beethoven with the utmost discretion – is made obtrusive and is richly
underscored by the strings. For thunderstorms, the overture to William Tell is used; for weddings,
the march from Lohengrin or Mendelssohn’s wedding march. These practices – incidentally, they
are on the wane and are retained only in cheap pictures – correspond to the popularity of
trademarked pieces in classical music, such as Beethoven’s E-flat Concerto, which has attained
an almost fatal popularity under the apocryphal title The Emperor, or Schubert’s Unfinished
Symphony. The present vogue of the latter is to some extent connected with the idea that he
composer died before it was finished, whereas he simply laid it aside years before his death. The
use of trademarks is a nuisance, though it must be acknowledged that childlike faith in the eternal
symbolic force of certain classical wedding or funeral marches occasionally has a redeeming
aspect, when these are compared with original scores manufactured to order. (15 – 16)
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This disparaging tone is found echoed in all film music theory. Without acknowledging
any advantages at all, Manvell and Huntley write that
The disadvantages of using established music in dramatic films are several. The chief
disadvantage is that it has an artistic vitality independent of the film. Its familiarity to the public
has already made it into a breeding-ground for emotional responses which may or may not help
the particular atmosphere or situation in the film. (1957: 66)

This is precisely the argument presented by Lindgren:

The use of well-known music is even more distracting, and has the additional disadvantage that is
often has certain associations for the spectator which may conflict entirely with the associations
the producer wishes to establish in his film . . . The use of classical music for sound films is
entirely to be deplored. . . (1963: 139-140)

The notion that classical music is distracting to the film audience seems to start with
Steiner:
. . . the American people . . . are still not entirely familiar with all the old and new masters’ works
and would thereby be prone to ‘guessing’ and distraction (1938: 225)

and is subsequently picked up by Williams:

We would not underline a dramatic film with a Beethoven symphony because, no matter how
good the film, the audience might end up listening to Beethoven (1974: 42).

Bazelon, sounding almost like a classical musicologist, feels that the overpowering
medium of film washes away the true beauty of ‘concert pieces’, in commenting on a
topic that Claudia Gorbman would later examine in more patient detail:
Aside from functional considerations, my objections to the excessive practice of using concert
pieces are fundamentally pragmatic and aesthetic. The marriage of a concert piece to a film is not
an equal partnership. With this conjugal arrangement, the piece itself loses importance: only the
music’s ability to convey a mood or an association has any validity . . . Moreover, the shape,
content, and complexity of the music – its interrelationship of parts and subtleties of nuance,
balance, and detail – shrink or disappear altogether when interlocked with the visual image. A
good portion of its concert-hall punch is lost. (1975: 134-135)

Bazelon does believe, however, that “the strategic placement of concert pieces in a
dramatic context . . . can be effective” (1975: 133), and he quickly skims over several
examples of exclusively diegetic classical music in film, where the music serves as “a
dramatic device” or contributes basic associations such as “classical purity” (1975: 134).
In spite of these grudging concessions, Bazelon’s overall opinion of the combination of
classical music and film is that “the incorporation of concert pieces into numerous films
is a hangover from early film days” (1975: 133). Film composer Bernard Herrmann
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could always be relied upon to offer no-nonsense answers to a given question, as in this
interview with Royal Brown shortly before Herrmann’s death in 1975:
Brown: What do you think about the use of already existing music in a film?
Herrmann: I think it’s stupid. What’s it got to do with the film? Nothing. Cover
it up with chocolate ice cream, that’s about it! (Brown, 1994: 291)

This general feeling is echoed by more recent film theorists such as Gorbman
and Caryl Flinn, film music psychologists who have both focussed on the fact that most
composed film score music is intended to be perceived unconsciously. Both Gorbman
and Flinn view repertoire classical music as music that runs a high risk of being
consciously perceived. Gorbman dismisses classical music used in film as “musical
clichés” (1987: 86) before going on to cite the aforementioned quotation by Eisler.
Gorbman also subscribes to the (pre)1937 notion of distraction. Using the opening of
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony by way of example, a choice of example that seems
cribbed directly from Williams, Gorbman claims that “. . . since the filmgoer knows this
musical warhorse, his/her pleasure in recognizing it in a new context threatens to
interfere with “reading the story” of the film” (1987: 17). Caryl Flinn supports this view
of classical music as inappropriate distraction (1992: 35-36) in much the same way,
citing Kurt London, Max Steiner, Manvell & Huntley, and Ernest Gold, amongst others
(1992: 36-38).
Several authors have merely incorporated the use of classical music as examples
and case studies into their investigations of various aspects of film music theory without
making any theoretical distinction between composed film score and repertoire classical
pieces, effectively collapsing any fundamental cultural difference between them. In his
1996 article ‘Film Music and Narrative Agency’, Jerrold Levinson uses examples such
as Bernard Herrmann’s composed score for Vertigo and Stanley Kubrick’s use of music
by Beethoven and Rossini in A Clockwork Orange in order to make a narrative
distinction between an implied narrator and a ‘perceptual enabler’, without providing
any cultural contextualisation. Royal Brown acknowledges that “the 1960s, for instance,
saw what must be considered as an important shift in the use of pre-existing classical
music on the nondiegetic music track” (1994: 239) but fails to engage the phenomenon
in any greater detail. Most confusedly, in an article promisingly entitled ‘Film and
Classical Music’ Brown rejects an historical or even a pop culture definition of classical
music (as outlined above), which he instead defines in terms of “. . . the complexity of
its composition” (1988: 166). This definition is seemingly constructed in order to allow
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Brown to talk about composed film scores, rather than the classical repertoire, and
indeed a broad discussion of Steiner, Herrmann et al. duly follows.
It is plain, then, that the general feeling towards classical music as film music has
remained largely unchanged since the 1930s, and that no new theoretical work has been
put forward to assess this combination of art forms since that time. To the best of my
knowledge there has never been an investigation into analysing classical music and film
as an exercise in intertextuality. There are several reasons for this. Early film music
theory, written by film music composers, was naturally biased against the use of
repertoire classical music as it threatened their livelihood. The ensuing solid body of
theory that disparages classical music in film allows later theoreticians to neatly close
off that particular avenue of inquiry in their pursuit of other areas of interest, as in the
case of Gorbman, Flinn, and Kalinak. In addition, I believe that intelligent, intertextual
combinations of classical music and film are a relatively new phenomenon in film-
scoring, deeply connected with the rise and wide dissemination of popular culture. Only
since the 1960s has classical music been employed in a manner that begs attention.
Indications that the use of classical music in film in the 60s and early 70s was starting to
make impressions on critics and audiences can be found in the repetition of brief
references to the use of Mozart in Widerberg’s 1967 film Elvira Madigan (Bazelon,
1975: 133; Evans, 1975: 203; Brown, 1988: 179), and of Mahler in 1971’s Death in
Venice (Huckvale, 1988: 46, 64; Evans, 1975: 203; Romney & Wootton, 1995b: 2;
Levinson, 1996: 249). The last 20 years in particular have witnessed the practice of
combining classical music with film in such a consistent, successful, and wide-spread
manner that it can be no longer considered just a symptom of lazy film scoring. These
dates have an evident correlation with the rise of conscious intertextuality in film
making and music marketing, and the rise and visibility of popular culture: all of these
concepts are deeply intertwined.
In addition, there is tendency amongst film music scholars to dismiss the use of
classical music in film as merely clichéd. This response is largely due to the lack of
cross-disciplinary study between musicology and film studies, in that there seems to be a
vague perception amongst film music scholars that (a) musicology is an arcane, highly
technical and theorised science, with its own language, rendering it effectively foreign;
and (b) that there is such a huge body of musicological theory about, say, Wagner, that
any analysis of Wagner and film would be instant prey to criticisms of gross
decontextualisation. This underlying feeling seems to suggest a belief that Wagner and
his classical music somehow do not belong in film music analysis on the basis of
contextual incompatibility: the analysis of cultural apples and oranges. In this notion,
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classical music is the anomaly, the ‘one-off’, the exception to the rule, whereas
composed score music, which shares a cultural art-form context with the film for which
the music is composed, can be seamlessly integrated into academic theory synthesis.
This is obviously nonsense, but it illustrates the strong ideological bias in film
music theory, which favours the visual over the aural. The neglect of classical music in
film music theory exposes the hegemony of the visual image in film music theory, in
spite of many authors’ pained lengths to avoid this trap. This is not surprising, as film
music theory is usually a subgenre of film theory, after all. Gorbman writes of “the
visual chauvinism of saying ‘point of view’” (1987: 2) rather than “point of experience”,
but fails to advance past the ideas of Eisler with respect to classical music. Carroll
introduces the concept of “modifying music” (1996: 141), whose role is solely to act
upon the on-screen images and never the other way around. Kalinak writes at length
about the relationship between the visual and the aural:
. . . classical film theory reproduces this bias [of visual over aural], prioritizing the visual at the
expense of the aural, and rendering problematic an uncritical adoption of its central and highly
influential paradigm for the relationship between sound and image: the transcendent power of the
image and the dependence of the soundtrack. (1992: 20)

Kalinak ultimately fails to escape this dialectic, however, by discussing film music as a
narrative force in a film. Having narrowed her focus to composed film scores, this is
only natural, as composed film scores are plainly written for a film after that film has
been shot, and this industrial chronology leads to inescapable ideological relationships
between film and film score. These do not exist for classical music however (nor, for
that matter, with many pop music soundtracks). When classical music brings its own
narratives, history, and mythology to a film, new theoretical approaches must be made
that allow for the free and equally-weighted interplay between film and classical music,
and each of their respective imagery, narratives, and mythology. This approach is
justified by the existence of a pop culture, intertextual, metasemiotic audience, as
examined at length in the previous chapter.
Having made this point, and in the spirit of Kristeva’s theory of intertextual
appropriation, there are many ideas and issues in film music theory that can shed much
light on how classical music and film interact. These can be divided into three areas; the
theory of musical narrative, the issue of diegesis, and the notion of “mutual implication”,
suggested by Gorbman (1987: 15). Research demonstrates that the concept of mutual
implication is popular and widespread, and can found under other names by theorists in
differing forms of artistic music-visual combination, such as popular music video and
the musical film genre.
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Film music theory that explains how music acts as a narrative is well-developed.
This is the major theme in all film music theory done in the last twenty years, including
work by Gorbman (1987), Huckvale (1988, 1990, 1994), Warren (1989), Carroll (1988,
1996), Kalinak (1992), Brown (1988, 1994), Hillman (1995), Tarasti (1978), Flinn
(1992), Levinson (1996), Smith (1996), and Bruce (1985, 1992, 1993), who has written
an entire book on the narrative film music of composer Bernard Herrmann. Throughout
this body of literature, the narrative role of film music can be divided into two areas: the
inherent musical codes of music (and their narrative impact) and the contextual musical
codes of music, both film and cultural contexts. Both of these areas can be easily applied
or adapted to the use of classical music in film.
There are also two additional applications of narrative theory that offer
contributions to this thesis, and both are specifically related to the use of pre-existing
classical music as film music. This first application of musical narrative to classical
music used in film grows from the established operation of leitmotifs in film music, but
in this case involves the operation of entire piece of music as a leitmotif itself. Rather
than remain peculiar to a single film, the referential nature of this musical leitmotif
carries meaning from film to film, on a scale that encompasses all films in popular
culture. In this way a musical reference may operate as a ‘metaleitmotif’, absorbing
narrative meaning and connotation from its contextual film as self-referential cultural
icon. Second, consideration must be made of the historical narrative context that some
classical music brings with it. This is the narrative context that so dismayed early film
music theorists in their discussion of classical music in film, but many examples of this
film music combination are not that distracting, owing to the congruence or parallel
between the historical narrative and the new film recontextualisation.
The issue of inherent musical-narrative codes can be easily applied to classical
music, as in fact classical music was precisely the tradition from which film music
composers (and subsequently theorists) derived their material. This connection, between
composed score music and the Romantic Age musical tradition, is well-established.
Gorbman develops at length the symbiosis between Max Steiner’s score for Mildred
Pierce and “the Wagnerian principles of motifs and leitmotifs” (1987: 3), and Flinn
devotes an entire chapter of her book to this relationship, entitled ‘The New
Romanticism: Hollywood Film Composition in the 1930s and 1940s’, stating that “. . .
most scores were composed in a manner deeply influenced by late romantic composers
like Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss” (1992: 13). By way of setting the scene for
the arrival for composer Bernard Herrmann, Bruce reminds us that “. . . in 1940, a
particular style of film music had become firmly established. That style may be
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succinctly described as the symphonic style of late nineteenth-century European

romanticism” (1985: 5).
Huckvale writes that “much of the film music for the popular market shares a
common heritage with Germanic Romantic music – especially opera – and the most
obvious traceable roots of the film-score style can be found in Weber, Wagner, and
Liszt” (1988: 46), and this theme runs through several other of his publications (1990;
1994). Prendergast had earlier stressed the similarity between Romantic opera and
Hollywood film:
Why did these [film] composers choose the style they did, namely, the mid-to-late nineteenth
century symphonic idiom as exemplified in the stage works of Wagner, Puccini, Verdi, and
Strauss? . . . When confronted with the kind of dramatic problems presented to them, Steiner,
Korngold and Newman merely looked (whether consciously or unconsciously is unimportant) to
those composers who had, for the most part, solved almost identical problems in their operas.
(1977: 39)

Brown claims the range of film music style extends “from late romantic to post-
modernist” but describes early Hollywood film music as having “a decidedly late
romantic cast to it” (1988: 184). Flinn goes so far as to comment that “for critics of film
music, these observations on Hollywood’s debt to romanticism are hardly new” (1992:
18).
Romanticism is often personified by Richard Wagner in film music literature,
and indeed Wagner’s music-dramas and theoretical writings on music have contributed
more to film music and film music theory than any other Romantic composer (Bruce,
1985: 182; Gorbman, 1987: 29; Kalinak, 1992: 64). It is thus no accident that Wagner’s
own music should occupy such a strong presence in film music, a connection that will be
examined in greater detail in subsequent chapters. Wagner’s influence on film music can
be summed up in three concepts, readily supplied by Flinn: the leitmotif, the
Gesamtkunstwerk (the total transcendent artwork combination of music, drama, dance,
painting, sculpture, etc.), and the unendliche Melodie (unending melody) (1992: 17-18).
Beyond these three theoretical concepts lies the association of certain musical
codes with human emotions, feelings, moods, and psychological insights, but explicating
the precise nature of this relationship between romantic music and the film score music
inspired by it, however, is generally neglected by film music theorists. Of course this is
not surprising, as an articulation of the mechanics that explain the emotive affect of
music is still beyond our linguistic grasp, as the previous chapter outlines. With few
exceptions, film music literature assumes some degree of phenomenological connection
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between, say, minor chords and ‘sadness’, and dissonance with ‘tension’. Carroll’s
comments are typical:
. . . music possesses certain expressive qualities which are introduced to modify or to characterize
onscreen persons and objects, actions and events, scenes and sequences. . . For example, that the
Prelude to Tristan and Isolde is expressive of yearning . . . [is] part of the incontestable data of
aesthetic theorizing. To say that music is expressive is to say that it projects qualities describable
in anthropomorphic, emotive terms. (1996: 141, emphasis added)

Huckvale also takes this line of reasoning in film music literature, claiming that
Our response is not to be found in the music because it contains, latently, such “meanings”, but
because the musical gestures have become an established code, an accepted and intuitively
understood system which the listener in the cinema appropriately decodes. . . . . The response it
aims to evoke is not inherent, but depends upon an exploitation of an established system of
musical symbolism. (1988: 52)

In this way, the ‘Dracula March’ music heard in a Hammer horror film
successfully communicates its emotional “programme” because it draws upon a musical
mythology already well-established in Götterdämmerung and nineteenth-century music
generally. (ibid)

This line of reasoning is problematical on several levels, not the least of which is the
issue of how an audience who is not familiar with Götterdämmerung and romantic
music (imagine any inner-city 13 year-old) manages to decode the ‘Dracula March’.
Huckvale’s arguments seemed simply based on a system of musical precedents.
Nonetheless, Huckvale has managed to examine Wagner’s role in popular culture to a
greater degree than any other, and this work will be examined in greater detail in the
subsequent chapters.
The issue of music’s inherent narrative codes is best addressed by Philip Tagg’s
work with musical sign typologies, as seen in the previous chapter. Although Tagg is
working from the field of popular music, his analysis of musical musemes and
anaphones is presented in such as way as to apply to all musical genres and forms, and
thus can be considered the most detailed explanation of music’s inherent narrative codes
available to both musicology and film music studies.
In film music literature, the inherent narrative codes of music are more often
connected to music’s contextual codes, via the leitmotif. The association between a
musical phrase’s inherent musical codes and contextual codes is often assumed to be so
close as to be synonymous, and the leitmotif is widely offered in film music literature as
the device which satisfies both narrative operations. The concept that musical codes such
as the leitmotif could be narrative in nature, and thus contribute to the overall narrative
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of the film, was derived directly from Wagnerian romanticism along with the rest of the
nineteenth-century musical tradition. In accordance with the visual hegemony of film
music theory, this was always worded in terms of how the music contributed narrative to
the film (and never the other way around), but the idea that music could be narrative at
all can be profitably applied to classical music as well.
Gorbman defines the leitmotif as “a musical element that is repeated during the
course of a work; as such it picks up narrative associations, which, in turn, infuse
themselves into each new thematic statement” (1987: 17). Leitmotifs operate through
association: if a musical phrase is heard at the same time a character is introduced on-
screen, then that musical phrase becomes associated with that character. According to
current film music theory, leitmotifs thus exist in two levels of context: culture-
contextual leitmotifs and film-contextual leitmotifs. Culture-contextual leitmotifs are
common to entire genres of film and can be found in all, say, Western films over the last
75 years. These codes are closely related to music’s inherent narrative codes and are
instantly decoded by film audiences. Kalinak outlines several examples of these
leitmotifs, which include the association of pageantry, the military, the hunt and nobility
with the sound of French horn fanfares, the ‘habanera’ rhythm connoting Spain and
Spanish culture, and the Orient evoked by quartal harmonies (1992: 12-13). Brown
explicitly connects this associative connotation of the leitmotif with Barthes’s concept of
‘myth’, declaring that
. . . even the briefest recognizable snippet of such a piece . . . can evoke in the listener an entire
political mythology. For the tune or fragment is not simply a motif incorporated into a larger
musical or musico-dramatic fiber but rather stands as the kind of second-degree sign that Roland
Barthes defines as “myth” in Mythologies. (1988: 172)

Brown cites the allusion of ‘Dixie’ in Steiner’s 1939 prelude to Gone With The Wind in
order to evoke what Brown dubs “old-southicity” (ibid), and Eco makes exactly the
same point with respect to Steiner’s 1942 score for Casablanca, in which an allusion to
the ‘Marseillaise’ is employed to suggest French patriotism (1986: 203). In each of these
respective references both Brown and Eco relate the connotative power of the leitmotif
to intertextuality and mythological archetypes.
Film-contextual leitmotifs exist only within the bounds of a given film or film
franchise: examples would include ‘Tara’s Theme’ from Gone With The Wind, or Darth
Vader’s theme music from the Star Wars franchise of films. This kind of leitmotif is
closer to Wagner’s concept of narrative communication, which of course employs the
inherent codes of music within it. For example, John William’s theme music for Darth
Vader is written in a dotted rhythm with unmistakable military connotations and
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performed by low-register brass instruments that communicate ‘power’ and ‘evil’. Darth
Vader’s theme operates within the Star Wars franchise as straight-forward leitmotif,
contributing narrative information to the audience. When this music plays over a shot of
the Excalibur, the flagship of the Imperial fleet in Return of the Jedi, the audience
understands that Vader is on-board despite the fact that this information has yet to
receive visual confirmation.
The self-referential intertextuality of the late twentieth-century has introduced a
new layer of narrative code for film music, which also operates in the same way as a
leitmotif. This layer in fact uses the film music leitmotif as a leitmotif, and thus can
properly be called a metaleitmotif – a layer of narrative communication only possible in
the self-referentiality of popular culture. The metaleitmotif works by not just connoting
information about its associated character or theme, but also information about the film
in which that leitmotif is found and with which the leitmotif is associated. Clearly this
layer of narrative communication only works when the audience recognises the
metaleitmotif for what it is, by knowing the film from which the reference is made, but
the frequency of the metaleitmotif in popular culture suggests that this self-referential
recognition does occur (and is possibly a built-in expectation of the medium’s producer
and/or director).
To continue with our example from Star Wars, Darth Vader’s theme exists as a
metaleitmotif in popular culture. It can be heard in the ‘Marge Gets A Job’ episode
(#9F05) of The Simpsons as a reference to Mr. C. Montgomery Burns, Homer Simpson’s
evil nuclear power plant boss and Springfield’s richest man. Darth Vader’s theme is
heard over a view of Springfield’s nuclear power plant by way of preparing us for Mr.
Burn’s presence in the story. Heard for no longer than a few seconds, the brevity of this
musical reference belies its complexity, as it operates on several levels simultaneously.
Its inherent musical codes operate much as before, with a dotted rhythm of bass
instruments connoting evil, martial power. But for audiences of The Simpsons who have
also seen Star Wars, Mr. Burns becomes associated with Darth Vader, both evil
characters of martial and political power. Specifically, combining Vader’s theme with an
establishing shot of the Springfield power plant is a reference to the establishing shot of
the Excalibur in Return of the Jedi, as described above. In this way, Mr. Burns picks up
connotative associations of Star Wars as a film and as a pop culture icon: mystic dread
and horror, the morally-corrupt bourgeois ruling class, a supernatural capacity for death
and destruction on a global scale, ‘the dark side of The Force’, and a mythological depth
of evil not generally associated with animated cartoon characters. Mr. Burns is as Darth
Vader; the power plant is as the Excalibur.
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This metaleitmotif reference is also smug and elitist in its self-referentiality.

Connecting Mr. Burns with Darth Vader is also an ironic comment on Mr. Burn’s
physical frailty, advanced age, narrowness of vision, and money-sheltered naïvety, all of
which are connotations accessible only by those familiar with Star Wars. Crucially,
although the reference is musical, the humour is primarily visual. It suggests an ironic
comparison between, for example, a scene from The Simpsons in which Mr. Burns is
physically unable to lift Homer Simpson’s door knocker, with scenes from The Empire
Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi of Darth Vader physically overwhelming hero Luke
Skywalker in furious lightsaber duels. Added to this is a play on the fictional nature of
the characters. Mr. Burns is a fictional, animated character, literally a cartoon, and in a
similar way Darth Vader is also a cartoon character, a fantasy, the fictional
personification of death in the Star Wars science-fiction fantasy universe.
These ironies are of course precisely the kind of humour upon which one of the
appeals of The Simpsons is based. Having laughed smugly at its metasemiotic use in The
Simpsons, it is very possible that the pop culture audience is subsequently unable to hear
Vader’s theme in quite the same, ‘innocent’ way, consciously or unconsciously, when
they revisit the original text. With this introduction as an intertextual, popular culture
reference, Darth Vader’s theme music has become a metaleitmotif, and its larger
meaning must now be widened to include Mr. Burns and The Simpsons.
The metaleitmotif has clear implications for the use of classical music in film, as
many classical music references exist in popular culture in this way. Proof of their
existence as metaleitmotifs can be found in their recurring use in advertisements and
television programs such as The Simpsons and Seinfeld. Specific examples of Wagner’s
‘Ride of the Valkyries’ and Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra as metaleitmotifs will be
analysed in each upcoming case history chapter, but many others could be cited here,
such as the metaleitmotif reference of Samuel Barber’s Adagio For Strings in G minor
in a recent Seinfeld episode. This music received much attention through Oliver Stone’s
Platoon (1986), where it was used in association with the death of American soldiers in
Vietnam, America’s ‘tragic’ loss of national innocence in general, and with the death of
character Sergeant Elias in particular. As a metaleitmotif, Barber’s Adagio For Strings
has come to connote Platoon as a symbol of the horror and tragedy of death and war on
an epic, mythological scale13. This was demonstrated in an episode of Seinfeld in which
Mr. Costanza, suffering a flashback to his days as a Korean War cook, recalls an
occasion when a platoon of American soldiers were poisoned as a result of his cooking.

13
This scope of Platoon is given biblical proportions in the opening seconds of the film, by combining (through mutual implication)
the music of Barber with an epigraph drawn from the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes.
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Slow-motion scenes of soldiers gagging and throwing up were the visual

accompaniment to Barber’s Adagio For Strings, a metaleitmotif that makes ironic
reference to a scene in Platoon in which the soldier Elias is graphically killed in slow-
motion by a fusillade of NVA bullets to the same music. The humour of this Seinfeld
scene in part draws on the existence and audience recognition of Barber’s Adagio For
Strings as a metaleitmotif derived from Platoon’s contextual meaning, and (to a lesser
degree) the music’s original context as Roosevelt’s funeral dirge.
The second layer of narrative communication neglected in film music theory is
that of the music’s original narrative context. This neglect is again borne from the failure
of film music theorists to adequately assess the use of classical music in film. As cited at
the beginning of this chapter, the original, historical narrative content of classical music
was often dismissed as distracting, a judgment sometimes made at the same time as a
grudging acknowledgment that the music’s original narrative might in fact be
complementary to the film’s narrative. Manvell and Huntley acknowledge that classical
music has “emotional responses which may or may not help the particular atmosphere or
situation in the film” (1957: 66, emphasis added), but clearly the practice offered too
great a risk to be recommended in the slightest degree. Kurt London is very clear that
“the film should be supplied with music specially composed for it” (1936: 52),
suggesting in passing that the use of classical music in film involved “music by great
composers . . . torn out of their original contexts” (ibid).
It might be more difficult to assign distinct visual narratives to some classical
music (such as some Baroque music), but the Romantic music from which a large
majority of these multimedia combinations are derived often does possess strong
original narrative14. Classical music with original roots in opera, music dramas, or tone
poems enjoys clear narrative histories, as does other late-Romantic or neo-Romantic
Age music composed with clear narrative imagery in mind, such as Debussy’s Prelude a
l'apres-midi d'un faune, Orff’s Carmina Burana, or the aforementioned Adagio for
Strings in G minor, which Samuel Barber composed for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s funeral.
Opera music and tone poems in particular involve narratives realised in great detail, and
thus excerpts from operas and tone poems (arias, preludes, introductions etc.) bring with
them clear original narrative contexts. What is surprising about these original narrative
contexts is how closely they often match the contexts of the films with which they are
associated. This congruence of narrative context suggests that the use of many kinds of

14
Baroque music does sometimes carry a visual narrative, such as Handel’s opera Xerxes, but music such as Bach’s Goldberg
Variations seems to defy visualisation in a way that Romantic music rarely does.
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classical music in film might not be as distracting or deplorable as film music theorists
have claimed.
Narrative congruence occurs when the narrative content of a piece of music
(articulated through music and/or lyrical content) communicates the same information as
the narrative of the section of film in which that music is used, and vice versa. Music
and film convey the same narrative: their narratives are congruent. This congruence
occurs directly or indirectly, within broad structural parameters which include ironic or
comedic modes of congruence. In an ironic mode of narrative congruence, the narrative
of the music/film is often specifically calculated to highlight particular nuances of the
narrative in question, by way of exaggerated opposites. Crucially, even ironic comedic
narrative congruence is still narrative congruence, as the humour derived from ironic
narrative juxtaposition must be related, one way or another, to an audience's
understanding of the original narrative codes under ironic attack.
The primary characteristic of this narrative congruence is a faithfulness to the
spirit or theme of the music’s original narrative context, if perhaps not to the original
images. This is the point over which most claims of decontextualisation are levied, but a
narrative can remain consistent whilst its images are being updated or changed: the
theme of the narrative remains the crucial and consistent element. This is obviously the
basis on which countless opera productions are mounted and the justification for re-
making films (such as Luhrmann’s 1997 Romeo + Juliet).
Because of the Romantic Age tradition of musical anaphones, genre synecdoches
and style indicators (Tagg, 1992a), and the way in which this Romantic tradition was
incorporated into film music theory and practice, the original narrative associations of
this classical music offer a clean, un-broken line of visual association right back to the
music’s inherent musical codes. In Romantic music, this first stage of synaesthetic
connection occurs at the level of composition. The composer might be working from a
libretto (his/hers, or someone else’s), or perhaps a poem, novel, favourite myth or
legend, or other text. The composer thus writes music with images and narratives firmly
in mind, with a view to musically communicate those visuals, texts and narratives. This
stage of composition involves synaesthesia and the assumption of Tagg’s typology of
musical signs as a mechanism for that synaesthesia. This same process is subsequently
repeated by the film director or musical director, who is able to employ the music in the
same narrative fashion as the original composer, building contemporary visual images
on top of the same, consistent inherent musical codes. The technical purity of the
musical performance ensures that the music’s narrative import remains clear, and a
congruence of narrative between the original and contemporary contexts results.
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The first case history, offered in the next chapter, presents an excellent example
of this narrative congruence. Briefly, in 1885 Nietzsche wrote a book called Thus spoke
Zarathustra to outline his theory of the Superman (who was based on Goethe), in the
process appropriating the name of Zarathustra, an ancient Persian prophet who founded
Zoroastrianism in the sixth century B.C. In 1896 Strauss wrote a Tone poem based on
Nietzsche’s book, called Also sprach Zarathustra, which was subsequently used by
Kubrick in his 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. This use of Strauss’s music can be
found referenced in many films produced since that time, including Scorsese’s Casino
and Heckerling’s Clueless in 1996. As the following case history will demonstrate, the
narrative of Strauss’s music is consistent from its roots in sixth century B.C.
Zoroastrianism to its use in 1996’s Clueless: the dawn of knowledge or enlightenment in
the mind of Man.
The following case histories will also trace the narrative congruence of Wagner’s
original contextual opera images through contemporary film and television
manifestations, but many other examples could be cited here: the contemporary
visualisation of Barber’s Adagio for Strings in films such as Platoon and Lynch’s The
Elephant Man remains consistent with its original context as a funeral dirge, and the
attendant, excessive visual imagery of state funerals. Orff’s Carmina Burana was based
on texts written by defrocked Benedictine monks, who used poetry about secular,
sensual vices such as sex, drinking, gambling to vent their desires for the sensuous
(Wiener, 1996). This historically-contextual narrative finds contemporary visualisation
in King Arthur’s triumphant ride back into the physical world in Boorman’s Excalibur,
at a moment in the film which celebrates the reunification of Arthur’s physical body
with his religious, spiritual self.
Carmina Burana is also used effectively in television advertisements for Michael
Jackson’s 1996 HIStory world tour, where ‘O Fortuna’ is used to communicate
Jackson’s raw physical, sexual, and deific presence. Put simply, the use of ‘O Fortuna’
in the HIStory tour ads presents Michael Jackson ‘as a god’15, but a god of Rock ‘n’
Roll, that apotheosis of musical sensuousness and pagan hedonism. The association of
Carmina Burana and its lyrical, literary narrative with pagan deification is carefully
manipulated in these ads. The lyrics of Carmina Burana offer a pagan ideology and a
‘carpe diem’ philosophy, emphasising physical, temporal pleasures in direct opposition
to Christianity’s promise of rewarding physical asceticism with promised, heavenly
bliss. Musically, however, Carmina Burana elevates this celebration of physical

15
My thanks to Andrew Curnock for articulating this so succinctly.
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pleasure and sin to the level of liturgy, with its use of Latin words, ‘Dies Irae’ musical
allusions, and massed choral voices. The end result is a musical deification of pagan,
physical hedonism, which perfectly parallels Michael Jackson’s self-proclaimed title of
‘The King of Pop’ and the customary cultural role of popular music in society (including
that of devil-worship and being ‘the music of Satan’). Heavy Metal rocker Ozzy
Osbourne opened every concert on his 1986 tour with Carmina Burana, on this basis
(Walser, 1993: 79). These narrative themes of deification through carnality and/or
sensuousness also find similar, consistent visualisation in the character of rock star Jim
Morrison, in Oliver Stone’s film The Doors (1991), which also employs ‘O Fortuna’ for
the same purpose.
This ability to reconcile contemporary visualisations with original musical
contexts is related to the defining characteristics of Eco’s metasemiotic audience. The
intertextual expectations of pop culture’s metasemiotic audience suggest that this
ongoing reassessment of music’s historical narrative might be an easy process. One
could speculate, in the absence of empirical data, that this audience might be more
receptive to media narrative-reinterpretations than any generational audience before
them. An expectation to continually reinterpret manifestations of pop culture narratives
is arguably part of the metasemiotic audiences’ “media savvy”, a connection outlined in
detail by pop culture theorists such as Owen (1997).
Gorbman’s concept of mutual implication (1987: 15) is the most useful tool
offered by film music theory in an application to classical music. This concept is echoed
in related theory (under different names) derived from the study of musicals, music
videos, and popular music, all of which suggest a slightly different facet of the same
idea: the curious, aesthetic fusion of music and visual image that produces an artistic
experience somehow greater than the mere sum of its parts. As suggested above, this
idea that music and visual image fuse together in the film auditorium can be found in
earlier film music literature, although Bazelon’s mention in 1975 of music becoming
“interlocked with the visual image” (1975: 135) was brief, negative and dismissive.
Specifically, Gorbman’s mutual implication parallels Tagg’s application of
“tactile and kinetic anaphones” (1992a: 25) and Negus’s concept of “repeated semiotic
particles” (1996: 94), both from popular music studies, Altman’s theory of the “audio
dissolve” (1987: 63), derived from the musical genre of film, and Berland’s thoughts on
the restoration of film/music’s “abandoned unity” (1993: 28). Further suggestions of the
concept can be found in Dyer’s notion of ‘nonrepresentational signs’ (1981: 177),
Flinn’s film music “utopias” (1992), Campbell’s books on twentieth-century myth
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(1972, 1988), Costello & Wallace’s comments about “pavlovs” (1990: 90), and
Barthes’s “Third Meaning” (1977: 53) and “Grain of the Voice” (1977: 179).
Gorbman explains that mutual implication is the effect of simultaneously having
the music alter our perception of the accompanying visual image as much as the visual
image alters our perception of the accompanying music.
Whatever music is applied to a film segment will do something, will have an effect – just as
whatever two words one puts together will produce a meaning different from that of each word
separately, because the reader/spectator automatically imposes meaning on such combinations. . .
Image, sound effects, dialogue, and music-track are virtually inseparable during the viewing
experience; they form a combinatoire of expression. (1987: 15-16)

Gorbman goes on to remark that “In fact, as long as the general musical style is not
completely at odds, whatever the music at the moment, the scene seems to justify it”
(1987: 16), and ordinary examples that demonstrate the truth of this can be easily
imagined. Musicologist Philip Tagg calls this exercise “The Letter Example” (1992a:
19), in which identical visual film imagery segues perfectly with three completely
different kinds of music because the audience automatically assumes the narrative
connection between them. In watching a man read a letter to “menacing music”, we
know that the “letter brings really bad news to the character portrayed” (ibid), whereas a
“soft, wavy flute melody” associated with the same image informs the audience that the
letter must be from the man’s lover, and that she “must be very beautiful, that he loves
her, and that she probably loves him too” (ibid). The audience’s assumption that music
and visual image are inherently connected is implicit and unquestioned.
Gorbman’s statement about the universality of mutual implication application is
not any less accurate for being delivered from a hegemonic-visual stance. In fact, this
concept comes the closest to fully recognising the autonomy of musical narrative and
influence in film, out of all film music theory, although Gorbman does not (naturally)
fully develop the musicological implications of her theory in her book. In an articulate
review of mutual implication, Kalinak discusses the need for this to happen but then
veers off into a more standard examination of how musical narrative affects film
narrative (1992: 30). In spite of this, Kalinak fully supports Gorbman’s concept of
mutual implication, and believes that it offers film music theory its first genuine chance
to escape the underlying hegemony of visual image inherent in previous work (“such a
reconceptualization offers a solid framework for building a new paradigm” {1992: 29}),
an ideology Kalinak ironically fails to escape. Kalinak identifies mutual implication as a
conceptual device, or mechanism, rather than a filmic effect:
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It is this projection of affect from the aural realm onto the visual field and its almost simultaneous
readjustment which constitutes the primary perceptual mechanism constructed by the culture for
the relation of aural and visual stimuli. (ibid)

Kalinak might have added that mutual implication also means the projection of affect
from the visual field onto the aural field as well. This missed opportunity, as well as her
subsequent ideological emphasis on the hegemonic-visual in her book, reveal that
Kalinak, like Gorbman before her, has failed to fully realise the cross-ideological
ramifications of this paradigm. Mutual implication plainly states that musical narrative
and film narrative are both equal in weight, importance, nature, and historical potential,
in that both music and film have the potential to bring with them an entire host of
cultural-narrative connotations and associations. The complicated combination that
results from fusing film and music into a single art-form results in profound changes in
both elements: film narrative is affected by music, in the same way (and, crucially, to a
similar degree) that musical narratives are affected by film images.
Both Gorbman and Kalinak, respectively, proceed to examine one half of the
mutually-implied fusion of sound and image, but their ideological groundings in film
studies do not allow either of them to fully examine the effects of Gorbman’s theory on
music, and how music and musical narrative might be affected by images with which
they are associated. In order to illustrate the idea of mutual implication from the filmic
perspective, Gorbman engages in exactly the same exercise carried out by Tagg in “The
Letter Example” (1992a: 19) given above, as well as in Tagg’s Ph.D. thesis on musical
semiotics (1979): the transposition of various musical styles, instrumentation, and
orchestration over the same piece of film, in order to illustrate how the change in music
alters the overall aesthetic effect of the image-music combination. In the same way that
Tagg changed the meaning of the Swedish national anthem by manipulating musical
elements (such as changing the beat to a cha-cha or by lowering the tempo to that of a
funeral dirge {1979: 77}), or transformed the letter-reading music from grim to gay, so
Gorbman manipulates the bicycle scene from Truffault’s 1961 film Jules et Jim:

Let us now perform a commutation on the bicycling segment by changing the music on the
soundtrack. First, if we put the music in a minor mode, a sadder, darker, more remote feeling
comes upon the scene. . . Or we might change the tempo of the music. If played much faster,
allegro staccato, this music will add an energy, an allégresse to the three characters’ bicycling,
and perhaps even an optimism not previously suggested in Delerue’s score.
Further changes could be wrought on the theme in terms of instrumentation: imagine the
difference in effect if the melody were performed on a solo violin (more pathos), a solo tuba
(more humor), a large orchestra (over-blown, Romantic excess). Imitative-denotative
instrumentation (“mickey-mousing”), such as violins playing col legno, might also give a
comedic touch. Changes in rhythm, as well as articulation (accents, phrasing), would each have
corresponding effects on the way we receive diegetic information. (1987: 16-17)
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Jackendoff also suggests the same experiment from a musical cognition perspective, but
misses the point: “the organization of a [musical] theme requires a metrical structure: try
singing your favourite waltz as a march or vice versa and its coherence vanishes” (1989:
236). Of course, as Tagg and Gorbman each demonstrate, the musical coherence merely
changes, not vanishes.
What is interesting here is that both Tagg and Gorbman, ostensibly working from
opposite ideological sides of the mutual implication issue (i.e., music and film,
respectively), both use a static visual example and layers of different music. This thesis
will complete the trans-ideological application of mutual implication by reversing
Gorbman and Tagg’s assumed ideological hierarchy, and apply different visual images
to static musical case histories.
The ideological difference between Gorbman and Tagg in this exercise of music-
image transposition is of course evident in their respective goals. Gorbman uses this
exercise to illustrate the changes that different music can bring about on film (as the
final product of combining film and music), whereas Tagg uses the same idea to identify
(although not fully explain) the affective-semiotic codes of music. In effect, while
Gorbman identifies mutual implication and gives examples of how it might work from a
film studies perspective, Tagg explains the mechanics of how mutual implication works,
from a musicological perspective. To continue with the mechanical metaphor, Gorbman
identifies the vehicle, whereas Tagg names the engine.
In subsequent, related research, Tagg outlines a musical sign typology (1992a,
1992b), which actually makes mutual implication between music and visual image
possible. This typology is examined in some detail in the previous chapter, but it is
worth reviewing the material from a film music perspective.
Tagg offers the concept of musical ‘anaphones’ as a way of describing the
simple, homologous relationship between music and visual image, and his tactile and
kinetic anaphones make explicit connections between music and touch, and music and
motion, respectively. Kinetic and tactile anaphones are thus the operating mechanics of
mutual implication. Kinetic anaphones in music visually evoke “the relationship of the
human body to time and space” (1992a: 24), and tactile anaphones similarly offer visual
homologies with touch and physical sensation (ibid), such as the lush romantic film
music of Steiner and Korngold so often cited by film music scholars (as seen in the
previous chapter). The visual manifestations of these connections are discussed at
length, and in fact Tagg refers to actual film sequences (from Hitchcock’s Psycho,
amongst others) to illustrate his points (1992a: 25). Tagg is suggesting a narrative
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connection between music and image, describing the mechanics of this connection with
his anaphones, and his film music examples outline in detail how closely fused the two
can be. Tagg’s tactile and kinetic anaphones are the mechanisms through which
Gorbman’s mutual implication works: mutual implication being described in purely
musicological terms.
Writing about the film genre of musicals, Altman describes the process whereby
mutual implication is so strong that it reverses the hegemonic-visual ideology of film,
allowing music to dictate the visuals. Altman begins by identifying a technical feature of
musical films which he calls the “audio dissolve” (1987: 63), in which one particular
audio track is dissolved into a second audio track, much in the same way one visual
image is dissolved into another. The result of this ‘audio dissolve’ is a transition in the
musical from visual hegemony to musical hegemony (ibid). Using the ‘Kansas City’
sequence from Oklahoma! as an example, Altman describes how:
. . . the order of priorities of audio and image track has now been reversed . . . the movement
which we see on the screen is now an accompaniment to the music track. A new mode of
causality now appears, a simultaneous mode wherein the image is “caused” by the music rather
than by some previous image. In short, the normally dominant image track now keeps time to the
music track, instead of being accompanied by it. The music and its rhythm now initiate
movement rather than vice versa. (1987: 69, original emphasis)

This would probably come as no surprise to music video audiences, who accept this
reversal as a matter of course. Musical sequences in film musicals can be easily
considered as if they were ‘videos’ within the movie. Blaine Allan uses Altman’s notion
of the audio dissolve to connect music videos and film musicals: “Here is where the
music video draws from the expressive and structural conventions of the Hollywood
musical” (1990: 9).
The ‘imposition’ of the music-over-visual relationship found in all music videos
into a film context does not of course occur only in musicals, but rather in any film that
features classical music, or any music with an established narrative history and a
recognisable length of time in which to unfold. During these sequences the narrative
flow and timing of the film seems to have been suspended, while the music unfolds as a
‘set piece’, and the audience’s recognition of the music implies their expectation that the
music will play on to its logical conclusion. The bicycle sequence set to Burt
Bacharach’s ‘Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head’ in George Roy Hill’s 1969 film
Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid is a notable example of this. The audio dissolve
occurs when a recognisable piece of music has a strong enough narrative to dissolve the
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hegemony of the visual narrative, and mutual implication occurs, if only out of the
‘combat’ or sudden synthesis between the music’s narrative and the images’ narrative.
In this way, Altman’s audio dissolve suggests that mutual implication can have a
special function in certain scenarios, such as that of the musical’s ‘set’ piece or musical
number. Altman suggests that these occasions occur when a film visually identifies “. . .
any space which is marked off, separated from the normal world, and reserved for an
idealized, artistic presentation” (1987: 61), going on to cite examples such as “a
magazine cover” or “the deck of a ship” (ibid):
In each of these cases, the characters break out of the normal world into a realm of performance
and art, a world where stylization and rhythm provide a sense of community and beauty absent
from the real world. (ibid)

Mutual implication suggests that this identification can equally be made sonically,
however, and this is most often noted by the sonic ‘appearance’ of classical music in a
film. The use of classical music in film can operate as the device that ‘marks off’ a given
part of a film as a realm of performance and art, especially when the music is familiar.
All three following case history examples illustrate this point, but there are countless
others. In the thriller/horror film subgenre of serial killers alone, we find Hannibal
Lecter’s performance to the music of Bach’s Goldberg Variations in The Silence of the
Lambs, and Detective Somerset’s library research to the ‘Air’ from Bach’s Suite No. 3 in
D-major in Se7en16. Once again, these are cultural-cinematic codes to the audience that
mutual implication is at work, and that their attention should now be divided between
acknowledging and combining (applying to each other) the respective narrative threads
of both the music and the film.
Furthermore, Altman claims that these scenes of audio-dissolved mutual
implication are able to offer the audience a cathartic, transformative, transcendental
experience, by suggesting an aesthetic utopia: “. . . the music track lifts the image into a
romantic realm far above this world of flesh and blood” (1987: 63) . Altman himself
uses a well-known example of classical music and film to illustrate this point: the use of
Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto in his David Lean’s film Brief Encounter is “a
particularly clear use of this convention” (ibid):
There are times, however, when these diegetic noises recede into the background, in favour of the
romantic strains of Rachmaninoff’s Second Piano Concerto. Symbol of a world beyond middle-
class morality and its earth-bound limitations, Rachmaninoff’s music lifts us out of the here-and-
now into a special realm which is the private province of romantic love – and the cinema that
portrays it. (ibid)

16
There seems to be a consistency in employing the calm, intellectual, sophisticated, mechanically and mathematically complex
music of Bach to comunicate equivalent characteristics in the personalities of serial killers in this film genre.
 111

Altman is quite clear that mutually-implied suspension of music-visual ideological

hegemony is responsible for this effect:
In leaving normal day-to-day causality behind, the music creates a utopian space in which all
singers and dancers achieve a unity unimaginable in the now superceded world of temporal,
psychological causality. The dominance of sound over image serves to unify groups by
synchronizing their movements . . . In daily life people hear different drummers and thus live
their lives out of sync; when music begins to initiate the movements of a couple, they start to
move in time to each other because they are hearing the same beat. (1987: 69)

Allan reiterates the connection between audio dissolves/mutual implication and utopian
discourse in film music studies:
. . . writers on the musical have commented extensively on the invocation of the utopian in the
realms of entertainment and performance upon which the genre depends and within the films
themselves. Altman links this meaning to the reversal of sound and image relations he calls the
“audio dissolve”, in which the music no longer accompanies action, but, in the musical numbers,
action accompanies music” (1990: 9)

This effect is exponentially magnified when either the music or the image have
mythological or archetypal narratives (or metanarratives). Simply put, it is demonstrable
that many film-visual images and film narratives already enjoy this larger-than-life,
mythological, transcendent nature, and so it stands to reason that fusing, through mutual
implication, these narratives and images with music that also fulfils this aesthetic
function will only serve to magnify the overall effect. This will be suggested as one of
the reasons for the tremendous impact and influence of certain film-classical music
combinations, but this aspect will be examined in greater detail in each case history.
Berland picks up Altman’s point about the transcendent potential of certain film
music combinations. In her discussion of “the poignant quality of much film music”
(1993: 28), Berland attributes its affective quality to the film’s ability to “restore the
abandoned unity of image and sound . . .” (ibid), having pointed out that sound and
image had been separated by “the rise of modern media technology” but undergone
“subsequent reunification through electronic means” in the cinema (1993: 26). Berland
is leaning towards a rather metaphysical definition of aesthetic utopia, but her work is
useful in that it serves to identify the fact that current film music theory does not
adequately explain the affective impact of certain film and music combinations, and that
explanations for how some film music combinations leave such strong impressions on
some audiences are still being sought.
In his semiotic analysis of music video components, Negus suggests an
equivalent to mutual implication, which is comprised by the combination of “repeated
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semiotic particles” (1996: 94). Arguing from the contextual perspective of the receiving
audience, Negus believes that music, images, and words are consumed by audiences as
equally-weighted semiotic units, and are considered in a manner that does not favour
one over the other (ibid), as reviewed in the previous chapter. Minus the reference to
lyrics, this is precisely the way that Gorbman’s mutual implication operates. Negus
develops this idea into the mutually-implied ‘hook’, a term borrowed from pop music
studies which refers to a particularly catchy tune, refrain, or musical/lyrical line. In a
multi-media environment such as music video or film, the audience is led to recognise
“identifiable hooks that combine visual, lyrical and musical elements” (1996: 95). It is
this process of three-way mutual implication, Negus concludes, that might explain the
appeal of certain multi-media combinations. Substituting the music video references for
classical music & film references, Negus’s argument echoes Altman and Berland’s
respective identifications of the transcendent quality of some music/film as a way of
identifying the fact that some videos manage to aspire to the status of Art:
In addition, an analysis of how individuals appreciate and build up interpretations and
understandings of videos over time might help explain how music videos sustain themselves, give
pleasure and generate new meanings over repeated listenings, and in the process become much
more than advertisements. (ibid, emphasis added)

Through the works of Negus, Altman, Allan, and Berland, Gorbman’s mutual
implication is associated with the affective nature of film-music combinations, or the
ability of this multi-media fusion to invoke the utopian or ineffable in audiences. The
ability of music to suggest the ineffable has been documented back to Plato and St.
Augustine (Flinn, 1992: 9), but the association between utopia and the entertainment
industry (and its products) is picked up by Dyer (1981). In an influential article, Dyer
assigns the evocation of utopian feeling to “non-representational signs – colour, texture,
movement, rhythm, melody . . . although we are much less used to talking about them”
(1981: 178). The non-representational sign works on the basis of “resemblance at the
level of basic structuration” (ibid), which is to say that they directly demonstrate “what
utopia would feel like, rather than how it would be organized” (ibid).
Flinn proceeds to develop this concept at length in her book Strains of Utopia
(1992), which examines in detail the connections between utopia and film music:
Music, [commentators] maintain, has the peculiar ability to ameliorate the social existence it
allegedly overrides, and offers, in one form or another, the sense of something better. Music
extends an impression of perfection and integrity in an otherwise imperfect, unintegrated world.
This is the utopian function I believe has been assigned to music in general and to film music of
the 1930s and 1940s in particular. (1992: 9)
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Of course, as we have seen, the film music of the 1930s and 1940s most closely
resembles, and is indeed composed in the style of the Romantic-age classical music
under consideration in this thesis. Dyer’s and Flinn’s respective works correlate with
Negus’s, Altman’s and Berland’s theories to suggest that there is something about the
combination (through mutual implication) of classical music and visual film image that
offers more than can be explained in mere film studies or musicological terms, or indeed
in language at all, although efforts to provide names or labels for this aesthetic
experience continue.
Brown associates this transcendence of film-music combination with Myth as
described by Joseph Campbell, claiming that “one of the primary functions of film
music, in fact, is to mythify the cinema” (1988: 172) in reference to Campbell’s Myths to
Live By (1972). Campbell elsewhere discusses the ability of film to transcend its
medium and evoke larger, mythological, archetypal concepts, often citing Star Wars as
an example of this (1988: 143-148).
This idea that film and music combinations can communicate aesthetic
information beyond the abilities of their media can be found independently in both film
semiotics and pop musicology. Costello & Wallace, in their musicological analysis of
rap music, invent a term to describe certain ‘nodes of association’ called “‘pavlovs’ – a
unit of measure of everything we feel or think while hearing music we’ve heard before”
(1990: 90). This has obvious applications to classical music, which stands a high chance
of being familiar. Costello & Wallace explain that:
Pavlovs are everything we come to associate with music – and can re-experience in listening
again – that isn’t ‘in’ the music. They’re what we each bring to bear, when rightly cued. Pavlovs
are the saliva that flows when the bells ring. (ibid)

Pavlovs can be as specific as a visual image, or as ineffable as pain or joy, or

combinations of both (ibid), but they refer to synaesthetic, phenomenological
experiences that cannot be transcribed by any other language or explained by any other
theory. “Aesthetically, pavloving shouldn’t happen, but in experience it does” (ibid).
This has clear associations with Barthes’s “grain of the voice” (1977: 179) as outlined in
the previous chapter.
Turning his gaze from musical semiotics to film studies, Barthes labels this same
affect “The Third Meaning” or “the obtuse meaning” (1977: 54). These are Barthes’s
terms for the ineffable meaning in film, terms which for Barthes had strong causal
associations with the use of sound in film, as referenced in Eisenstein’s writings (1977:
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53). Barthes semiotically dissects and analyses various stills from Eisenstein’s Ivan the
Terrible, but then complains:
Is that all? No, for I am still held by the image. I read, I receive (and probably even first and
foremost) a third meaning- evident, erratic, obstinate. I do not know what its signified is, at least I
am unable to give it a name . . . (ibid).

Later Barthes states that

the third meaning also seems to me greater than the pure, upright, secant, legal perpendicular of
the narrative . . . the obtuse meaning appears to extend outside culture, knowledge, information . .
. (ibid)

Once again, this serves to identify the presence of an element in film and music thought
to be beyond linguistic articulation or theoretical manipulation: a mutually-implied
fusion of image and music that communicates a transcendent affect to audiences.
Closely related to both the narrative function of music and mutual implication is
the issue of diegesis, which examines the source of music within the film. Immediately
this wording suggests the visual hegemony of film theory, which is concerned with
justifying how music fits into the primary universe of the visual image, and never
interested (indeed, would likely see as ridiculous) the question of whether the images fit
the universe of the music.
The large majority of film music theory that addresses diegesis as an issue is
heavily rooted in this ideological position, again, not surprisingly for film studies
research. Several accounts of diegesis theory do manage to suggest alternative
suggestions for the source of music within a film that move closer towards a
musicological stance, and in doing so are able to suggest theories that can be profitably
applied to the combination of classical music and film, a combination that most diegetic
film music theories have found problematical. These notions of diegesis are crucial to
any discussion of classical music and film because they address a possible site of
resistance on the part of the receiving audience member, especially when it comes to
non-diegetic classical music. Because much repertoire classical music might well be
recognisable as such to the audience, the issue of how this non-diegetic music fits into
the narrative becomes important. The music has a cultural life outside the film, in reality,
and yet the film asks the audience to suspend disbelief and become immersed in its
narrative, a reality of unreality. The tension between the reality of the classical music
and the unreality of the film narrative must then be resolved if the audience is to accept
both the film and the music. The theoretical positions on diegesis that best address this
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tension are Gorbman’s “metadiegetic” music (1987: 22), and Levinson’s distinction
between the “implied filmmaker” and the “cinematic narrator” (1996: 253).
The difference between diegetic music and non-diegetic music in film is
generally agreed upon in film music literature, following Gorbman’s definitions of the
terms. Drawing on Genette and Souriau, Gorbman defines ‘diegesis’ as “the narratively
implied spatiotemporal world of the actions and characters” (1987: 21) and thus diegetic
music is “music that (apparently) issues from a source within the narrative” (1987: 22).
Non-diegetic music traditionally refers to all other music, that is, music that does not
issue from a source within the narrative. An oft-cited example of this might be David
Raksin’s off-screen string orchestra somehow playing music in the middle of the Pacific
Ocean in Hitchcock’s Lifeboat (Prendergast, 1977: 210-211; Evans, 1975: 212; Warren,
1989: 74). Again drawing on Genette’s work, Gorbman proposes the existence of
“metadiegetic music” as a way of hearing a narrative character’s “musical thoughts”
(1987: 22). This narrative device is thus neither entirely diegetic nor solely non-diegetic,
but rather a fusion of the two: the source of the music in question is the narrative
character’s mind, and while we cannot physically locate this source on the screen, we
are able to reconcile it with the rest of the narrative.
These distinctions have also been employed by opera musicologists in
comparisons between opera music and film music, and their differing diegeses. Warren
is clearly talking about diegetic music when discussing ‘realistic’ music, although she
does not use Gorbman’s word:
Let me then define realistic music as music occurring in the world of the drama, and stipulate that
such music is subject to all the conditions of time and space which prevail within that world.
(1989: 71, original emphasis)

Non-diegetic music is called “background music” (1989: 66), which Warren suggests
could be considered as having been “sung” by “the [film] camera’s voice” (ibid). In a
response to Warren’s article, Cone then suggests the existence of metadiegetic music
(again, neither this nor any equivalent terminology is offered) in both opera and film:
More interesting are those cases in which apparently realistic sounds in the orchestra are actually
imagined, or possibly imagined, by characters on the stage . . . In movies, too, one is sometimes
unsure whether the background music is for our ears alone or whether it is a representation of
what certain characters hear, or think they hear. The eerie music that accompanies characters
depicted as losing their grip on reality: does it reflect the hallucinatory sounds that they are
imagining, or is it purely atmospheric, for the benefit of the audience? (1989: 79)

Often the audience will witness a transfer between diegetic and metadiegetic
music in a film, assisted by mechanical effects such as volume and sound quality, as in a
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scene from Bertolucci’s Stealing Beauty. A scene in Stealing Beauty shows Lucy
listening and dancing to the pop song ‘Rockstar’ by Hole on a walkman at high volume,
and the audience initially hears the music diegetically, i.e., at low volume and very tinny
in quality. Gradually, however, the music grows in volume and sound quality until the
high-fidelity noise of it fills the cinema: the music has passed from being diegetic to
metadiegetic in nature, and the audience is now hearing Hole as if they were wearing the
walkman. The audience has been invited to share the character’s musical thoughts, or
intrapersonal musical experience.
This transition of diegetic music into metadiegetic music is also described in
corresponding terms by Smith in his analysis of the 1932 song ‘Fascination’ and its role
in Wilder’s 1957 film Love in the Afternoon:
Even when Ariane does stop humming [‘Fascination’], however, the song continues to haunt her
imagination. As Ariane dreamily picks up her cello and enters her apartment, the theme is played
nondiegetically by the vibes and violins. The narrative import of the moment is clear; the tune
pervades Ariane’s thoughts because it is associationally linked to her encounter with Flannagan
in the hotel. (1996: 242, emphasis added)

Suggestions of metadiegetic music can also be found in music video,

demonstrating that metadiegetic sound is equally supported by musicology and music
video theory as by film music theory. In Everything But The Girl’s video for their song
‘The Only Living Boy In New York’, both of the band members ‘perform’ the song for
the camera with their mouths closed. All of their physical performance mannerisms are
normal according to the established rules for this kind of video genre: the head, body
and arm movements, standing in front of microphones with their instruments; all is
perfectly average and unremarkable, except for the fact that nobody is actually opening
their mouths to sing. This is clearly a reaction against the standard video practice of lip-
synching, but performance music videos are arranged to provide the audience with an
apparent diegetic source for the music, and this performance video does not. And yet,
the close correlation between the physical head movements and facial expressions with
the music suggests that the music’s source is in fact in the minds of the musicians – the
audience is merely hearing the musicians sing silently to themselves, or internal singing.
The music video audience is hearing metadiegetic music. Other examples of this would
include Michael Stipe’s partially wordless performance in R.E.M.’s video for
‘Bittersweet Me’, and the video for Prodigy’s track ‘Smack My Bitch Up’. This latter
example (promptly banned by music video stations in England, North America, and
Australia for numerous reasons) presents music that fades between diegetic (stereo) and
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metadiegetic sources as the character in the video prepares for and then enjoys a night on
the town.
Gorbman does not distinguish between non-diegetic composed score music and
diegetic, pre-existing pop/classical music when she suggests her “hypothetical instance”
of metadiegetic music: “. . . a melody that had played earlier in the film. . .” (1987: 23).
As the above example from Stealing Beauty implies, the audience’s suspension of
disbelief regarding metadiegetic music is easier when pre-existing pop or classical music
is employed. Unless we are composers or otherwise musically gifted, few of us imagine
or sing completely original musical compositions in our heads. An excellent example of
‘original’ metadiegetic music can be heard in the opening credit sequence for Mr.
Holland’s Opus (1996), where Mr. Holland’s compositional efforts shift from diegetic
(on the piano) to metadiegetic, as the full glory of the symphony playing in his mind
becomes audible to the audience. More often than not, however, our ‘musical thoughts’
are usually composed of favourite musical samples circulating through popular culture,
such as ‘Rockstar’ by Hole or Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, or personal memories
of diegetic music playing during some formative moment of our lives. Particularly
‘catchy’ pop tunes might ‘play’ in our heads for hours or days on end, sometimes, to our
extreme annoyance, in direct contradiction to our personal aesthetic sense. In theory,
metadiegetic music in films should be drawn exclusively from popular culture and never
from the pens of film music composers.
Metadiegetic music, being the fusion of diegetic and non-diegetic music, is also
intrinsically connected to mutual implication and the fusion between sound and image.
Altman makes this connection clear, calling metadiegetic music “supra-diegetic” (1987:
67), and claiming that supra-diegetic music is the sign by which the audience is aware
that they have transcended the aesthetic bounds of the film experience into Flinn’s
utopia (1987: 66-67). Altman begins his arguments by citing an example similar to the
one above from Stealing Beauty. In the beginning of the 1961 film Blue Hawaii, Elvis
begins to sing along, a capella, to a tune playing diegetically from a small music box:
Before he has finished a verse, however, the music box has been joined by a full orchestra. Soon,
in fact, the tinny Middle-European sound of the music box disappears entirely as a large chorus is
added to the orchestra. Imperceptibly we have slid away from a backyard barbecue in Hawaii to a
realm beyond language, beyond space, beyond time. With the disappearance of the music box
sound we have moved into a world of pure music, divorced from this or any other specific plot.
We have reached a “place” of transcendence where time stands still, where contingent concerns
are stripped away to reveal the essence of things. (1987: 66)
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Altman subsequently refers to “. . . the timeless transcendence of supra-diegetic music. .

.” (1987: 67), making it clear that he considers the notions of mutual implication and
metadiegetic music to be closely related.
Levinson also identifies this diegetic shift, which he calls “quasi-diegetic” (1996:
269). Levinson explains that ‘quasi-diegetic’ music
can be thought to be audible in the world of the story, because it is fictionally grounded in an
observable source, and even confirmed later as something heard by a character . . . but not in the
precise form heard by the viewer, in respect of volume, instrumentation, or performance quality.
(ibid)

The examples Levinson uses to support this concept include Fellini’s use of Wagner’s
‘Ride of the Valkyries’ and Rossini’s overture to The Barber of Seville in 8½, which can
be heard “with a robustness, once again, that surpasses the resources of the musicians
visually established as present” (ibid). Levinson too makes a clear connection between
‘quasi-diegetic’ music and the notion of transcendence, utopia, and Barthes’s ‘Third
Meaning’, in his analysis of a final example of quasi-diegetic music, from Chariots of
Fire. Citing the introductory musical cue which accompanies the slow-motion running
of the athletes on the beach, Levinson begins by identifying various narrative
characteristics of the music, such as “heroism” and “exhilaration” (1996: 271). In
addition to these, however, there seems to be an aspect to the music which raises the
combined sound and image to a different plane:
But there still seems to be a certain “surplus value”, as it were, to the cue. Those narrative ends
do not appear to exhaust the functioning of the cue; its scale and expressiveness seem more than
is called for with respect to those ends, imparting to the activity of jogging on the beach an
almost godly aspect . . . it appears to testify to the almost religious regard in which he [the
implied filmmaker] holds the athletic efforts of those young Britishers of yesteryear. (ibid)

Levinson’s ‘surplus value’ is simply another articulation of Flinn’s notion of utopia

(1992: 66-67) and Barthes’s ‘Third Meaning’ as outlined above.
Warren raises the issue of “the camera’s voice” from a musicological context, in
her account of opera music diegesis versus film music diegesis as referenced above
(1989: 66), and this concept is addressed and developed from a film music perspective
by Levinson (1996). Levinson makes a distinction between a “cinematic narrator” and
an “implied filmmaker” when discussing film music diegeses (1996: 253). The
difference between the two is subtle but has important narrative implications. The
implied filmmaker is closer by nature to the audience: s/he sets up the camera, chooses
the angles, adjusts the lighting, edits the sequences, etc. The cinematic narrator, on the
other hand, is “fictionally on the same level as its [the film’s] subject matter” (1996:
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255), and is thus might be considered a personification of the diegesis. For example, the
cinematic narrator is responsible for allowing us to cut rapidly between views of the
inside of the computer vault in Mission: Impossible (1996) with the inside of the air
circulation duct above it, something we (and Brian de Palma, the director) would find
physically impossible to manage in that time.
Levinson is primarily concerned with dividing up diegetic musical responsibility
between cinematic narrators and implied filmmakers, depending on the example given.
Thus Carl Orff’s ‘Musica Poetica’ and Erik Satie’s ‘Trois Morceaux en Forme de Poire’,
used in Terrence Malik’s Badlands, are assigned to an implied filmmaker (1996: 272),
and Maurice Jarre’s composed film score for Peter Weir’s Witness is attributed to a
cinematic narrator (1996: 270).
This distinction has an important application to the use of classical music in film,
although Levinson does not extend his point any further than the assignment of music to
one metadiegetic source or another. In this way, metadiegetic music need not necessarily
be ‘grounded’ in an on-screen character played by an actor. Metadiegetic music can also
be derived from the personification of the diegesis, as if we were hearing the musical
thoughts of the cinematic narrator.
Levinson does make a pointed claim about the use of classical music in film, but
stops short of discussing the implication of his cinematic narrator versus implied
filmmaker dichotomy. Levinson claims that classical music used in films is more likely
to be generated from an implied filmmaker:

. . . music composed for a film (for example, the soundtracks of Vertigo or The Heiress or On the
Waterfront or La Strada), is more likely to be purely narrative in function than preexisting music
appropriated by a filmmaker (for example, the soundtracks of A Clockwork Orange or Barry
Lyndon or Love and Death or Death in Venice). (1996: 249)

but restricts his use of the term ‘purity’ when discussing narrative to refer to the
distancing effect brought about by having the music assigned to an implied filmmaker
rather than a diegetically-closer cinematic narrator. This appears as rather a fine
distinction, and Levinson fails to account for the rich narratives that preexisting,
‘appropriated’ classical music might bring to a narrative, or the congruent narrative of
the music itself as a recognisable classical piece. Ultimately Levinson joins those film
music theorists who believe that classical music operates as a sub-standard film score.
Levinson appears to feel that classical music’s pop culture recognition weakens its
function as a narrative tool, rather than considering that the very same pop culture
connotations might in fact strengthen a film through the congruence of visual and
musical narratives.
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Levinson also seems to misread certain combinations of classical music and film.
In his analysis of the scene from A Clockwork Orange in which Alex and his droogs are
engaged in combat with Billy-boy and company (the music is Rossini’s ‘Overture’ to La
Gazza Ladra), Levinson feels that the Rossini music could not possibly be metadiegetic
as it would cast “Alex’s reactions on perhaps too high a level of sophistication” (1996:
275). This appears as rather a quick dismissal. Alex is repeatedly shown as being fully
immersed in classical music (and in Beethoven in particular). Alex buys micro-cassettes
by Deutsche Grammophon (the best), and even his favourite milkbar plays the music of
Handel and attracts choral soloists as customers. Given this apparent love and
knowledge of the classics, it does not seem unreasonable that Alex would view a gang
fight with the same glee and complete absence of physical fear communicated through
Rossini’s music.
This mis-step over the issue of diegesis serves to emphasis the important
contribution that classical music’s narrative and historical/contextual narrative
congruence can make to a film. Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra opera is a typical Rossini
comedy, filled with convoluted romantic entanglements, frenzied physical comedy, and
a high volume of traffic off and on the stage. On a larger context, there is a confidence to
Rossini operas in that we know they all turn out for the best in the end, happy endings all
around. This historical, narrative imagery is in fact fully supported by the narrative
images of A Clockwork Orange, filtered through the psychosis of Alex, the diegetic
narrator of the film. The placement of the narrative deep within Alex as a diegetic
narrator is crucial here, and illustrated plainly through Alex’s ongoing voice-overs
throughout the film. To parallel La Gazza Ladra, A Clockwork Orange is filled with
convoluted, violent physical entanglements, frenzied physical violence, and a high
volume of victims and characters on and off the screen. For Alex, it would seem his life
is very much a Rossini opera: all laughs and problems not quite too difficult to be
solved.
In fact, Kubrick even fulfils Rossini’s promise of a happy ending, as the film
finds Alex free of his ‘cure’, having returned to his original state of ‘innocent grace’,
fantasising happily about sex and violence and the ‘Ode to Joy’ finale of Beethoven’s
ninth symphony. The crucial difference of course is Alex’s psychosis. His predisposition
towards violence twists all of the comedy of Rossini and the sacred glory and religious
transcendence of Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ into violence and rape, and yet the film
makes it quite clear that for Alex rape and violence is a comedic, transcendent, religious
experience. Violence is Alex’s religion. Alex even attains a momentary state of spiritual
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bliss while reading the prison bible, although for him this bliss is attained through
identification with a scourging centurion at Golgotha.
Levinson’s reading of A Clockwork Orange illustrates that any discussion of film
music narrative must start with an accurate assessment of diegetic source, or else all
subsequent analysis runs the risk of being fallacious. Levinson’s notion of the cinematic
narrator, however, is a useful concept in explaining how audiences might assign
responsibility to classical music heard in a film and thereby accept the music as a
justifiable narrative element.
To summarise: film music theory, which concentrates largely on composed film
scores not generally written to receive the full concentration of the audience, offers three
large theoretical concepts of use to the examination of classical music in film. Musical
narrative establishes that music is capable of communicating narratives on several
levels simultaneously, and these include inherent musical codes and cultural contextual
codes. Two levels not explored in extant film music theory include the metacodes of
musical narrative, also called the ‘metaleitmotif’ function of classical music, and the
importance of classical music’s historical, literary narrative, or original narrative context
(when such a narrative exists). Mutual implication explores the synaesthetic
relationship between film and music when they are combined in the movie theatre, and
the resulting fusion of media is closely tied to concepts of utopia, transcendence, and the
aesthetically ineffable. Mutual implication also implies the consideration of both film
and music as independent media art forms and thus supports the application of
intertextuality as a theoretical ideology. The issue of diegesis establishes the source of
non-diegetic music within a film or narrative, which is crucial when assessing classical
music with a recognisable presence in the ‘real’ world of popular culture.
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Chapter 4 ~ Richard Strauss’s ‘Introduction’ from Also sprach Zarathustra

Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra is instantly recognisable to millions as

“the theme from 2001”, but just as many might be oblivious to the fact that Also sprach
Zarathustra had an independent history as a solid piece of classical music for seventy-two
years before it was used by Stanley Kubrick. 2001: A Space Odyssey has changed Also
sprach Zarathustra forever, but perhaps not in the way many might think. The narrative of
the music remains essentially unchanged regardless of its use, owing to its consolidation of
meaning and connotation in Kubrick’s film: even its use in recent Simpsons episodes
supports Kubrick’s version of Strauss’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s original vision. The
change has occurred in Also sprach Zarathustra’s visual associations: it has acquired
concrete visual images in a way quite inconceivable before the mass mediation of film and
the rise of twentieth-century metasemiotic popular culture.
This combination of film and music can be analysed through each of the three
theoretical lenses as outlined above: as an example of intertextuality; as music video and
pop music; and as film music. As an intertextual reference, Also sprach Zarathustra
must be traced back to Persia and the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism. As film music
and/or music video, the ‘Introduction’ to Also sprach Zarathustra has been used in at
least three feature films and has been referenced in both the ‘Lisa’s Pony’ and the ‘Deep
Space Homer’ episodes of The Simpsons, and all five of these film texts will be
examined in this case history. The three films are Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey,
Scorsese’s Casino, and Heckerling’s Clueless. Strauss’s ‘Introduction’ to Also sprach
Zarathustra plays complete and uninterrupted three times during the course of 2001: A
Space Odyssey, whereas in the remaining three texts the music is only heard for several
bars, generally spanning the first five distinctive notes.
This case history will thus follow a general chronological order, starting with the
Prophet Zarathustra and ending with Homer Simpson and Cher Horowitz, so that the
narrative, musical and visual codes of Also sprach Zarathustra and the films in which it
appears may be shown as a process of pop culture consolidation and culmination.
The name ‘Zarathustra’ in the title Also sprach Zarathustra immediately suggests a
clear intertextual reference. Remaining unchanged, this reference offers a direct line from
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Kubrick and The Simpsons back through Strauss to the original Nietzsche text. Although
certainly Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey was the defining moment for Also sprach
Zarathustra in popular culture, the intertextual nature of the name ‘Zarathustra’ evokes
specific connotations, meanings, and narrative codes from the ancient religion of
Zarathustrianism (a term corrupted by the Greeks into ‘Zoroastriansim’). Zarathustrianism
is a monotheistic religion founded in what was then Persia, sometime between the sixth and
seventh century B.C. by an Ayran priest named Zarathustra (Noss, 1970: 346).
Zarathustrianism preaches a gospel of ethical dualism, offers an elaborate eschatology, and
is today largely practised in India by a small but devout minority (ibid). Believers are
required to follow their consciences to do ‘right’, thereby hallowing the name of Mazda
Ahura, “the Wise Lord” (ibid), and avoid doing ‘wrong’. By this ethical decision the devout
shall be separated from the unfaithful at the final judgment, where the devout enter heaven
to enjoy an eternity of bliss, and the less fortunate are condemned to fall into the
putrefaction of hell.
Zarathustra was a Prophet, and as such received holy enlightenment in precisely the
same way as all major prophets before and after him, regardless of their religion. Moses,
Christ, Buddha and Mohammad all traditionally undertook similar paths to enlightenment,
and the singularity of the narrative of how prophets become enlightened suggests a ‘prophet
narrative’, or what Barthes would call a ‘myth’ (Barthes, 1957).
Zarathustra’s experience is typical. After wandering the world for ten years,
maintaining a vow of silence, and living in a mountain cave for seven years, Zarathustra
received a divine revelation at the age of thirty, instructing him in the true religion and
calling upon him to preach and spread the Word of Mazda Ahura (ibid). In this same way,
Christ fasted in the desert for forty days and forty nights before returning to civilisation
with true knowledge of God, and Buddha meditated under a Bohdi tree for a similar amount
of time before achieving Nirvana (and returning to the physical world to teach about it).
Thus a Prophet (defined by the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary as “a teacher or
interpreter of the supposed will of God”), is one who goes out of civilisation into the
wilderness (be it the desert or the jungle), survives temptation, and receives divine
knowledge. The Prophet then returns to civilisation in order to bring the message of this
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knowledge, light, news, or enlightenment to humanity, so that we may progress in our

spiritual evolution.
Ancient Zoroastrianism was a sophisticated religion, incorporating many botanical,
agricultural and astronomical elements into its theology (Besant, 1897: 59-60). According
to Besant, Zarathustra “gave an immense amount of astronomical science interwoven with
the philosophy and the religious teaching” (1897: 60), with a surprising emphasis on
celestial bodies and their influence on mankind:
To Him [Zarathustra] the stars were not mere masses of matter, revolving by blind unconscious laws
around dead unconscious suns. To Him the planets around the sun, and the mighty stars in the
highest heavens, were but the bodies of spiritual Intelligences, whose will was their guiding law and
whose knowledge insured the stability of the universe. He taught astronomy not as of dead matter
and soulless energy, but as of living Intelligences, moving in changeless order, because guided by
perfect wisdom and unswerving will. (ibid)

This emphasis on the intelligence of celestial bodies in Zarathustrianism will of course

provide much resonance in Kubrick’s later text.
In 1885 Nietzsche appropriated Zarathustra’s name for his book entitled Also sprach
Zarathustra (translated into English as “Thus spoke Zarathustra”). This intertextual
reference also appropriates the ‘prophet narrative’ implied in Zarathustra’s name. In Also
sprach Zarathustra Nietzsche describes the enlightenment of a prophet named Zarathustra,
who subsequently feels beholden to leave his mountain cave retreat in order to bring his
philosophy to humanity, in order to assist them in the next stage of humanity’s
spiritual/theological evolution, called the ‘Superman’ (Übermensch). This philosophy is
grounded upon something Nietzsche called the ‘Eternal Recurrence’, and while Nietzsche
considered this concept the most important of all (Rhys, 1946: xi), it has been the
‘Superman’ which seized the public’s imagination (perhaps because the ‘Eternal
Recurrence’ is an oblique, abstract concept that even the best of Nietzschian scholars have
problems discussing).
Nietzsche’s Superman is described as the next, quantum leap in human
evolution, a form of humanity so advanced and transcendent in nature that our present
form will seem as a mere transitory prologue. Also sprach Zarathustra is thus primarily
concerned with the evolution of mankind from ape to man to Superman. Nietzsche
describes the relationships between these three stages of mankind’s evolution:
What is the ape to men? A laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment. And just so shall man be
to the Superman: a laughing-stock or a painful embarrassment.
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You have made your way from worm to man, and much in you is still worm. Once you were
apes, and even now man is more of an ape than any ape. (1977: 41-42)

as well as in a later passage: “Man is a rope, fastened between animal and Superman – a
rope over an abyss” (1977: 43). Nietzsche claims that the purpose of mankind is to
transcend mere humanity, that “Man is something that should be overcome” (1977: 41), and
that the Superman is the secular apotheosis of mankind. This state is not achieved through
meekness or self-denial however, but rather through the ‘Eternal Recurrence’, a confident
grasp of personal self-empowerment which must be continually and constantly challenged
and renewed. The Superman is “the man who is master of himself” (Hollingdale, 1977: 26-
27).
In his use of Zarathustra as an intertextual reference, Nietzsche thus reinforces the
‘prophet narrative’ found in historical Zarathustrianism, and consolidates historical
meaning with a parallel use of narratives. Nietzsche is using Zarathustra’s name and
historical role as a Prophet as a conscious intertextual reference, in order to communicate
his own spiritual/philosophical revelation. “Nietzsche used this great prophet of antiquity as
a prop on which to clothe his own ideas on the purpose and destiny of mankind” (Del Mar,
1978: 133). This religious tone is apparent throughout Also sprach Zarathustra, which is
written in a formal, highly stylised language clearly intended to evoke more traditional
Scripture: translator Hollingdale refers to “the notion that Thus Spake Zarathustra is mock-
Biblical throughout” (Hollingdale, 1977: 341-342). Nietzsche’s philosophy of the
Superman obviously has little to do with Zarathustrianism, but the name Zarathustra would
presumably have been familiar enough to Nietzsche’s audience that the reference to
‘Prophet’ would not be lost, and yet exotic enough not to provide any philosophical or
theological confusion. Nietzsche himself acknowledges the deliberate reasons behind his
intertextual reference:
Zarathustra was the first to consider the fight of good and evil the very wheel in the machinery of
things: the transposition of morality into the metaphysical realm, as a force, cause, and end in itself,
is his work. But this question itself is at bottom its own answer. Zarathustra created this most
calamitous errors, morality; consequently, he must also be the first to recognize it. Not only has he
more experience in this matter, for a longer time, than any other thinker . . . what is more important is
that Zarathustra is more truthful than any other thinker. His doctrine, and his alone, posits
truthfulness as the highest virtue . . . The self-overcoming of morality, out of truthfulness; the self-
overcoming of the moralist, into his opposite – into me – that is what the name Zarathustra means in
my mouth. (Nietzsche, 1969: 327-328)
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Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra begins with Zarathustra’s enlightenment, and

Zarathustra’s acknowledgment that his accumulated knowledge must be communicated to
humanity in order that humanity might evolve, in an opening chapter entitled ‘Zarathustra’s
Prologue’:
When Zarathustra was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home and went into the
mountains. Here he had the enjoyment of his spirit and his solitude and he did not weary of it for ten
years. But at last his heart turned – and one morning he rose with the dawn, stepped before the sun,
and spoke to it thus:
Great star! What would your happiness be, if you had not those for whom you shine!
You have come up here to my cave for ten years: you would have grown weary of your light and of
this journey, without me, my eagle and my serpent.
But we waited for you every morning, took from you your superfluity and blessed you for it.
Behold! I am weary of my wisdom, like a bee that has gathered too much honey; I need hands
outstretched to take it.
I should like to give it away and distribute it, until the wise among men have again become happy in
their folly and the poor happy in their wealth.
To that end, I must descend into the depths: as you do at evening, when you go behind the sea and
bring light to the underworld too, superabundant star!
Like you, I must go down – as men, to whom I want to descend, call it.
So bless me then, tranquil eye, that can behold without envy even an excessive happiness!
Bless the cup that wants to overflow, that the waters may flow golden from him and hear the
reflection of your joy over all the world!
Behold! This cup wants to be empty again, and Zarathustra wants to be a man again. (Nietzsche,
1977: 39)

Nietzsche’s text offers a narrative which is congruent with the origins of Zarathustra’s
ancient Persian religion, from the thematic similarities of isolation in the wilderness to the
reference to a mountain cave. Nietzsche’s theological twist on traditional Zarathustrianism
is crucial, however, in that Zarathustra’s divine revelation comes not from God or a
Supreme Deity, but rather from the sun, or a star (“Great star!”). Zarathustra steps before
the dawn, thanks the sun for his superfluous wisdom, and vows to emulate the sun in
spreading ‘light’, or wisdom, to the world of mankind.
The substitution of a natural phenomenon such as the sun in place of God is a
necessary manifestation of Nietzsche’s atheism, and yet the emphasis on stars, planets and
other cosmic phenomenon is derived directly from the emphasis placed on astronomy and
celestial bodies in original Zarathustrianism, as cited previously.
This focus on the stars finds curious resonance in other, related literature of the
period. In his introduction to Also sprach Zarathustra, translator R.J. Hollingdale points out
that Nietzsche subsequently acknowledged Goethe as the personification of the Superman
(Hollingdale, 1977: 29), and that a particular passage from Goethe’s essay about
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Winckelmann, written in 1805, “could stand as the motto of Thus Spoke Zarathustra”
(Hollingdale, 1977: 30). This passage also draws on the imagery of stars and planets
celebrating a relationship with the evolution of mankind:
. . . the universe, if it could be sensible of itself, would shout for joy at having attained its goal and
wonder at the pinnacle of its own essence and evolution. For what end is served by all the
expenditure of suns and planets and moons, of stars and Milky Ways, of comets and nebula, of
worlds evolving and passing away, if at last a happy man does not involuntarily rejoice in his
existence? (cited in Hollingdale, 1977: 30)

At the very least, philosophers such as Goethe and Nietzsche were accustomed to expound
their ideas using cosmic and planetary imagery in order to emphasise the contextual scales
of their respective philosophies.
Nietzsche’s text has therefore served to reinforce and consolidate the intertextual
meaning behind Zarathustra’s name and history, adding concrete visual associations to the
consistent narrative theme. This theme can be summarised by the ‘prophet narrative’, here
re-cast by Nietzsche in a stylised, literary, narrative form, and reinforced by visual
descriptions of apes as humanity’s forebears. Further literary personification is extended to
the emphasis on stars and astronomy as an influencing agent in human evolution.
In 1896 Richard Strauss composed a tone poem entitled Also sprach Zarathustra,
intended as a tribute to Nietzsche and Nietzsche’s book of the same name (Wigmore, 1986:
1), and it is this music that reoccurs in popular culture as a metaleitmotif and a self-
referential intertextual reference, and which acts as the ‘static’ musical text in this case
history.
Rather than examined solely as film music, Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra
would benefit from an analytical approach that applied cultural theory to music, as
demonstrated by Tagg (1992a, 1992b) and Goodwin (1993a) in their respective analyses of
popular music. This approach, as outlined in Chapter 2, draws from a wide range of cultural
theories and popular music theory. A cultural theory-musicological analysis of Also sprach
Zarathustra is best outlined along the following five axes: intertextuality, synaesthesia,
anaphones and musical codes, narrative congruence, and Barthesian ‘grain’ or timbre.
Strauss’s intertextual reference is a direct and well-documented derivation of
Nietzsche’s text. Strauss’s reference to Nietzsche is straight-forward, upfront and not
mediated by irony or cultural recontextualisation, in that Strauss made a deliberate attempt
to render some of the narrative themes in Nietzsche’s text in musical form. Strauss
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transferred nine of Nietzsche’s chapter titles to his own work, and although he initially
denied that his composition was a direct musical translation of Nietzsche’s entire book, he
then immediately contradicted himself by claiming the music was an homage to Nietzsche
as exemplified by Also sprach Zarathustra:
I did not intent to write philosophical music or portray Nietzsche’s great work musically. I meant
rather to convey in music an idea of the evolution of the human race from its origin, through the
various phases of development, religious as well as scientific, up to Nietzsche’s idea of the
Übermensch. The whole symphonic poem is intended as my homage to the genius of Nietzsche,
which found its greatest exemplification in his book Also sprach Zarathustra. (cited in Del Mar,
1978: 134)

Classical musicologists immediately seized the idea that Strauss’s composition could be
successfully analysed using Nietzsche’s text as a skeleton key, and indeed the similarities
between the two are intellectually seductive (Del Mar, 1978).
Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra thus presents a fascinating example of
intertextuality and synaesthesia, as Strauss by his own admission was inspired by
Nietzsche’s text of the same name. Strauss’s work can be accurately analysed as a product
of synaesthetic composition, whereby the composer renders typographic, visual, and
narrative content in musical, sonic form. In this way, analysing Strauss’s Also sprach
Zarathustra in musicological terms (such as anaphones and genre synecdoches) becomes
simultaneously an analysis in intertextual and synaesthetic terms. Because Strauss was
thinking of Nietzsche’s text when he composed his music, any musicological dissection
must necessarily be couched in terms of intertextuality, rendered into musical form, via
synaesthesia.
A full musicological analysis of Also sprach Zarathustra is beyond the scope of this
thesis. Also sprach Zarathustra plays for an average of thirty-five minutes in entirety, and
Tagg has demonstrated that a doctoral thesis might only consider a full analysis of fifty
seconds of music (1979). In recognition of the depth of textual material that music presents
for analysis, only the ‘Introduction’ will be examined here, although it is important to note
that Strauss’s entire work is concerned with “. . . the evolution of the human race from its
origin . . . up to Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch” (Del Mar, 1978: 134). This larger
musical context offers further textual congruence with other texts in this case history.
The ‘Introduction’ to Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra should be familiar to many
readers, even to those who might only know it as ‘the theme to 2001’. Like all music, it can
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only be described in non-musicological language with difficulty. A deep rumbling bass

note begins the work, and then a slow trumpet announcement of three notes is heard,
moving up in pitch, before a dramatic two-chord orchestral extension. This last chord
becomes louder, giving way to dramatic rhythmic strokes of kettle drums in even rhythm.
This trumpet announcement repeats twice more, making three statements in total. Each
time, the trumpets give way to a two-chord orchestral extension. The third and last of these
ends with a different, more ‘impressive’ chord, and is slower, more expansive, and louder
than the previous two. This passage continues beyond the previous end of the earlier, now
familiar phrase to a second fanfare phrase, again moving up in pitch for three notes. The
phrase pauses here in clear musical anticipation before continuing with a further musical
phrase of three more notes, again moving higher in pitch. A loud brass scale moving down
in pitch is heard at this point, in counterpoint to the ascending three-note scale of the last
phrase. This last phrase also repeats three times, ending with a loud chord which swells in
volume before dying away, leaving an organ chord for several seconds later than any other
instrument.
This music communicates unmistakable information to the audience even without
its intertextual, Nietzschian context. However, to separate these pure musical codes from
the synaesthetic process that generated them seems impossible, and it is at this point that
neurological psychology/physiology reaches its limitations. Any analysis of the pure
musical codes in Also sprach Zarathustra must be foregrounded in the knowledge that
Strauss was thinking of Nietzsche’s book during the composition of the music, and thus the
causal relationship between musical form and textual inspiration becomes, in this case at
least, quite clear and linear in chronological order. In this way Strauss’s own admission that
his composition is a synaesthetic, intertextual interpretation of Nietzsche’s Also sprach
Zarathustra (as cited above) justifies a reading of the music in Nietzschian terms. Crucially,
this progression of logic should be seen more as a demonstration of synaesthesia that
specifically connects typological text to musical text, and not as a further example of the
lyrical hegemony that mars so many music video analyses.
At any rate, the textual material that Strauss had in mind when composing the
‘Introduction’ is more accurately discussed in thematic, narrative terms rather than literal
terms. Strauss certainly does not attempt to musically render every word in Nietzsche’s
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opening chapter. Instead Strauss chooses to musically portray ‘dawn’, the one narrative
event that defines Nietzsche’s ‘Introduction’, both as an actual celestial event and as a
metaphor for Zarathustra’s spiritual enlightenment.
The connection between Strauss’s ‘Introduction’ to Also sprach Zarathustra and
Nietzsche’s ‘dawn’ is explicit, as Strauss copied out the first several lines of Nietzsche’s
‘Introduction’, onto the original score (Del Mar, 1978: 135). Del Mar, a classical
musicologist who has written about Strauss extensively, describes the ‘Introduction’ to Also
sprach Zarathustra in these words:
The score is prefaced with . . . the very first opening lines of Zarathustra’s Prologue, describing his
withdrawal from home and family and giving in full the great apostrophe to the rising sun. Hence the
music begins with all the magnificence of a spectacular sunrise. Strauss chose the pure and simple
tonality of C to symbolize Nature, and the opening section is entirely built in that key. There is
something of the origin of all things in the deep C held over four slow bars which derives from the
similarly primeval E flat of Wagner’s Ring. Out of this deep fundamental C springs the Nature
theme, the simplest of all Naturtheme, a rising C G C . . . It is declaimed three times by four
trumpets in unison and leads to tutti enunciations of the major and minor modes in alteration. This
vacillation between major and minor is itself symbolic: the Nature theme as it stands suggests neither
mode, being only a bare fifth. Its modal clothing through the addition of the major or minor third has
a human significance and the doubtful ambiguity of the alternation indicates man’s perplexity at the
sublime but insoluble mysteries of nature. This impressive introduction with its thundering timpani
triplets reaches a majestic climax, to which the addition of the organ supplies a solemn liturgical
element which Strauss emphasizes by leaving the organ holding on by itself for a full two beats after
the orchestra has ceased. (1978: 135).

In this description Del Mar succumbs to the musicologist’s practice of discussing music in
terms of musical theory, describing music as “modal clothing” and of “the tonality of C”, as
well as assigning specific human emotions to musical sequences. Del Mar seems to be
aware that claiming that “the addition of the major or minor third . . . indicates man’s
perplexity at the sublime but insoluble mysteries of nature” (ibid) is theoretically unsound,
but he defends himself in a footnote by stating that the “logical aptness [of this connection]
becomes apparent and subsidiary to the sheer quality of the music” (ibid) once the listener
becomes aware of the narrative congruence between Strauss’s and Nietzsche’s works.
A broader approach which combines traditional musicological approaches with
those of popular music and general cultural theory (as outlined above), allows a closer
investigation into the mechanics of how the Prologue to Also sprach Zarathustra
communicates musical and cultural meaning, well beyond that which Del Mar has
managed. As Del Mar points out, Also sprach Zarathustra begins with a low, sustained
bass note being played on an organ over four bars, or approximately 17 seconds. This single
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note immediately brings with it numerous inherent musical codes, acting both as genre
synecdoche and kinetic anaphone (Tagg, 1992a: 22). In Western culture, the use of the
organ as instrumentation of genre synecdoche communicates a religious connotation,
placing the music directly into a mythological, epic, sacred cultural context. The organ is an
instrument traditionally associated with church and organised religion, and the distinctive
timbre of organ pipes communicates an entire genre of musical meaning, which spans from
the glory of God (as found in the thundering organ fugues of J.S. Bach) to its diametrically-
opposed inversion (as found in the psychotically-brilliant organ playing in The Phantom Of
The Opera, which features a brilliant but insane organist-monster). The organ is a huge,
powerful instrument capable of producing never-ending sound on a volume scale
unmatched by any other, and a low sustained bass note implies a wide, infinitely-
sustainable range of musical violence. The spectrum of these genre associations all exist
within popular culture and are instantly evoked by the timbre of organ notes.
The bass C note that begins Also sprach Zarathustra is a tactile anaphone,
according to Tagg’s musical sign typologies (Tagg, 1992a: 22). The note communicates
meaning through an analogy with anticipation, physical tension, physical illness, unease,
and nervousness, as the bass frequency of the note seems to physiologically affect the
body’s internal organs. The use of a low bass note to communicate this information is
common and well established in film and television music. Johnson and Poole, in their
discussion of this convention in Peter Weir’s Picnic At Hanging Rock, recognise that “. . .
flatline sounds in disturbingly unsourceable low register . . . constitute one of the
standardised markers of menace in film music (1998: 129). This practice was informally
dubbed the “megadrone” by Philip Tagg and his student Anders Wintzéus in 1987, and
examples of it can be found throughout Angelo Baldamenti’s music for David Lynch’s
Twin Peaks (television episodes and feature film versions), as well as in trailers for
innumerable films (trailers for Jeunet’s Alien: Resurrection {1997}, McNamara’s Casper:
A Spirited Beginning {1997} and Kevin Spacey’s Albino Alligator {1996} are but three
disparate examples).
In this latter example the tactile anaphone works typically. Trailers generally work
on a binary narrative structure. The first half of the trailer establishes the initial, stable
dramatic setting, and the second half introduces the conflict or disruption of the initial
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stability that will subsequently drive the rest of the film. In the commercial trailer for
Albino Alligator, the initial dramatic setting is set to care-free, light-hearted New Orleans
jazz music. The film’s conflict is then introduced, first in purely musical terms through the
‘megadrone’, then visually reinforced with fast-cut edited images of violence and
confrontation. When heard even over visual images of happy social stability, the deep bass
rumble communicates anticipation, chaos, tension, and fear. The carefree jazz music has
disappeared and the megadrone has communicated the information that the narrative has
taken a twist and that the previously happy, static narrative environment has gone badly
wrong. The megadrone accompanying the trailer’s visual images suggests (through mutual
implication) that only pain and grief and intense emotion will follow, and an emotive state
of anticipation and tension ensues.
As an anaphone of anticipation and tension, the megadrone that opens both Also
sprach Zarathustra and 2001: A Space Odyssey is particularly effective. Analogically, the
deep C note in Also sprach Zarathustra acts as a foundation, cornerstone, or beginning,
upon which the listening audience might reasonably expect some further musical structure
to be built. This low bass foundation note appears to exist at the lowest end of the audible
frequency, and indeed can almost be perceived physically (in the pit of the stomach) as
much as heard audibly, and so any subsequent musical information necessarily must be
built ‘on top’ of the low bass note. As in architecture, the larger and deeper the foundation,
the taller and more impressive the subsequent structure built on top, and this artistic
potential is latent in the bass register.
In this way, this single note manages to convey a sense of some primordial starting
point, through a combination of sacred genre synecdoche and kinetic anaphone. In Western
culture, a low bass note played on an organ combines connotations of ‘religion’ with
‘beginning’, and thus evokes textual suggestions of the beginning or starting-point of
religion, myth and history. This can be found articulated in the Introduction to Nietzsche’s
Also sprach Zarathustra (with its faux-scripture tone) as well as in the Book of Genesis
(1.2): “And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the
deep”. The low C megadrone is the sound of that deep darkness: musically, it is that which
comes before anything; before light, before the heavens, before earth, and before any
melody, theme, song, trailer or film sequence can begin. This kinetic-anaphonic
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characteristic of the bass C is emphasised by its simplicity and unadorned, musical

starkness. This emotive affect can be seen in Del Mar’s attempts to articulate how “there is
something in the origin of all things in the deep C. . .” (1978: 135).
The next three rising notes, building from the low bass C organ note, initially span a
fifth to an octave and communicate the composite, sonic and kinetic anaphone of ‘dawn’ or
‘sunrise’. This is called the “Nature theme” by Del Mar (1978: 135). The rise of these notes
up the scale anaphonically parallels the rise of the sun up into the sky, and the slow, stately
speed of the notes anaphonically parallels the slow speed of a sunrise. The octave span of
the first three notes suggest the mathematical precision behind celestial orbits. The trumpets
that play these notes also bring with them specific genre synecdoche connotations. These
connotations revolve around the ‘fanfare’, and ensuing meanings of ‘nobility’, ‘wealth’,
and ‘power’. All of the other genre synecdoche connotations also synaesthetically parallel
corresponding associations with dawns: majesty, stateliness, power. The timbre of the
trumpet anaphonically communicates associations of ‘brightness’ and golden ‘brassiness’.
The ‘Nature theme’ is heard three times on the trumpets, each with a slightly different full
orchestral extension, building to the third and final statement which then transforms into a
final fanfare flourish which Del Mar calls “a majestic climax” (ibid). The timing of the
notes in this final flourish is carefully spaced out to communicate, again using Tagg’s
mechanics of tactile anaphones, a sense of agonising deliberation, as the final ‘concluding’
chord is reached. The final note of the Prologue is held by the aforementioned organ, which
reinforces the sacred, liturgical character of the music for another six seconds after the rest
of the orchestra has stopped playing (ibid). The religious/mythological code of the organ
timbre also suggests the sun/dawn, in its genre synecdoche evocation of sun-worshiping,
and pre-historical religious ceremonies devoted to the sun as a deity.
The synaesthetic association between Strauss’s music and Nietzsche’s visual image
of the rising of the sun is thus musically supported both by musicological analysis as well
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as Strauss’s own written intent. In this way the narrative congruence between Nietzsche’s
text and Strauss’s music is also apparent and demonstrably deliberate. The wide-spread
assumption of this acknowledged connection between the dawn at the beginning of
Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra and the dawn at the beginning of Strauss’s Also
sprach Zarathustra can be found reflected in media such as the cover art for Deutsche
Grammophon’s 1986 reissue of its 1974 recording of this music, which features a
reproduction of a painting entitled “Die fünfte Phase”, by Henning von Gierke. This
painting depicts five phases of the moon, from new moon through to full moon, each phase
represented along a parabola arc trajectory over a terrestrial horizon (see Illustration 5).
This also serves to reinforce the connection between Zarathustrianism, Nietzsche, Goethe,
and Strauss in their use of celestial objects as metaphors for their humanistic/artistic
purposes, as seen above. This synaesthetic and narrative-congruent connection between
Nietzsche and Strauss, and between their respective depictions of linguistic and musical
‘dawn’ imagery, would likely have been widely accepted in 1896 and for the next seventy-
two years.
In 1968 Stanley Kubrick used the music of the ‘Introduction’ to Also sprach
Zarathustra in his film 2001: A Space Odyssey, and the role this music played in popular
culture seems irrevocably changed as a result. The ‘Introduction’ to Also sprach
Zarathustra is heard three times in the film: in the opening credit sequence; during a
crucial narrative scene early in the film; and in the final minutes of the film during the
last startling images.
The screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey was developed by Kubrick and
science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke from a short story written by Clarke called ‘The
Sentinel’. Synopses for 2001: A Space Odyssey are often vague and contradictory owing
to the film’s surreal and narratively-abstruse final sequence, and Kubrick’s refusal to
engage in comments or even speculation about the ‘meaning’ of his film. The film’s
narrative is split into three basic sections. The first section, entitled ‘The Dawn Of Man’,
follows the day-to-day activities of pre-human apes in their routine of hunger and fear.
One morning a huge monolith of foreign origin is found in their midst, which causes
great alarm and interest, and which seems to teach the apes about tools and weapons.
Armed with this new knowledge, the apes are able to intimidate the rival tribe and
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provide meat for food. The second section is set in the year 2000, with Mankind having
just conquered space travel and the moon. Recent moon excavations have unearthed a
monolith which the audience recognises as being identical to the one that visited the
primates in the first section of the film. As this monolith is examined by American
scientists at dawn, the monolith emits a high pitched radio frequency apparently aimed
at the planet Jupiter.
The third and longest section is set eighteen months later, in 2001. A space ship
has been sent to Jupiter to follow the radio signal, in the hopes of discovering the
signal’s recipient. The space ship, manned by astronauts Bowman and Poole, is run by
an omnipotent computer called HAL. After an unprecedented computer malfunction that
causes HAL to murder all of the mission astronauts but Bowman, Bowman takes a space
shuttle out into space to meet a second, gigantic monolith in orbit around Ios. Bowman
makes some kind of contact with the monolith, which seems to send Bowman on a
journey that transcends space and time, in a fantastically-visual film spectacle known as
the ‘Star Gate’ sequence. After emerging and spending what seems to be years in a
surreal apartment at the other ‘end’ of the Star Gate, Bowman meets the monolith again
and appears to evolve or transform into an entity known as the ‘Star Child’, which is
seen represented on a scale equivalent to the size of the earth in the film’s final shot.
Much of the narrative confusion surrounding 2001: A Space Odyssey can be
dispelled when the text is analysed in relation to its intertextual relationship with
Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra. As explained above, Also sprach Zarathustra
makes explicit reference to apes and primates as the ancestors of humanity, and uses this
imagery to describe the evolutionary voyage of mankind from ape to a super-human
entity, or Nietzsche’s ‘Superman’. The narrative parallel with Kubrick’s text is apparent:
this is precisely the vision of humanity and evolution offered in 2001: A Space Odyssey,
with Kubrick’s ‘Star Child’ filling the same role as Nietzsche’s ‘Superman’. 2001: A
Space Odyssey is also concerned primarily with the evolution of mankind, and
secondarily in the role that technology might play in that evolution. To this end, Kubrick
depicts the same three stages of humanity as Nietzsche: pre-human primates at the
moment they evolve from ape to human, humans, and humans at the moment they
evolve from human to something super-human (the ‘Star Child’). In 2001: A Space
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Odyssey, mankind’s function is to discover space travel and demonstrate that they have
achieved the level of technical sophistication required to qualify for the next stage of
evolution. In this way they are merely the transportation, or Nietzsche’s “rope bridge”
(1977: 43), on route to the Star Child/Superman.
This quantum leap in evolution, from primate/animal to human and human to
Star Child/Superman, is achieved by both primate and human through a deliberate act of
self-empowerment. Nietzsche clearly states that during the journey of man becoming
Superman, man first passes through the stage of ‘higher man’, who will prepare the way
for the Superman by being “beasts of prey”:
Thus they shall become finer beasts of prey, subtler, cleverer, more man-like beasts of prey: for
man is the finest beast of prey. (1977: 227)

In the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey, at ‘The Dawn Of Man’, the ape achieves
evolutionary transcendence by becoming a beast of prey: first smashing the skulls of
tapirs for food and then the skull of the enemy tribe leader for territory – mankind’s first
murder. At the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Bowman achieves mankind’s evolution to
Star Child through the ‘murder’ of HAL, the malevolent omnipotent computer
determined to kill him, in a scene of excruciating deliberation. Once the hunted,
Bowman has become the hunter. In each case these evolutionary steps are facilitated by
the monoliths, who are somehow responsible for running the machinery (or are the
machines themselves) of evolutionary transformation. The monoliths are the visual icons
of mankind’s new age, and are represented sonically by Richard Strauss’s Also sprach
Zarathustra.
Also sprach Zarathustra is first heard over the opening credits of 2001: A Space
Odyssey (Video Clip 2). In fact, the deep bass C megadrone note can be heard while a
blue MGM ‘lion’ logo is being screened, even before the film’s visual images can be
said to have actually started. The opening credit sequence depicts the dawning of the sun
over the crescents of two planets, all three planetary bodies perfectly aligned along a
vertical axis in the centre of the Cinerama screen.
As the trumpet scale starts, the sun rises over the top of the planets. This is a
celestial dawn, instead of a terrestrial dawn, and as the sun rises its light breaks over the
visible crescents of both aligned planets. The first appearance of the sun is carefully
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timed to synchronise with the beginning of the first trumpet note of the ‘Nature theme’.
As the theme plays, the film’s credits are superimposed over the image of the sun rising
over the two planets, (one of which eventually orbits out of sight): “Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer Presents”, then “A Stanley Kubrick Production”, and finally the film title, “2001:
A Space Odyssey”. The placement of this last credit is carefully timed to match a crucial
chord in the music’s final fanfare, immediately preceding the moment of ‘agonised
deliberation/anticipation’ described above. The credits furthermore are centred on the
screen and centred with the images of the aligned planets behind them, presenting a
symmetrical visual picture (see Illustration 6). The music and the title are both timed to
match the moment in the sun ascent when it clears the horizon of the second planet and
can be seen in its entirety.
The result of this opening sequence is deliberate. As film music, the Introduction
to Also sprach Zarathustra fulfils all film music duties by supporting the accompanying
visual image. The stars, planets and sun suggest that the film’s genre is likely to be
science fiction, and the classical style and instrumentation of the music announce genre
elements of ‘epic’ and ‘spectacular’, information reinforced by the use of the word
‘Odyssey’ in the film’s title (a word with classical Greek connotations through Homer’s
epic poem). Reversing the visual hegemony of film music, the credit sequence works
equally well as musically-generated media, or as pop music video. The visual images of
planets, suns and stars, and especially the way the sun rises on a straight vertical axis
above larger, descending planets, support the rising notes of the ‘Nature theme’ on the
trumpets, laid on top of the bass C megadrone. The careful editing of musical and visual
coordination supports the perception of mutual implication and synaesthesia, that the
music is somehow generating the credits and visual images to the same degree that the
credits and visual images seem to be generating the music.
The musical codes splice perfectly into the visual images presented through a
combination of mutual implication, synaesthesia and narrative congruence. The emotive
affect of tension and anticipation, established by the tactile anaphone of the impressive,
deep bass C megadrone note, enjoys a mutually-implied parallel with the anticipation
established by the pre-film, opening production logo for MGM (as well as mutually
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implying that MGM is a company of impressive, nigh-sacred power). The trumpet

fanfares, which are communicating both ‘dawn’ and all the associated connotations of
royalty and importance, support the credit titles as they appear in the same way that the
credits seem to be generating the music. These connotations are also transferred to the
film itself through mutual implication. In this way the film communicates royalty and
importance, and the beginning of the film becomes the ‘dawn’ of the film: the
impressive starting of something glorious to behold. The title of the film, timed with the
climactic fanfare, is the information both the music and credit sequence has been leading
up to: this is the information the audience has been waiting for both visually and
musically.
Thematically, the historical narrative is congruent. Also sprach Zarathustra (as
articulated by both Nietzsche and Strauss) historically depicts the beginning of a
Prophet’s journey to communicate a great truth or message to humanity. Similarly, the
opening credit sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey represents the beginning of a mass
media form (film)’s attempt to communicate a story or message to the public. The visual
images of the aligned sun and planets also enjoy a synaesthetically close connection with
the music and its traditional, historical narrative. The symmetrically-aligned sun and
planets visualise the rising sun described in words by Nietzsche and in music by Strauss,
a detail of Zarathustra’s life that can be found in the original accounts of the prophet’s
religious transfiguration in the sixth century B.C. Nor is the astronomic setting so
unusual, as both traditional Zarathustrianism and Nietzsche’s text place a clear emphasis
on the importance of stars and planets as narrative agents. The visual image of the rising
sun, here depicted with such visual style by Kubrick (see Illustration 6), is exactly that
which Nietzsche describes in Also sprach Zarathustra and which is described in
traditional Zarathustrianism history.
The immediate cultural result of combining Also sprach Zarathustra with the
title sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey was to establish Also sprach Zarathustra as the
‘theme’ music to 2001: A Space Odyssey. While this aspect of combining Also sprach
Zarathustra with 2001: A Space Odyssey will be examined in greater detail after all
three occurrences of Also sprach Zarathustra are examined, it is worthwhile to note that
the title sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey would have been largely responsible for
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this cultural association. Bazelon writes: “I daresay there are many people who connect
Richard Strauss’s Thus Spake Zarathustra only with the opening of 2001, and I wouldn’t
be surprised if they believe Strauss wrote the music with Kubrick’s film in mind” (1975:
157).
The very next, establishing shot of 2001: A Space Odyssey immediately offers a
subtitle: “The Dawn Of Man”. This further strengthens the narrative congruence of
Strauss’s music and Nietzsche’s words in as blunt a manner as possible. The next twelve
static shots depict the sun in various stages of breaking over what might be a prehistoric
African veldt, initially pre-dawn and then with the dawn sun low on the horizon. During
subsequent scenes we are introduced to a tribe of primates with obvious physiological
traces of human potential, such as Australopithecus. These primates eke out a hard life
of fear and hunger. They live under numerous mortal threats, including predation from
leopards, an antagonistic, enemy tribe on the other side of the communal watering hole,
and having to scratch out a sparse vegetarian diet in competition with complacent tapirs.
Early one morning at dawn the primates are awakened by the arrival of a monolith in the
middle of their sleeping area, a large solid rectangular slab of flat grey material that
seems to emit a disturbing chorus of apparently diegetic noise and which seems
physically compelling in spite of its clearly foreign nature and origin. A singular shot of
the monolith is offered as if from the primates’ point of view. It portrays the monolith’s
perfectly symmetrical alignment, along its vertical axis, with the rising sun and the
crescent of a planet (the moon, perhaps). The sun is just breaking over the top of the
monolith, and the visual similarity of this shot with the previous title sequence is
apparent – as if the monolith were a planet itself.
In the immediately following scene, one of the primates is shown pawing
desultorily for food amongst a pile of bones, the silent monolith clearly forgotten (Video
Clip 3). Suddenly the primate looks up, his gaze unfocussed: clearly something has
occurred to him or some thought has struck him. There is a cut to an identical shot of the
monolith as described above, with the sun dawning between the top of the monolith and
the symmetrically-crescent moon, and the montage editing communicates that the
monolith is somehow responsible for the thought that has struck the primate, although
nothing is heard at first. The primate’s gaze seems to focus on the bones surrounding
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him for the first time, and he considers them with slight tilts of his head, seemingly deep
in thought.
At this point the low bass C megadrone that starts Strauss’s Also sprach
Zarathustra can be heard. This results in an electrifying cinematic moment, as the
audience is led to anticipate an event of extreme importance. All of Strauss’s anaphonic
communication (as outlined above) prepares the audience for a plot development of
biblical, primordial importance and ramification. This anticipation is enhanced by the
fact that Also sprach Zarathustra is by now familiar to the audience, if only through the
preceding credit sequence, and this gives the audience some idea of the musical/visual
scale on which the upcoming plot development can be measured.
After several seconds of the bass C, the trumpet ‘Nature theme’ begins, and the
primate concentrates on the bones in front of him with tilts of his head coordinated with
the trumpet fanfare notes. The conclusion to the first fanfare then accompanies the
primate hopping forward and picking up the large femur bone he has been contemplating
with such intensity. Picking up the femur bone to knee height and letting it fall under its
own weight, he sees that several bones fly out of the way as a result. The primate seems
encouraged by this and uses the femur to strike the rest of the bones with increasing
strength and enthusiasm, clearly understanding that the bone is particularly effective as a
tool. The second statement of the trumpet fanfare continues. By the third and final
statement of this trumpet theme, the primate is clearly intoxicated by his own strength
and success in smashing bones, and the scene has shifted into slow-motion to follow the
violent strokes of the femur, some of which are timed perfectly with trumpet fanfare
chords. A particularly violent and effective stroke of the weapon is timed perfectly with
the ‘anticipatory’ chord of the final fanfare that accompanied/generated the film’s title in
the opening title sequence.
The primate next targets a tapir skull lying at his feet, and brings the femur down
on it with great (slow-motion) force, shattering the skull into many pieces. These images
are again timed perfectly to coordinate with the music. Slow-motion shots of the
bleached skull shattering into smaller and smaller pieces are edited quickly with shots of
live tapirs hitting the ground as if they had been clubbed in the head, and we are given to
understand through the montage editing that the primate can imagine (or the audience is
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seeing the actual results of) bringing this new knowledge to bear on live animals rather
than animal bones. Later scenes show the entire tribe of primates eating meat from slain
tapirs, and the primate leader permanently claims the waterhole by killing the leader of
the enemy primate tribe with his bone weapon: clearly the primates will never feel
hungry, thirsty or threatened again.
The overall narrative effect of this sequence is to show that the monolith is
responsible for introducing the concept of ‘tool’ and ‘weapon’ to the primate, through
some kind of silent, direct mind-to-mind communication. Music notwithstanding, this
scene justifies the opening subtitle of the film, “The Dawn Of Man”, by presenting the
precise moment in the evolutionary process that animal became man. This moment is the
discovery of the tool, and how the tool can be instrumental in staving off hunger and
enemies, thus opening up greater potential for increasing genetic population.
As with the opening credit sequence, the music and the visual images in this
sequence are carefully edited together in such a way that the music of Strauss is
plausible as film music. The synchronisation of trumpet notes with slow-motion blows
of the femur serves to musically emphasise the importance of that visual image, which is
offered as visual proof of the primate’s introduction to higher knowledge.
Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra brings numerous associative contextual
connotations and narratives to 2001: A Space Odyssey, in addition to the inherent
musical codes as outlined above. The most obvious context is the film itself, as this
exact music was employed in the credit sequence that opened the film. In this way Also
sprach Zarathustra operates as a leitmotif within 2001: A Space Odyssey since the
inherent musical narrative codes of ‘dawn’ given visualisation in the opening credit
sequence are referenced in this later scene, thus transferring all the musical connotations
established by the credit sequence. This explains why this second use of Also sprach
Zarathustra is so effective. The audience anticipates the climactic final chords of the
music, having already associated them with the titles in the opening credit sequence
through mutual implication, as described above. The momentum and anticipatory nature
of the music prepares the audience for an event or climax of similar narrative
importance.
The issue of diegesis becomes interesting in this scene, as the music could
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arguably be the metadiegetic form of the enlightening communication between monolith

and primate. The monolith’s ability to generate diegetic sound is suggested in an earlier
scene depicting the arrival of the monolith in the primate’s sleeping area. The atonal
chorus by Ligetti seems to be emanating either from the monolith or is presented as
being heard by the primates, an observation reinforced by the abrupt, diegetic end to the
music when the scene cuts to time later in the day. Non-diegetic music is never this
abrupt in its conclusion, strongly suggesting a diegetic, or metadiegetic, source.
The careful editing of the music to the visual action in this scene also suggests a
metadiegetic source, from the musical thoughts of the primate undergoing intellectual
evolution. This is not weakened by the shift into slow-motion, as the timeless,
‘suspended’ nature of the chords allow a synaesthetic parallel with the suspended nature
of slow-motion photography. Metadiegetic music allows for visual tropes such as slow-
motion, as it represents a move of the audience’s perception into the mind of the
character in question, who might well be seeing or imagining themselves enjoying a
particular moment of grief or triumph in less than linear time. The inherent and historical
narrative codes of Also sprach Zarathustra suggest that as the concept of ‘weapon’
dawns in the primate’s mind, so does Strauss’s music of ‘dawn’ metadiegetically dawn
in the primate’s mind.
There is also a sense of poetic satisfaction to the idea that classical music itself is
enlightening the primate and facilitating a leap in human evolution. This satisfaction can
be found echoed in such scenes as Robert Redford and Meryl Streep playing Mozart to
baboons in the middle of the Serengeti in Pollack’s Out Of Africa (1985), and in clichéd
quotations such as “music soothes the savage beast”17.
This second use of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra in 2001: A Space Odyssey
also presents a perfectly-weighted role of audio-visual mutual implication. It musically
communicates Nietzsche’s text through intertextuality and synaesthesia at the same time
as it acts as the ‘musical-isation’ of Also sprach Zarathustra. All of the icons and themes
that connected Strauss’s music with the Nietzsche text that inspired it can be found
visualised in Kubrick’s film. The role of the prophet, assigned to Zarathustra in Also

17
This is a popular – and telling – mis-quotation from William Congreve’s The Mourning Bride: “Music has charms to sooth a
savage breast.”
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sprach Zarathustra, is assigned to the monolith by Kubrick. The monoliths are the
Prophets in 2001: A Space Odyssey, bringing a message from the wilderness of space to
mankind and facilitating their next quantum leap up the evolutionary scale. This offering
is intimately connected with dawn, the stars, and planetary bodies, and this connection is
made visually explicit throughout 2001: A Space Odyssey. An early shot of the
monolith, from the primate’s perspective, clearly aligns the monolith with the moon and
the dawning sun, which breaks over the top of the monolith in perfect planetary
symmetry. The association between monolith and prophet is reinforced by the diegetic
source of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra in this scene, and can be found in subtle
details such as camera angles. The monolith is shot from a low angle shot, looking
straight up at the monolith towering over the camera, with the sun and moon in perfect
symmetry. This point-of-view positioning establishes the monolith as a powerful
presence, evoking narratives such as Moses descending from the mountain-top with the
ten commandments, Christ preaching from the top of the Mount of Olives, and (as
consciously employed by Leni Riefenstahl in Triumph of the Will) Hitler addressing the
1934 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg.
Finally, the connection between the monolith and Strauss’s Also sprach
Zarathustra finds synaesthetic reinforcement in simple geometry. The distinctive
trumpet scale – the Nature theme – that opens Also sprach Zarathustra involves three
notes that span a fifth to a perfect octave. This involves a musical range with
mathematical precision. Similarly, the physical dimensions of the monolith incorporate a
mathematical symmetry, comprising the squares of the first three integers: 1:4:9. In the
novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke describes these proportions as an
intrinsic part of the monolith’s function:
How obvious – how necessary – was that mathematical ratio of its sides, the quadratic sequence
1:4:9! And how naive to have imagined that the series ended at this point, in only three
dimensions! (Clarke, 1973: 221)

The final occurrence of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra is found at the very
end of film, during the final scenes, effectively finishing the film (Video Clip 4).
Astronaut David Bowman has survived the Star Gate journey and undergone a surreal
experience whereby he encounters progressively older versions of himself in a strange
seventeenth-century apartment. Finally bed-ridden with age, Bowman comes face to
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face with the Monolith standing mute before him. The next scene shows a luminescent
humanoid figure curled in a foetal position in a round, transparent shell, with the roof of
the seventeenth-century apartment dimly seen in the background. The deep bass C
megadrone begins at this point, carrying through the next shot, a facial close-up of the
figure within the ‘globe’. The creature within it is child-like and foetal but with
preternaturally large and unblinking eyes, and it becomes clear that the glowing orb
surrounding it is some kind of egg. Both the ‘child’ and its egg are bathed in a strange
glow of blue light. On the next cut the trumpet ‘Nature theme’ begins, as the shot begins
a steady zoom directly into the heart of the monolith, standing directly in the middle of
the apartment, symmetrically flanked by furniture. The screen goes black as the surface
of the monolith blots out all else, and the audience is led to believe that they have
somehow passed into, or through the monolith as a result of the camera’s continued
momentum. The climax of the first trumpet fanfare is timed with the next shot, showing
the moon against a field of stars, the camera panning down. This pan continues, as does
the second and third trumpet ‘Nature theme’ fanfare, passing over the Earth on the right-
hand side of the screen. The next shot is again timed with the climactic chord of the third
fanfare, immediately after the ‘anticipatory’ chord described above. This shot again
shows the ‘star child’, again bathed in glowing blue light but this time positioned
upright, although its hands are still gathered near its chin in the foetal position. A slow
movement brings this creature’s unblinking stare directly into that of the audience, and
this final image fades along with the dying organ chord of Also sprach Zarathustra.
The ending to 2001: A Space Odyssey has a deserved reputation for being cryptic
and obscure, although much of this confusion can be explained when filtered through the
narrative codes brought to bear with Also sprach Zarathustra. Strauss’s music acts as a
strong unifying force in this part of the film’s narrative, connecting this final, surreal
imagery with the primate sequence at the beginning of the film. All of the inherent
musical, narrative and contextual codes as outlined above receive further and final
reiteration during this final scene. In this final sequence, Nietzsche’s descriptions of the
Superman are given visualisation, as described above. The linear progression from
primate to Superman/Star Child is communicated through Strauss’s music, as
Nietzsche’s philosophy is communicated through Strauss’s music as narrative
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congruence. In addition, the music acts as a leitmotif, announcing the arrival of the
monolith as the instrument of mankind’s evolution to this advanced state. Bowman’s
evolution into the Star Child is achieved literally through the monolith, as the music of
Strauss begins.
The presentation of the monolith in an upright position, as it is portrayed in the
opening primate sequence and as found on the moon, suggests the anthropomorphisation
of the monolith as a character. This association is reinforced by the use of Also sprach
Zarathustra as film music, which again has a metadiegetic source with a suggestion that
the actual music is the vehicle for man’s evolutionary transformation (a suggestion
which nicely underlines the narrative congruence of Strauss’s music with the writings of
Nietzsche). The repetitious, anticipatory nature of the music works well as a leitmotif at
this late stage of the film. Mutual implication also transfers the wonder and expectation
of this scene back onto the music, even within the filmic context of 2001: A Space
Odyssey. The narrative context of 2001: A Space Odyssey has established an expectation
of insight, spectacle and transcendence in both previous manifestations of Also sprach
Zarathustra, so the first chord of the music in this last example immediately establishes
an expectation in the audience that a final, further leap in contextual narrative is
forthcoming, and this expectation is realised in the surreal images of the Star Child. The
extremely wide diegetic time-span of the film enhances this element of musical
communication, as Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra is still diegetically effective in
2001: A Space Odyssey over 4 million years of time and an incalculable number of light-
years. As popular music, this final performance of Also sprach Zarathustra supports all
musical and synaesthetic codes, as even the speed of the camera’s movement through
the monolith is timed to coordinate with the speed of the music.
By the end of this final sequence, a strong leitmotivic connection has been forged
through mutual implication between several narrative and contextual elements: the
music of Strauss has been associated with the arrival, presence, and subsequent
‘influence’ of the monolith, and more specifically with the precise second of dawning
human consciousness. Zarathustra’s and Nietzsche’s literal and figurative dawns have
been transferred into Kubrick’s literal, intellectual and psychological dawns with
concrete associated visual imagery (planets, primates, skulls, Bowman, Star Child).
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Narrative congruence supports both sides of film-music mutual implication, with the
music justifiably ‘generating’ the visual images with the same plausibility as the visual
images ‘generating’ the music.
The use of Also sprach Zarathustra in 2001: A Space Odyssey created a major
sensation in the media press and amongst film scholars. In fact, Kubrick’s use of Also
sprach Zarathustra in 2001: A Space Odyssey dominates the discussion of classical
music used in film, throughout film music literature. The number of references in
various theoretical literature to the use of Also sprach Zarathustra in 2001: A Space
Odyssey is enough to suggest an unprecedented film-music combination, but this fusion
of contemporary, science fiction visual image and traditional classical music has never
been analysed in any kind of detail, and certainly not in terms of intertextuality,
narrative congruence, and popular music synaesthesia.
Film music academics are fond of citing Kubrick’s decision to reject an original
score for 2001: A Space Odyssey composed by Alex North (Buhler & Neumeyer, 1994:
380; Brown, 1988: 179; Bazelon, 1975: 111; Evans, 1975: 243; Mulhall, 1993: 1-2;
Townson, 1993: 1). In accordance with standard film directing practice, Kubrick had
apparently compiled a ‘scratch track’ or ‘temp track’ of music in order to communicate
basic film-music direction to his primary composer, Alex North and also to Frank
Cordell, who was also commissioned to write a score (Brown, 1988: 179; Bazelon,
1975: 111). This scratch track featured music composed by Richard Strauss, Johann
Strauss II, Ligetti, and Khachaturian, and was of course eventually used in the final film.
Townson explains that Kubrick planned on using his classical music scratch track in the
final version of his film from the beginning:
According to various accounts which have developed over the years, Stanley Kubrick never
intended to use an original score in 2001: A Space Odyssey. His request to use classical music
excerpts in the film had been immediately rejected by the studio, which felt a very strong need for
an original score. MGM had actually been very specific in its vision of the film from a musical
standpoint and had even gone so far as to specifically “suggest” Alex North as the composer of
choice. Kubrick had gone along with this (at least as far as the studio knew) when seemingly
what had begun was a charade of monumental proportions. (1993: 1)

Alex North himself claims that he suspected Kubrick was not going to consider an
original score for 2001: A Space Odyssey, and so North composed an Introduction that
was as close to Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra as he could manage:
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But somehow I had the hunch that whatever I wrote to supplant Strauss’ “Zarathustra” would not
satisfy Kubrick, even though I used the same structure but brought it up to date in idiom and
dramatic punch. (Quoted in Townson, 1993: 1)

North’s confession of basing his Introduction strongly around Strauss’s music is

fascinating, particularly with respect to apologists for North, who claim that North’s
score for 2001: A Space Odyssey would have been a substantial improvement over
Kubrick’s scratch track. Indeed, the 1993 Varese Sarabande recording of Alex North’s
score for 2001: A Space Odyssey reveals an Introduction that is remarkably similar in
tone, feel, and structure to Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. Mulhall acknowledges the
challenge presented to North because of the connection between Kubrick, Nietzsche, and
Strauss:
The temporary music track Kubrick selected for the main credits was the opening of Richard
Strauss’ tone poem, “Thus Spake Zarathustra.” Kubrick was undoubtedly attracted to the
grandiose sound and symmetry of Zarathustra’s structure (the ascending three-note line parallels
the conjunction of the three spheres as the camera moves upward). Moreover, the title of the
Strauss piece was taken from a book written by Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher who loosely
inspired some of 2001’s ideas (for example, the myth of the ape-man-superman; the concept of
eternal recurrence). North knew it would be difficult to persuade Kubrick to distance himself
emotionally from Zarathustra, but he proceeded to write his own title anyway. (1993: 1-2)

The similarity between Strauss’s music and North’s music (North even began his cue
with a megadrone) serves to illustrate the extent to which Strauss’s music carried with it
seventy-two years of high-cultural baggage. It seems that this baggage alone, and not
any inherent synaesthetic, musical incompatibility, subsequently led critics to disparage
Kubrick’s choice.
For twenty-five years after the release of Kubrick’s film, however, North’s music
remained unheard, and indeed acquired ‘legendary’ status as one of the great lost scores
of film history (Townson, 1993: 1; Mulhall, 1993: 1). During these twenty-five years,
the use of classical music in Kubrick’s film arguably drew more attention and argument
than any use of classical music in any film before it. Reactions ranged from contempt to
cautious admiration. Bazelon felt that Kubrick was being pretentious and that the use of
Strauss et al. represented an attempt to position the film as something greater than it
actually was, i.e., a product of ‘artificial’ culture:
With all art, both serious and popular, becoming an amusement commodity for leisure-time
activity, the film industry has absorbed the materials of traditional art in order to imbue its
product with all the trappings of the genuine culture. In 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork
Orange, for example, Stanley Kubrick uses the framework of classical music to give his films the
veneer of art. In 2001, he borrows liberally from Richard Strauss and others . . . This is
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reminiscent of the early days of film when the musical gems of the past were incorporated as
background adornments. (1975: 35)

Although Bazelon was slightly more impressed with the use of Johann Strauss II’s ‘Blue
Danube’ in 2001: A Space Odyssey, he felt that “. . . its evolvement to main-theme status
[was] idiotic . . .” (1975: 111), and he summarised his opinions thus:
Kubrick’s decision to use selective pieces from the late nineteenth- and twentieth-century concert
repertoire – Strauss, Khachaturian, and Ligetti – sounds like what it is – a pastiche of odd musical
bedfellows. An impressive film like 2001 should have had an important composer and an original
score. Having seen a portion of Alex North’s music, I am convinced that its use would have
enhanced the film; if not North, then perhaps avant-gardist Ligetti from beginning to end. The
nineteenth-century splashes of musical sentiment in 2001, for the most part, reduce its emotional
impact to that of romantic drama. (ibid)

Bazelon’s biases as a film music composer himself are clearly revealed in statements
such as this, which now might appear slightly dated in light of the 1993 recording of
North’s score and its close similarity with Strauss’s music.
Brown brings slightly more historical and professional perspective to his brief
mentions of Also sprach Zarathustra in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and he acknowledges
that 2001: A Space Odyssey marked the beginning of a new era for pre-recorded film
music, although his line of reasoning eventually takes a rather commercial turn.
The 1960s, for instance, saw what must be considered as in important shift in the use of
preexisting classical music on the nondiegetic music track. In films such as . . . Stanley
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1969), the excerpts of classical music compositions that
replace the original film score no longer function purely as backing for key emotional situations,
but rather exist as a kind of parallel emotional/aesthetic universe. (Brown, 1994: 239)

Disappointingly, this “parallel emotional/aesthetic universe” is not described or explored

in any more depth. In an earlier article Brown does briefly identify the importance of
Also sprach Zarathustra’s narrative congruence with 2001: A Space Odyssey, although
he feels the result of this congruence is mere cliché:
Kubrick’s choices struck audiences, critics, and subsequent film-makers as so appropriate that
audiovisual associations, such as the dramatic opening of Richard Strauss’s tone poem Also
sprach Zarathustra with various forms of dawning, became almost instant clichés. (1988: 179)

Brown's use of the phrase ‘instant cliché’ is interesting here. What Brown seems to be
identifying is the instantly and innately recognisable ‘click’ of synchronous narratives
communicating consistent music and visual information over decades of cultural history.
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In interviews with Bazelon, film music composers Leonard Rosenman and John
Williams, respectively, give positive accounts of Kubrick’s scoring technique for 2001:
A Space Odyssey:
Bazelon: Do you have to be a composer to write film music?
Rosenman: I feel that the answer is no . . . . Stanley Kubrick got together a bunch of records for
2001 and it worked quite handsomely. (Bazelon, 1975: 181)

In all film music literature, John Williams comes the closest to recognising the profound
effect that Kubrick’s synaesthetic combination of classical music and contemporary
image can project on the screen, and the implications of this for film music scoring
practice:
Bazelon: Do you think that music can really describe anything, or do you think that it suggests
though visual imagery? I realize we’ve inherited the romantic tradition.

Williams: I was about to say it’s largely cultural association. But what I think Kubrick has shown
so wonderfully well is that the associations can be dispelled. Take a thing like the
Strauss waltz in 2001. The whole thing about a waltz is grace, and you can see that the
orchestra can achieve this. Kubrick takes what is the essence of courtly grace, the
waltz, and uses it to accompany these lumbering but weightless giants out in space
during their kind of sexual coupling. And even though the Strauss waltz in my mind,
probably yours too – it’s the Danube, it’s Viennese awful chocolate cakes and ghastly
Viennese coffee. You know what I mean? But Kubrick says to us, “Watch the film for
more than five seconds and forget those associations, and it will stop being nineteenth-
century Vienna”, and in the hands of Von Karajan the music becomes a work of art
that says “look”, that says “air”, that says “float” in beautiful orchestral terms, and if
you go with this film, the films helps dispel all of these associations, and we’re into a
new audio-visual world. Zarathustra too, but it’s a less startling example. . . . . the
audio visual coupling is the key to your original question, I think. (Bazelon, 1975:
199-200, emphasis added)

As Bazelon’s comments as an interviewer suggest, all of these references originate from

deep within the ruling ideologies of film music practice, such as visual hegemony and
the assumption that specifically composed film music is de facto superior to any
appropriated score. Clearly the use of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra struck a chord
with many audiences, theorists and critics.
As cited earlier, Bazelon has stated that he believes “. . . there are many people
who connect Richard Strauss’s Thus Spake Zarathustra only with the opening of 2001,
and I wouldn’t be surprised if they believe Strauss wrote the music with Kubrick’s film
in mind” (1975: 157). One point that Bazelon, Brown et al miss is that many audience
members, especially those without any profound knowledge of nineteenth-century
romantic classical music, might not only fail to recognise Also sprach Zarathustra as a
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1896 composition by Richard Strauss, but that such distinctions of time and historical
context might be entirely unimportant. As Rosen (1997: 57) points out with his Repo
Man example (discussed in Chapter 2), Eco’s metasemiotic audience and Owen’s
Generation X audience are able to consume media texts as a combination of textual
elements, “ . . . received and appreciated on the basis of its parts” (ibid). These parts are
all related to each other by virtue of their common existence in popular culture and by
virtue of their mere proximity in the given media form. This is mutual implication on a
media-wide scale: if two textual items are combined or offered together in a given media
form, then the audience might well construct or assume a contextual relationship
between them – even if only a relationship of ironic pop culture self-referentiality. As
cited in Chapter 2, Rosen describes it this way: “. . . we’re dealing here with a generation
of people who are receiving things in pieces — here-there-here-there — and then
making the leap to the whole” (1997: 57). Modern audiences who watch 2001: A Space
Odyssey can assume a contextual justification for combining Also sprach Zarathustra
with the visual images portrayed with it, through mutual implication. This assumption is
of course entirely justified, and this fortunate combination of well-placed trust — and
the depth of synchronicity of that congruence — go a long way to explain the immense
effect that Also sprach Zarathustra and 2001: A Space Odyssey have had on each other’s
presence in popular culture.
There is something in the strength of the mutually implied fusion of Also sprach
Zarathustra and the images of 2001: A Space Odyssey that suggests an aesthetic effect
beyond that which can be explained through semiotic or textual analysis. Kubrick has
achieved a ‘utopian’ sound and image moment, through a combination of multimedia
elements which have perfect mutual-implication and audio-dissolve. The depth of
congruence between the narratives of Kubrick’s film and the three narratives reiterated
through Strauss’s music combine through mutual implication to generate an additional
meaning: Barthes’s Third Meaning, or that which cannot be expressed through language
or academic analysis. The combination of Also sprach Zarathustra with 2001: A Space
Odyssey is one of those textual combinations which achieve the kind of aesthetic
transcendence described by Altman, Allan, Berland, Dyer, and Barthes, and supported in
theory by Costello & Wallace, and Negus (see Chapter 4). It is this magical, utopian,
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transcendent, Third Meaning (suggested by so many media theorists but beyond the
scope of linguistic articulation) which helps explain why Also sprach Zarathustra and
2001: A Space Odyssey have fused together so completely, and continue to fascinate and
galvanise audience almost thirty years after the film was released.
The association of Also sprach Zarathustra with the concrete visual images of
2001: A Space Odyssey, and the ineffable, transcendent aesthetic which resulted, was so
successful in terms of narrative congruence and synaesthesia-aided mutual implication
that the music became established as a metaleitmotif — a self-referenced particle of
popular culture. The existence of Also sprach Zarathustra as a metaleitmotif is a result
of the cumulative effect of all three occurrences of Strauss’s music within 2001: A Space
Odyssey, and the transcendence of mutually-implied sound and vision. From 1968
onwards, it has not been possible to reference Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra without
also referencing Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and it is very unusual to reference
2001: A Space Odyssey without accompanying the visuals with their sonic counterpart.
Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra has acquired the concrete visual imagery of Kubrick’s
film, and it seems unlikely that it will perceived in a non-Kubrick light again. In popular
culture, the associations are very specific: Also sprach Zarathustra is associated
sonically with the monolith, with stars and planets, and with celestial, terrestrial,
evolutionary, intellectual, and psychological dawns/dawnings of profound importance
and implication, filtered through Kubrick’s cinematic sensibility.
The proof of Also sprach Zarathustra’s existence as a metaleitmotif can be found
it its appearance in several television advertisements, programs, and films released since
2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968. All of these uses of Also sprach Zarathustra involve
the play upon Kubrick’s imagery from 2001: A Space Odyssey (such as stars and
planets, primates, and the monolith) as well as themes (dawning of knowledge, the
announcement of great, earth-shattering truth). Brown speaks of the association of
Strauss with various forms of dawning as “instant cliché” (1988: 179), and this lazy
opinion is likely based on the presence of several television commercials announcing
new and improved formulations of their invariably mundane products, set to Strauss’s
music.
One such example, dated in the early seventies, involves a Dutch television
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advertisement for Silan fabric softener (Video Clip 5). As the trumpet begins the first
notes of the Nature theme, we see a highly stylised, symmetrical bulge of liquid
immediately prior to becoming a drop of liquid. This is shot in extreme close up, with
professionally-lit photography. So extreme is the close up and so stylised is the image
that the audience is not sure what they are seeing until the second of the two orchestral
chords following the Nature theme, which shows the slow-motion impact of the liquid
drop into the pool of liquid into which it fell. This splash pattern is shown in slow-
motion and in close-up, in order to emphasise the symmetry and beauty of such an
ordinary event. The ad then shows the swirling effect of heavier liquid as it is poured
into water, and an extreme close-up shows individual particles of material respond to the
presence of the new liquid. As the Nature theme is heard a second time, the results of
this fabric softening are shown. An extreme close up of a towel being draped over a
human body in slow motion is shown, with the light source dipping in and out as
multiple images are layered over one another. Eventually a woman is shown flinging a
towel over her left shoulder, and finally the product — a plastic container of Silan fabric
softener — is shown next to folded laundry. The final notes of the Nature theme reveal
the product to be the great revelation of the advertisement.
As facile as this effect appears, this advertisement still upholds consistent visual
imagery and ironic narrative congruence with its intertextual reference to Strauss,
Kubrick, et al. The initial bulge of liquid and the subsequent drop of liquid are presented
in such a way as to suggest planetary bodies, photographed with a symmetry that clearly
recalls Kubrick’s opening title sequence for 2001: A Space Odyssey. A quick close up of
towel fabric is lit in such a way as to suggest the light of dawn breaking (a morning
shower, perhaps), and the slow-motion photography is established to match the
synaesthetically slow movement of the music and the orbiting planets in Kubrick’s film.
As trite and commercialised as it appears, the advertisement is playing on the Prophet
narrative established by Zarathustra and echoed by Nietzsche, Strauss, and Kubrick.
Rather than any profound message for mankind, Silan is merely communicating the new
presence of a laundry product, but this in no way diminishes the narrative theme
followed in this case. In broad narrative terms, proclaiming the new dawn of mankind’s
next evolutionary stage is no more different than proclaiming the release of a new fabric
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softener formulation: a proclamation of news is still a proclamation of news. Narrative

congruence remains intact.
By 1980, the combination of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra with Kubrick’s
imagery and themes from 2001: A Space Odyssey was common-place enough that
intertextual references to it could be safely made in feature films and television
programs without too much fear of audience alienation.
Martin Scorsese’s film Casino was released in 1995, but set from 1973 to 1980.
It traces the lives of three people within that time period: Sam “Ace” Rothstein, who is
employed by the Mafia to be the front man for their casino interests in Las Vegas; Nicky
Santorini, a thug who is sent to Las Vegas to act as a violent enforcer for Rothstein’s
Tangiers Casino & Hotel; and Ginger McKenna, Rothstein’s unstable wife. The film is
largely concerned with the political and legal complications arising from Rothstein’s
dual role as a legitimate businessman and as a member of the Mafia, and his rise and fall
from power and Mob favour through political snubbings and Mob killings.
Towards the end of the film, Rothstein finds that his application hearing for a
State of Nevada Gaming License (which he requires to legitimately operate the Tangiers
Casino) is quickly denied by politicians who have amassed political leverage against
him. However, these same politicians have had a long history of patronising the Tangiers
Casino on complimentary rooms and entertainment provided by Rothstein. With the
blunt refusal of his Gaming Licence application, Rothstein verbally attacks the Nevada
politicians and vociferously accuses them of hypocrisy in full, public view of the
assembled press.
The next scene depicts Rothstein’s Mafia bosses in Kansas City, discussing
Rothstein’s Nevada newspaper headlines (Video Clip 6). Remo Gaggi, the mob boss, is
sitting in the back of a large Cadillac, which is parked on an anonymous side street.
Gaggi’s right-hand man Andy Stone is talking to Gaggi through the open car window,
which he has walked to from his own car also parked on this side street. Gaggi is highly
annoyed that Rothstein is making such a public spectacle of himself in Las Vegas, which
generates precisely the kind of public scrutiny that the Chicago group consider
anathema. Throwing down a newspaper with the headline “Rothstein Out Of Gambling”
in disgust, Gaggi has the following conversation with Stone:
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Gaggi: What the hell’s he gonna do now?

Stone: I don’t know.
Gaggi: What’s he doing? He knows all those guys he yelled at are friends of ours. What’s the
matter with him, making all this mess?
Stone: Maybe he could run things with another job title. It won’t be the best . . . but whatta we
gonna do.
Gaggi: However he runs things, it’s gotta be quiet. Let him hide upstairs in the office, say he’s a
janitor, I don’t give a shit. But please — whatever job he takes — make sure it’s
something quiet.
Stone: O.K.

This exchange is immediately followed by another medium shot of the two Cadillacs
parked on the snowy street, as Stone walks back to his car, and it is during this shot that
the bass C megadrone that begins Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra can be heard. As
Gaggi’s Cadillac pulls away towards the camera, the three notes of the Nature theme are
heard, spanning the octave. Film special effects blur the image of the Cadillac as it pulls
away, leaving afterimages of the car ‘echoing’ on the screen.
The next shot is edited to the two orchestral chords which follow the Nature
theme, and depicts a stylised star field with stars moving towards the camera from a
vanishing point in the centre of the screen, as if the camera was moving quickly through
outer space18. Two things happen simultaneously: the words “From the Tangiers Hotel”
can be seen revolving around the vanishing point, coming to rest in the middle of the
screen, and a young woman’s voice can be heard saying “Ladies and Gentlemen! The
Tangiers Hotel proudly presents the all new Sam Rothstein show . . .” As the woman’s

18
Users of personal computers today will recognise this effect from the screen saver called ‘Starfield Simulation’ by Microsoft.
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voice concludes with the name of the show, “Aces High!”, the words “Aces High”
appear at the same time, also on top of the moving star field.
The next scene cuts to a shot of a famous neon sign on the Las Vegas strip,
which reads “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas Nevada”, while the music changes to a
Vegas-style orchestration of the disco classic ‘That’s The Way I Like It’ originally
performed by K.C. & The Sunshine Gang. The overall effect of these two scenes edited
together – the side-street meeting of Mafia bosses and the Las Vegas television or in-
house advertisement is highly amusing. Clearly Rothstein has gone well out of his way
to do something as loud and noisy as possible, using mass media broadcasting to reach a
wide audience well beyond the scope of Rothstein’s mere personal relationships. This is
in direct disobedience of Gaggi’s requirement that ‘whatever job he takes, make it
something quiet’.
Rothstein’s show ‘Aces High’, which uses Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra at
least partially as its ‘theme tune’, is diegetically designed to give Rothstein a mass media
broadcasting forum to expose Las Vegas and Nevada politicians for hypocrisy,
immorality and dishonesty. It allows Rothstein to communicate the information that he
has collected over the years about these politicians (such as the Senator of Nevada
enjoying complimentary suites, gambling credits, and high-price prostitutes),
presumably to the cable television audience, or at very least the Tangiers Hotel & Casino
residents through closed cable television. In this way, the use of Strauss’s Also sprach
Zarathustra is narratively consistent with Zoroastrianism, Nietzsche, Strauss, and
Kubrick. In Casino, Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra is used to announce the dawning
of a great revelation experienced by Rothstein: that Nevada government officials are
impossibly corrupt. Like Zarathustra, like the Monolith, Rothstein is attempting to
communicate a great truth, attempting to raise the consciousness of his audience, to
educate them and bring them to a new level of understanding — in this case, about the
state and extent of government corruption. Rothstein is establishing himself as a minor
Prophet, preaching his message about government hypocrisy and corruption to the
people.
This intertextual reference suggests ironic humour as well. Scorsese is suggesting
that music previously used to communicate connotations of majesty, timelessness, and
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sacred authority in 2001: A Space Odyssey could be used for something as pedestrian,
fleeting and ‘rooted-in-the-moment’ as Sam Rothstein’s Vegas show, with ‘the Sam
Rothstein Dancers’. Clearly this is one way that Scorsese uses to underline Rothstein’s
sense of self-grandeur. Kubrick’s use of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra would come
across as funny and clever to a diegetic audience, but funny and ironic to the 1990s
audience of Casino. This irony is reinforced by the sonic montage of Strauss with a
Vegas orchestration of a disco hit by K.C. & The Sunshine Band. The fact that ‘That’s
The Way I Like It’ has been orchestrated, and not even sampled as a musical tmesis in
its original form, is important as the disco hit is further denied even a veneer of musical
authenticity as a result. Scorsese’s use of irony here further supports the pop culture
mediation of Strauss’s music, as this kind of irony relies heavily on the fact that its
targets are established particles of western popular culture, accepted and recognised by
the audience.
Scorsese’s use of Kubrick’s imagery in Casino consolidates Kubrick’s reading of
Strauss in popular culture. The ‘starfield simulation’ that accompanies the extension to
the Nature theme is a direct reference to the science fiction genre of 2001: A Space
Odyssey, which has had time to have become very well known by 1980 when this scene
is set. Already eleven years old by the diegetic clock, this music serves as a further
reference to the time setting of the scene. This reference to early 1980s pop culture can
also be found in the tone of voice used by the announcer (which suggests a stereotypical
unintelligent female model, chosen more for her physical sexual appeal than her stage
presence or announcing voice) and in the low-technology special effects for television
presentations, both of which might be colloquially called ‘cheesy’ in today’s popular
culture.
The reference to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey can also be seen in other
details of this scene: in the way that the words “From the Tangiers Hotel” revolve
around the vanishing point in much the same fashion as the monolith revolved around its
orbit around the moon Ios, and in the way that the Mafia bosses’ Cadillacs in Kansas
City are depicted in a blurred, colour-shifted special effect to suggest non-linear time
and space movement. This latter example, which has been edited on film to match the
megadrone and the first note of the Nature theme in the soundtrack, is a suggestive
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reference to the ‘Star Gate’ sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is entirely
composed of similar, psychedelic imagery. However, the best indication of Kubrick’s
success in attaching concrete visual images to Strauss’s music appears in the end music
credits for Casino, which do not cite the ‘Introduction’ to Strauss’s Also sprach
Zarathustra, but instead cite “Overture (Prelude from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’)”,
“Composed by Richard Strauss”. Whether this was deliberate or just poor research is
beside the point, which is that Kubrick’s film is the context in which the music was
offered, and from which the audience seems to be expected to derive recognition and
understanding.
Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra has been used in two episodes of The
Simpsons, where once again it is used in connection with a play on Kubrick’s 2001: A
Space Odyssey and imagery related to that film. The Simpsons, currently in its eleventh
season in the United States, has become one of the most popular television shows in
history. A remarkable feature of the program, and arguably a reason behind its success,
is the sheer volume of intertextual references written into its typical half-hour running
time. These references operate on many levels and encompass the entire range of
popular culture. Often entire episodes will be based on a single intertextual reference
(such as episodes framed as a half-hour spoof of Scorsese’s 1991 remake of Cape Fear,
or an episode of The X-Files), but hundreds more are based on throw-away humorous
assaults on everything from the seductiveness of late-night television shopping, to
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s accent, to the popularity of all-you-can-eat restaurants. The
Simpsons has a cultural reputation for being the most ravenous consumer of pop cultural
references in twentieth-century television. Writing as if it were a self-evident truth,
Anthony claims that “the pinnacle, of course, [of television self-referentiality] is Fox’s
The Simpsons, which parodies every corner of mass media it can find — including Fox’s
The Simpsons” (1997: 35).
The sonic appearance of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra in not one, but two
episodes of The Simpsons is extremely important. More than any other use of this
multimedia tmesis, Groening’s use of Strauss’s music and Kubrick’s imagery
demonstrates the fusion of sound and image in this instance, and the degree to which this
fused particle of media has become an accepted part of popular culture. The Simpsons
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provides the media studies scholar with a continually up-to-date encyclopedia of popular
culture’s constituent parts, as well as indisputable proof that today’s pop culture
audience can be defined in part through its comfortable familiarity with metasemiotic
intertextuality. Owen succinctly sums up the important role that The Simpsons plays in
promoting and consolidating this relationship:
Although the show began more as a showcase for Matt Groening’s dysfunctional family creation,
The Simpsons evolved into a pop culture barometer. If it’s made fun of on The Simpsons, then it’s
an important piece of popular culture. (1997: 66)

The Simpsons offers textual indication of Eco’s metasemiotic audience, as it is written

and constructed in such a way as to offer the maximum number of culturally semiotic
references in its half-hour allotted time. The Simpsons excels in offering intertextual
references merely for the sake of intertextuality, regardless of whether the intertextual
references contribute to the plot or narrative in any way. The sole purpose of these
references is to provide satisfaction from audience recognition. In his attempt to explain
this aspect of the huge Generation X popularity of television programs such as The
Simpsons, Friends, and The Single Guy, Anthony claims that “you can be cool simply by
understanding allusions to old television shows” (1997: 35), although all three of these
shows also reference popular film, music, and general culture.
The Simpsons episode ‘Lisa’s Pony’ (episode #8F06) originally ran in the show’s
third season, in 1991. The episode’s plot revolves around Homer Simpson’s purchase of
a pony for his daughter Lisa, in order that he might win her love back after causing her
public humiliation at a school recital. However, as is typical with Simpsons episodes,
many of the intertextual references have little, if anything, to do with the central plot,
and the reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey and Also sprach Zarathustra falls into this
category.
‘Lisa’s Pony’ opens with a direct and obvious reference to the beginning of
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the entire opening sequence of the primates
and the monolith is recreated in animated form (Video Clip 7). The entire sequence is
even portrayed in letterbox format, as if the actual letterboxed, cinema-released film
were being intertextually sampled. The opening shot of the episode offers an African
Veldt and a pre-dawn sky, with the subtitle ‘The Dawn Of Man’ written below in even
the same font (albeit in ‘cartoon’-style) as Kubrick’s original film. The sequence moves
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rapidly through an animated re-creation of Kubrick’s key scenes: a waterhole is shown

with a group of apes drinking water from it, and Homer Simpson as the primate is
obvious from his singularly bald head and recognisable physiognomy. Suddenly the
primates take fright and run off-scene, though Homer is typically the slowest to react.
An animated recreation of Kubrick’s scene depicting the arrival of the monolith is next,
followed by shots of the primates running up to it in order to stroke and touch it, in
accordance with Kubrick’s original choreography (although primate Homer is
conspicuous by his absence in this group). Once again a shot of the monolith from a very
low angle looking straight up is shown, with the sun breaking over the top of the
monolith, and the crescent moon above it, in perfect geometrical symmetry, also a
perfect animated recreation of the equivalent shot in 2001: A Space Odyssey (see
Illustration 7).
The next shot presents a primate smashing a large bone into a skull and skeleton
spread out before him, in a similar arrangement to Kubrick’s film. During this quick
scene, the music of Also sprach Zarathustra is heard on the soundtrack, in the correct
key. Rather than lingering on this shot, however, rapid scenes follow which portray
other crucial evolutionary steps in mankind’s history: a primate is shown discovering
fire, and a second primate is shown discovering the wheel. The Nature theme of Also
sprach Zarathustra accompanies these shots. This is followed by a shot of primate
Homer looking up at the monolith, and a cut to a close-up of Homer’s face depicts him
as impressed and anticipatory, as he emits one of his trade-marked drawls of surprise (a
sound that audiences of The Simpsons recognise as the sound Homer usually makes
when he discovers, say, an unusually tasty doughnut). Clearly, it is Homer’s turn to be
enlightened and receive wisdom and knowledge. However, walking up to the monolith,
Homer sits down in front of it and uses the monolith as a backrest for a nap, tipping the
monolith over on an angle in order to achieve a more comfortable position. The other
three apes can be seen in the background, celebrating their discoveries, as Homer falls
asleep. The next shot is a repeat shot of the monolith in symmetry with the sun and
moon. Panning down, the camera reveals Homer snoring and fast asleep, his hands
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clasped behind his head, which is perfectly aligned with the monolith and the planets
above it, as the final orchestral chords of the first fanfare come to a close and the kettle
drum rhythm begins. This close-up of Homer’s snoring face dissolves to Homer asleep
in the same position at work at his desk in the Nuclear power plant, and as this dissolve
occurs, the music dissolves from the kettle drums of Richard Strauss to the music of
Johann Strauss II’s ‘The Blue Danube’. This music lasts for only a few notes and it fades
away with the ring of a telephone. Homer wakes up, grunting like a primate, and
answers the phone: it is Lisa calling from the school recital with a request for a new
saxophone reed, and the episode’s plot begins in earnest. Homer is surprised by the
phone call: a request for a new saxophone reed is not generally the kind of mission for
which he is competent.
This sequence has no bearing on the subsequent episode plot, and exists only as
an intertextual reference to Kubrick and Strauss – one of the many non-contextual
intertextual references littered throughout this episode (other references in this one
episode alone include The Godfather, National Velvet, The Magnificent Seven, television
show Fantasy Island, and Stevie Wonder’s song ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’). The
humour in the reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey is multi-layered: either we have been
given a prehistoric insight into how Homer’s earliest ancestor missed the opportunity to
evolve, or Homer has been dreaming of participating in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space
Odyssey, and his profound laziness has prevented him from following the script and
joining the rest of the tribe in evolving from animal to human. In either case, when
presented with the tremendous opportunity to initiate a quantum leap in evolution, the
best Homer can manage is to have a nap, with a verbal expression that suggests that even
this idea is a huge step for Homer’s mind to take. However, the writer of this scene
clearly understood the original narrative details of Kubrick’s film, as visual details have
been added in order to emphasise the precise nature of the evolutionary leap, and, as a
result, the humour that revolves around Homer’s failure to evolve. Specifically, shots of
primates discovering the wheel and fire, the two other fundamental tools of civilisation,
are added to this scene from The Simpsons. While these discoveries were not part of
Kubrick’s film, the spirit in which these additions are added to this animated reference is
perfectly congruent with Kubrick’s intent in 2001: A Space Odyssey to depict that
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moment when Mankind achieves an evolutionary benchmark. The discovery of fire and
the invention of the wheel are arguably the only two other human benchmarks that
compare in importance.
Interestingly, the shift from nondiegetic sound (Strauss) into diegetic sound is
made via the telephone, and this offers a humorous play on the function of the telephone
in modern society. Much as the monolith seems to use Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra
to announce the communication of (ostensibly) important information, so do we use the
telephone ringer or buzz. Much play can be found in the difference of importance
between typical phone calls (Lisa Simpson needs a new saxophone reed) and the kind of
information communicated to the primates as they make their quantum leap in human
evolution (the simultaneous discovery of tools and weapons). This sonic trope is found
reiterated in Heckerling’s film Clueless, as discussed below.
Groening’s writers have improved on the original in their pursuit of a joke, but
this in no way diminishes the consolidation of Kubrick’s imagery and the fusion of that
imagery with Strauss’s music. Kubrick’s imagery is reinforced largely through the
perfect replication of camera angles (see Illustration 8) and the scene’s subtitle. The
underlying message behind this reference though, apart from the scene’s function as an
intertextual reference, is the reinforcement of the original synaesthetic associations made
by Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey. All of Kubrick’s associations are recreated here
by Groening under the guise of reference or parody (which in no way diminishes the
strength of these associations). The music reinforces synaesthetic associations of the
narrative archetypes of dawn, the prophet narrative, and evolutionary/spiritual
transcendence
The second instance of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra can be found in an
episode of The Simpsons entitled ‘Deep Space Homer’ (episode #1F13) which ran in
1994 during the show’s fifth season. As the title suggests, ‘Deep Space Homer’ recounts
Homer’s adventure as a NASA astronaut, and offers the show’s audience a wide range
of references to science fiction films and films about space travel, such as 2001: A Space
Odyssey, Alien, various films and television shows within the Star Trek franchise, Total
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Recall, The Planet of The Apes, The Reluctant Astronaut, The Hellstrom Chronicle, and
The Right Stuff.
In this episode, NASA is apparently concerned with low television ratings, and
so the decision is made to send an ‘ordinary, blue-collar slob’ into space, thereby giving
the fickle viewing audience an identifiable human reference. Homer and his friend
Barney Gumble are chosen as candidates. This is fortunate for Homer, who is typically
suffering low self-esteem as a result of being beaten out by an inanimate carbon rod for
the ‘Employee of the Month’ award at the nuclear power plant where Homer works.
Homer wins the competition to be the chosen astronaut (by default) and is sent into
space, where he jeopardises the mission with his incompetence and predilection for
ruffled potato chips. Through sheer accident with another carbon rod, Homer manages to
secure the space ship door that was threatening to mortally weaken the ship, and the
crew arrives back on earth safely. Rather than feted as a hero, however, Homer is once
again passed over for glory in favour of the inanimate carbon rod used to secure the
door.
The combined reference to Strauss and Kubrick occurs at the very end of the
episode as the final reference of the show (Video Clip 8). The very last scenes of ‘Deep
Space Homer’ show Homer and his family back at home, watching the ticker-tape
parade for the carbon rod, on television. Bart is asked to say something encouraging to
his father, but Bart is busy writing something on the back of Homer’s head with a black
marker, echoing a similar scene at the beginning of the episode when Bart wrote ‘Place
Brain Here’. This time, however, Bart has written ‘Hero’ on Homer’s head in genuine
admiration. When he has finished writing, Bart throws the black marker into the air, and
the camera cuts to a close-up of the marker turning in space as it ascends. On its decent
the scene changes, and the marker is montage-replaced by a space satellite which is
clearly marked with the “Fox” name and logo (Fox is the American network that screens
The Simpsons). As soon as this montage editing happens the music of Strauss’s Also
sprach Zarathustra can be heard, as the Nature theme begins. As Strauss’s Also sprach
Zarathustra plays, the satellite descends through space, and the camera pans down in
front of it, revealing a thin crescent of the earth on the left hand side. On the right hand
side is Homer Simpson, this time arranged as the Star Child from the end of 2001: A
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Space Odyssey. Homer, shown from the waist up, is naked and surrounded by a glowing
globe, his eyes wide. Homer’s hands are up in front of his mouth in the foetal position,
and he taps his fingers together as if bored. At this point the Fox satellite, which has
been continually orbiting, hits Star Child Homer in the middle of his forehead before
bouncing off. This is timed to occur immediately after the last chord of the extension to
the Nature theme. Homer recoils in pain and emits his famous cry “D’oh!”, indicating
surprise and irritation. Obviously annoyed, he watches the satellite off-screen with a
frown on his face.
From the moment that Bart throws the felt marker into the air, this is a pointed
reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey, cleverly collapsing scenes from the beginning and
the end of Kubrick’s film. In Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey the move from the
prehistorical primates to the twentieth-century is made through such a montage edit,
described by Bordwell & Thompson as “one of the boldest graphic matches in narrative
cinema” (1997: 299). Kubrick depicts the primate, victorious from the murder of the
opposing tribe’s leader, turning to hurl the femur weapon high into the air. The bone is
shown flying straight up through the air in slow motion, before being replaced through
montage editing with a descending satellite. In this way Kubrick makes an association
between relative technologies — the bone weapon for the primate, the satellite and space
shuttle for modern man, both just technical vehicles for achieving an end. This leads
directly to the space shuttle sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was combined
with Johann Strauss II’s The Blue Danube waltz.
Groening combines this image with the final scenes of Kubrick’s film, which
show the Star Child floating in space somewhere close to Earth. Furthermore, Groening
has duplicated Kubrick’s choreography, depicting Bart Simpson using the same stylised,
backhand motion to throw his powerful tool into the air, and depicting the marker
rotating through the air in the same direction (counter-clockwise on the ascent,
clockwise on the descent) as Kubrick’s femur.
As in the ‘Lisa’s Pony’ episode of The Simpsons, this reference and the
congruent narrative behind that reference are used to emphasise Homer’s profound
laziness, ignorance, and bad luck. The narrative vehicle through which these jokes are
made is congruent with the imagery that Kubrick successfully associated with Strauss’s
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music, as outlined throughout this case history. Homer has become the Star Child, the
ultimate stage in human evolution, and yet even this is not enough to spark his interest:
he appears bored with the silence and emptiness of space, twiddling his fingers. This
boredom and apparent daydreaming results in Homer’s failure to notice and avoid the
Fox satellite, which duly hits him in the forehead. As announced by Strauss’s music,
Homer has realised a truth, through hardly a great truth: satellites are heavy, and he
should have been paying attention to avoid getting hurt. The overwhelming banality of
this communicated message plays off the profound messages explored in 2001: A Space
Odyssey, such as the discovery of tools and weapons. In the novel 2001: A Space
Odyssey, the Star Child detonates nuclear missiles aimed at it with a mere thought
(Clarke, 1973: 223), yet Homer fails to avoid getting hit by the satellite owned by the
company that broadcasts ‘his’ show. Retribution against Fox Television by Star Child
Homer is therefore treasonous, if not suicidal, and loyal audiences of The Simpsons
know that Homer is used to being used, abused and oppressed by his social superiors
such as his boss Mr. Burns.
This reference immediately follows a larger revelation, however, namely
Homer’s epiphany of the episode. By the end of the show’s allotted half hour, Homer
realises that his experiences as an astronaut, and his adventure in space, are far more
important than the public recognition and ticker-tape parade given to the inanimate
carbon rod. Homer’s realisation of this moral is made through another intertextual
reference, to Kaufman’s 1983 film The Right Stuff:
Homer: Ooh, stupid rod . . . I got gypped!
Marge: Oh Homey, you should be proud! Only a handful of people have done what you’ve
done!
Lisa: Yeah Dad! How many people have seen the ice caps and the deserts all at once, or the
majesty of the Northern Lights from one hundred miles above?
Homer: Yeah, maybe I do have the right . . . what’s that stuff? Anyway, thanks Marge, Lisa.

The play on Kubrick’s imagery and Strauss’s music in this episode serves to
further reinforce the combination of these two media in popular culture. The reference is
humorous, but like most of the pop culture references in The Simpsons, that humour is
predicated on a solid knowledge of intertextual media references and their contextual
use. As in the use of Strauss and Kubrick in the ‘Lisa’s Pony’ episode, the humour of
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intertextuality involves recontextualisation, and an assumption of audience recognition

of that recontextualisation. In this way Homer is depicted as the apotheosis of humanity,
but he still fails to avoid being hit in the head by a flying object. This joke only holds
meaning if the audience in question is familiar with the ending of Kubrick’s 2001: A
Space Odyssey, and Kubrick’s use of Strauss to announce the presence of the
extraordinarily important. Groening’s ability to use Strauss and Kubrick’s fused sonic
and visual imagery as a consistent reference in The Simpsons indicates the strength of
that reference’s place in popular culture.
A similar reference to Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra and Kubrick’s 2001: A
Space Odyssey can be found in Amy Heckerling’s film Clueless, released in 1995.
Clueless is a contemporised retelling of Jane Austen’s Emma, set amongst the teenagers
of Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. Clueless stars Alicia Silverstone as Cher Horowitz, a rich
but self-absorbed student at Beverly Hills High School who prides herself on making
successful relationship matches between lonely teachers, as well as between lonely
students. Her matchmaking attempts finally fail after she befriends Tai, a newly arrived,
disadvantaged student, and attempts to set her up with an incompatible suitor. It is not
until Cher realises that she is ‘clueless’ about love that she realises Tai is better off with
another partner and that she herself can best find emotional happiness with her ex-step-
brother Josh, who had been hitherto inconceivable as a mate due to his intelligence and
penchant for Nietzsche (which is itself a reference to Strauss’s intertextual sources).
The ‘Introduction’ to Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra has been reduced to the
three-note ‘Nature theme’ and its two-chord orchestral extension, as used in Kubrick’s
Casino. Cher is shown sitting on a couch discussing relationships with Josh, while the
cartoon show ‘Ren & Stimpy’ plays on a television in the background (Video Clip 9).
The next shot is of a gloss black, rectangular slab of indeterminate material, aligned in
the precise centre of the screen (see Illustration 9). This monolith has been filmed from a
low angle, which portrays the monolith as towering above the camera, its lines reducing
through perspective. At the same time, same time, this low camera angle is revealed as
coming from the surface of a table or desk, and the monolith is balanced by a table lamp
on the right hand side of the screen. The monolith is clearly on the same scale of the
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lamp. As the first section of the ‘Introduction’ is heard, the light in the scene changes.
The light source appears to be rising in the room in which the monolith is being shot, as
a circular shadow can be seen descending in the left-hand corner of the screen, and a
sun-reflection is visible moving up the gleaming right-hand side of the monolith. The
punch-line of this intertextual reference occurs after the second, minor chord of the
extension. Rather than the even tympani drums, an electronic beeping is heard, and the
monolith is revealed as a cordless telephone sitting upright on a bedside table. As soon
as the telephone ring is heard, the scene changes, cutting to a wide shot of Cher’s
bedroom. She is packing a suitcase for her father, which she interrupts to pick up the
black cordless telephone from her bedside table. The phone call is from Christian, a boy
with whom Cher had a date with the night before. She is surprised to hear from him, as
the phone call was not expected until several days later (which, according to Cher, is
tomorrow in “boy time”).
The visual reference to Kubrick’s imagery for Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra
is clear in this scene. The precise alignment of the telephone in the centre of the screen,
the low angle of photography, shooting upwards to portray the telephone as powerful
and divine, and the suggestion of the dawning sun in the background (as evidenced by
the circular shadow moving on the wall behind the telephone, and the ascending gleam
of light on the telephone itself) all correlate specifically with identical elements in
Kubrick’s film. Once again, Clueless offers the music and visual image of a prophet
meeting the dawn with an important announcement.
As in Austen’s Emma, Heckerling’s Clueless in concerned with Cher’s
acquisition of wisdom, or her intellectual evolution. The process of the film is to outline
Cher’s initial ignorance and then portray the means by which she achieves wisdom and
insight. In this way, this short reference to Kubrick and Strauss reinforces the entire
narrative direction of the film. Cher is about to achieve wisdom, or evolve intellectually,
in the same way as Zarathustra’s audience, or in the same way as the primates in the
beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Bowman at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Cher also receives information within the scene itself via the telephone, just as Homer
Simpson does in the earlier episode of The Simpsons. Once again, the ring of the
telephone interrupts or replaces Strauss as the sound of communication, a diegetic shift
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in sound that also serves as a diegetic shift in historical reference, from the ‘old’ to the
‘modern’. In Clueless, however, Heckerling also takes the opportunity to make a visual
play on the physical similarities between the telephone and Kubrick’s monolith, as
Cher’s black, vertical, rectangular cordless phone is only recognisable as such when the
ring is heard and Cher actually picks up the item.
Thus Heckerling continues and consolidates the narrative similarities between
Clueless and The Simpsons, and Kubrick before her. The telephone is an instrument of
communication, through which Cher receives knowledge from Christian and through
which Homer Simpson receives his quest for a new saxophone reed. In the same way,
the monolith is an instrument of communication through which the primates and Bowen
receive evolutionary transcendence, and the television show ‘Aces High’ is the vehicle
of communication through which Rothstein seeks to communicate to the public. In both
The Simpsons and Clueless, the main characters are surprised when they receive their
messages: both Cher and Homer are receiving interesting information that is new to
them.
Like Casino and The Simpsons before it, Clueless is a film saturated in
intertextual references, which is where some of the film’s appeal lies. Clueless offers
many of its intertextual references as multimedia tmeses, as a way of showing Cher’s
saturated familiarity with a pop culture environment. The scene immediately preceding
the Kubrick/Strauss reference offers scenes from a ‘Ren & Stimpy’ episode, as an
example of this. Josh comments on how ridiculous he feels, taking advice from a person
who watches such apparently juvenile programmes. Immediately, a shot from ‘Ren &
Stimpy’ is edited in the conversation. The cartoon character Stimpy is shown on the
television set, saying ‘Be quiet, you idiot’ in his distinctive Mexican accent, as if in
answer to Josh’s derogatory comment.
The reference to Kubrick and Strauss is made in much the same fashion,
appearing spontaneous and ‘off-the-cuff’, and as simply another of the countless pop
culture references in the film. It is a reference made both visually and sonically, as
Strauss’s music is heard non-diegetically, without any apparent diegetic source. At first
the music appears to be coming from the monolith itself, but this illusion is broken when
the actual telephone ring is heard in a way that immediately suggests diegetic noise,
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above and beyond the non-diegetic Strauss. In spite of the speed of the reference, and
apparently humorous incongruity of placing Kubrick and Strauss in Clueless’s ironically
self-referential context, Heckerling’s use of Kubrick’s imagery and Strauss’s music
reinforce all of the cultural, narrative, and musical codes outlined above, and this
accuracy contributes to the humour of the scene.
With its appearance as a non-diegetic, multimedia tmesis in Clueless, Strauss’s
Also sprach Zarathustra can now be seen as having achieved the status of a pop culture
particle and a metaleitmotif. It is simultaneously film music (due to its non-diegetic
source), pop music (its five-note sound byte is identical in style and brevity to the
dozens of other pop music references throughout Clueless), and classical music.
Following the pattern of classical music recontextualisation outlined in Chapter 2,
Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra is cited in the music credits of Clueless, right between
‘Closer To Heaven’ performed by The Chocolate Hippies and a cover version of ‘The
Ghost In You’ performed by Counting Crows. In the same way that Clueless is able to
absorb the traditional connotations and historical meanings of Strauss’s music, so is
Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra able to absorb the connotation of pop culture currency
from Clueless. Through its mere inclusion as a reference in a film filled with up-to-the-
second, throw-away pop culture references, Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra gains a
pop culture acceptance denied to most other classical repertoire numbers. The pop
culture recontextualisation of Also sprach Zarathustra is complete.
Suggestions of this can be found in the ongoing use of Strauss in popular music
and popular culture. Strauss’s music has recently been used as a sample in current dance
music, as demonstrated by the 1997 song ‘You Gotta Have Hope’ by Melbourne dance
group Blackout. This dance track, which also samples the bass line from Frankie Goes
To Hollywood’s song ‘Relax (Don’t Do It)’, offers the Introduction to Strauss’s Also
sprach Zarathustra in its entirely, as emphasis for the lyrics “I believe in you, all you
need is hope, hope in your soul”. Contextually, Strauss is given equal sonic footing to
Frankie Goes To Hollywood, who enjoyed popular success in the 1980s. This reference
to Strauss is metareferential, as Blackout is certainly referencing Kubrick, Groening,
Scorsese and Heckerling more than Strauss, Nietzsche or Zarathustra. Blackout seem to
be attempting a synaesthetic connection between Strauss’s music and the concept of
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‘hope’, suggesting that as long as one has hope (in one’s soul), one will be able to
achieve the grand quantum leap forward (in life, in love, in emotional, social, financial,
psychological growth) as visualised by Kubrick et al.
This practice continues in television and cinema advertising. A 1999 television
advertisement for the bedding store Forty Winks used the ‘Introduction’ to Also sprach
Zarathustra to accompany their current promotional offer, which involved consumers
paying no interest or down payments until the year 2001. Strauss’s music was used
prominently in its capacity as the ‘theme music’ to Kubrick’s film. As the year 2001
approaches, many more examples of this nature can be expected, thanks to Strauss’s
music being synaesthetically associated with the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. A 1997
cinema and television advertisement for SubZero™ alcoholic cola featured music with a
marked similarity to Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, ending with an image of the
bottle standing erect and perfectly aligned and symmetrical in the middle of the screen,
shot from a low angle to emphasise the prophetic stature of the product. In accordance
with Kubrick’s science fiction film reference, the ad’s tag line ran: “The future of
alcohol has been defined”, written in a font reminiscent of computer L.E.D.s.
Heckerling’s achievement — the consolidation of Kubrick’s and Scorsese’s
visual imagery — is that Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra can now be filtered through
the philosophy of Clueless (as a result of mutual implication), which is representative of
the most disposable, bubble-gum/candy-floss end of the pop cultural spectrum. Although
really a double reference to both Strauss and Kubrick, this short scene from Clueless
might only register as a single reference to some audiences thanks to Kubrick’s feat of
producing a mutually-implied, audio-dissolved, ‘utopian’ multimedia scene – the perfect
fusion of sound and image. This collapsing of references is an indication of how closely
Kubrick’s imagery and Strauss’s music have fused in popular culture.
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Chapter 5 ~ Richard Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ from The Valkyrie

Richard Wagner composed the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ (‘Walkürenritt’) for his opera
The Valkyrie (Die Walküre), which was completed in 1856. The ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ can
be arguably considered ‘popular’ music since the day it was first performed, as the 1870
Munich premiere performance of The Valkyrie was interrupted owing to the “especially
strong” applause this one piece inspired (Bernheimer, 1962: 32). Furthermore, it can be
counted as amongst the very first film music ever due to its prominent use in D.W.
Griffith’s seminal, 1915 film The Birth of a Nation. Its presence in popular culture as
popular music and as film music has not diminished since, with featured appearances in at
least twenty films and television programs, and countless television advertisements. The
‘Ride of the Valkyries’ has evolved into one of the most famous metaleitmotifs in popular
culture, rivalled only by Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra. Like the Strauss, Wagner’s
music has risen to this cultural status through broad narrative congruence, and the
accumulation of concrete, congruent visual images initially from Griffith, and consolidated
and contemporised by Francis Ford Coppola in Apocalypse Now. So successful and
powerful was Coppola’s fusion of Vietnam helicopter imagery and Wagner’s music that, by
the end of the twentieth century, many audiences who hear the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ are
synaesthetically inclined to see Vietnam War helicopters.
This fusion of music and visual image finds its roots in Teutonic mythology, before
synaesthetically articulated by Wagner. The intertextual nature of Valkyries and their
steeds, and their role and function in Teutonic cosmology can be found supported/reflected
throughout the ensuing media representations, again best analysed both as film music and
as popular music/music video. Assessed together, this approach ends in the assessment of
‘The Ride of the Valkyries’ as a self-referential pop culture particle. After its crucial and
unforgettable ‘appearance’ in The Birth of a Nation, the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is found in
the Warner’s Brother’s Bugs Bunny cartoon ‘What’s Opera, Doc?’ (1957) before the Billy
Wilder film One, Two, Three (1961) and the Fellini film 8½ (1963), not to mention a sonic
cameo performance in Rebel Without A Cause (1955). Then in 1979 Francis Ford Coppola
employed it in Apocalypse Now, and from that point on, recontextualised pop culture
imagery was considered de rigueur whenever ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ was used in a film or
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advertisement. Since Coppola’s use of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in 1979, every single use of
this music in film has been in comedic terms, either as intertextual homage or ironic self-
referentiality. The consolidation of Coppola, Griffith, and Wagner’s synonymous,
congruent imagery would continue through The Blues Brothers (1980), Police Academy 5
(1988), Wagons East (1994), My Girl 2 (1994), Casper (1995), Cosi (1996), Pinocchio
(1996), Heaven’s Burning (1997), the ‘Mother Simpson’ episode of The Simpsons (1995),
the ‘In the Nam of The Father’ episode of Duckman (1996), and ‘The Mexican Staring Frog
of Southern Sri Lanka’ episode of South Park (1998). Recent, albeit brief, use of the ‘Ride
of the Valkyries’ can also be found in television advertisements for the Heritage Building
Society (1997) and Jila Mints (1998). In all, twenty film/TV texts will be analysed in this
case history chapter, and even then many films were excluded for reasons of economy or
availability problems, including Junk Mail (1997), The Beat (1988), Come Now, My Dear
Little Bird (1968), and Mahler (1974), Ken Russell’s bizarre composer biography film.
In spite of Wagner’s tremendous impact on and involvement with film music,
scholastic literature that examines the combination of Wagner’s music and film texts is
extremely rare. In 1992 Müller claimed that “the only work to date to deal with Wagner and
the cinema is the anthology of essays edited by Ermano Comuzio and Giuseppe Ghigi to
coincide with the 1983 Wagner Film Festival in Venice” (1992: 373), later citing an article
in this anthology by Roberto Pugliese which apparently discusses the use of Wagner’s
music in film (Müller, 1992: 388). Unfortunately, this work has proved difficult to find and
has not been translated into English. Müller does go on to say that “among the most popular
pieces are Lohengrin, Tristan, and the Ring, with The Ride of the Valkyries, predicably
perhaps, at the head of the list” (ibid). Müller does not explain why the popularity of the
‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is so predictable.
The only other film music scholar to address the combination of Wagner and film
music in any kind of detail is David Huckvale, in his 1994 article entitled ‘The Composing
Machine: Wagner and Popular Culture’ found in A Night in at the Opera: Media
Representations of Opera edited by Tambling, and his (Huckvale’s) 1990 article entitled
‘Twins of Evil: an investigation into the aesthetics of film music’ found in the journal
Popular Music. In these articles Huckvale repeats many of the same theoretical arguments
he made in his 1988 article entitled ‘Wagner and the mythology of film music’ in the
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journal Wagner. Several of his arguments appear similar to those in this thesis, and so it is
worth the special attention to examine his theory closely.
In his articles, Huckvale develops at length the affective connotations of film music
details, and uses similar examples derived from the art music repertoire, particularly
Wagner’s operas, as ‘proof’. Unfortunately, Huckvale fails to push the synaesthetic
connection between sound and affect any further than that established by Wagner and his
contemporaries. For example, Huckvale claims that the use of dotted rhythms and brass
instruments playing “downward octave leaps” (1988: 49-50) communicates an anti-heroic
musical theme in the Hammer horror film Dracula (1958). As ‘proof’ of this, he cites
Siegfried’s ‘Funeral March’ from Gotterdammerüng, comparing it to Mozart’s Don
Giovanni (which he calls “a musical metaphor for the diabolic” {ibid}) and the writings of
Berlioz (1988: 49-50). Unfortunately, Huckvale fails to explain why Mozart and Wagner
might have respectively felt that ‘downward octave leaps’ manage to communicate anti-
heroism, and no justification for this musical decision is offered. Huckvale’s analysis
provides an excellent example of how intertextuality can enrich the artistic experience of
the audience member (Huckvale hears Hammer’s ‘Dracula March’ and is flooded with
intertextual reference connotations from Mozart, Berlioz, and Wagner), but unless those
intertextual reference are mechanically connected to inherent musical codes such as
anaphones or genre synecdoches via synaesthesia, then the result is more a demonstration
of the depth of Huckvale’s musical education. Huckvale fails to address the real nature of
connective ‘tissue’ between sound and image.
In spite of this, Huckvale has nevertheless addressed the use of Wagner in feature
films to a greater extent than any other film music scholar or musicologist, including the
only reference in film music literature to Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in Chuck
Jones’s Bugs Bunny cartoon ‘What’s Opera, Doc?’, which will be examined later in this
chapter. Huckvale’s analyses of films such as Apocalypse Now and Boorman’s Excalibur
(1980) are good but extremely brief, and they fail to penetrate the depth of the intertextual,
musical references in question, instead leaving the matter at the level of “mythological
ambience” (Huckvale, 1994: 138).
As in the previous case history chapter, this case history will follow a general
chronological order (this time stretching from Brünnhilde to South Park’s Uncle Jimbo) in
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order to follow the evolution of Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ into a recontextualised
metaleitmotif in popular culture.
Wagner’s The Ring, comprised of the music-dramas The Rhinegold, The Valkyrie,
Siegfried, and The Twilight Of The Gods, is fundamentally and richly intertextual. All of
the characters, settings, and plot developments in The Ring are intertextual references taken
or developed from ancient Teutonic mythology, in Wagner’s efforts to create an inherently
German art form. As with every other aspect of Wagner’s life, the relationship between
Wagner’s music and the Teutonic mythology that inspired it is well documented, if not
over-documented.
As is well known, Wagner drew mainly on mythology for his music-dramas, rather than on history or
romantic fiction, since he believed myths to be humanity’s intuitive expression, in symbolic form, of
the ultimate truths about its own nature and destiny. His intention, in re-creating them in musico-
dramatic form, was to set forth on the stage pure symbols of those fundamental elements of human
life which underlie all particular cases and instances. (Cooke, 1979: 10)

According to Cooke, Wagner derived his intertextual references from five primary
sources: the anonymous epic poem Das Niebelungenlied, written in Austria around
1200; the anonymous prose narrative Thidriks saga af Bern, written in Norway between
1260 and 1270; the Poetic Edda, an anonymous collection of poems about gods and
heroes from Iceland and Norway; the Volsunga Saga, an anonymous prose narrative
about heroes; and the Prose Edda, an instruction manual for poets by Snorri Sturluson
(Cooke, 1979: 89-90). These latter three texts date from 1150 to 1270 (ibid). Wagner
also researched the collection of myths by Jacob Grimm, entitled Teutonic Mythology,
and was fastidious about rooting his narrative and character sophistications in
demonstrable scholarship (ibid).
The second music-drama of The Ring, The Valkyrie, is no exception. Wagner
drew on characters and mythological narratives with solid etymologies and genealogies
stretching back into prehistory. The existence and nature of Valkyries can be traced back
to the Poetic Edda, dated 1150 at the earliest, although clearly these prehistoric myths
were common currency long before they were finally recorded in an attempt to preserve a
tradition fast disappearing under the onslaught of Christian conversion (Cooke, 1979: 89).
The description of the Valkyries’ visual appearance and function is remarkably
(though typically) vivid in mythological literature. The term ‘Valkyrie’ (modern German
Walküre), is derived from the Old Norse valkyrja, and Anglo-Saxon wælcyrge, and
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which translates to mean ‘chooser of the slain’ with a specifically feminine gender
(Cooke, 1979: 317; Branston, 1974: 100; Grimm, 1976: 419, Davisdson, 1964: 62;
Finch, 1965: 93). Cooke takes the (pre)history of the Valkyries back even further:
. . . the original Valkyries, as a matter of historical fact, were a terrifying part of the primitive
Teutonic war-cult: they were the priestesses of the battle-god — grisly old women who officiated
at the sacrificial rites when the prisoners were put to death (‘given to Odin’) — and who
sometimes did the killing themselves, which often involved use of the ritual spear. . .
By the time of the Poetic Edda, these ‘strange legends’ had transformed the gruesome old
‘Valkyries’ of historical fact into supernatural warrior-women who took an active part in battles,
and decided, according to Odin’s orders, who should win and who should die. (Cooke, 1979:
317)

Valkyries were semi-divine, half-daughters of the god Odin/Wotan, who were

responsible for two functions: choosing those to be slain on the battlefield and
transporting their bodies from the battlefield to Valhalla, the warrior’s heaven; and then
serving drinks to those warriors in Valhalla’s dining hall (Cooke, 1979: 317; Branston,
1974: 100; Grimm, 1976: 419; Davidson, 1964: 61; Finch, 1965: 94). A greater
emphasis is placed, in the literature, on the Valkyries’ military functions. Grimm
remarks that “Still more to the purpose is the office of the valkyrs in war. . . . therefore
the deciding of battle and victory, is placed in their hands” (1976: 420), though Branston
feels the issue is less than clear:
The word valkyrja means a ‘female chooser of the slain’; there is, too, a phrase in the Old Norse
kjose val, ‘to choose the slain’, whose real meaning (simple as it seems) is uncertain. The phrase
may mean either to pick up the dead from the battlefield, or to decide upon those who are to die
on the battlefield. (1974: 100)

While there might remain uncertainty over whether Valkyries actually designate
which warriors are to fall on the battlefield, the literature is unanimous about their role
as transports for the dead to Valhalla. This transportation is done in a singular manner,
with all sources agreeing on four distinctive narrative/stylistic characteristics.
The first characteristic of Valkyries is described in terms of strength and physical
beauty. Valkyries are uncommonly, supernaturally strong, and are invariably attractive
in the extreme. According to the general rules of mythological narrative, of course, as
semi-divine daughters and handmaidens of Wodan/Odin, Valkyries are beautiful and
strong by definition. In his excellent summary of relevant Norse mythology, Cooke
describes the Valkyries found in the later poems as being led by a “. . . warrior-woman,
the beautiful young daughter of a king, a kind of romantic heroine, though also
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possessed of supernatural power” (1979: 318). The Saga of the Volsungs describes the
Valkyrie Brynhild variously as “ . . . a good-looking woman” (Finch, 1965: 42), “. . . a
beautiful woman” (ibid), and “. . . the finest woman in the world” (ibid). Sigurd
subsequently tells Brynhild that “No woman is born lovelier than you” (Finch, 1965:
43). In The Elder Edda, Brunhild is hailed as “Fair woman” by the giantess in the lay
‘Brunhild’s Hel-Ride’ (Taylor & Auden, 1969: 113). Suggestions of physical strength
and prowess can be read into the military role of the Valkyries, and their association
with war, battle, and heavy armour, as outlined below. Cooke points out that the account
of the Valkyrie Brünnhilde in the Niebelungenlied repeatedly emphasises her
remarkable, supernatural strength, describing her as “amazonian” (1979: 97) and “a
formidable female athlete” (ibid). In a courtship triathalon with Siegfried, Brünnhilde
throws a spear which is so heavy that “three male warriors can only just lift [it]” (ibid),
followed by the shotput of “a huge boulder which it takes twelve warriors to carry”
(ibid). Brünnhilde throws this vast rock twenty-four yards, and then “. . . she follows
through with a standing long-jump which clears it easily” (ibid).
Secondly, the Valkyries ride horses when transporting dead warriors from the
battleground, and they ride these horses through the air. Grimm is especially clear about
this, using the presence of horses and the renowned ability of the Valkyries to ride in
order to distinguish Valkyries from other, similar semi-divinities such as Norns: “The
valkyrs ride to war, decide the issue of the fighting, and conduct the fallen to heaven;
their riding is like that of heroes and gods, mention is made of their horses. . .” (1976:
421, original emphasis). Cooke cites several instances in the Poetic Edda that make
specific reference to the riding of horses through the air, a typical example being “Then
they saw in the air nine Valkyries riding . . .” (1979: 320, also 318, 319). Branston
summarises the Valkyries using similar language:
In general, both the Prose and Verse Eddas’ picture of the Valkyries is of a domesticated type of
warrior woman who is equally at home serving drink in the hall or riding splendidly horsed and
armed above the battlefield. (1974: 100)

as well as stating that “. . . [Valkyries] are connected with death and the grave, they ride
noisily and fiercely over the land, yelling as they go” (1974: 106), and:
. . . The Lay of Darts is spoken by Valkyries who . . . say plainly that they are able to order
victory or defeat in battle, after which they cry ‘Let us ride off far away on our bare-back steeds
with our drawn swords in our hands!’ (1974: 101)
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The Prose Edda states that Valkyries “Gud and Rota and the youngest norn Skuld
always ride to choose the slain . . .” (Young, 1954: 61), The Poetic Edda refers to “The
valiant riders, the Valkyries” (Taylor & Auden, 1969: 148), and Davisdson simply states
that Valkyries “. . . appear as women who wear armour and ride on horseback, passing
swiftly over sea and land” (1964: 61).
Thirdly, the Valkyries are always heavily armed and armoured when engaged in
these missions. In The Prose Edda, Sigurd discovers Brynhild sleeping in a helmet and a
coat of mail, which is explained by her position as a Valkyrie (Young, 1954: 113).
Davidson includes armour in his simple description of the Valkyries, as cited above,
describing elsewhere the propensity of Valkyries for spears, citing old Germanic spells
(1964: 63). Grimm states that “Usually nine valkyrjur ride out together . . . their lances,
helmets and shields glitter” (1976: 421). With his usual detail, Grimm outlines the
etymological and multilinguistic evidence of the Valkyries’ armoured state, explaining
that the Valkyries “. . . are called skialdmeyjar, hialmmeyjar, because they go forth
armed, under shield and helmet . . .” (1976: 418), going on to cite ten instances in the
Poetic Vedda of epithets relating to beauty or helmet-ornaments (ibid). Branston speaks
of the Valkyries “riding splendidly horsed and armed over the battlefield”, as cited
above, and proceeds to cite the Lay of Helgi the Slayer of Hunding, from the Poetic
Edda:
High under helmets
across the field of heaven
their breastplates all
were blotched with blood
and from their spear points
sparks flashed forth. (1974: 100-101)

Finch, also summarising, succinctly uses the props of both horses and armament to
define Valkyries:
The concept of valkyries as armed, mounted supernatural warrior-maidens is very probably a
poetic development of an earlier and cruder belief in savage elemental beings who rejoiced in
bloodshed and carnage (1965: 94)

The fourth consistent reference is made to the high volume of noise that the
Valkyries emit in their flights to and from the battlefield. Evidence of this can be found
in the earliest recorded names of Valkyries in the Poetic Edda, such as Hlökk, Göll and
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Skögul, which translate to ‘Shrieker’, ‘Screamer’, and ‘Raging’, respectively (Bellows,

1923: 99; Branston, 1974: 101; Cooke, 1979: 318). Branston also mentions the general
view that Valkyries “. . . ride noisily and fiercely over the land, yelling as they go”, as
previously cited, and Finch suggests vocal noise in his use of the phrase ‘rejoice in
bloodshed and carnage’, as cited above. Davidson quotes an ancient Germanic spell that
nicely combines the noise of war with the Valkyries’ weaponry of choice:
When the mighty women made ready their power
And sent out their screaming spears . . . (1964: 63)

Davidson also reveals an explicit connection between the Valkyries and a battle-song,
citing the poem Darraòarljóò in the Njáls Saga:
the Valkyries have power to choose the slain . . .
All is sinister now to see,
a cloud of blood moves over the sky,
the air is red with the blood of men,
as the battle-women chant their song. (1964: 65)

All of these characteristics are perfectly in keeping with the Valkyries’ military
nature, and as emissaries of Odin/Wotan in his ‘God of War’ persona. The Valkyries
were to personify the essence of war and battle, which necessarily involved horses,
armour, weapons, and terrifying noise.
In 1856 Wagner completed the second opera of his four-part Ring Cycle, The
Valkyrie. As the title suggests, Valkyries play an integral part in this opera, with the
leader of the Valkyries, Brünnhilde, playing a leading role. The beginning of Act III
introduces the Valkyries and their leader Brünnhilde to music which became known as
the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, and it is this music that has evolved into one of the most
popular recontextualised classical music metaleitmotifs in pop culture.
As with Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra in the previous chapter,
Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is best examined through a cultural theory-
musicological analysis instead of simply as film music, again drawing on the theories
employed by Tagg (1992a, 1992b) and Goodwin (1993a) respectively. As in the
previous case history, this approach is articulated in terms of intertextuality,
synaesthesia, anaphonic musical codes, narrative congruence, and Barthesian timbre.
Wagner’s use of Brünnhilde and of Valkyries as characters in The Valkyrie is an
intertextual reference. Wagner’s entire Ring Cycle is a vast monument to intertextuality,
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and in fact is arguably the largest, most impressive intertextuality exercise in the history
of art. As with everything else that touches upon Wagner’s life, the process of
researching texts and the actual construction of the libretto from all of the historical
intertextual fragments on hand to Wagner at the time has been exhaustively documented.
The narrative of The Valkyrie was compiled from all of the ancient texts referenced
above (the Poetic and Prose Eddas, the Volsung saga, Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology,
and the Niebelungenlied, amongst others), a task of intertextual referencing
painstakingly outlined by Cooke (1979). However, both Cooke (1979) and Finch (1965),
respectively, are very clear that Wagner did not follow any one myth in pure form.
Rather, Wagner created his own mythology, a condensed version of several different
ancient myths, but using characters, narrative directions, motives and relationships that
could be traced back into the available mythology literature and which were the
mythological legacy and heritage of all Germanic people:
. . . Richard Wagner drew largely on the lays of the Icelandic Poetic Edda for the basic material of
Der Ring des Nibelungen, and on Volsung saga which, although containing additional material and
differing in certain matters of detail, is essentially a prose retelling of the relevant Eddaic lays.
Wagner’s Ring cannot, however, be equated with the ancient Scandinavian legends that it seems
to tell: it is by no means a modern dramatisation of Volsung saga or of the Eddaic lays, and
Wagner, in attempting to recreate the primitive ‘myth’ became an innovator on a grand scale
whose genius produced an entirely new ‘myth’ in accordance with his poetic and musical
purpose. His approach to the material was eclectic and arbitrary. (Finch, 1965: vii)

Cooke makes a similar point:

(Wagner) was not trying to dramatize old myths or poems for their own sake, but to interpret
through his art such of their meaning as seemed to him still to have relevance for his own time,
and where that meaning was lacking, to supply it himself. (1979: 84)

In adapting this ancient Teutonic mythology for his music-dramas, Wagner

remained faithful to all of the historical representations of Valkyries outlined above.
Wagner’s Valkyries, and Wagner’s Brünnhilde in particular, are physically strong,
beautiful, supernatural, semi-divine women, daughters of Wotan. They ride horses
through the sky, to and from the battlefields19 from which they gather their fallen heroes,
carry spears and swords, and are arrayed in full armour: helmets, shields, chain-link
corsets. Clearly, Wagner’s Valkyries have their battle-song as well, which is sung at
high volume to the phrase “Hoyotoho”.
From the very first performance of The Valkyrie in Munich on June 25th, 1870,
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Brünnhilde has carried a long spear and a shield, worn a heavy cloak, chain-link body
armour which includes two polished, conical breast plates, and a helmet featuring two
protruding, feathered wings. This imagery can be found in photographs of soprano
Amalie Materna at the premiere performance of The Valkyrie in Bayreuth on August
14th, 1876 (Osborne, 1977: 93; Osborne, 1982: 113). These costumes were designed by
Carl Emil Doepler and would set a standard for Valkyrie imagery that continues to this
day. For example similar imagery, with various stylistic interpretations, was used in
productions of The Valkyrie at Bayreuth in 1896, 1960; in London, 1975; in San
Francisco, 1985; in Bayreuth 1994, to name but a few. The renowned illustrations of
Wagner’s Ring cycle by Arthur Rackham offer a beautifully-realised composite of
Brünnhilde’s visual imagery20. One particular illustration depicts a young, very attractive
blonde women with long, flowing hair, arrayed in a chain-link corset with round,
nippled breast-plates, a red cloak, short sword, spear and shield, and a helmet with an
attached crest of feathered wings (Rackham, 1979: 22) (see Illustration 10). Even
modern recontextualisations of The Valkyrie support this imagery: the 1974 ‘space-age’
production of The Valkyrie mounted in Cassel portrayed Valkyries wearing heavy
protective space-suits and wielding science-fiction inspired laser guns in Act I, and
Nazi/Third Reich-inspired costumes and sets in Act II (Osborne, 1982: 161; Holloway,
1985: 19, 27).
In addition to this visual faithfulness, Wagner assigned traditional roles to
Valkyries including Brünnhilde, once again supporting the original contextual situation
of his intertextual references. Wagner’s Valkyries are not shown serving beer and food

19
Very few productions of The Valkyrie, of course, manage to convey the flight of horses visually.
20
The anonymous text on the back of this book of illustrations claims that “. . . all the tiny details are painted with such textual
accuracy and empathy that today’s opera companies who wish to return to staging the “Ring” in the traditional manner turn to
Rackham’s paintings for guidance” (Rackham, 1979).
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to the army of heroes in Valhalla, but instead are portrayed carrying out the first half of
their responsibility, that of transporting dead, fallen heroes from the battlefield to
Valhalla in the first place. The beginning of Act III of The Valkyrie shows the traditional
nine Valkyries gathering to meet at a mountain top to re-group, in anticipation of
completing the journey to Valhalla each with their slain warriors.
Act III begins with an orchestral prelude, the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ (Video Clip
10). The music of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is, of course, entirely Wagner’s creation: a
synaesthetic act of musical composition in which Wagner translates the visual images of
the Valkyries and their traditional flight from the battlefield into the form of nineteenth-
century orchestral music. As outlined in the previous chapter with respect to the music
of Also sprach Zarathustra, the music for Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is almost
impossible to adequately describe in non-musicological language, and the margin for
ideological error is very large indeed. Over six minutes long, Wagner’s ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ is considerably more complicated in terms of polyphonic harmony than
Strauss’s ‘Introduction’ to Also sprach Zarathustra, however, and attempts to render the
music into descriptive English quickly flounder in pure musicological, technical detail
combined with words and phrases suffused with subjectivity. Donington offers a typical
example of this, referring to an Appendix of motives, numbered and rendered into
musical notation:
Act III opens in prodigious excitement. The chief motive (47) of the Valkyries dominates the
music, supported by figuration very close to some of Loge’s fire music, e.g. (20C), and
conveying a similar impression of demonic energy. The curtain goes up on a rocky, cloud-
wracked mountain-top, where four of the Valkyries are standing in full armour. They break into
imperious song to their further motive (22), of which the harmonic basis is the chromatically
augmented triad; the orchestra intermittently writhes and slithers with sixth-three chords
descending chromatically by semitones as at (22B), again relating to the fire music as at (20B).
We are into the famous Ride of the Valkyries. (1974: 163)

Interestingly, Cooke seems to recognise the problem of metalanguage, and does not even
attempt to describe this piece of music:
The third act begins with the famous Ride of the Valkyries, and it might seem that, on the face of
it, no interpretation of this vivid scene is necessary. Wagner is obviously in his element
portraying one of the most picturesque features of the mythology – or rather of the mythology as
made explicit by him. He pictures the nine Valkyries in full armour, riding through the air on
horseback (without their leader for the moment) . . . They have come to their ‘assembly area’ on a
mountain peak, prior to riding to Valhalla with their catch for the day. (1979: 343)
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The music of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, which is often prefaced by ‘the famous’ as
above, is doubtlessly familiar to many readers. In terms of its cultural theory-
musicological impact, the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ can be musically assessed in terms of
several segments, although the interaction of these segments as a whole is no less
important.
The music begins with a prolonged trill in the woodwinds, introduced by a
startling five-note upthrust in the strings. The upthrust and trill are repeated an octave
higher in the next bar, and a further octave higher in the next bar, before descending in a
corresponding fashion. As this ascending figure begins again, bassoons, horns, and
cellos add a syncopated rhythm. This syncopated rhythm is best described as
‘galloping’, as Wagner clearly wrote it to anaphonically represent the galloping of the
Valkyries’ horses. Sweeping arpeggios are added next in the strings, which cascade
downwards, and the violins add the earlier upthrust on the third beat of the bar with
electrifying effect. At this point the main melodic line of the piece, the Valkyrie motif
(which had been anticipated by the galloping rhythm) is added, played with marked
accents by horns and brass trumpets. The motif is played in a broad, expansive manner
and has the air of a dignified fanfare as the notes ascent, fall back, and re-ascend in
stages, using the galloping rhythm. At one point, there is a call and answer effect in the
dialogue between trumpets and bass trumpet. As the curtain rises, four trombones are
added, giving the Valkyrie motif an impressive weight. The trombones are soon silenced
as Gerhilde, one of the four Valkyries visible on the rock, begins to sing the Valkyrie
battle song:
Hoyotoho, Hoyotoho!
Heiaha, Heiaha!
Here Helmwige,
bring your horse here. (Mann, 1973: 61)

Her vocal line has something of the shape of the cascading string figure, while horns and
trumpets accompany the voice with the galloping rhythm. As the arriving Valkyrie she
has called to, Helmwige, answers off-stage, the latter’s “Hojotoho!” ends with the
upthrust figure, now turned into an octave leap, leading into a prolonged trill on the first
syllable of Helmwige’s “Heiaha!” This recalls the first bar of the opening of the act with
its string upthrust and woodwind trill. The final note of the “Heiaha!” is held high in
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triumph, suspended over the oscillating strings, as the trombones, joined by a bass
trumpet, start a new cycle of the Valkyrie motif. When the cycle has run its course
(some fifteen measures), Waltraute and Schwertleite, who are assembled with Gerhilde
on the rock, now join her in greeting the newcomer: “Heiaha! Heiaha!”
A feeling of musical suspension occurs at this point in the music. The Valkyrie
motif falls silent and sustained brass chords trigger off a descending scale in the strings.
This introduces a sparser orchestral texture for the dialogue among the five warrior
women about their horses which is underscored with fragments of the galloping rhythm.
As Waltraute notices Siegrune arriving, and berates her for dawdling, the Valkyrie motif
begins again in horns and bass trumpet without the trombones, and continues during the
Valkyries’ calls to one another. As Waltraute answers the off-stage voices of Grimgerde
and Rossweisse, these two appear on horseback, each carrying a dead warrior on her
saddle. As this action is revealed, according to Wagner’s text, “in a cloud formation lit
up by lightning” (also seldom realised in the theatre), the four trombones are brought
back to blast out the Valkyrie motif, and two new instruments are introduced: a double
bass tuba lends massive support to the motif, and cymbals mark the first beat of the bar.
The Valkyrie motif now dominates in its loudest and most impressive statement so far,
with the Valkyries’ calls, laughs, and snatches of sung conversation occasionally
punctuating the dense orchestral texture. The ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ proceeds in this
way, with some lightening of the texture for prolonged conversational exchanges
between the warrior women, until Brünnhilde, the last of the Valkyries to arrive, is
sighted. At this point, concert versions of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ generally conclude.
As with Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’
communicates specific information very effectively. Once again, separating pure
musical codes from the synaesthetic process that generated them would prove very
difficult, but the connection here between Wagner’s music and the narrative that is
associated with them is even closer here than with Strauss, as Wagner was responsible
for the narrative and the imagery as well as the music. In this way, associating Wagner’s
music with Wagner’s imagery and narrative is entirely justifiable in plain synaesthetic
terms. However, the chronological date of the narrative material Wagner used to
construct the imagery and narrative of The Valkyrie permits a clear progression from
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image to music: on the basis of the exhaustive research into ancient Teutonic mythology
Wagner did in the 1840s before he wrote the music (Mann, 1964: 4), Wagner had the
imagery in mind as he wrote, not the other way around.
Due to the original, operatic context of the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, the
connection between sound and image is a given. The musical, anaphonic codes that
drive the operation of this music are by no means subtle, but they are undeniably
effective. In fact, the lack of musical subtlety attracts attention amongst music critics and
musicologists. Cooke complains that “Eric Blom once described the Walkürenritt as ‘the
most tasteless piece of music ever written’” (1979: 343), going on to defend the music
by rhetorically asking “What could have been the use of a tasteful ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’?”, the actual perceived tastelessness of the music apparently not even an
issue. Donington is even blunter:
If we feel resistant to its crude impetuosity, we shall dislike it however well is being performed.
A good performance will bring out its wild grandeur; a bad performance will make it seem a little
vulgar; but the plain fact is that this is not tasteful music. (1974: 163)

The ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ might be considered ‘tasteless’ in part because of its
effectiveness. Wagner has successfully and effectively communicated what Donington
calls “the raw force of life” (ibid), and it is some measure of Wagner’s use of genre
synecdoche and composite anaphones that this raw subject matter is received so crudely.
Specifically, the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ communicates the action and sensation
of flying, while at the same time expressing notions of weight (horses and armour),
military glory, and military strength. The eight short sharply ascending string phrases,
each culminating in woodwind trills, that begin ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ are sonic
anaphones for hunting horns or war-bugles. Simultaneously, they perform as simple
tactile anaphones for surprise and alarm, and kinetic anaphones through the sharp raising
of one’s head or the jumping up of the entire body, and then looking sharply around as if
searching for the source of perceived opportunity or danger. These three aspects
combine together to communicate a musical announcement of opportunity, alarm and
danger for a battle or a hunt, and are anaphonically designed to raise the heart-rate and
increase the flow of adrenaline, which is the standard physiological response to such
potential. The fact that four such composite anaphones in different registers are given,
communicates the suggestion of more than one hunter (in fact a minimum of four
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hunters, one per anaphone), or the rallying of large numbers of people to battle. The
timing of the phrases suggests communication between the instruments or their players,
which in turn communicates notions of distance and strength of numbers, as each horn
anaphone is designed to be heard by many over several miles. This is reinforced by the
anaphonic suggestion of ‘echo’ offered by the close repetition of similar phrases.
The cascading arpeggios played on the strings to continue the piece communicate
‘flying’ through the kinetic anaphone of flapping wings, as well as simple rising and
falling. The notes start high, then fall, then rise, but always end up where they started: in
this way a movement of altitude is measured and sensations of height and motion are
achieved. The strings play in the top end of musical frequency, which is anaphonically
recognised as being ‘high’ (the phrase ‘top end’ is alone evocative of physical height).
Even the distinctive ‘flick’ of the final upthrust on the third beat of the bar is avian in
nature. The downward sweep of the string arpeggios with the added string upthrust is
continually repeated with the same note pattern, supporting the kinetic anaphone
sensation of floating suspended in mid-air. The constant presence of these background
arpeggios infuses the entire piece of music with a sense of weightlessness, regardless of
the relative weight of the bass and brass instruments playing other melodies. The string
arpeggios offer a kind of musical context into which the brass motifs must be placed,
and that context seems to be placed in the atmosphere, several thousand feet above sea
level. A flute can be heard playing a constant trill high in its register over these
arpeggios, and this supports the sensation of altitude as a tactile anaphone, as humans
physically register high flute notes as being somewhere ‘over one’s head’ (in the same
way that the megadrone C that begins Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra physically
registers in the pit of the stomach).
The syncopated ascending brass motifs are also clear genre synecdoches and
composite anaphones. The use of instrumentation and the written melodic line suggest
the flight and weight of armed Valkyries on horses in a number of ways. The brass
nature of french horns, trumpets and trombones alone is suggestive of highly polished
metal armour, which is supported by the hard, metallic timbre that all brass instruments
can demonstrate. Brass instruments such as horns, trumpets and trombones also
communicate through genre synecdoche, as hunting (french) horns and trumpets and
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military bugles are representatives of military hardware, and of the entire military by
extension. The genre association between horns and brass instruments and military or
hunting operations would pre-date Wagner by hundreds of years, stretching back into
history. By the nineteenth century, Wagner’s brass harmonies, and in particular the
opening four notes of the brass motif, would have been recognisably evocative of the
military’s traditional, musical announcement for advancing the enemy: a cry of ‘charge!’
or the ‘tallyho!’ cry of English fox hunts. Wagner reinforces this characteristic of the
music by employing the horns in a call-and-answer structure. The sonority of the brass
and the particular chords written serve to reinforce the effect of announcement and echo,
an effect also explained as a sonic anaphone.
The actual melodic line played by the brass, in addition to the anaphonic
instrumentation, is written to suggest upward movement. The overall ascending melodic
line is a simple kinetic anaphone for ascension. The overall direction of the music is up
the register, ranging from, in the very first phrase, an F# up the scale to A, then C#. The
effect is magnified by the syncopated, short intervals moving down several tones before
moving higher than the last, which anaphonically suggest the role of gravity as it fights
to drag the armour and horses towards the earth. These half-step notes down combined
with the syncopated rhythm give this anaphone a lumbering feel, which ties in well with
the sense of weight offered by the instrumentation. It also communicates a sense of
jumping or leaping through kinetic anaphone: as the music jumps and leaps up the scale,
so do the Valkyries and their steeds leap and jump through the sky. In this way the
jagged, syncopated line anaphonically represents the successful tension between flight
and gravity, of the heavily weighted steeds bearing their armed riders towards the
mountain-top in leaps and lurches. The listener is reminded that this movement is taking
place in the sky and not on the ground through the atmospheric contextualisation of the
string arpeggios. As each repeated brass motif ends on a higher note than the last, a
sense of increasing altitude is achieved continually through the work.
Trombones play in the bass register, and in ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ this
communicates ‘weight’ as a tactile anaphone. The other instruments play either at the
bottom end of their range or with phrasing best described as ‘heavy’, and this reinforces
the tactile anaphone of weight combined with strength. The final repetition of the brass
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motifs is played at a slower pace than the previous versions. This slowed speed,
combined with the extra dynamic volume, and increased instrumentation (including the
double bass tuba and, crucially, the cymbal), communicates travel of even greater
weight.
The last notes of the brass motives constitute a kind of fanfare flourish, which
suggests the successful achievement of a certain stage in climbing through the sky
towards the goal of the mountain top. This brass fanfare flourish that concludes each
melodic cycle motif communicates other information through genre synecdoche and
composite anaphones. As genre synecdoche, the fanfare flourish communicates pomp,
circumstance, nobility, royalty, wealth, importance, celebration, military power,
strength, and Divine ordination through association with royal weddings, inaugurations,
state occasions, and royal announcements/proclamations. In addition to the composite
anaphones of brightness and resonant space, the fanfare flourish in ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ anaphonically communicates weight and height in the held suspension of the
last fanfare chord, utilising strong brassy chords at the top end of the instruments
register. The suspension of the note acts as a composite tactile and kinetic anaphone for
the suspension of armed Valkyries over the landscape below — almost as if the fleet of
Valkyries were ‘coasting’ in mid-air after a strenuous sprint up several thousand feet of
taxing altitudinal climb. Following this musical image, the next rising sprint in
melody/altitude can occur only after the Valkyries and (more to the point) their horses
have caught their literal/musical breath.
The overall effect of the music as it is written, combining the timbre of the
instruments with the phrasing, the speed of the music, and the loud dynamics, is one of
strength and weight moving with confidence in a particular direction. Certain aspects of
the music defy notational specificity: the confidence of the Valkyries (based,
presumably, on efficiency and a semi-divine upbringing) is communicated somehow
through a inarticulatable combination of harmony, melody, the timbre of the
instruments, and the manner in which they are played by the musicians. Elements of
cruelty and arrogance come through the music, illuminating the characters of the
Valkyries. Cooke records his belief that:
. . . the actual [music of the] Ride reveals this [Valkyrie] nature much more clearly. The
Valkyries, we can see, are cold, hard, inhuman instruments of Wotan guided only by military
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discipline, who regard human suffering and death as a joke, and are utterly devoid of softer and
tenderer feelings. (1979: 344)

Based on the impact that ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ had on its contemporary audience, and
continues to have today, Wagner’s success in communicating visual and narrative codes
through music is substantial. It is important to note that Wagner was obliged to
communicate the visual aspects of the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ solely through music, as
the visual spectacle of several horses being flown through the air by heavily armed and
armoured women was (and remains) logistically impossible to accomplish on stage. The
specific connotations and visual imagery of the music – of strength, military confidence,
and armed warriors and armoured horses – were to translate effectively into congruent
imagery (ironic or not) in every subsequent media recontextualisation up to the present
day.
In 1914, a mere fifty-eight years after the premiere of The Valkyrie, filmmaker
D.W. Griffith included the music of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ as accompaniment to his
ground-breaking feature film The Birth of a Nation, which premiered a year later in
1915. Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ thus becomes some of the first film music ever
heard. Griffith’s use of the music served to consolidate both the narrative content of the
music, as well as set a filmic precedent for the kind of modern recontextualisation that
would find fruition in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, eighty-four years later.
As early film music, the use of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in The Birth of a Nation
has attracted passing mention by most film music and soundtrack scholars, but none of
these authors offers an analysis of how Wagner’s music synaesthetically offers narrative
congruence between the musical context and the filmic context. Prendergast is entirely
and pointedly dismissive of any value that ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ might offer Griffith’s
film:
The score for D.W. Griffith’s monumental film The Birth of a Nation is of little musical
significance but is of considerable historical interest. It is a pastiche of original compositions,
quotes from Liszt, Verdi, Beethoven, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, as well as a number of well-known
traditional tunes from the United States . . . . Despite the score’s lack of musical value, it did set
standards of orchestration and cuing techniques that remained throughout the silent era. (1977:
13)

Gorbman mentions in passing that The Birth of a Nation “had one of the earliest
specially composed scores” (1987: 35), but fails to even note that this score was
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comprised of previous music references. Later in her book Unheard Melodies she uses
the example of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ to illustrate a point about musical narratives,
assuming of course the hegemony of the visual image in film:
. . . the point is rather to provide a musical parallel to the action to reinforce the mood or tempo.
A fast horse chase needs fast “Ride of the Valkyries” music; a death scene need slow, somber
music. (1987: 78)

Evans also cites all the classical references in The Birth of a Nation, but feels that the
‘Ride of the Valkyries’ deserves special mention:
The final score of The Birth of a Nation consisted of a combination of excerpts from nineteenth-
century symphonic pieces, patriotic tunes, and a romantic melody, “The Perfect Song”, which
later became the tune of the Amos and Andy radio program. For some of the sequences, Griffith
used sections of works by Grieg and Wagner, including the “Ride of the Valkyries.” (1975: 9)

Wlaschin says exactly the same thing:

Pioneer director D.W. Griffith compiled a potpourri of 19th century classics as the score for his
epic movie masterpiece. One piece of music that was featured prominently was “The Ride of the
Valkyries” from Die Walküre. (1997: 590)

Earlier in his book Wlaschin states that “the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ music is often used
in non-operatic films” (1997: 589). Manvell & Huntley acknowledge the importance of
The Birth of a Nation, which was “ . . . rightly described as the first film to be
accompanied by a ‘full orchestral score’, built on symphonic lines” (1957: 20), going on
to explain in detail:
It consisted of an elaborately orchestrated assembly of original material; a mass of short,
sometimes mixed quotations from Grieg, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Rossini, Beethoven, Liszt, Verdi
. . . . Another special section involved the Clan call . . . [used] sometimes in combination with
other material such as quotations from Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyrie, elements of Dixie and
sound effects of galloping horses during the Ride of the Clansmen in the last two reels. (1957:
21)

MacKay briefly makes the point that opera music transferred well to the classics of the
silent screen on the basis of their similar multimedia combinations (sound and image),
clearly citing the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ as a good example of this: “Operatic music,
illustrative in genre as it was, proved ideal for many situations. . . . the ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ for battles . . .” (1992: 14). Huckvale mentions the use of the ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ as accompaniment for “the famous ride of the Ku Klux Klan” (1994: 135-
136), and Brown acknowledges the use of “various excerpts” from Wagner’s The
Valkyrie in the 1915 premiere of The Birth of a Nation (1988: 171-172).
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As Huckvale describes above, Wagner’s ‘famous’ ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is used

by Griffith in association with the ‘famous’ rescue of Piedmont by the Ku Klux Klan,
who ride into town en masse dressed in paramilitary costume and mounted on horses. In
this way Griffith recontextualises Wagner’s original associations and intentions, and
maintains full narrative congruence with the text of The Valkyrie.
The Birth of a Nation is concerned with the end of the American ‘genteel’ South
subculture, the American Civil War and its racial aftermath, in particular the creation
and implementation of the Ku Klux Klan as a response to the emancipation of the
blacks. The movie follows the relationship between the Cameron family and their
friends, the Stoneman family, who are obliged to serve on opposing sides of the Civil
War. After the victory of the North, the surviving members of the Stonemans and the
Camerons band together under the auspices of the Ku Klux Klan in order to protect their
families from the anarchic mob of freed slaves who have taken over the town of
Piedmont, South Carolina, and who threaten the Camerons in their isolated country farm
house. The end of the film depicts the success of the Klan in liberating Piedmont and
rescuing the Camerons, who join the Stonemans in a double matrimony.
The imagery used to accompany the music of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is of the Ku
Klux Klan members meeting up and riding on their horses to Piedmont (Video Clip 11).
The narrative at this point in the film is alternating between two situations: the proposal
of marriage from (black) Silas Lynch to (white) Elsie Stoneman and her subsequent
horrified response, and the gathering of the Ku Klux Klan. The ‘Ride of the Valkyries’
can be heard over scenes from both scenarios as they are edited together in montage.
The music begins on one such montage edit, as approximately ten Klansmen in full
uniform ride across a shallow creek towards the camera. The music is an orchestrated
version of the opera prelude described above, but the only audible difference is the
replacement of the Valkyries’ chorused war cries with trumpet solos. As the music
plays, several other similar scenes with Klansmen on horses riding at high speed around
the countryside are shown. Several smaller groups of Klansmen and their mounts are
shown joining an army of Klansmen, assembled in a field and led by Ben Cameron.
Subsequently, the entire
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army of Klansmen ride into Piedmont at high gallop, several hundred horses strong, and
the music is heard while the Klan army shoots and overrides the mob of black rioters.
The visual presentation of the Ku Klux Klan is consistent throughout these
scenes. The Klansmen are garbed in white robes, and wear long white masks with long
white spiked helmets. Most of the white tunic and robes bear the stylised St. Andrew’s
Cross emblem of the Klan, and many Klansmen have two of these round symbols side
by side, one on each breast, a design given great emphasis in an earlier scene when Flora
is sewing such a design on Ben’s costume. Ben Cameron (whose nickname in the film is
‘The Little Colonel’) is clearly established as the leader of the Klansmen, and one such
establishing shot depicts him sitting imperiously on his horse with the two St. Andrew’s
cross circles prominently placed on his white tunic, one on each breast (see Illustration
11). All Klansmen are riding horses without exception, and most are armed with
revolvers. The Klan horses are also masked and dressed in white sheets carrying the
Klan cross. Several Klansmen are carrying a burning cross aloft, particularly in early
summoning scenes, and during the battle Klansmen can be seen carrying battle standards
on long poles.
The initial appeal of this ‘Ride of the Klansmen’ sequence was invariably
articulated in visual terms when the film was premiered, in that the film critics of 1915
did not generally recognise Wagner’s authorship of the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’.
Nonetheless, this failure to identify Griffith’s intertextual reference in no way
diminished their reaction to and enthusiasm for the music itself. Harlow Hare is one of
the few critics to address the music directly, in a review of the film originally published
in the Boston American on July 18th, 1915, and reprinted (as with the others cited) in
Lang’s anthology on The Birth of a Nation:
One of the most effective features of The Birth of a Nation production is its really brilliant
musical setting. During the two hours and a half which the big film requires, the orchestra plays
an arrangement which perfectly fits the unfolding story and which includes many of the finest
bits of melody extant. The library of the old masters and the collections of songs and ballads of
the 60’s have alike been rifled to make up the score of The Birth of a Nation. (Hare, 1994: 186)

Further on in this review, Hare reports that:

The final Piedmont scenes in The Birth of a Nation are very strenuous . . . While these big flights,
riots, and rescues are going on we have the appropriately big music of Tchaikovsky’s “1812
Overture”, Wagner’s “Rienzi Overture”, the “Zampa Overture”, the Fire Music from “Die
Walküre” and “The Ride of the Valkyries”. (Hare, 1994: 188)
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Most of the other contemporary critics were primarily impressed with the unison brass
‘bugle’ calls:
Then the Ku Klux Klan gathers . . . back and forth the scene changes — one moment a street in
Piedmont swirling with mad negroes, the next a bugle blast from the orchestra and out of the
distance the riders of the Klan sweeping on and on. Back to the street and a house where a white
girl trembles in fear before the black horde without, back with the bugle blast to the onrush of the
Klan. They are coming, they are coming! . . . You know it and your spine prickles and in the
gallery [of the cinema] the yells cut loose with every bugle note. The negro mob grows wilder
and wilder, the white-shrouded riders are tearing nearer and nearer. Then, with a last mighty blast
from the bugle, they sweep into the town and with a shattering volley hammer into the crowd.
(Greene, 1994: 181)

The scene shifts to a great open field at night. There is a blood-curdling trumpet blast from the
orchestra pit, pitched in a minor key. A troop of white figures upon spirited horses dashes at
breakneck speed into the picture and wheels into position. There is a cheer from the audience.
Comes another blood-curdling trumpet call and another troop, and then another and another and
another. (McIntosh, 1994: 184)

Ironically, McIntosh, who wrote this review for The Atlanta Constitution on December
7th, 1915, goes on to state that:
Any mention of The Birth of a Nation, however, is not complete with comment on the picture
alone. The picture is not all. There is with the picture an orchestra of a score or more pieces and it
is a good orchestra. The music is wonderfully adapted to the picture. The score of an opera could
not more perfectly express the sense of the lines than does this music interpret the situations,
thought, and spirit of The Birth of a Nation. (185, emphasis added)

Clearly McIntosh was not familiar with The Valkyrie. The critic’s enthusiasm for
the music (and, it seems the very vocal enthusiasm demonstrated by the theatre
audiences at the time) go a long way to reflect the success Griffith enjoyed in
constructing a congruent musical and visual narrative with Wagner’s ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’. Griffith’s visualisation of the ride of the Klan supports and reinforces all of
the visual icons and narrative contextualisation established by Wagner and decades of
subsequent The Valkyrie performances. The Klan, like the Valkyries, are an army of
horse-mounted warriors. Both of their purposes involve death, war, and battle. The
summoning of the Klan members parallels the orientating of the Valkyries with their
battle-cries and their suggestions on how to tether rival horses. The gathering of the Klan
in the field prior to their descent into Piedmont parallels the gathering of the Valkyries
on the mountain-top, prior to their ascent into Valhalla. The startling string upthrusts that
open the music, which operate as composite anaphones communicating a bugle/hunting
horn call to arms, to battle, and to the hunt (as described above), are perfectly and fully
recontextualised in the visual imagery of the two Klan horsemen blowing their bugle to
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summon other Klan members for the ride to Piedmont. In addition, the costumes of the
Klan and the Valkyries are similar: both employ long flowing robes, helmets, and helms,
and both bear weapons and long spears/standards. Ben, the leader of the Klan, has two
breast-plate cross emblems, one on each breast, which is strongly evocative of the most
common realisation of Brünnhilde’s costume (as per Rackham, loc. cit.).
The synaesthetic relationship between Wagner’s music and Griffith’s Klan
operates in the same way as between Wagner’s music and his own imagery, thanks to
this congruence in visual iconography. The ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ communicates the
flight of armed Valkyries on horses, and Griffith shows the high speed flight of armed
Klansmen on horses. While the Klansmen are not riding through the air, the speed of the
horses suggests the closest terrestrial equivalent, and the musical sense of weightlessness
and euphoria is thus transferred into an exhilaration for the sheer speed of the horses and
their riders. The sense of equestrian weight is supported by shots of hundreds of men
and horses at full gallop. Furthermore, the moral centre of the film lies with the
Klansmen, so Griffith is suggesting that the Klan ride into Piedmont to the strains of
‘Ride of the Valkyries’ with the additional weight of moral certainty and righteousness.
The use of the held brass chords at the end of each motif phrase is particularly effective
when heard in connection with parties of Klansmen joining the army of their colleagues,
with their associated connotations of fox hunts and hunting calls (and their echoes of the
music’s opening composite alarm anaphones). The harmony of these held brass chords,
originally offering a composite anaphone for the harmony of purpose amongst the
Valkyries, transfers this connotative anaphone to the harmony of purpose amongst
Klansmen.
Griffith’s genius here was to effect the recontextualisation of Wagner’s music in
a contemporary setting without compromising the original narrative of the music, which
results in narrative congruence. The success of this recontextualisation can be read in the
description of audience’s reaction to the fusion of sound and image in 1915, where
McIntosh (1994: 184) and Greene (1994: 181) respectively, refer to audiences yelling
and jumping up from their seats. Unfortunately, Griffith also added a racist connotation
to the music in his association of Wagner with the Ku Klux Klan, a connotation that
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cannot be extrapolated from Wagner’s original work21. This racist connotation, a

metaleitmotif that arises from the use of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in The Birth of a Nation
alone, pre-dates the well-documented Nazi infatuation with Wagner’s music by at least
twenty-four years, and is explored in more detail in later films such as Apocalypse Now
and The Blues Brothers.
Prior to its use in the seminal Apocalypse Now, however, Wagner’s ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ became well-established in film culture as a musical intertextual reference.
The wide variation of these references and their filmic contexts suggests that the music’s
consolidation as a metaleitmotif with concrete visual iconographic associations had not
yet occurred, in spite of the frequency and regularity of reference.
The general narrative use of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ was still supported by the
films in which it appeared, however, such as Rebel Without A Cause, directed by
Nicholas Ray in 1955. Here it is heard as a diegetic sonic cameo. Rebel Without A Cause
begins with Jim Stark, played by James Dean, awaiting the arrival of his parents at the
police station where he is being held for public drunkenness (Video Clip 12). When his
parents arrive, with Jim’s Grandmother in tow, Jim begins singing Wagner’s ‘Ride of
the Valkyries’ under his breath, drunkenly, but audibly. At first this seems like a
diegetic, musical non sequitur, until the film’s characters are more fully explored. It
quickly becomes clear that Jim’s mother, Mrs. Stark, is the Valkyrie in question, and
Jim’s singing of Wagner in the police station is a pointed reference to the ride of Mrs.
Stark (and her mother) to pick up her son from the police station and bear him home to
safety.
Mrs. Stark can be recognised as a recontextualised Valkyrie through her
function, demeanour, attitude, and behaviour, rather than her costume or visual
iconography. Mrs. Stark is a Valkyrie in the same mold as outlined by Cooke, above:
“The Valkyries . . . are cold, hard, inhuman . . . regard human suffering and death as a
joke, and are utterly devoid of softer and tenderer feelings” (1979: 344). Her verbal
attacks of both her son

21
See Cooke (1979: 263-266) for clear, concise, and articulate refutation of the accusation that Wagner’s music is inherently racist.
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Jim and her husband are constant and bitter, and she has long beaten Mr. Stark into
submission in the family power struggle. Her ongoing, fearsome behaviour reduces Mr.
Stark to cowering over spilt food on the landing in one scene, wearing a frilly apron in
deference. In fact, Mr. Stark’s inability to stand up to his Valkyrie wife is constructed as
the primary reason behind Jim’s dissatisfaction with family life and the (lack of) social
role models he finds there. Mrs. Stark’s stern performance at the police station
immediately following Jim’s diegetic singing of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is enough to
establish her role, verbally attacking and castigating Jim, her husband and the Juvenile
Officer. Jim’s Grandmother is also portrayed as a cold, hard, verbally abusive, strong
woman to be feared, in her few scenes in the film. This depiction marks her as a
Valkyrie as well, which further reinforces Jim’s choice of music at the police station.
At the same time, Mrs. Stark is fiercely protective of her son Jim, the ‘hero’ of
the narrative: her descent into the battle-zone of the police station to bear Jim away to
safety has clear resonance in the Valkyrie’s role of descending into the battle-zone to
bear war heroes to the safety of Valhalla. In a pivotal scene later in the film, Jim declares
his intention of going to the police with his knowledge of the fatal chicken-run, and Mrs.
Stark is ferocious in her protective maternal instinct. Having secured the hero Jim to
Valhalla, Mrs. Stark is prepared to fight tooth and nail not to lose her son to the
battlefield once again, in her belief that Jim’s confession of guilt and duplicity will ruin
his life. The fact that this means verbally beating her own son into submission does not
seem to faze her in the slightest, which is in keeping with the Valkyries disdain for
mortal suffering.
It is interesting that director Nicholas Ray seems to have felt that Jim’s apparent
knowledge and understanding of Wagner would not necessarily seem out of place in
1955, but this assumption can be found in other texts in this time period as well. Gerald
Levitch believes that in the 1950s, the daily awareness of classical music in the home
was well beyond that of today, and he cites the popularity of Warner Brothers cartoons
about classical music (and their reliance on an assumption of audience recognition) as
proof of this:
How do we account for the extraordinary number of Warner Brothers cartoon parodies of classical
music, such as ‘The Rabbit of Seville’ (1950) with Bugs Bunny, or Elmer Fudd singing Wagner in
‘What’s Opera, Doc?’ (1957). If you don’t know anything about Wagner, ‘What’s Opera, Doc?’
would seem downright mystifying – and certainly not funny. (1997: C17)
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‘Respectable’ music in the fifties was still classical music, as jazz and rock ‘n` roll had
yet to penetrate the acceptable mainstream. In this way, Jim Stark, depicted as part of a
comfortable, middle class (if dysfunctional) family of the 1950s, might well have had
knowledge of Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ and its operatic context. Similarly,
Warner Brothers Studios could release an animated cartoon entitled What’s Opera, Doc?
in 1957, secure in the knowledge that their audiences could appreciate and find amusing
its intertextual humour, in spite of the fact that it was heavily reliant on a knowledge of
Wagnerian opera conventions and music. What’s Opera, Doc?, directed by Chuck Jones,
also features recognisable phrases, melodies and motifs from Wagner’s ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’.
Jones’s What’s Opera, Doc? is in fact a short spoof of Wagnerian opera, both
musical and visual (Video Clip 13). Elmer Fudd is offered as an un-named Teutonic
God, controlling the stormy elements with powerful gestures. His goal, he announces, is
to “kill the wabbit!”, which unsurprisingly turns out to be Bugs Bunny. Attacking the
rabbit hole violently with his spear, Fudd the God naturally fails to recognise Bugs as a
rabbit, who asks by what means Fudd the God plans to carry out this murder. Fudd the
God claims he has a magic helmet, and demonstrates its power over wind, lightning and
rain to the suddenly terrified Bugs, who runs away. Fudd the God pursues him, and
suddenly comes upon Bugs dressed as a Valkyrie, coquettishly astride a vast white
horse, posed romantically in a beam of sunlight (see Illustration 12). Fudd the God is
transfixed with love. Singing melodiously, and in spite of the fact that he clearly cannot
recognise a rabbit when he sees one, he instantly recognises Bugs as “Brünnhilde”:
Fudd: Oh Brünnhilde, you’re so wovely!
Bugs: Yes I know it, I can’t help it. . .

Fudd the God courts Brünnhilde Bugs with a duet, and the two end up in each other’s
arms. Unfortunately, at this point Brünnhilde Bugs’s helmet and blonde braided wig fall
off, revealing the deception. Fudd the God is furious, and smites Bugs with lightning,
typhoons, hurricanes, earthquakes, and, apparently summoning up the worst climatic
affliction he can possibly imagine, “smog”. Bugs is found splayed on a shattered rock,
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slow drops of water falling on his head from a single broken flower above him. Fudd the
God realises the enormity of his error, and he slowly carries the limp body of the dead
Bugs away. Bugs raises his head to the audience and remarks, “Well, what did you
expect in an opera? A happy ending?” as the traditional Warner Brothers’ iris closes on
the scene.
The visual iconography of this cartoon is recognisably Wagnerian. Fudd the God
is dressed in a steel tunic and a Viking-style helmet, with a helm of pointed horns, and a
spear in one hand. The angular, tortured landscape is distinctly mythological in its
stylistic extremity, and “suggest the rocky landscape required by parts of the Ring
Cycle” (Huckvale, 1994: 130). Brünnhilde Bugs is discovered wearing rounded breast-
plates, a steel helmet with a helm of two feathered wings, and long braided blonde hair.
She wears heavy purple mascara and eye-liner to emphasise her femininity. Brünnhilde
Bugs’ horse (named Grane in the original myths) is pure white and comically obese, yet
she floats down from the hilltop with grace and fluidity in a smooth gallop.
The music is a clever mix of Wagnerian motifs and melodies, in a sonic medley
that matches the visual combination of Wagnerian icons. Recognisable musical
references can heard to the ‘Overture’ to The Flying Dutchman, and entirely new lyrics
have been composed by Michael Maltese for the love duet ‘Return My Love’ between
Fudd the God and Brünnhilde Bugs to the music of the ‘Pilgrims’ Chorus’ from
Tannhäuser. The ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ occurs in the first half of the cartoon,
functioning as Fudd the God’s hunting music. Announcing to the audience in recitative,
Fudd the God admonishes “Be vewy quiet: I’m hunting wabbits!”. His subsequent
stalking is made to the brass Valkyrie motif of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, although the
cascading string arpeggios cannot be heard in the background. Fudd the God next
discovers rabbit tracks and a rabbit hole, and the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ brass motif is
heard for one full cycle as Fudd the God sings “kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit!” along
with the syncopated melody, stabbing his spear blindly into the rabbit hole. So violent is
Fudd’s attack that his legs and feet remained hanging in mid-air: he is virtually
suspended upside down. After a verbal aside from Bugs, who is understandably horrified
to find this apparition attacking the (wrong) hole, Fudd moves on to singing the Valkyrie
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battle-song. He manages to get this not quite right, singing “Yohotoho! Yohotoho!”
instead of ‘Hoyotoho!’, but the music is correct.
In this short musical reference, Jones manages to support many of the narrative
congruences established by Wagner and used by Griffith and Ray, respectively. Clearly,
the mythological references made by the costumes are purely Wagnerian and offer no
mediating distance. The association between ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ and the hunt is
made explicit in the text and visuals of the cartoon, with its attendant notions of death.
Even weightlessness and a suggestion of flying are supported by the visuals, with Fudd
the God hanging suspended over the rabbit hole as he engages it in warfare.
What is interesting about this cartoon is the purity of its intertextual reference,
that Jones references Wagner entirely and offers no hint of reference to Griffith’s The
Birth of a Nation, made some forty years earlier. This indicates that ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ had not attained the status of metaleitmotif in popular culture, although as a
pop culture leitmotif it was well accepted. It suggests the level of awareness enjoyed by
opera, and Wagner’s opera in particular, in popular culture at the time. According to
Warner Brothers Studios, Wagner’s operas apparently were as acceptable a target for
cartoon satire as the gangster film genre (“Bugs and Thugs”), the conventions of
swashbuckling pirate epics (“Mutiny on the Bunny”), and the gothic horror narratives of
witches and fairy-tales (“Broom-Stick Bunny”). Nor was Wagner singled out for special
musical notice: other opera cartoons included “The Rabbit of Seville”, which played
upon the music, visuals and narrative of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and The
Marriage of Figaro.
One, Two, Three is a 1961 comedy, directed by Billy Wilder, that also uses
Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ as an ironic intertextual reference for comedic
purposes (Video Clip 14). Wilder’s overt purpose of using Wagner seems to be
primarily as a genre synecdoche centred around the ‘German-icity’ of Wagner’s music.
This in itself is telling, as the Valkyrie motif can be identified as Wagner’s most
recognisable musical phrase. Wilder is thus reinforcing and consolidating the position of
‘Ride of the Valkyries’ as an intertextual reference and as cultural leitmotif.
Federico Fellini used Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ for two scenes in his
1963 film 8½. Fellini’s use of Wagner’s music in this film further confirms what Jones
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and Wilder made quite clear in ‘What’s Opera, Doc?’ and One, Two, Three
(respectively), that the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ was recognisable enough to have its
narrative context established as a safe subject for irony and amusement. Fellini parodies
the visual and musical conventions of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, but this is equally telling
in terms of the consolidation of musical iconography in popular culture. Fellini
presumably felt that musical/visual jokes made at the expense of Wagner’s music would
be understood and appreciated by his audience, and so both uses of Wagner’s ‘Ride of
the Valkyries’ in 8½ play on the visual-musical association established by Wagner and
explored by Griffith, Jones, Ray, and Wilder respectively.
8½ is a transparently autobiographical metafilm about a film director, Guido
Anselmi, who finds himself suffering ‘director’s block’, unable to come up with an idea
for his new film. 8½ begins at a health spa, where Guido has come to rest and recharge
his soul and imagination. When this fails, he returns to the overwhelming grind of film
pre-production, where he is continuously harassed by his producer, writer, casting agent,
and other colleagues, as well as his mistress and wife. Unable to resolve his artistic
crisis, not to mention his emotional crises, Guido finds solace by retreating
psychologically into nostalgic memories and fantasies about the various women who
have played roles in the film of his life. In a typically obscure ending, the film suggest
that either Guido commits suicide at the height of a particularly vicious press
conference, or that he manages to resolve both his director’s block and his inability to
commit to or be satisfied with his female relationships through some sudden,
unexplained epiphany.
Wagner’s music is heard early in the film, when Guido is taking ‘the cure’ at a
local heath spa (Video Clip 15). The spa’s ‘cure’ involves drinking the mineral waters
that bubble from a natural spring, as well as sauna and steam bath procedures. After an
opening nightmare/dream sequence and a subsequent routine check-up, Guido walks
slowly to a large, tiled bathroom. Shortly after the lights in the bathroom come fully on,
Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is heard, apparently non-diegetically. The telephone in
the bathroom rings, and Guido mocks its rings with stylised crouches. The next shot
continues under the auspices of the music, but the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is now much
louder and presumably diegetic. The camera has moved outside to the grounds of the
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spa, where the spa residents are lining up to partake of their daily glass of spring mineral
water. As the music plays, the camera pans by the spa residents, most of whom smile,
wave, or acknowledge the point-of-view in some way. The residents are female by
overwhelming majority, and are without exception elderly. All are elaborately dressed
and most are carrying parasols: clearly, the daily mineral water ritual is an important
social event in the daily routine. The elderly residents walk slowly along in orderly lines,
one of which passes the orchestra responsible for the music’s diegetic source. Various
characters are shown as the camera pans slowly left: one old woman is shown fast asleep
in her chair; a bearded monk lifts his legs out of rhythm with the music; a bespectacled
nun grins coquettishly for the camera before turning shyly away.
At the second, louder, brassier repetition of the Valkyries motif, a close up of an
old man’s arm, wrist and hand are shown. The man is holding a walking cane and is
visibly shaking with the effort of walking. The mineral water is shown being dispensed
from the actual spring, ladled up in cups by attendant nurses, who stand on a lowered
platform for this purpose. Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ comes to an end, and is
replaced immediately by the overture to Rossini’s opera The Barber of Seville.
Fellini deliberately spoofs many of the Wagnerian conventions associated with
‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in this sequence. In one respect he remains faithful to aspects of
the ancient Teutonic mythology that inspired Wagner for his Ring cycle, as Valkyries
were traditionally ascribed the role of serving beer to the gathered heroes in Valhalla.
Here Fellini has the spa attendants in the role of Valkyries, serving mineral water to the
gathered patients of the establishment. The spa’s inhabitants take on the role of the fallen
heroes, gathered in this one place to reap the rewards of their bravery and perseverance
in battle. For Wagner, the string upthrust that sets off the woodwind trills, acted as a
composite anaphone for a hunting horn cry of alarm and battle. Fellini associates this
anaphone visually with a ringing telephone and Guido’s reluctance to answer it. Guido
has heard this call to battle clearly enough, but he does not feel the cause is just enough
to warrant an answer, let alone compliance, and so he mocks the stridency of the alarm
with humorous poses.
In another way, the inhabitants of the spa, who are overwhelmingly old and
female, are ironic, humorous caricatures of the Valkyrie stereotype. The elaborate and
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stylised dress of the old women includes impractical, elaborate hats and parasols, which
are ironic recontextualisations of military helmets and spears or shields. The advanced
age of the women is important, as Valkyries are traditionally young and ageless, as is
becoming for immortal daughters of Wotan. The frailty of the spa inhabitants is
constantly emphasised, in marked contrast to the picture of virile strength portrayed in
Teutonic myth and in Wagner’s The Valkyrie. One erstwhile Valkyrie has fallen asleep
in her chair with the strain of it all, another has to be helped into a seat by two
attendants, while the physical shaking of the arm and walking stick of the spa patient to
the renewed brass Valkyrie motif can only have been timed deliberately. The slow,
sedate pace of the spa patients as they patiently line up for their mineral water is an
ironic recontextualisation of the speed of the Valkyries as the soar through the air on
their battleground missions.
The difference between the spa patients and Wagner’s Valkyries could not be
greater, and therein lies the humour of the sequence. The spa patients are weak, slow,
old, frail, unattractive, sick, and ineffectual, and Fellini associates them musically with
characters who are known to be strong, fast, immortal, beautiful, in prime physical
health, bold, and arrogant. This humorous use of Wagner is emphasises by the
orchestra’s next choice of music, which happens to be Rossini: the overture to The
Barber of Seville is as appropriate a choice for the silly cast of comic characters seen at
the spa as ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is inappropriate. The juxtapositions between the music
of Wagner, the imagery of Fellini, and the music of Rossini seem deliberately
constructed, and they can stand as a testament to the pervasiveness of Wagner’s
Valkyrie imagery in the popular culture of 1963.
The second occurrence of Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is found towards the
end of the film (Video Clip 16). Guido is suffering the embarrassment of having his
mistress Carla arrive at the same al fresco cafe where he is dining with his wife Luisa.
Luisa is furious and mortified at Guido’s lies and hypocrisy, and she rails at Guido.
Shortly thereafter Guido smiles, sinks low into his chair, and peers at Carla over the top
of his sunglasses. Viewers have learnt by now that this is the visual signal for one of
Guido’s nostalgia trips or fantastic daydreams.
Then follows one of the most famous sequences in all of modern films: In his daydreams, Guido
occupies a house with all the women in his life, past and present, and they all love him and
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forgive him, and love one another. But then there is a revolt, and he cracks a whip, trying to tame
them. Of course he cannot. (Ebert, 1993)

The ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ music coincides with the revolt of the women against
Guido, which is sparked by complaints from Jacqueline against the house rule, which is
that all women in the household who reach a certain age are banished upstairs.
Jacqueline does not want to go, and her complaints spark sudden rebellion in Guido’s
women. Saraghina, who is the very large, wild-haired prostitute to whom Guido lost his
virginity at a young age, starts the revolt by grimacing madly at the camera and
proclaiming “It’s not fair!” Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ immediately follows this
call to arms, and all of the other women quickly agree, saying things like “a real man
wouldn’t make such a rule!”. An un-named black woman dressed in a toga yells “Up the
revolution!” and “Down with the tyrant!” as she leaps up on the dining table to grab a
white sheet that is hanging from the upper balcony. She wraps it firmly around her wrist
and swings across the room, flying from one side of to the next, followed closely by the
camera. Guido begins to look alarmed. Scrambling to his feet, he finds a bullwhip and
begins to crack it at his women, keeping them at bay like a lion-tamer. Guido is calm,
collected, decisive, and focussed, all characteristics he fails to demonstrate in the non-
fantasy sections of the film. It quickly transpires that the women enjoy the whipping,
deriving sexual pleasure from the pain in several instances, and emotional pleasure from
Guido’s macho display of physical strength and sexual prowess. Guido’s wife Luisa is
singularly unimpressed with the riot, explaining to the visiting Rossella that Guido “. . .
likes excitement. He does this almost every night”. The music reaches the end of the
brass Valkyrie motifs and begins the descending scales, and the act ends, with all of the
women praising Guido’s performance with applause.
Most of the women in this sequence can be interpreted as Valkyries, through
their demonstrations of strength, independence, and (sexual) pleasure derived from
violence and physical strength. Several individual characteristics are emphasised,
however, in order to further strengthen the narrative congruence between the characters
in this sequence and Wagner’s slightly recontextualised Teutonic mythology. For
example, one of the women featured in Guido’s fantasy household is an airline attendant
called Nadine. Nadine is tall, wears both an airline stewardess’s hat and a scarf over her
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head, sunglasses, and she holds a broom inverted and upside down like a spear. This
suggests a Valkyrie’s helmet and lance, as her stance is distinctly martial. At Guido’s
request she repeats a speech she apparently gave to the passengers of a flight some time
ago, in Copenhagen. Nadine has a deep, throaty voice, and Guido comments on it
wistfully. Through her voice Nadine is presented as a figure of great sexual self-
confidence, presence and authority, all of which are Valkyrie traits. The prostitute
Saraghina is clearly a recontextualised Valkyrie, with her physical bulk and sexual self-
confidence. Portrayed as a large, wild woman with an unkempt mane of black hair,
blazing eyes and a large, toothy grin, Saraghina is reminiscent of the bloodthirsty
Valkyries described in the Poetic Edda, as cited earlier in this chapter. Finally, the black
woman in the toga is overtly ‘Valkyrian’ in her aggressive self-confidence (she
communicates her violent-animal affectation with growling sounds and hand scratching
motions), and by the fact that she ‘flies’ across the room, holding onto a sheet like some
kind of Roman Tarzan or pirate.
Fellini’s use of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in this famous dream sequence is still
closer to ironic spoof than straight iconographic recontextualisation, although it is closer
to Wagner’s Teutonic imagery than in the first sequence of this film. The result of this is
that the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ sequences in 8½ are unlikely to remain engraved in
popular culture as narratively-congruent metaleitmotives, and yet they still manage to
support (through irony) the intertextual images and connotations extrapolated from
Teutonic mythology by Wagner.
In 1979 Francis Ford Coppola released his film Apocalypse Now, which was
quickly to become a benchmark in popular culture for several reasons. Not least of all,
Apocalypse Now established Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ as a metaleitmotif in
popular culture, fusing Wagner’s music with concrete contemporary visual imagery that
was still in general alignment with the trajectory of narrative congruence ordained by
Teutonic mythology. The use of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in Apocalypse Now also helped
create the phenomenon of classical music recontextualised as popular music, offering a
prominent example of music video narrative style in a filmic context saturated with
music by sixties bands like The Doors, The Rolling Stones, and Jimi Hendrix.
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The screenplay for Apocalypse Now was written by Coppola and John Milius,
and was based on Joseph Conrad’s 1895 novella Heart of Darkness. As such, it follows
an American Army captain named Willard on his mission up the Nung River into
Cambodia. At the end of this riverboat journey Willard is to find a Green Beret Colonel
named Kurtz, who has gone insane, and to kill Kurtz “with extreme prejudice”. Just like
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Apocalypse Now is also a metaphorical journey into the
darker regions of mankind’s soul, into mankind’s ‘heart of darkness’. Conrad placed his
novella in nineteenth century imperialistic Africa, and Coppola placed his film in
Vietnam, where he created a film that not only examines the depths of mankind’s
inherent capacity for evil, but also stands as a metaphor for America’s political and
military involvement in Vietnam.
Coppola’s film is thus extremely dense with several layers of intertextuality. The
theme, plot, narrative structure, individual narrative scenes, and even character names
(like Kurtz) are taken directly from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Conrad’s novella had
also been celebrated intertextually by poet T.S. Eliot, who used a line from Heart of
Darkness as an epigraph for his poem ‘The Waste Land’, and Eliot’s poetry is also
intertextually referenced within the diegesis of Apocalypse Now. Apocalypse Now is also
saturated with other diegetic intertextual references and multimedia tmeses, such as
shots of Frazer’s seminal literary work on mythology, The Golden Bough, and songs by
Jimi Hendrix. Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ falls into this latter category of sonic
tmeses. Furthermore, the film offers a rich political subtext about American involvement
in Vietnam. The parallels between Coppola’s making of Apocalypse Now and the
manner in which the Americans fought the war in Vietnam have been publicly discussed
by Coppola, and are the subject of Eleanor Coppola’s excellent documentary about the
making of Apocalypse Now, entitled Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse
(1991).
As Willard travels up the Nung river in search of the insane Kurtz, the film offers
a sequence of filmic ‘set pieces’, which get progressively anarchic, surreal and morally
frightening as the journey continues. The film’s set pieces include the film’s opening
hotel room sequence, the Playboy Bunny Show at the Hau Phat base depot, the
nightmarish scene at Do Lung bridge, filmed partially through patrolboat gunner
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Lance’s acid-infused point-of-view, and the montage-edited murder of Kurtz at the end
of the film. There is a distinct correlation between the structure of these ‘set-pieces’ and
those of music videos, as examined in Chapter 3: in fact, the ‘set-piece’ sequences in
Apocalypse Now effectively are music videos, set in a filmic context. Both music videos
and the set-piece sequences in Apocalypse Now involve the fusion of music and visual
image. The music is both non-diegetic and metadiegetic. Both feature standard video
narrative ideology and an inversion of standard film narrative ideology, in that the music
dictates the pace and editing of the visual image and not the other way around.
One of these set pieces is the attack on the Vietcong village Vin Drin Dop by an
Air Cavalry division of attack helicopters, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore
(played by Robert Duvall). Willard introduces the Air Cavalry in a voice-over:
First of the Ninth was an old cavalry division that had cashed in its horses for choppers, and gone
tear-assing around ‘Nam, looking for the shit. They’d given Charlie a few surprises in their time
here. What they were mopping up now hadn’t even happened yet an hour ago.

This Air Cavalry division, the ‘First of the Ninth’ is under orders to escort Willard and
his patrolboat crew to the delta mouth of the Nung river, where Willard’s travel up the
river is to begin. The village at this location is under Vietcong control and is considered
extremely dangerous, but Kilgore, a fanatical surfer, feels strongly that the benefits of
being able to surf the six-foot peak at this location outweigh the military risks. The fact
that one of Willard’s patrolboat crew (Lance) is a renowned, professional surfer cements
Kilgore’s decision to attack the village at dawn the next day. His decision made, Kilgore
stands up at the barbecue beach party at which this conference is being held, claiming:
We’ll pick your boat up and put it down like a baby, right where you want it. This is First of the
Ninth, Air Cav, son: air mobile. I can take that point and hold it as long as I like . . .

At this point the audience is given a hint of the musical tmesis to follow, as one of
Kilgore’s crew launches into a wordless, sung rendition of the brass Valkyrie motif from
‘Ride of the Valkyries’ immediately after Kilgore says “air mobile”.
Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is first played diegetically (and then non-
diegetically/metadiegetically) on loudspeakers hung from the First of the Ninth
helicopters, as they attack the village of Vin Drin Dop (Video Clip 17). The diegetic
performance of the music is preceded with several shots of the helicopters as they take
off and fly towards the village: a traditional cavalry bugler plays the cavalry charge on
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his horn as the helicopters depart. Photographed at dawn, the flight of the helicopters is
visually striking, and shots of Willard lost in contemplation underscore the transcendent
beauty of the scenery and lighting. Approaching the village, Kilgore is expansive in his
pride at using Wagner in this particular situation, explaining to Lance the psychology
behind it:
Kilgore: We’ll come in low, out of the rising sun, and about a mile out, we’ll put on the music.
Lance: Music?
Kilgore: Yeah, I use Wagner . . . it scares the hell out of the slopes. My boys love it!
Lance (to Willard): Hey, they’re gonna play music!

Seconds later, Kilgore gives the command to play the music: “Big Duke Six to Eagle
thrust: put on psy-war ops22, make it loud. Romeo Foxtrot, shall we dance?” A
crewmember leans over and turns on a large reel-to-reel tape player attached to the floor
of the helicopter cabin, and Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ starts playing from the
attached speakers.
As soon as the music of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ starts playing the sharply
ascending string phrases, the entire narrative ideology of the multimedia switches from
that of film to that of music video, and the set-piece sequence is under way. The music is
recognisably pure in textual source, and is in fact from a performance of The Valkyrie by
the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Georg Solti. The visual images of
the film are now being edited to fit the music rather than the other way around. This is
most noticeable in the visual images of the helicopter’s speakers, which are edited to
match with those first eight string upthrusts and woodwind trills that begin ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’. Several shots of the speakers are shown in order to establish the diegetic
source of the music. In spite of this, the audience becomes aware that the music is also
being played non-diegetically, because the sheer decibel volume that would be required
to hear any music over the noise generated by an entire division of attacking army

22
Kilgore calls Wagner’s music “psychological warfare operations”.
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helicopters would be well beyond the technical (and electrical) capabilities of those
machines. Coppola plays with the diegetic source of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in this
sequence, as the relative distance between the diegetic source of the music and the
audience is at times too extreme to allow for seamless musical continuity, and yet at
other times the movement of the helicopters seems to directly affect the volume and
acoustical space of the musical performance.
The ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ plays for just under seven minutes in Apocalypse
Now, and the first sequence of motifs is cleverly repeated in order to cover this extended
length of time. The musical edits are made under the cover of helicopter rotor noise,
which is pervasive throughout this entire sequence. As the music plays, shots of the
speakers and miniguns are cut with reaction shots from Willard and the patrolboat crew
members, who are amused and incredulous at the strangeness of hearing classical music
in such a context. With the first cycle of the brass Valkyrie motif, a longer shot of the
entire helicopter division is shown, flying in loose formation at high altitude. The Air
Cavalry crew appear comfortable with their immediate environment: Kilgore bobs his
head in time to the music, a smile on his face; another faceless soldier strokes the
externally-mounted rocket launchers with absent-minded familiarity. The non-flight
crew lock and load their weapons, check their magazines, and prepare for combat. The
second, heavier repetition of the Valkyrie motif, with unison trombones and trumpets, is
accompanied with a slow pan shot of the division helicopters, and at least ten helicopters
are shown. The next shot shows them descending in altitude, islands visible in the ocean
below them.
The courtyard of the village is shown next, and no music can be heard at all at
first. Helicopter rotor wash is then audible, and ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is heard shortly
after that, once again underlining its diegetic source. The following long shot shows ten
helicopters approaching the beach, low over large breaking surf (see Illustration 13).
This image is timed to accompany the first vocal lines of the music, that of Gerhilde
singing the Valkyrie battle-song. A shot from the helicopter’s point-of-view shows them
closing on the village quickly, only meters above the breaking surf, and the next shots
cut quickly between the approaching helicopters and the Vietcong preparing themselves
for battle with great urgency, all edited to match Gerhilde singing her lines. Kilgore is
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shown briefly talking urgently into his microphone, with complete concentration, clearly
in the final stages of pre-attack coordination.
Helmwige reaches the final, top note in her battle-song, and a visual climax is
reached, simultaneously, again the visual images timed to meet the music. At the high B,
the lead helicopter finally reaches range and fires off the first rocket: the attack has
begun. Chef looks up in surprise, either at the noise of the rocket and its explosion or at
Helmwige’s high B — the timing is so exact, it is unclear which. The brass Valkyrie
motif begins again, and the attack on the village continues with it. A great amount of
diegetic sound can be heard alongside the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’. The roar of helicopter
rotors is omnipresent, and the sound of different kinds of gunfire, rocket fire, and
explosions are faithfully generated. The ongoing yelled conversation of battle can also
be heard, between helicopter crews and pilots.
The bulk of the battle over the village is filmed in very fast edits showing shots
of weapons discharging, soldiers shooting, large impressive explosions and fireballs, and
various items of hardware blowing up: cars, bridges, mounted 50mm cannons,
helicopters, village buildings. Vietcong soldiers are strewn around in liberal numbers.
Several quick close-ups of American air-crew and soldiers are shown, all depicting
intense concentration, fear, exhilaration, and battle-terror. Willard is shown looking
mildly interested in an abstracted way. A large majority of the shots are shown from the
Air Cavalry’s point-of-view, and only a few shots from the Vietcong’s perspective are
offered. The combination of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, the helicopter rotor noise, the gun
and rocket fire, the constant high-volume microphone traffic, and the explosions adds up
to a textually dense section of filmmaking.
At the end of the Valkyrie motif cycle, the next musical section begins, with the
suspended notes held above descending scales, as described above. This is accompanied
by a point-of-view shot from one of the helicopters as it passes directly through a
billowing cloud of black smoke, from an earlier fuel explosion. The angle of the shot
changes as the helicopter banks over the village courtyard, and the music at this point
dies away. For fifty-one seconds, the battle becomes ordinary and businesslike, with no
music heard. Kilgore personally shoots a car travelling along a bridge without even
pausing to put down his morning mug of coffee. A flare goes off in Kilgore’s helicopter,
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and Kilgore calmly ensures the flare is thrown out, making sure that the surfer Lance is
not hurt.
The next edit brings the music back, and the helicopters are shown landing on the
beachhead. Eight Valkyries are now singing, and the scene regains some of its earlier
excitement. Helicopter after helicopter lands, its troops pouring out of the open weapons
bays and immediately deploying in all directions at high speed. The rotor wash is
churning up sand and paper, and a sense of chaos and barely-controlled panic is evident.
A closeup of one young, baby-faced recruit is shown having lost his nerve, remaining in
the helicopter and yelling “I’m not going! I’m not going! I’m not going!” in hysterics
before being physically dragged off his seat by an officer.
The focus of the scene now shifts to the door-to-door ground fighting, which is
fierce. American soldiers are under heavy fire, and one black serviceman takes
particularly bad gunshots in his leg in the courtyard as a series of clay pots is blown up
at close range. At this point the music dies away again. A pilot can be heard saying
“We’ve got wounded down there” into his helicopter microphone. Kilgore, in a
beautifully-composed shot showing a swirl of grey smoke twisting in the rotor wash of a
flanking helicopter in the background, orders “I want my wounded out of there into a
hospital in 15 minutes. I want my men out!”. A helicopter duly lands and the wounded
solider is quickly loaded into it, but a Vietnamese woman throws a hand grenade (hidden
in a Dauli hat) in the helicopter and it promptly — and impressively — blows up.
Kilgore lands on the beach in his own helicopter shortly thereafter, and, annoyed
at the reluctance of his men to go surfing given the dangerous gunfight situation, orders
a huge napalm attack on the surrounding treeline to end the battle on a decisive note.
Standing on the beach, Kilgore demonstrates a complete, almost neurotic lack of fear for
his environment. Kilgore remains standing, contemptuously, when all the other people
around him are diving for cover as incoming mortars can be heard approaching. Some
explode mere feet away, but Kilgore remains unscratched by shrapnel. In fact, Kilgore
does not even flinch, and this is shown in marked contrast to Willard, who does flinch,
and who has already been established as a soldier with an impressive background in
fieldwork, who does not flinch easily. Kilgore’s sole concern is surfing and the state of
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the waves, and the danger to his person from the battlefield surrounding him does not
seem to register at all.
As Commander of the First of the Ninth Air Cavalry, Kilgore is established as
the Leader of the Valkyries, a male Brünnhilde. Title aside, this is evident in Kilgore’s
complete military and physical confidence, or arrogance. At the beach barbecue party,
Willard muses about Kilgore in a voice-over:
He wasn’t a bad officer, I guess. He loved his boys and they felt safe with him. He was one of
those guys that had that weird light around him. You just knew he wasn’t gonna get so much as a
scratch here.

Kilgore’s “weird light” is Coppola’s version of divine invulnerability, much as

Brünnhilde was invulnerable to battle-field injury by virtue of her divine status. Kilgore
also shares characteristics of military competence with Brünnhilde, and the natural
leader’s ability to get their subordinates to carry out orders contrary to their innate
common sense. Brünnhilde manages to cajole her Valkyries to stand up to Wotan, hiding
Sieglinde in their midst, and Kilgore gets members of his crew to go surfing in spite of
their extreme reluctance and the fact that the actual surf break is targeted by Vietcong
mortar fire.
Coppola’s narrative congruence between his Vietnam-set film and Wagner’s
mythological and operatic context is extremely well-developed. The narrative of the
music communicates flying, altitude, weight, military strength, power and confidence,
and all of these meanings are found reflected in Coppola’s visual iconography. The
recontextualisation of the Valkyries’ horses into helicopters was an inspired, though
natural choice. The connection between helicopters and horses is explicit in the text, of
course, when Willard points out that the Air Calvary unit “traded in its horses for
helicopters”, and all of the supporting visual iconography for the Air Calvary division is
drawn from equestrian military sources, such as the old-fashioned cavalry bugler
(complete with tasselled buck-skin cavalry gloves) at the beginning of the raid. The
division’s military crest is that of a horse’s head on a shield with a diagonal black band,
and this horse symbol is seen on everything from pilot’s helmets to Kilgore’s coffee
mug and custom-made surfboards. Kilgore clearly still feels his Air Cavalry is distinctly
equestrian in nature, and diegetically plays up the historical association of the division
with horses. The familiarity of the helicopter gunners with their equipment, such as the
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solider who strokes the chassis of the rocket launcher, also suggests the kind of close
personal relationship traditionally ascribed to horses and their riders.
The string upthrusts leading to the woodwind trill at the beginning of ‘Ride of
the Valkyries’ communicate their connotative meaning in exactly the same way and with
the same high degree of success as in The Birth of a Nation. These composite
anaphones, which express meanings of alarm and the call to arms or battle, are easily
recontextualised in Coppola’s Vietnam war setting. The nature of this musical
announcement is prefigured twice in the text, once visually and once in the script: the
helicopters originally take off to the visual and sonic accompaniment of the gloved
bugler, and Kilgore explains to Lance that the entire purpose of playing the ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ is to announce the approach of the helicopter division, inspiring fear in the
Vietcong soldiers.
Helicopters offer the latest, up-to-the-moment advance in military transportation
technology, in exactly the same way that horses offered the ultimate in military
advantage for hundreds of pre-technological years. The cascading string arpeggios that
provide the musical background for the brass motifs in ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ find a
perfect non-musical match in the sonorous drone of helicopter rotors. This sound can be
found constantly through the first third of Apocalypse Now, and has been called “one of
the emblematic sounds of Vietnam movies . . . like the flapping wings of malevolent
birds” by Adair (1981: 148), who also cites Cimino’s The Deer Hunter in this instance.
The speed and frequency of helicopter rotors is such that the sound appears to be in time
with the music, and thus an integral part of the musical text. The actual string arpeggios
cascading downwards and returning via the upthrust on the third beat, act as a kinetic
anaphone for helicopter rotor rotation, with their constant circular movement but static
relative position, and thus is this sequence suggests a causal link between the helicopters
and the actual music they broadcast. The kinetic anaphone of the descending and
ascending strings as flapping wings, as described above, finds visual congruence in the
speed-oscillated imagery of flapping rotor blades.
Helicopters share the characteristics of being heavy, armour-plated, and heavily
armed, much as the horses of the Valkyries would have been at the time. At the same
time, helicopters suggest a fluidity and manoeuvrability that jet fighters lack, and this
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too connects horses to helicopters more than to jet planes. Coppola emphasises this
characteristic of helicopters throughout the village battle sequence in Apocalypse Now,
repeatedly showing helicopters engaged in loose, informal, changing formations, nimble
acrobatic manoeuvring and (in one case) swaying from side to side in a very equestrian
manner. The jet fighters in Apocalypse Now, by comparison, travel in rigid formation in
a perfectly straight line, without changing direction or speed. The photography of the Air
Cavalry division is calculated to emphasise those musical elements in ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ that emphasise Valkyrie connotations. Repeated medium and long shots of
the helicopters at high altitude are given, often with helicopter interior in the immediate
foreground to underline the relative scale. The second, heavier and louder repetition of
the brass Valkyrie motif, which is accompanied by a slow pan of the helicopters flying
at high altitude in loose formation, shows the division flying parallel with the clouds,
and the mountaintops they shroud. Several helicopters are depicted in profile against a
solid white background of cloud. It is a majestic image, playing the added weight of the
musical instrumentation against the added visual altitude of the helicopters. The
suggestion is that the entire Air Cavalry division has just left the gates of
heaven/Valhalla itself, represented by the clouds lying in the background. By flying
effortlessly in a controlled formation above the cloud cover, the helicopters come across
as divine and not connected to the earthy, temporal world below23: a visual and
connotative image in mutually-implied fusion with the music. There is an echo of this
divine influence in the next scene, which shows the helicopters flying in low over the
breaking surf: at this point in the music, one of the Valkyries is singing “Hoyotoho” in a
descending scale, and this musical descent is timed to match the break of the waves as
the crest descends down the wave’s face.
If the falling and rising strings represent the helicopter’s rotors and their
mechanical function of keeping the helicopter flying, aloft, then the brass Valkyrie
motifs anaphonically represent the body of the helicopter itself and the warriors it
carries: armour and weapons in a confident, arrogant package. The metallic timbre of the
brass instruments, which Wagner used to anaphonically suggest the shield and armoured

23
Exactly the same imagery was used in 1936 by Leni Riefenstall for the beginning of Triumph of the Will, which depicts a plane
carrying Hitler flying thousands of feet above cloud cover before descending down to the earth to deliver its ‘divine’ passenger.
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breastplates of the Valkyries, here operates in the same way to suggest the metal armour
plating of the helicopter as well as the heavy cast-steel metal of the miniguns, rocket
launchers, and M-16 machine guns. Repeated shots of these aspects of the helicopters
are offered in the beginning of the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ music, all edited in time with
the musical phrasing. This music video-style editing makes a close connection between
that music and the parts of the helicopter under inspection. The military nature of these
metallic weapons is further reinforced by the associated weaponry imagery of Wagner’s
Valkyries, and so Coppola manages to combine the Wagnerian emphasis on weapons
and armour with modern, contextualised armoured weapons, all of which is specifically
communicated in musical terms as described above.
The aircrew and soldiers flying inside the helicopters are visually and musically
identified as recontextualised Valkyries. In accordance with the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’
and the film editing that matches it, shots of the soldiers in the helicopters emphasise
their armour, weapons, and military confidence/arrogance. The aforementioned shot of
the faceless soldier stroking the external rocket launcher supports this notion, as the
rocket launcher in question is heavily armoured. In addition, the soldier in this shot has a
large bandolier of huge stainless steel minigun ammunition draped from shoulder to
thigh. In another shot a soldier locks and loads his M-16 machine gun, and in the next
shot another soldier taps his magazine on his helmet in order to confirm that it contains a
full clip. This last shot serves a dual purpose by illustrating the metal weapons (bullets)
as well as the soldier’s metal armour (helmet), and the sound of the metal magazine
tapping against the metal helmet is clearly audible over both the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’
and the helicopter rotor noise. The following shot shows a soldier slamming his
magazine into his machine gun with a slap, and this metallic sound is also audible as
diegetic sound. The confidence of the aircrews is apparent through their facial
expressions, which are portrayed as contemplative, peaceful, and even sleepy in one
shot: these are the faces of men who are not afraid of the approaching battle.
A small sequence of dialogue immediately prior to the playing of Wagner’s
‘Ride of the Valkyries’ serves to illustrate this clever combination of arrogance,
weapons, and armour fetishism. Chef notices that one of the helicopter gunners, who is
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cradling a huge 30mm machinegun, removes his helmet from his head and sits on it,
helmet upside down:
Chef: Why do all you guys sit on your helmets?
Soldier: So we don’t get our balls blown off.

This soldier displays confidence and arrogance in the way that he leisurely answers
Chef’s question, and also in the implication that he feels the risk to his testicles, and thus
to his sexual ability or prowess, is more threatening than the risk to his life presented by
not wearing a helmet. The weapons (machinegun), armour (helmet) and arrogance
combine to present a portrait of this soldier, and “all” the other aircrew soldiers, as
invincible Valkyries, confident in their weaponry and their steeds in the sky. Chef laughs
at the soldier’s answer, nervously, before removing his helmet to do the same. Chef’s
facial expression tells us that he does not feel nearly that confident of his chances to
emerge from the battle unscathed, but Chef and the rest of the patrolboat crew are not
Valkyries, but merely passengers along for the ride.
In the second half of the village battle sequence, the Air Cavalry division fulfils
the second function of Valkyries, that of bearing slain heroes away from the battlefield
to Valhalla. In Coppola’s Vietnam recontextualisation, this translates into the bearing of
wounded soldiers away from the battlefield to the hospital, and then, by metonymy, to
civilisation and home (which would have been synonymous with Heaven to Vietnam
troops). In Teutonic mythology and in Wagner’s recasting of that mythology, Valkyries
descend from the sky on their horses to collect warriors from the battlefield where they
have fallen. The ensuing passage to Valhalla is considered a reward for bravery. Wagner
even has the Valkyries amuse themselves with pointed comments about rivalry between
these fallen heroes, which might have been serious when the warriors were alive, but
seems only too trivial now they are dead. In the village battle sequence, Coppola shows
the Air Cavalry operate in precisely the same way, descending from the sky in their
helicopters to collect warriors from the battlefield where they have fallen. The wounded
were loaded into the helicopters on stretchers and lashed into place, much as wounded
warriors would have to be lashed to horses in order to transport them away from the
battlefield in ancient and/or mythological times. The helicopter is even able to land right
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at the feet of the fallen serviceman, who has been conveniently shot right on the village
courtyard.
Kilgore’s ‘First of the Ninth’ pride themselves as being an ‘air mobile’ service,
who are able to transport virtually anything to anywhere. Certainly transporting the
patrol boat to the mouth of the Nung river is not a problem, and in an earlier scene a
helicopter is shown transporting a cow away from a battle-ground. It is in fact Kilgore’s
recitation of the First of the Ninth’s motto of ‘air mobile’ that evidently inspires one of
Kilgore’s crew to sing the brass Valkyrie motif in the beach barbecue sequence, which
clearly connects the notion of air transportation with the Valkyrie narrative.
In the village attack sequence, a black serviceman is shown being badly wounded
by heavy calibre gunfire, and Kilgore demands that this soldier be transported by
helicopter back to the hospital in under 15 minutes, a typically fast evacuation time from
the ‘front-line’ of Vietnam. Evacuation to the hospital was considered a highly desirable
escape for many American soldiers in Vietnam, and self-inflicted wounds designed to
facilitate transfer to the hospital were commonplace at the time. Servicemen who
managed to get wounded in such a way as to effect a release from duty without losing
any of the critical physical functions were considered the luckiest of all. Wagner’s music
is about war, destruction and death, and Coppola is making a wry point about American
military arrogance by having Kilgore assume that, as Valkyries, the First of the Ninth
would be the only parties in the war responsible for delivering death and destruction.
During the Vietnam war, helicopters were used more for medical evacuation than for
military offensives (see Platoon and the thinly-veiled Vietnam allegory Predator for
good examples of this) owing to the nature of jungle warfare, and so any narrative
congruence reflecting the transportation of slain warriors in a Vietnamese context would
logically have to refer to slain American warriors.
Having made much of the visual spectacle of the Air Cavalry helicopter
descending in the courtyard to fulfil its Valkyrie duties by bearing away the warrior
from the battlefield, Coppola then goes one extra step and has the helicopter blown up
by a Vietcong sympathiser. In a sense, this reinforces the association between Valkyries,
Air Cavalry helicopters, and their transportation of warriors to Valhalla/Heaven even
further, as the fiery death of all the people within the helicopter serves only to transport
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them to a literal heaven, as against the merely figurative heaven of hospital. In their
moment of death the crew and wounded passengers of the helicopter attain a high moral
ground, engaged as they were in a mission of mercy, which suggests a religiously
justifiable righteousness. To illustrate this, Kilgore is shown morally appalled, calling
the Vietcong “fucking savages” in response. The actual helicopter is also a complete
write-off, judging by the impressive fireball and the shrapnel it strews over the village.
The impression is given that if there is any kind of heaven for technologically-
complicated machinery, shot in the back (as it were) while engaged in a mission of
mercy, then that helicopter ought to gain easy admission. This modern horse, rider, and
human cargo has reached the afterlife at last.
The overall, undefinable impression of this multimedia fusion — Barthes’s ‘third
meaning’ — is one of tremendous, fast-paced excitement, given a classical, timeless,
mythological atmosphere through the use of Wagnerian opera music. The sheer
excitement of the sequence has posed problems for film critics, who are forced to justify
how such a sequence of death, destruction, immorality and unforgivable military
imperialism could possibly be so enjoyable to listen to and watch. Adair calls the attack
on the village “the movie’s most celebrated morceau de bravoure” (1981: 151), going
on to claim that “solely in terms of spectacle, this sequence has no parallel in any
previous war movie” (ibid). Choosing his words carefully, Adair states that:
Although it would be foolish to generalise from any mixed assortment of reactions to a movie,
there seems to be a confusion here between two distinct notions: ‘exaltation’ and ‘exultation’.
The helicopter attack is undeniably an exalting experience for the spectator. In this, it differs little
from such other cinematic set-pieces as the Odessa Steps massacre in Eisenstein’s Battleship
Potemkin (1925) and the shower murder in Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) — both, incidentally,
sequences of extreme violence. (1981: 151)

To prove this point, Adair cites the use of Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, but fails to
examine the use of the music in any depth:
Though doubtless a contributing factor to the spectator’s own pleasure, ‘The Ride of the
Valkyries’, turned up full blast to “scare the shit out of the slopes” [sic], has nevertheless been
stripped of all but its most blatantly bellicose, even Nazi connotations — questionable as music
criticism, maybe, but an unambiguous (if facile) statement of the movie’s intentions. (1981: 152)

Adair seems on stronger ground with his remarks about how the music of Wagner ties in
well with Kilgore’s evident arrogance, but unfortunately the issue is merely introduced
in a single short sentence and never developed:
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The idea of playing Wagner during the raid on the village is not Coppola’s, as it were, but
Kilgore’s. It doesn’t blast out from the movie’s soundtrack as much as from a helicopter’s
loudspeaker system. And if its ostensible aim is to terrify the enemy, it doubtlessly also provides
Kilgore with a suitable audio-visual ambience for his posturing heroics. (1981: 157)

Müller also dismisses the use of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in this sequence with a pat
phrase. Although he compliments this sequence as an “outstanding” use of Wagner in
film, he continues to describe it as
. . . a sequence that must be counted among the most famous in the history of the cinema, the air
raid on a Vietnamese village in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (USA, 1979) with The
Ride of the Valkyries used functionally as an aphrodisiac designed to release aggressive and
destructive tendencies. (1992: 389)

Wlaschin merely, and functionally, states that

Director Francis Ford Coppola made memorable and effective use of music from Die Walküre in
his film Apocalypse Now. Air Cavalry Colonel Robert Duvall leads a noisy helicopter charge on
the Vietcong by blasting them with “The Ride of the Valkyries” was well as guns and rockets.
(1997: 590)

As one might expect, Huckvale’s analysis of the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ sequence in
Apocalypse Now is the most detailed in the available literature:
The contextual use of Wagner is plainly apparent — translating the mythical aerial ride of the
warrior maidens into technological and contemporary, but no less mythical terms. It is important
to realise that Coppola’s version of the Vietnam war is deeply mythical, being more a re-telling
of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness . . . Therefore, the use of Wagner is highly appropriate to
emphasise and help create this mythological ambience. The fascist connotations which Wagner’s
music had by then acquired via previous popular associations added, of course, a further layer of
meaning, by drawing a parallel between the militarism of Nazi war atrocity and American policy
in Vietnam. (1994: 137-138)

Huckvale has understood the importance of mythology in Coppola’s film, and notes that
the narrative congruence is clear to anyone with an understanding of Wagner’s original
operatic context. Coppola’s use of Wagner is more profound than this, however, as
Coppola has managed to tap into the root synaesthetic associations between sound and
image (taken in this instance from Teutonic mythology) that resulted in Wagner’s
original success with ‘Ride of the Valkyries’.
Apocalypse Now also holds an important place in popular culture as one of the
first films to cement the role of popular music in film soundtracks, and this status has
interesting implications for the recontextualisation of classical music as pop music. In
their book Celluloid Jukebox, Romney and Wootton claim that Apocalypse Now was a
benchmark for establishing the importance and credibility of rock soundtracks for films
(1995b: 2). This opinion is echoed by two of the contributors to Romney and Wootton’s
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book, Kermode (1995: 16-17) and Toop (1995: 79-81), who states that “the sheer scale
and vision of a film such as Apocalypse Now demanded a music without constraints”
(1995: 81). Romney & Wootton (1995b: 2) and Kermode (1995: 16-17) make particular
note of the opening sequence for Apocalypse Now, which features the music of The
Doors performing their song ‘The End’ to accompany visual images of a huge napalm
bomb explosion in the dense Vietnamese jungle foliage. Slow motion helicopters fly
around the fireball like flies worrying a corpse. The apocalyptic lyrical content of the
song matches the gloomy melancholia of the music, which in turn matches the
overwhelming physical destruction visually depicted on screen, all of which can be
found summed up in the film’s title.
This narrative congruence turns the opening of Apocalypse Now into a ‘set-piece’
music video, much like the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ sequence that follows, and indeed
there are several other set-piece sequences that are shot around musical numbers (for
example, the USO Playboy Bunny performance at Hau Phat depot). The presence of the
‘Ride of the Valkyries’ music video sequence alongside the other pop music video set-
pieces within Apocalypse Now filmic context was crucial to the recontextualisation of
‘Ride of the Valkyries’ as popular music. This popular recontextualisation was
supported by the broad narrative congruence between Coppola’s visual narrative and
Wagner’s musical narrative, as outlined above, as well as the identifiable music video
ideology evidenced by the change in editing and visual narrative flow.
The overall result of this carefully constructed narrative congruence and close
recontextualisation was that Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ appears to have become a
metaleitmotif, becoming inextricably intertwined with the visual imagery so accurately
contemporised in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, and also found as far back as Griffith’s
The Birth of a Nation. From 1979 onwards, ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ arguably became an
intertextual reference to the intertextual references contained within it, and thus became
a self-referential particle in popular culture, with a cultural life of its own. This seems to
be due to the overwhelming effect that Apocalypse Now has had on popular culture, an
effect acknowledged by the two Academy Awards awarded to it in 1979 for Best Sound
and Best Cinematography: two Oscars for sound and vision. Television shows,
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commercials, and films began to use ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ merely to reference
Apocalypse Now, The Birth of a Nation and the related elements of popular culture,
merely for the sake of it, on the basis that it was one intertextual reference that nearly all
audience members would recognise. With few exceptions, most of these subsequent
texts would reference Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in satiric or humorous terms,
and most of the films (and television programs, and advertisements) that use ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ after Apocalypse Now in 1979 are comedies. The notable exception to this
rule is the road-trip drama genre film Heaven’s Burning (1997), which nevertheless
employs ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ for comic relief. Many filmmakers also appear to have
factored in most of the connotative anaphones (in various iconographic guises) that
supported the narrative congruence found in the aforementioned films by Griffith, Ray,
Jones, Wilder, Fellini, and Coppola, although most of these intertextual references are
notably brief.
Evidence that ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is now often visually conceived in terms of
Apocalypse Now is wide-spread throughout popular culture. Perhaps most telling is the
tendency of classical music record labels to market the music of Wagner, and ‘Ride of
the Valkyries’ in particular, as the ‘theme music’ from Apocalypse Now, as examined in
Chapter 3. EMI’s ‘Mini Classics’ series, as previously discussed, shows three heavily
armed military helicopters in formation on their cover for their CD entitled “Wagner,
including ‘The Ride of the Valkyries’, as used in Apocalypse Now”. The best example of
this mediation of Wagner through the imagery of Apocalypse Now comes from Deutsche
Grammophon, who released a double CD Wagner compilation in 1998 entitled Twilight
of The Gods and subtitled “Music of Terrifying Power & Transcending Beauty: The
Essential Wagner Collection”. The magazine advertisement for this CD (see Illustration
14) featured a large photograph of five helicopters taken directly from a still frame of
Apocalypse Now, and the ad’s tag line read “You loved the sound of Wagner in the
morning . . . now experience the ultimate soundtrack of War & Peace”. The ‘Huey’
helicopters, rendered in black and white, are superimposed over a red-orange sun, and
the overall effect of the ad recalls the movie posters for Apocalypse Now, which also
shows helicopters flying in front of a large, bloated red-orange sun. The positioning of
the CD aligns the music of Wagner with the visual imagery of Apocalypse Now, and
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even the first track of the first CD is cited as “Ride of the Valkyries (Theme from
“Apocalypse Now”) from The Valkyries” (sic). The balance of the CDs, some two hours
and eleven minutes of music, is drawn from everything from The Flying Dutchman to
Parsifal: music that does not appear in Apocalypse Now.
In addition, the magazine that carried the ad contributed to the
recontextualisation of this music: Uncut magazine is published in England and
specialises in pop music and movies. The July 1998 edition of Uncut, in which this
Twilight of the Gods compilation was advertised, also ran feature articles on Kurt
Cobain and Courtney Love, The Specials and Madness, Billy Bragg, Quentin Tarantino,
Robert Duvall and John Boorman.
The liner notes to this Wagner compilation make the explicit connection between
Wagner’s music and their recontextualisation as Apocalypse Now-mediated pop culture
imagery:

The gripping power of Richard Wagner’s music was demonstrated with spectacular effect in
Francis Ford Coppola’s cinema classic Apocalypse Now, when “The Ride of the Valkyries”
became synonymous with the chilling journey of American Marine “Huey” helicopters into battle
over the Vietnamese jungle.
Coppola’s use of Wagner’s music is hardly surprising. It is epic music – the original soundtrack
of war and peace. Music embodying and portraying the most basic and powerful of human
emotions: love, hate, fear, ecstasy, grief. Music telling stories tailormade for Hollywood – tales
of murder, greed, political intrigue, love and tragedy.

So strong is the synaesthetic sound-image connection between Wagner and

Vietnam helicopters that often Wagner’s other compositions are associated with military
helicopters and helicopter warfare. A news article on the Australian television program
7:30 Report which aired in November 1997 examines the civil unrest in Papua New
Guinea: the music chosen by the report’s producers to accompany the images of
helicopters delivering supplies was in fact music from Wagner’s opera The Rhinegold.
This subtle intertextual reference is made to the general perceived connection between
Wagner, helicopters, and war, and a narrative congruence in its most diluted form.
The Blues Brothers was directed by John Landis in 1980, merely a year after
Apocalypse Now was released to wide-spread acclaim. The Blues Brothers follows the
adventures of Joliet Jake Blues (John Belushi) and Elwood Blues (Dan Aykroyd).
Having managed to make enemies of everyone from local country-music bar band ‘The
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Good Ole Boys’ to the Illinois Nazi Party, the Blues Brothers embark on an extended car
chase sequence that follows them into Chicago, and established new film records for the
number of automobiles crashed and destroyed on set. The Illinois Nazi Party is
introduced in an earlier scene from the film. Their recent court-case victory march is
ruined when they are forced to jump off a bridge into a creek, in order to avoid being run
down by the Blues Brothers in their 1974 Dodge Monaco Sedan (affectionately known
as the ‘Bluesmobile’). The Nazis find this particularly humiliating, as they are ridiculed
by the large and angry group of protestors they had previously been inciting to racial
violence under their newly-won police-sanctioned protection.
Towards the end of the car chase sequence to the Richard J. Daly Plaza where
the Assessor’s Office is located, the Blues Brothers drive at high speed past the Nazis,
who are waiting in ambush in an inner-city alley (Video Clip 18). The tremendous speed
of the car chase has just been established through a shot of the Bluesmobile’s
speedometer, which registers a speed in excess of 120 miles an hour. Driving a green
station wagon and a bright crimson station wagon, the Nazis engage the Blues Brothers
in their own car chase, a sequence that begins with the Head Nazi saying “There they
are!” with grim satisfaction, and the immediate commencement of Wagner’s ‘Ride of
the Valkyries’. Wagner’s music is apparently non-diegetic and played with full
instrumentation. The Nazis pursue the Blues Brothers through several streets and alleys
of Chicago at high speed, and the Head Nazi shoots at the Bluesmobile with a Luger
handgun from the crimson red car, while the brass Valkyrie motif plays non-diegetically.
Jake and Elwood Blues are shocked to find this renewed threat engaged in battle with
them, and they flinch and attempt to avoid the bullets by cowering in their car seats. The
Luger bullets appear to have caused some mechanical damage, as a heavy metallic clank
is heard emanating from the engine of the Bluesmobile.
A close-up shot of the Head Nazi’s Luger is shown, jammed, while the Head
Nazi briskly tries to reload the clip. The music has reached the first of the Valkyrie
motif’s climaxes, and the sustained brass chord and the descending string scales are
matched visually with an edited shot from the interior of the Bluesmobile. As the music
continues, all three cars move into a freeway construction zone. Elwood realises at the
last second that the freeway overpass has not been completed, but avoids driving straight
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over the edge into empty space and a sixty-foot drop. In a scene remarkable for its
complete disregard for physics, logical narrative, and the dramatic suspension of
disbelief, the car is turned around in mid-air to speed away in the opposite direction.
Renewed strains of the brass Valkyrie motif are heard during this impressive manoeuvre.
So great is this mid-air automobile flip (the Bluesmobile is shown in a medium shot
rotating around 360 degrees, clearly some hundred feet in the air) that the car flies over
the red Nazi station wagon altogether. The Nazis, turning in surprise to watch the
Bluesmobile sail over them, are unable to stop in time and drive straight off the edge of
the unfinished overpass with an expletive.
By this point pure fantasy has taken over the narrative of the film in the name of
physical comedy. Having driven off the unfinished overpass at over one hundred miles
an hour, the Nazi car is shown flying through the air (via a car interior shot) and
increasing in altitude, in order that the car clear the high-rise buildings looming before
it. The next shot shows the faces of the two Nazis, open-mouthed in complete
astonishment. A similar shot follows, buildings flying by in the background, indicating
that the car is still increasing its altitude. The momentum of the car then slows as it
reaches the apex of its trajectory, and the fall to earth begins. However, every one of the
subsequent three shots of the red station wagon is shot from a correspondingly higher
altitude. The first shot, looking straight down with the red car falling away from the
camera, looks to be filmed from around a thousand feet. Immediately as this shot begins,
the suspended section of Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ begins, with the descending
scales heard under the brass chords. A second shot of the falling red car follows, with
the car falling six seconds before the distant sky-rise office buildings of Chicago can be
seen in the background, a shot filmed from around five thousand feet. The first six
seconds of this shot, in which the exact altitude of the falling car is unknown owing to
an absence of relative scale, accompany the six-second chord suspension half-way
through ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, prior to the final brass chords of the suspended section.
The descending scales heard behind the brass chords are only heard when the radio
antenna and bulk of the sky-rise in the background can be seen, and this visual image
has clearly been edited to fit the music in question.
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An interior shot of the car shows an exchange between the Head Nazi and the
‘Gruppenfuehrer’, who tells his leader “I have always loved you.” This intertextual
reference is a line of dialogue taken from the end of Cleopatra (1963), and the Head
Nazi looks suitably aghast. A third shot of the red car falling in the middle background
follows, this time taken at around 15 thousand feet: the car looks tiny against the vast
downtown background. Finally, the car is shown hitting the pavement, where it punches
a rectangular hole over fifteen feet deep straight through a Chicago street. Accelerating,
the Blues Brothers successfully jump this huge hole, but the following green Nazi
station wagon drives straight into it and disappears from sight, so deep is the obstruction.
Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is lost in the diegetic sound of this final car crash.
Landis’s imagery in The Blues Brothers supports Wagner’s contextual imagery,
and demonstrates basic congruent narratives between Wagner, Griffith, Wilder, and
Coppola. It seems probable that the non-diegetic and pronounced use of ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ is a result of that music’s effective use a year earlier in Apocalypse Now, as
The Blues Brothers is a film that takes comedic aim at many film and television genre
conventions. Most of Landis’s narrative connotation, however, seems to derived more
from congruence with the Ku Klux Klan in Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation than
anything else, including traditional Nazi iconography.
Associating Wagner’s music with Nazis is not new, obviously, as the Nazi party
appropriated much of Wagner’s music for various political programs. This association in
film can only be drawn back as far as Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, however, and
should not (as Cooke explains so lucidly) be extrapolated from Wagner’s music itself.
As the Illinois Nazi Party is introduced in The Blues Brothers, the Head Nazi is making
an inflammatory speech that accuses “the Jews” of using “the blacks” against white
people. The Illinois Nazi Party’s subsequent hatred and pursuit of the Blues Brothers is
thus racially motivated, in part, as Jake and Elwood are members of a musical band with
black roots, and who are (musically and spiritually) black themselves. This racial
association is emphasised throughout The Blues Brothers: the Blues Brothers’s foster
‘father’ was Curtis, the black caretaker of the orphanage; Jake and Elwood regain their
spiritual orientation through the black gospel music of the ‘Triple Rock Church’ led by
Rev. Cleophis James (played by James Brown). Black soul artist Chaka Khan has a
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cameo role as the choir soloist at the Triple Rock Church, where Jake and Elwood are
the only two white congregation members. In addition, the Blues Brothers Band’s lead
guitarist, Matt ‘Guitar’ Murphy, is black (his on-screen wife is played by Aretha
Franklin), as is the drummer Willie ‘Too Big’ Hall; and the band’s equipment supplier
and financial/moral supporter is none other than Ray Charles. In their pursuit of the
‘black’ Blues Brothers band through the streets of Chicago in their station wagons, the
Illinois Nazis are providing a narrative congruence with the Ku Klux Klan’s pursuit of
black ‘rioters’ through the streets of Piedmont in The Birth of a Nation.
In addition, the timing of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ with the Head Nazi’s statement
“there they are!”, coupled with the grim smile on his face, suggest that ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ is the Head Nazi’s metadiegetic music. This adds a further layer of comedy to
the use of Wagner in this context, as the Head Nazi is doubtlessly thinking of ‘Ride of
the Valkyries’ in terms of a musical articulation of his perceived ‘nobility’ of purpose
and military success. Within The Blues Brothers, the use of Wagner’s ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ in this way acts as the ironic/comedic recontextualisation of classical ‘high
art’ music in a popular ‘pop art’ music film context: The Blues Brothers, after all, is a
film concerned and saturated with the music of rhythm & blues. Landis’s intertextual
reference to Coppola’s Apocalypse Now is part of this recontextualisation, as the Head
Nazi would presumably identify with and admire Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore. Clearly
both the Head Nazi and Kilgore share the same delusions of grandeur and the neurotic
tendency to articulate their impression of cultural seniority through the music of
Wagner. Following so closely after Apocalypse Now, audiences might well understand
that the Head Nazi begins his attack on the Blues Brothers with the same frame of mind,
and with the same musical articulation, as Kilgore begins his attack on the Vietnam
village.
Wagner’s musical and visual iconography is apparent throughout this sequence
of The Blues Brothers. The mechanical, armoured weight of armed Valkyries, their
speed of flight, and their attendant battle noise is contextualised in The Blues Brothers
through the iconography of police cars and police car pile-ups. The two station wagons
of the Nazis support these themes in a similar fashion. The high-speed car chase evokes
the head-long flight of Valkyries and their horses through the air.
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In addition, both the Bluesmobile and the red Nazi station wagon are repeatedly
shown ‘flying’ through the air during this sequence. The shot of the Bluesmobile turning
360 degrees in the air in order to reverse over the Nazi’s station wagon at the edge of the
incompleted overpass is staged and filmed in such a way to suggest a large degree of
aeronautical dexterity and acrobatic agility. The red Nazi station wagon is shown
enjoying an extended flying sequence, first flying over the top of the Chicago sky-line
before free-falling from what ultimately seems to be around fifteen thousand feet, an
altitude clearly more suitable for small aircraft rather than station wagons. The free-fall
sequence is specifically timed to match the chord suspension sequence in ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’, with each of the two edits of the falling car are made to coordinate the visual
image with the falling scales in the music, in a perfect visualisation of a kinetic
anaphone.
The extended, three-shot free-fall sequence of the two Nazis in their red station
wagon exemplifies many of the anaphonic details found in Wagner’s ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’, carried down from Wagner’s Teutonic mythology research. The cars offer
congruent narratives to mounted Valkyries, being a mode of transport heavily armoured
with metal and weapons, and capable of high speed flight through the air. They also
generate large amount of noise, through tyres and engine sound, which correspond to the
Valkyries’s characteristic battle-songs. The Nazis themselves are congruent Valkyries,
possessing military self-confidence and familiarity with facing and providing death,
while projecting an attitude of divine destiny. The Nazi station wagon is descending
from the sky to the very Chicago streets which acted as the battleground between the
Nazis and the Blues Brothers several minutes earlier, and this corresponds to the descent
of the Valkyries to the field of battle. Finally, Teutonic Valkyries always enter the
battleground when death is at hand, or to collect up dead warriors, and there seems to be
no doubt that the Nazi warriors would not have survived their fifteen thousand foot free-
fall from the edge of the unfinished overpass.
A similar use of Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ can be found in Alan
Myerson’s 1988 film Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach (Video Clip 19), as
well as in Peter Markle’s 1994 film Wagons East (Video Clip 20), and Howard Zieff’s
My Girl 2 (1994). In Police Academy 5, the recontextualised Valkyrie Officer Kate sings
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the Valkyrie battle song as she attacks the terrorists in a propeller-driven swamp boat,
while in Wagons East, psychotic General Larchmont mounts a cavalry charge against
the ‘renegade’ settlers (in slow motion) to the metadiegetic music of Wagner. My Girl 2
offers visual imagery that ironically upholds Wagner’s original narrative, in Hary
Sultenfuss’s awkward tuba practice. In all three of these films, Wagner’s original
narrative intentions are congruently visualised by the directors in question, reinforcing
(if only through irony in the case of My Girl 2) notions of battle, warriors, armoured
weight, and military self-confidence. At the same time, the inclusion of ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ in these generic Hollywood films reinforces its status as an intertextual icon
in popular culture.
Casper was directed by Brad Silberling in 1995, and is based on the popular
comic books about the same character, Casper the Friendly Ghost. Ostensibly a
children’s comedy, this film boasts an extremely large number of intertextual references,
most of which are aimed clearly at adult audience, well over their children’s heads.
Casper intertexts include Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator 2: Judgement Day,
Superman, Mr. Rogers, Ghostbusters, Entertainment Weekly magazine, Nike products,
Oprah, Clint Eastwood, and Mel Gibson, to name but a few. Wagner’s ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ is yet another reference, and it holds no more prominence in Casper than any
of the others, just another metaleitmotif cited purely for the sake of pop culture self-
referentiality.
Casper, who is a friendly, lonely young ghost, lives in a house with his three evil
uncles, Stretch, Stinkie, and Fatso. Dr. Harvey arrives in order to ‘cleanse’ the house of
paranormal activity, with his daughter Kat in tow, and he manages to temporarily trap
Stretch, Stinkie and Fatso in a vacuum cleaner in the resulting battle. The next morning
Dr. Harvey and Kat are treated to a pancake breakfast by Casper, who then departs the
kitchen in order to fetch newspapers for Dr. Harvey, whom Casper is anxious to impress
(Video Clip 21). Dr. Harvey and Kat are nervously amused by Casper’s antics, but their
conversation is interrupted by the sound of helicopter rotor blades, and a blast of air
coming from the ceiling. Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ can be heard, and Stretch,
Stinkie and Fatso are heard singing along to the Valkyrie motif. The tails of the three
ghosts are twirling around like helicopter blades as the trio descends from the kitchen
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ceiling. Stretch, the leader of the uncles, is conducting himself to the Valkyrie motif as
the three of them land at the kitchen table, and as the motif comes to an end, Stretch
takes a deep breath and paraphrases Kilgore’s famous line of dialogue from Apocalypse
Now: ‘I love the smell of fleshies in the morning!’ (‘fleshies’ being the ghost’s term for
‘humans’). Stretch bangs the kitchen table for emphasis and dislodges the window blind,
which allows the sun to hit the ghosts with full force, and the three uncles dissolve into
nothing with another intertextual reference from The Wizard of Oz, screaming “I’m
melting, I’m melting, I’m melting!”
Although an extremely short reference, like most of the intertextual references of
this nature in Casper, the execution of Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ supports the
basic tenets of narrative congruence, primarily through Coppola’s recontextualised
narrative congruence in Apocalypse Now. In fact, this use of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in
Casper marks the most obvious reference to Apocalypse Now to this point in time in
popular culture. The association of helicopters with ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is derived
directly from Apocalypse Now, (and reinforced in popular culture through CD
marketing, such as Deutsche Grammophon’s Twilight of the Gods compilation, as
described above) and can be seen through the rotating tails of the ghosts and the fact that
they descend from the ceiling to the floor. Narrative congruence with Wagner’s Teutonic
mythology supports the notion that the ghosts are descending to the battleground (in the
battle with Dr. Harvey for possession of the house), in order to engage Dr. Harvey in the
second round of their fight. The traditional, mythological association between Valkyries
and the dead support the arrogant demeanour of the ghosts, who are clearly relishing the
idea of defeating Dr. Harvey and Kat and driving them from the house in figurative
death. Of course, in the same way that the helicopter carrying the wounded soldier in
Apocalypse Now is blown up on the ground of the Vietnamese village, so the three ghost
uncles are dissolved to oblivion when they are ‘hit’ by the sun. The reference to
Apocalypse Now is complete with Stretch’s paraphrase of Kilgore, whose “I love the
smell of napalm in the morning” speech is one of the more famous monologues in
modern cinema history. As with the rest of modern pop culture self-referentiality, such
as the Strauss intertexts in The Simpsons examined in the previous chapter, the
Wagnerian reference here has no deeper narrative or connotative meaning to the overall
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context or content of the film. The reference is notable primarily for the proof it offers of
the recontextualisation of Wagner as popular music, and the established nature of ‘Ride
of the Valkyries’ as a metaleitmotif in popular culture.
Similarly, Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ can be briefly heard as an
intertextual reference in The Adventures of Pinocchio (1996), directed by Steve Barron
(Video Clip 22). In Pinocchio, Pinocchio is shown acting in a play, descending from the
heavens in a chariot of clouds, dressed in full armour and brandishing a sword while the
orchestra performs ‘Ride of the Valkyries’. This imagery is congruent with Wagner’s
original narrative intention to musically depict armed warriors descending from the sky.
Mark Joffe’s 1996 film Cosi also employed Wagner as an intertextual reference in its
closing scenes (Video Clip 23), and a year later in 1997, Craig Lahiff made intertextual
reference to Joffe’s use of actor Colin Hays and Wagner in Heaven’s Burning (Video
Clip 24). In both Cosi and Heaven’s Burning, Colin Hays plays a similar character who
performs ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ on an accordion to ironic comedic effect, as the choice
of instrumentation ironically emphasises Wagner’s narratives of aeronautical grace and
military power. In all three of these films, broad narrative congruence is observed
between Wagner’s music and the film in question, and the use of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’
again suggests an acceptance, recognition and recontextualisation of ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ into popular culture.
In the last several years, animated features have enjoyed tremendous popularity,
in part due to impressive sophistications in computer animation technology. This trend is
apparent both through feature films (The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, The Hunchback
of Notre Dame, Toy Story, Antz, A Bug’s Life) as well as through adult-oriented
animated television programs. Once again, animated television programs such as The
Simpsons, Duckman, King of the Hill, and most recently South Park are currently
leading the way in pop culture expression, social satire, and media intertextuality. As
with Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ appears in
many of these programs, usually when the episode in question is referencing the
Vietnam War, with which the music seems to have become synonymous through
narrative congruence and Apocalypse Now-inspired synaesthesia. So complete is the
synaesthetic, narrative congruence between Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ and
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Coppola’s set piece in Apocalypse Now, that using the music as a metaleitmotif
intertextual reference is now apparently all that is necessary to evoke all of the Vietnam
War’s social and cultural connotations.
The use of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in the ‘Mother Simpson’ episode of The
Simpsons, which was broadcast in late 1996, operates in much the same way as Casper’s
intertextual reference, as well as the musical references to Strauss’s Also sprach
Zarathustra in other Simpsons episodes. The episode revolves around the arrival of
Homer’s long-lost mother, ‘Grandma’ Simpson, and the story of how she deserted
Homer at an early age in order to avoid capture by the FBI for protest crimes against
Burns’s chemical warfare company in the 1960s (Video Clip 25). Burns finally
recognises Grandma Simpson in the post office, and mobilises the FBI and the military
against her as she is having dinner at the Simpson household. Pulling up outside the
house in a tank and wearing an old tank driver’s helmet, Burns announces “I’ve been
waiting twenty-five years for this moment” before pressing ‘play’ on an attached
cassette-tape player. Loudspeakers are clearly visible on the tank, mounted outside the
gun turret. Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is heard, for just long enough to be
recognisable, about half of the first part of the Valkyrie motif, and Burns smiles in
satisfaction. Abruptly, the music changes to ‘Waterloo’ by ABBA, and Burns’s
expression falls. The lyrics to ‘Waterloo’ are audible: “Waterloo/Couldn’t escape if I
wanted to . . .” Burns looks to Smithers for an explanation, and Smithers explains “I’m
sorry, Sir, I must have taped over that”.
The next shot shows the inside of the Simpson household, with ‘Waterloo’ heard
loudly through the open windows: “Waterloo/Knowing my fate is to be with you”. Four
reaction shots of the Simpsons are given, with the entire family looking up, horrified, at
the sound of ABBA coming from outside. Even the family dog, Santa’s Little Helper,
looks up in fear. The tank bursts through the front door and Joe Friday (an intertextual
character reference from Dragnet) tells the family “Freeze. FBI: the jig is up”. Grandma
Simpson escapes, however, to fight another day.
As is typical for Simpsons intertextual references, the Wagnerian metareference
is extremely brief in this sequence, but quite dense in pop culture referentiality.
Groening seems to be specifically referencing Apocalypse Now and The Blues Brothers
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as well as The Valkyrie in this scene, suggesting that Mr. Burns could be aligned with
both Kilgore (Apocalypse Now) and the Head Nazi (The Blues Brothers) as insane
fascist leaders. In doing so, Groening also supports all of the other narratively congruent
iconography present in all previous manifestations of this reference. Burns is cast in a
Kilgore role, bringing death and destruction and a sense of military invincibility to his
battle with Grandma Simpson, and so all of the narrative congruence described above
becomes transferred over through the purity of the reference. Burns’ tank helmet evokes
Kilgore’s flight helmet in shape and name-tag, and even the tank has loudspeakers
mounted on it, in order to specifically recall the loudspeakers mounted on the helicopters
in Apocalypse Now. The fact that music is interrupted by ‘Waterloo’ by ABBA is also
amusing in its suggestion that Burns the military leader is about to ‘meet his Waterloo’
with Grandma Simpson.
The sonic montage between Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ and ABBA’s
‘Waterloo’ also seems calculated to emphasise the musical connotations and
associations of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’. Combining the two pieces of music
paradoxically serves to reinforce the differences between the contexts of the two works
at the same time that it recontextualises both pieces in each other’s terms. Where ‘Ride
of the Valkyries’ carries with it connotations of warfare, death, strength, and mythology,
ABBA’s ‘Waterloo’ carries with it connotations associated with the disco era of the
1970s: inconsequentiality, aesthetic shallowness, blind hedonism, and a sense of
musical/cultural embarrassment. The contrast between the two pieces of music could not
be more extreme, much in the same way that Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra is
combined with a Vegas-style version of KC and The Sunshine Band’s ‘That’s The Way
I Like It’ from the film Casino, as examined earlier. As in Casino, this contrast in The
Simpsons is offered for its comedic element. The look of horror on the Simpsons’ faces
as the music of ‘Waterloo’ fills the house serves to emphasis this ironic contrast, as their
expression would be much more fitting if ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ had in fact continued
to play. These throw-away reaction shots also wryly point out that to some viewers, the
music of ABBA and ‘Waterloo’ is possibly more horrifying than any classical music
with connotations and narratives of death and fascist destruction.
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Combining the two pieces of music in musical montage serves to recontextualise

‘Ride of the Valkyries’ as a pop disco song, and ‘Waterloo’ as a classic in its own right.
Both have been chosen as personifying theme songs by characters in The Simpsons, and
both are offered in fractional soundbites, relying on near-instantaneous audience
recognition. The success of using Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in this way seems
entirely reliant on its accepted existence as a pop culture metaleitmotif.
Duckman is an adult, animated television program produced by Klasky/Csupo,
the same production company that originally launched The Simpsons. The show revolves
around the life and work of Duckman as a private investigator, his work colleagues, and
his family. Duckman and his family are animated ducks, and Duckman’s assistant
Cornfed is a pig. Duckman, whose voice is provided by Jason Alexander of Seinfeld
fame, is a profane, vulgar and violent character full of misogyny, racism, crudeness,
arrogance, and cowardice, and a complete lack of taste, empathy, honour, or
consideration. As with most adult animated programs of this nature, Duckman is
thoroughly intertextual and derives much of its humour from social satire. The ‘In the
Nam of The Father’ episode of Duckman aired in 1996 and involves an even more
pointed reference to Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. The episode has two Vietnam-related
plotlines; one in which Cornfed is faced with the possibility that he has a long-lost son
as a result of a tryst with a Saigon callgirl during Vietnam, and another in which
Duckman undergoes a serious of flashbacks based on his supposedly long-repressed
memories of his role in the Vietnam War. The punchline of the episode revolves around
the fact that Duckman was never involved in the Vietnam War and was in fact only
reliving various scenes from his favourite Vietnam movies.
During the episode, Duckman, his family, and Cornfed are flying to Vietnam to
confront these two issues (Video Clip 26). Charles and Mambo, Duckman’s twin-headed
son(s), places a pair of headphones over their (outside) ears and turns the volume up on
the airline seat armrest controls. The opening bars of Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’
can be heard, ostensibly playing on one of the plane’s music channels. Duckman,
reading a ‘Playduck’ magazine in the next seat, looks up with an expression of
recognition, and says: “That music . . . I’ve heard it before”. The scene dissolves into
another of Duckman’s ‘flashbacks’, which starts with the image of three helicopters
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appearing from over the jungle foliage horizon, flying towards the viewer. Large rocket
tubes are clearly shown slung on the helicopter’s gun racks, while Wagner’s ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ continues to play. As the music fades away, the helicopters are next shown
flying over Duckman’s army tent, in which Duckman is sleeping. Mistaking his spray
deodorant for a canister of napalm, Duckman sets both himself and the tent on fire,
causing him to run in flames from the camp. In his flight he sees a large, neon sign in the
middle of the jungle that reads ‘Kurt’s Kill Your Own B.B.Q.’, emblazoned with a large
buffalo skull, and Duckman runs inside, presumably for assistance. At this point the
parody of Apocalypse Now becomes clear, as Duckman runs past several emaciated
savages holding burning staffs and a pig trussed for slaughter on a stone table, before
running right into the buttocks of a very large bald man wearing only a loincloth. This
character is a parody of Marlon Brando’s portrayal of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now,
as he begins a speech with
You have no right to judge me. You have a right to kill me, but you’ve no right to judge me. No,
wait, reverse that: judge me, don’t kill me. Yeah, that seems better. For no man is an island, though
some are roughly the same size as one. I could have been somebody, I could have been a contender!
Senator Corleone . . . Governor Corleone!

This speech contains references to On The Waterfront and The Godfather as well as
Apocalypse Now, and is delivered in an exaggerated, slurred drawl instantly recognisable
as Marlon Brando. Duckman’s Kurtz concludes his parody by asking “Why am I here
rambling incoherently? The money . . . the money . . . the money”, which is a reference
from both Apocalypse Now and its literary source, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, in that
Kurtz’s last words in both texts are “the horror . . . the horror”.
In this episode of Duckman, Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is used as an
intertextual metaleitmotif for Apocalypse Now. Once again, the reference follows the
rules of narrative congruence by emphasising the synaesthetic connection between
Wagner’s music and the visual image of Vietnam helicopters, as explained above. A trio
of heavily armed helicopters is the first image conjured up by Duckman in the plane as
he begins his ‘flashback’, and the parody of Marlon Brando occurs only after the music
of Wagner and their associated helicopters have set the flashback’s setting. Duckman’s
comment, “That music . . . I've heard it before”, is extremely telling in the wider context
of this thesis. In fact, by conflating the ‘theme music’ of Apocalypse Now with a ‘real’
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experience of the Vietnam War (visually mediated by helicopters), Duckman is

apparently offering clear evidence of the tmesis operating as a metaleitmotif in popular
culture.
Finally, the South Park episode entitled ‘The Mexican Staring Frog of Southern
Sri Lanka’ also uses Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ to establish the setting of a
Vietnam memory flashback (Video Clip 27). South Park is an animated television
program created by Matt Stone and Trey Parker, apparently aimed at an adult and
Generation X demographic. It features four third-grade children, Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and
Cartman, all of whom are extremely foul-mouthed, violent, crude characters who delight
in tormenting each other, their parents, and their classmates. By the end of 1998, Stone
& Parker’s South Park had become the new barometer for popular culture
intertextuality, taking over from The Simpsons which was fading in its tenth season
(Anderson, 1998: 52; Bennun, 1998: 61). The sonic presence of Wagner in South Park
further cements the position of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ as a recontextualised, pop culture
metaleitmotif intertextual reference. South Park in fact offers the music of Wagner its
most extreme recontextualisation in popular culture. Rated MA in Australia for violence,
extreme profanity, and subject matter, South Park routinely deals with topics such as
flatulence, explosive diarrhoea, obesity, vomiting, sexually transmitted diseases, anal
probes and alien abductions, child abuse, promiscuity, torture, and offers the routine
murder/manslaughter of one of its primary characters in every episode.
‘The Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka’ episode revolves around the
four children’s desire to get even with Stan’s Uncle Jimbo, who told them a greatly
exaggerated Vietnam story (and thus causing them to fail a Vietnam essay assignment).
Cartman: Was it fun?
Kyle: Cartman! What kind of stupid-ass question is that? Of course it was fun!
Jimbo: Well sure Vietnam was fun, but not like going to the circus fun, or fly fishin' in
Montana fun. No, Vietnam was more like shoving shards of broken glass up your
ass,
and then sittin' in a tub of Tobasco sauce fun.
Stan: Whoa!
Jimbo: Yeppers, that's where me and Ned met.

Vietnam is established as a countryside dotted with amusement park rides, such as a

Ferris Wheel, a Log Ride, and a carousel, and the opening shot is scored with a 1960s
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pop song reminiscent of Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’ (which itself an intertextual
reference to the prominent use of that song in Stone’s 1986 Vietnam film Platoon).
Having just enjoyed a ride on the Ferris Wheel, Jimbo is called over by his general to
meet new recruits, and at this point Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ can be heard under
the dialogue. The music seems to be scored for snare drum, brass and woodwinds, and a
full Valkyrie motif can be heard as the General explains the mission on his map of
Vietnam (which is actually a map of Italy marked with cities such as ‘Jungleland’,
‘Wildernessland’, and ‘Mystical Land’). Jimbo and Ned accept their mission to engage
the entire Vietcong army, and the next shot shows live footage of a U.S. helicopter
taking off into the air. At this point ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ continues to play, but the
instrumentation has been changed to a solo banjo. As the banjo plays the Valkyries’
theme, more live footage from Vietnam is shown of a helicopter gun bay door, with the
large 50 millimetre cannon clearly visible as the countryside streams away underneath.
Returning to animation, we see Jimbo and Ned sharing a conversation whilst
seated in the pilot and co-pilot seats (respectively) of the helicopter:
Jimbo: Soon it was all on, just me and Ned off to win the war for America.
[On the helicopter]
Pass me some cocoa, will you Ned?
Ned: Certainly, and would you like another muffin as well?
Jimbo: Why the hell not? We're at war!

‘Ride of the Valkyries’ ceases when Jimbo and Ned spot the Vietcong army and engage
them in battle, replaced by standard martial background score.
The pace at which this segment is directed belies the volume and complexity of
these intertextual references. The musical references alone are very quick, but all
support the recontextualisation of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ as a metaleitmotif enjoying
narrative congruence with Wagner’s The Valkyrie, as articulated through Apocalypse
Now and subsequent referencing films. Establishing the Vietnam setting in Jimbo’s
flashback memory with music similar to Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’ effectively
contextualises the Vietnam conflict as a modern cultural event, set in the 1960s. Using
contemporary popular music in this way is a musical conceit employed in virtually every
Vietnam film ever made, from Platoon to Forrest Gump (1994). It also provides a pop
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culture context for Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, which is heard immediately after
‘White Rabbit’ for a similar length of time at a similar level of non-diegetic volume, and
which is recontextualised as popular music as a result. The use of ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ in the map reading scene of this Vietnam setting is clearly intended to evoke
Apocalypse Now. In particular, ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is timed to coincide with the
‘serious’ turn of Jimbo’s reminiscence, to contrast with the 1960s pop music chosen to
musically illustrate Jimbo’s ride on the Da Nang Ferris Wheel. The reference seems
clear: Jimbo and Ned are to fly a helicopter into battle with the Vietcong army, which
requires the same music that Kilgore and company used to fly their helicopters into
battle with the Vietcong army.
The change of instrumentation from woodwinds and percussion to solo banjo,
when Jimbo and Ned actually fly away in the helicopter on their mission, is a reference
to another, nominally Vietnam War film, John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972). In
Deliverance a banjo duet (‘Dueling Banjos’) became musically representative of
depravity, loss, death and conflict, and was established as a pop culture metaleitmotif in
its own right as a result. In ‘The Mexican Staring Frog of Southern Sri Lanka’, this
association is once again played for comedic effect through the contrast of the jaunty
banjo music’s filmic connotations (through Deliverance), and the apparent luxury in
which Jimbo and Ned head off to battle (cups of cocoa and muffins).
In spite of this fast-paced ironic self-referentiality, the visual images and
references used in connection with ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ still maintain the narrative
congruence displayed in all the films examined in this case history. The image of the
helicopter, in South Park rendered (unusually) through both live newsreel footage as
well as standard Stone & Parker animation, supports Wagner’s original imagery in
precisely the same manner as in Apocalypse Now. A live action shot of the open
helicopter gun bay visually emphasises the large machine gun, once again supporting the
armed nature of Wagner’s Valkyries and Wagner’s musical articulation of this
characteristic. Echoing Coppola’s effective demonstration in Apocalypse Now, Jimbo
and Ned’s mission offers narrative congruence with Wagner’s original libretto for The
Valkyrie: both involve heavily armed warriors descending confidently from the heavens
to the battlefield below to be surrounded by death and destruction (see Illustration 15).
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Several recent television advertisements have used Wagner’s ‘Ride of the

Valkyries’, usually to comic effect, and these ads further confirm the position of this
music as a recontextualised pop culture metaleitmotif. In 1997 the Heritage Building
Society in Australia used Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ in a television ad to promote
their current low interest rate. This ad merely featured the details of the interest rate in
white letters on a blue background, while ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ could be heard as the
ad’s only music. The simple effect was to associate the excitement of low interest rates
with all of the musical and narrative connotations described above, presumably with the
suggestion that this good news would enable the audience member to fly confidently
through the air towards their financial goals, as (financially) armed and protected as a
Valkyrie.
A 1998 advertisement for Jila Mints also used Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’
(Video Clip 28). The ad shows two male spectators at a sports match, squeezed in tightly
together in a crowded stadium. The spectator on the right is an over-weight, loud fan,
who spends the entire ad shouting insults and frustrated cat-calls to an unseen athlete
named Wilson. This constant barrage of “Wilson! You’re a wimp Wilson! You’re
useless, Wilson! Wilson!. . .” is clearly wearing on the other spectator, a young man in
his mid-twenties. At the end of the ad, the young man gets out a package of Jila Mints
and takes one, also offering one to the burly, loud spectator beside him. The loud
spectator takes a mint and is immediately struck dumb, in mid-sentence, with a
galvanised look on his face. As the effect of the mint strikes him, the music of Wagner’s
‘Ride of the Valkyries’ can be heard. A voice over announces “Extra strong, for extra
long!” Simultaneously, the young man on the left also sits bolt upright and immediately
launches into his own encouragement of Wilson, screaming hoarsely “Good one,
Wilson!” The ad’s tag line reads “Not for wimps”.
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Once again, the ad is relying on the audience’s implicit recognition of ‘Ride of

the Valkyries’ and its attendant narrative and musical connotations for full effect. If the
audience is metasemiotic in nature and recognises Wagner’s music as an intertextual
reference, then the music offers an explanation as to why the loud spectator has fallen
silent so suddenly: he has been overwhelmed by the strength and power of the mints.
The entire appeal of the mints is thus communicated solely through the intertextual
metasemiotic connotations of Wagner’s music, as none of this information can be
derived from the actor’s frozen face. Several other elements of the ad reinforce the ‘Ride
of the Valkyries’ narrative. The insulting spectator is designed to evoke pop culture
visualisations of Brünnhilde, with his heavy weight and loud voice, and the emphasis on
‘wimps’ is calculated to contrast with musically-communicated Valkyrie narratives of
self-confidence and physical prowess. Similarly, the strength of Jila mints is associated
with the strength of Valkyries through the metallic clang that punctuates the product
placement at the end of the ad.
From The Birth of a Nation to South Park, Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ has
thus enjoyed broad narrative congruence with the visual image with which it has been
associated. From 1915 to 1979, all of the visual imagery employed in feature films to
accompany ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ took Wagner's operative vision (derived from his
research into ancient Teutonic mythology) as a point of departure, either implicitly or
explicitly. Coppola’s Apocalypse Now set a new standard for narrative congruence, and
brought the music into the diegetic fore, effectively recontextualising the music in a pop
music context as a metaleitmotif. Since 1979, most of the uses of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’
have been ironic or comedic, in recognition of its existence as a pop culture
metaleitmotif, and yet at the same time the narrative congruence between the music and
visual imagery associated with it had remained consistently high. To this day, ‘Ride of
the Valkyries’ communicates strength, power, confidence, military strength, weightless
weight, and flying, even when used in texts such as The Simpsons or South Park.
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Chapter 6 ~ Richard Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ from Tristan and Isolde

In 1859 Richard Wagner completed work on his opera Tristan and Isolde, but it was
not performed until 1865, partially due to the difficulty of the work (Mann, 1981: 4; Robb,
1965: vii). In subsequent years Tristan and Isolde earned a reputation for arguably being
Wagner’s best work, and a benchmark in musical history. Stein writes that: “Tristan and
Isolde is in many ways the ultimate among Wagner’s works” (1960: 131); Robb
rhetorically asks:
Today, if a person of culture is asked what the world’s two greatest monuments to love are, will he
not reply, “Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde”? (1965: xi)

In his discussion of Tristan and Isolde, Rose states that “Wagner’s musical inspiration here
reached its supreme peak, which he may have equalled in parts of later works, but never
surpassed” (1981: 9), whereas Kunze claims that “. . .as a music drama, Tristan und Isolde
was never a work which could be equalled or surpassed . . .”(1983: 49). Mann believes that:
. . . by the turn of the century Tristan und Isolde was acknowledged the most revolutionary musical
composition since Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, a verdict that no musician today has thought to
question: its only rival to date is Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. (1981: 4)

Tristan and Isolde is musically renowned for the two sections that open and close
the opera, the ‘Prelude’ and ‘Liebestod’, respectively. As with ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, the
‘Liebestod’ from Tristan and Isolde became recontextualised as ‘popular music’ even
before the turn of the century, by Wagner’s own contemporaries:
. . . even in Wagner’s lifetime, and in flagrant contradiction to his programme, star numbers like the
Fire Music and Wotan’s farewell, the Ride of the Valkyries, the Liebestod and the Good Friday
music had been torn out of their context, re-arranged and become popular. (Huckvale, 1994: 134)

Both works have appeared in modern Hollywood films in recent years, both as diegetic and
metadiegetic music. The ‘Prelude’ to Tristan and Isolde, for example, can be heard in
Boorman’s King Arthur film Excalibur (1981), and more recently in Girard’s Thirty-Two
Short Films About Glenn Gould (1993). Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’, however, has appeared in at
least six feature films, and seems on the verge of become a pop culture metaleitmotif like
‘Ride of the Valkyries’. These six films are Christmas Holiday (1944), Aria (1987),
Reversal of Fortune (1990), Species (1995), Romeo + Juliet (1996), and Heaven’s Burning
(1997). All congruently support Wagner’s original narrative intentions. Wagner’s
‘Liebestod’ possesses a more abstract narrative than the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ or Strauss’s
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Also sprach Zarathustra. The ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ anaphonically communicated the
narrative of armed warrior women flying on horses through the sky to the battlefield (very
concrete imagery), while the ‘Liebestod’ anaphonically communicates the narrative of two
doomed lovers, with connotations of pain, longing, love, and a desire for death and
oblivion.
Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde is an intertextual reflection of ancient narrative
material, and as such it follows the pattern of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra and
Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’. Ernest Newman acknowledges the deep intertextual
roots of Wagner’s opera in an excellent review of Tristan and Isolde’s sources:
As is the case with many another great legend, the origins of that of Tristan and Isolde are lost in the
mists of antiquity. This or that element in it may possibly have its roots in remote historical fact;
others are no doubt connected with some primitive form or hero-worship or god-worship; others
again are importations, at the first or fifty-first remove, from romances of the Graeco-Roman past.
The moving final motive of the black sail and the white, for instance, is met with in Plutarch’s life of
the legendary Theseus, and elsewhere in classical literature . . . (1949: 181)

Newman goes on to state that:

When we first meet with the Tristan story in literary form in the twelfth century it is already ancient;
the poets and prose writers who gave it shape at that time were working on the basis of a number of
episodes that had long been popular in oral form . . . (1949: 182)

The ‘Tristan story’ is then outlined in detail by Newman (who claims to have incorporated
most of the legend’s details from Thomas, Béroul, Eilhart, and Bédier), with the preamble:
There is no necessity for the ordinary reader who is interested in the Tristan saga only as a
background to Wagner’s opera to embark on the labour or working his painful way through all the
mediaeval versions of it. (1949: 184)

In his discussion of the textual sources of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, Rose writes:
The legend on which it is based had been famous far back into the Gothic period; Dante refers to
Tristan in The Divine Comedy (Inferno, Canto V). Whereas Shakespeare, in an equally famous love
drama, explores the poetic aspects of tragic adolescent love in Romeo and Juliet, Wagner explores all
the conscious and unconscious aspects of mature adult love . . . (1981: 9)

Ernest Newman also cites Dante’s ‘Inferno’ (1949: 197), and claims that “No story was so
widely diffused over cultured Europe or evoked so great an imaginative response in the
finest minds of the day” (ibid).
A short version of the legend of Tristan and Isolde would run as follows: Tristan is
thus named because he was born in the midst of tragic circumstances, par tristesse. Upon
becoming a knight and an adult, Tristan becomes the favourite of his uncle Mark, King of
Cornwall. Cornwall is at war with Ireland. In order to end the war, the Princess of Ireland,
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Isolde (also known as Iseut in some versions), is betrothed to King Mark. Tristan offers to
transport Isolde from Ireland to Cornwall, partially in order to assuage jealous rumours in
Court about his political ambitions. Isolde, on her part, is anxious about her upcoming
marriage and her handmaiden Brangaene takes receipt of a love potion from her mother the
Queen, with instructions to have Isolde share the potion with King Mark on her wedding
night. On the voyage across the sea, Tristan and Isolde both drink of the love potion before
Brangaene can stop them, and they fall irrevocably in love. With Isolde promised to King
Mark, however, the relationship is doomed, and eventually Tristan and Isolde are
discovered together by King Mark. Tristan is banished. After years of wandering in grief,
Tristan becomes wounded by a poisoned weapon and can only be cured by his one true
love. Unable even to stand up, Tristan asks his wife (confusingly called Isolde of the White
Hands) to tell him whether the approaching sail of Isolde’s ship is white or black: white
indicates Isolde’s presence, black her absence. Isolde of the White Hands, understandably
consumed with jealousy, lies to Tristan and tells him the sail is black. Tristan loses his will
to live and dies. Moments later Isolde arrives to find him dead, and kissing his lips and
holding him in her arms, she also dies of a broken heart, so as to be with him in death.
Since the twelfth century, several versions of the Tristan legend are notable,
especially Sir Thomas Malory’s 1470 retelling, entitled The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones
(Vinaver, 1967). Malory provides a good example of the literary trend that adds the story of
Tristan and Isolde to other Arthurian legends, establishing Tristan as a Knight of the Round
Table and often offering parallels between the doomed love of Tristan and Isolde with that
of Lancelot and Guinevere.
Newman notes that Wagner went back further than Malory in his intertextuality
research, and “. . . made the acquaintance of the legend in the course of his study of
mediaeval literature in his Dresden period. . .” (1949: 200). Most of Wagner’s biographers
and analysts are consistent in their acknowledgment that Gottfried von Strassburg’s
rendering of the legend, entitled Tristan (c. 1210), was Wagner’s primary source for Tristan
and Isolde (Sabor, 1987: 307; Rose, 1981: 14-15; Osborne, 1977: 71; Swales & McFarland,
1981: 36; Dahlhaus, 1979: 49; Mann, 1981: 4; Chinca, 1997: 1). Swales & McFarland, for
example, believe that Wagner’s “. . . Tristan text is much more faithful to its source than is
the case with either The Ring or Parsifal” (loc. cit.). Wagner did not merely copy or
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transpose Gottfried’s poem, however, and in fact could be said to have initiated a further
step in the ongoing evolution of Tristan and Isolde as a narrative, by reducing the legend to
a rich metaphysical exploration of non-physical emotional love.
Rose, for example, writes:
There were earlier French and Celtic versions of the legend, but Wagner’s main source was the 13th
century epic poem, Tristan, by Gottfried von Strassburg, which he pared down to its essentials . . .
All the versions, despite a variety of different details, told of a love so intense, that even the physical
bodies were a barrier to its ultimate fulfilment, the merging of soul with soul, beyond the cruel
limitations of time or the fluctuations of physical passion. (loc. cit., emphasis added)

Like Rose, Wagner biographer von Westernhagen points out that Wagner altered,
condensed, and simplified many elements of Gottfried’s poem, and von Westernhagen’s
language suggests a more profitable concentration on the few original elements that
Wagner actually retained:
Although he [Wagner] always aimed at stripping his legendary subjects of specific historical
conventions, he recognized that the knightly ethos of the Middle Ages had to be retained as the
necessary setting for Tristan’s conflict of love and honour. (1978: 233)

Chinca is even more terse, in the introduction to his book about Gottfried’s Tristan:
‘O everlasting night, sweet night, sacred, exalted night of love! He who has felt your embrace and
your smile, how could he ever awake from you without pangs of dread?’ Thus sing Wagner’s lovers
Tristan and Isolde. Their ‘Liebesnacht’, the night of love, becomes the ‘Liebestod’ in the
continuation of their duet: ‘Banish now those pangs, gentle death, love-death of our ardent longing!
In your arms, consecrated to you, hallowed warmth of ages, we are free from awaking’s duress!’ . . .
Night and death are the fulfilment of love. Nothing could be further from the medieval source on
which Wagner freely based his story-line, the Middle High German verse romance Tristan, written
around 1210 by Gottfried von Strassburg; nor is it anything like the source that Gottfried used, the
Old French Roman de Tristan by Thomas. In the medieval versions, there is nothing metaphysical
about the lover’s death. . . . This is no ‘Liebestod’: there is no mystical togetherness, no ecstatic
abandon, no hint that in death love triumphs over time and adversity. (1997: 1)

Gottfried’s original poem is a long and complex, multi-layered exploration of court and
social politics, incorporating a wide range of satirical comments on contemporary
institutions and conventions, and firmly rooted “very much in this life” (ibid). As translator
A.H. Hatto observes, Isolde only enters Tristan’s story half-way through Gottfried’s poem,
and it is for this reason that the tale is accurately called Tristan, rather than Tristan and
Isolde (von Strassburg, 1960: 7).
Wagner condensed and purified Gottfried’s Tristan, omitting all of the colourful
court scenes, minor characters, episodic incidents and ribald humour, and concentrated on
an unconsummated emotional love between the two lovers. For example, Gottfried worked
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Tristan and Isolde’s active libido into many of the poem’s episodes, often with a dry wit.
After Tristan wins Isolde back from the Irish knight Gandin, Gottfried writes:
As to our two companions, Tristan and Isolde, they were headed for home. Whether they attained
happiness anywhere on the way resting among the flowers, I shall leave unguessed: for my part I
shall refrain from guesses and surmises. (1960: 218)

Gottfried writes in a similar vein in his description of King Mark’s deflowering of

Brangaene, immediately after which he has carnal knowledge of Isolde without realising
that his partners have switched places:
To him one woman was as another: he soon found Isolde, too, to be of good deportment. There was
nothing to choose between them – he found gold and brass in either. Moreover, they both paid him
their dues, one way and another, so that he noticed nothing amiss. (1960: 208)

The characters in Gottfried’s Tristan are very sensual people, but Wagner’s characters
operate on a purely psychological and emotional plane. Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde never
physically consummate their love, and come no closer together in the flesh than an
embrace24. Their true union, according to Wagner, is entirely spiritual and occurs in a
transcendent state beyond all physical considerations. Wagner retained the narrative
structure of Gottfried’s version of the ancient Celtic legend, particularly in the second with
the introduction of Isolde, and distilled the romantic nature of the love story down to its
metaphysical essentials.
Wagner’s libretto for Tristan and Isolde in fact appears quite simple and
straightforward, especially when compared to the vast tetralogy of The Ring. Cooke
describes Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde as:
. . . perhaps the most Aeschylean of Wagner’s dramatic constructions. I. Tristan brings Isolde from
Ireland to Cornwall as a wife for King Mark, but they fall in love. II. Tristan is surprised with Isolde
by one of King Mark’s men and wounded. III. Tristan and Isolde die. (1979: 79)

Wagner has condensed the first half of the legend into a narration sung by Isolde to
Brangaene in Act I, in order to concentrate on the blossoming and resolution of the great
love between Isolde and Tristan. The first act is set on the deck of the ship transporting
Tristan and Isolde back to Cornwall. Isolde is deeply resentful of Tristan, whom she feels is
betraying her by delivering her to King Mark. Isolde asks her handmaiden Brangaene to

24
For example, Newman writes: “There has been much talk about the “deceit” of King Marke, and commentators, with the
mediaeval legend too much in their minds, have assumed previous clandestine meetings of the lovers. There is not the smallest
authority in Wagner’s text for that assumption . . . Wagner’s mystical drama was not concerned with realistic irrelevancies of that
sort” (1949: 261). Carnegy also believes that “. . . Tristan and Isolde fail to find erotic fulfilment and must seek their Nirvana in a
mystic union beyond death” (1981: 29), and Rose explains that “. . . the love scene between Tristan and Isolde becomes a similar
philosophical discussion – a search for a metaphysical solution, rather than physical satisfaction” (1981: 11).
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offer Tristan a Death potion, but instead Brangaene pours a Love potion, of which Isolde
also drinks. This potion has the ability to purge Tristan and Isolde of their inhibitions
(social and political) through their expectation of death, and allows them to acknowledge
the love that has been extant between them since the day they met. In the second act,
Tristan and Isolde indulge deeply in each other’s presence, but they are betrayed by
Tristan’s jealous rival Melot and discovered by King Mark. Tristan seems to allow himself
to become mortally wounded by Melot at the end of Act II, and is carried off to his ancient
ancestral home by his squire Kurvenal. The third act depicts Tristan agonising over his
separation from Isolde, his love for her, and his desire to be truly joined with her. Isolde
finally arrives and Tristan dies in her arms, his wish fulfilled. Isolde desires only to be with
Tristan, and her love for him is so great that she surrenders her life in order to follow
Tristan in death. King Mark arrives at the last, but is too late to offer his forgiveness to the
two lovers.
As Rose (1981: 14-15) and von Westernhagen (1978: 233) respectively
acknowledge above, the nature of the love between Tristan and Isolde is the one narrative
element that remains consistent throughout all versions of the legend. In the introduction to
his translation of Béroul’s poem The Romance of Tristan, one of the primary twelfth
century Tristan texts, Alan Fedrick writes:
The unique fascination of the Tristan legend seems to lie not in the accretions which have been
added to it with the passage of time . . . but rather in the unadorned central theme: the unsought
passion which draws Tristan and Yseut irresistibly together . . . and which compels them later to cut
across the moral code and the social and family obligations which are the framework of their
existence. (Béroul, 1970: 9)

Even Dante places Tristan in the infernal context of doomed lovers, beside Dido, Cleopatra,
Helen of Troy, Achîlles, and Paris (cited in Newman, 1949: 197). Newman recognises that
the story of Tristan and Isolde has achieved the status of an Archetype in literature, one of
the great enduring literary narratives of all time:
. . . Tristan and Isolde were already in mediaeval times not simply a chance pair of lovers but the
symbol and the essence of a love so overpowering that it is impossible for the human victims of it to
achieve their heart’s desire except in death. (1949: 199)

Gottfried is no exception to this rule. Chinca’s aggressive comments aside, several books
and book chapters have been written on Gottfried’s contributions to this theme in Tristan,
including Ferrante (1973) and W.T.H. Jackson’s book The Anatomy of Love: The Tristan of
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Gottfried von Strassburg. In his opening introductory paragraph, Jackson makes this point
as plainly as possible:
Gottfried’s Tristan is a poem about love. . . He proposes a thorough study of the love phenomenon,
of the relationship between the sexes in all its aspects – physical, intellectual, social, and artistic . . .
(1971: 1)

Wagner’s intention was to use the legend of Tristan and Isolde, using Gottfried as a
template of intertextual reference, to explore his most profound thoughts on the nature of
Love. The articulation of this desire (in an 1854 letter to Liszt), is perhaps the most-cited
passage in Wagnerian literature on Tristan and Isolde:
Since never in my whole life have I tasted the real happiness of love, I mean to raise a monument to
that most beautiful of dreams, in which, from beginning to end, this love shall really sate itself to the
full for once. I have in my mind a plan of a Tristan and Isolde, the simplest but most full-blooded
musical conception . . . (as cited in Newman, 1949: 201; Rose, 1981: 9; Robb, 1965: xi; Kunze,
1983: 47; Dahlhaus, 1971: 54; Glatt-Behr, 1977: 15; Gregor-Dellin, 1983: 258; Zuckerman, 1964:
33-34)

Konrad & Werckmeister feel they only need to refer to “. . . the famous letter of the autumn
of 1854 to Franz Liszt. . .” (1977: 26) in order to remind their readers of this passage.
Wagner made the theme of Tristan and Isolde clear in other writings, such as the
programme notes he wrote for the opera, which describe Tristan and Isolde as about:
. . . endless yearning, longing, the bliss and the wretchedness of love; world, power, fame, honour,
chivalry, loyalty and friendship all blown away like an insubstantial dream; one thing alone left
living – longing, longing unquenchable, a yearning, a hunger, a languishing forever renewing itself;
one sole redemption – death, surcease, a sleep without awakening. (as cited in Newman, 1949: 219)

The ‘Liebestod’ from Tristan and Isolde is the opera’s finale, and represents
Wagner’s finest, most articulate anaphonic description of the love explored in so much
detail throughout the opera. The term ‘Liebestod’ translates into “love-death, death-in-love,
love-in-death, love’s death, a love satisfied and consummated only by death” (Robb, 1965:
x). Isolde sings the ‘Liebestod’ as she cradles Tristan’s lifeless body in her arms, and it is
the musical passage through which she gives up her own life in order to join him in death.
Wagner in fact originally called the music ‘Transfiguration’ (Verklärung), as that more
accurately describes the heavy emotive and spiritual content of Isolde’s death (Newman,
1949: 218; Rose, 1981: 16; Konrad & Werckmeister, 1977: 30, Negus, 1981: 17). Wagner’s
success in musically communicating these intertwined themes of love and longing and
death and transcendent transfiguration in his ‘Liebestod’ is widely acknowledged in all
available literature. Glatt-Behr refers to the ‘Liebestod’ as an “apotheosis of passion”
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(1977: 15), and Rose claims that “Richard Strauss described the work’s final cadence as the
most beautifully orchestrated in all music” (1981: 12). Rose himself believes that Wagner’s
Tristan and Isolde culminates “. . . in one of the most exquisite tapestries of interwoven
melodies in all music, Isolde’s Liebestod” (1981: 16).
Various analysts, apologists, critics and scholars have attempted to describe Isolde’s
‘Liebestod’ in non-musicological terms, and most of these attempts employ a language
suffused with mysticism. In his correlation of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde with the
writings of Novalis, Lüthi writes that:
Tristan und Isolde ends with the triumph of the indestructible will to live and to love which has the
power to enter the other realm of eternal night, where, unconfined by the restraints of the world of
day, unperturbed by the separation that comes with consciousness, it is free to enjoy the highest
pleasure of eternal union. (1982: 8)

Mann explains that “. . . the Liebestod, Isolde’s final monologue, shows the fulfilment of
that love as she feels her life slip away to join Tristan, in spirit, outside the confines of
earthly existence” (1981: 4), offering more detail in a subsequent paragraph where he offers
this synopsis of the ‘Liebestod’:
As [King] Marke (sic) mourns these deaths, Isolde rises from her swoon to explain how she and
Tristan are at last united in a loftier sphere of spiritual existence. For her Tristan is only now truly
alive, as she is for him, for now she is to forsake her body for eternal happiness with him in another
life. (ibid)

Kunze talks about both the ‘Liebestod’ and the duet that occupies most of the second Act of
Tristan and Isolde:
Wagner’s drama of Tristan und Isolde is anything but a gentle and resigned farewell to the world,
even though at the end of the great love duet which occupies almost the entire second act, as well as
at the end of the work, all the violent discords are resolved in a mood of transfiguration and rapt
absorption, and all active and suffering consciousness is blotted out. (1983: 47)

Rose, in describing the ‘Liebestod’, explains that:

Isolde sings, finally, not of her grief, but of her vision of a transfigured Tristan, in a form free of all
sorrow and suffering, smiling with the joy of love, in a spiritual realm where she is to join him.
(1981: 14)

Wagner himself provided this expression of the ‘Liebestod’, written in a concert

programme note:
Yet what fate divided in life now springs into transfigured life in death: the gates of union are thrown
open. Over Tristan’s body the dying Isolde receives the blessed fulfilment of ardent longing, eternal
union in measureless space, without barriers, without fetters, inseparable. (cited in Newman, 1949:
218)
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Indeed, describing Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ in non-mystical language is extremely difficult.

The abstract nature of the music’s narrative, combined with the heavy chromaticism and the
abstract words of the libretto, offer a musical experience rendered nearly impenetrable by
metalanguage. Newman explains the final scene using language similar to Wagner’s:
But Isolde has already passed to a sphere in which words and thoughts like these [regretful
comments of King Mark] have no meaning. Fixing her eyes – the eyes now of a visionary – on
Tristan’s body, she begins, to the melody of [Motif] No. 42, her mystical monody of Verklärung, of
eternal reunion with him. The poetry of the Liebestod is in large part quite un-translatable. She does
not see her lover as the bystanders do. For her he is not dead but transfigured, open-eyed, smiling . . .
is it, she asks the world, she alone who can see all this, she alone who can hear the great melody
pulsing in the air about her, sad and sweet, all-revealing, all-reconciling, streaming from Tristan’s
being into hers? What and whence are these wonder-tones that envelop her? . . . It is the mystical
union, at last, for which they had longed . . . Now it becomes the symbol of another union, a more
cosmic joy, the ecstasy that throbs “in the world-soul’s depths profound”. It broadens out into wider
and wider waves of tone as Isolde, lost in her inward vision, sinks transfigured upon Tristan’s breast.
(1949: 293-295)

In his discussion of Wagner and film music, Huckvale feels that the ‘Liebestod’ has a
distinctly erotic meaning, and his somewhat inaccurate description of the music is couched
in appropriate terminology:
Another form of erotic signifier can, of course, be found in Tristan und Isolde where, specifically in
Isolde’s Transfiguration, orgasm is acoustically symbolised by means of an ever-rising series of
suspensions throughout a continual crescendo ultimately resolving in an expansive orchestral tutti
fortissimo. (1988: 60)

Gregor-Dellin recognises that Wagner’s use of chromaticism is the key to following the
music’s narrative, and in doing so anticipates an analysis of the ‘Liebestod’ in anaphonic
terms:
Tristan’s chromatic conflict, its soulful, painful descent from one key to another, is a “literary”
device that transcends the bounds of music and expresses disenchantment with a real world whose
fixed points of reference are steadily disappearing. (1983: 276)

Osborne simply feels that the music ought to speak for itself, in a conscious withdrawal
from subjecting Tristan and Isolde to metalinguistic analysis:
The music, coming from deep within him, addresses itself to deep responses in its hearers, to the
intuition, to the subconscious. It is music which is as susceptible to analysis as that of the composer’s
earlier operas, but to analyse Tristan und Isolde’s leading themes, its harmonies, its chromaticism, is
more than usually irrelevant to an appreciation of the work itself. (1977: 73)

Interestingly, Osborne does feel it necessary to comment on the fact that “The score’s
heavily sensuous chromaticism and the ecstatic richness of its orchestration combine to
give the opera a curious psychological strength” (1977: 73).
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In spite of the recognised complexity of Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’, Tagg’s system of

anaphones and genre synecdoches can offer a fairly straightforward description of musical
affect in this music, if perhaps not an explanation. As both Gregor-Dellin (1983: 276) and
Osborne (1977: 73) respectively recognise, Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ works effectively as a
single large-scale tactile anaphone. The restless nature of the chromaticism in the
‘Liebestod’, and its inability to rest and find musical satisfaction in a single, tonic key (until
the very end), is a tactile anaphone for emotional restlessness and longing, and the inability
of the human soul to find emotional satisfaction in the physical world. This pattern is found
throughout the ‘Liebestod’, and the chromatic, shifting transitions from key to key make up
one of the piece’s great distinguishing characteristics. The conflict between keys also
operates as a composite tactile/kinetic anaphone for conflict between the physical world
and the spiritual/emotional world. The musical resolution of that conflict (as the ‘Liebestod’
musically resolves in B major) is a tactile anaphone for death, the transfiguring physical
resolution of the conflict between body and soul. Operating close within this is the related
composite tactile/kinetic anaphone of emotional reunion, which in the ‘Liebestod’ “. . . is
formulated positively in the resolution of their individual motives and in the association of
both” (Konrad & Werckmeister, 1977: 30).
Unsurprisingly, combining an anaphonic-musicological analysis of the ‘Liebestod’
with generally recognised motifs (always keeping in mind the fluidity of and lack of
consensus regarding Wagnerian motifs) is perhaps the most effective.
Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ begins with Isolde singing a particular musical phrase (Video
Clip 29), a melody first heard in Act II of Tristan and Isolde when the lovers sing the words
“So let us die and never part” (Porter, 1980: 73). This melody is generally called the ‘Love-
Death’ motif. Isolde begins the ‘Liebestod’ with this phrase sung extremely quietly, with a
minimal instrumental accompaniment. Isolde repeats this motif in a higher key, then the
orchestra takes over the motif, first the horns then the strings, as Isolde’s vocal line soars
above it. This rising pattern in tone, coupled with Isolde’s gradual crescendo, starts the
tactile anaphonic affect of anticipation and longing that Wagner is to sustain throughout the
balance of the piece.
After these repetitions of the ‘Love-Death’ motif, Isolde’s vocal line reaches a
minor climax, and the growing crescendo reaches a peak before cutting out suddenly,
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leaving the musical phrase to continue its tonal ascent with a much diminished
instrumentation. Three more repetitions of the ‘Love-Death’ motif are next heard, this time
with a faster string accompaniment in the background. On the fourth repetition in the
strings, a four-note musical turn can be heard in the accompanying woodwinds. This
musical turn, also heard earlier in Act II, is a characteristic stylistic element in Romantic
opera and is heard frequently in Wagner’s earlier works. It occurs, for example, in Rienzi
(1840), in the opening phrase of the eponymous hero’s famous ‘Prayer’. Anthony Negus
speaks of this four-note turn as “the very symbol of romantic music which Wagner
ennobled” (1981: 23). Here, this reminiscence of Act II is heard first played by clarinet,
then, in each successive repetition of the motif, by oboe, flute, and strings, before it
becomes part of Isolde’s vocal line. Four more repetitions of the ‘love-death’ motif are
given, each again delivered in a key slightly higher than the last, the music further
reinforcing the anaphonic feeling of emotional tension. The reprise of these two motifs, the
‘Love-Death’ motif and the four-note turn, indicate that Isolde has turned her psychological
gaze inwards, returning to the earlier scene (Act II) in which she exchanged vows of
undying love with Tristan.
At the end of this cycle of motif repetitions, another phrase of musical transition and
minor climax follows. This phrase, much like the previous transitional climax, offers a
large crescendo and a sudden de-crescendo coupled with a drastic cut in instrumentation,
leaving the upward-circling musical line to continue. The effect this time is one of musical
suspension, as the heavy brass presence drops out to leave the strings and woodwinds to
continue the musical movement up the scale. The ‘Love-Death’ motif begins yet again after
this musical suspension, once again in increasingly higher keys. Another four repetitions of
the motif can be heard, each with different variations sung by Isolde and woven through the
instrumentation. A third transitional, anticipatory musical phrase is heard following the
fourth ‘love-death’ motif repetition. This anticipatory phrase itself winds chromatically up
the scale before leading into the first of the ‘Liebestod’s substantial musical climaxes,
offered in the form of three loud, heavy chords played by the full orchestra, as Isolde sings
the words “Resounding yet more clearly, wafting around me . . .” (Salter, 1966: 61).
From the first of these three chords on to the end of the ‘Liebestod’, the music is
largely dominated by a melody heard at the beginning of Act II as Isolde impatiently awaits
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Tristan. Generally known as the ‘Love’s Bliss’ motif (Newmann, 1949: 258), the rapidly
descending notes with their pulsating rhythm suggested in the second act Isolde’s eager
anticipation of the union with her lover. These three climactic chords, are delivered in a
musical and rhythmic pattern that anaphonically suggests the surging and pounding of large
waves. Even the ‘Love’s Bliss’ motif, which connects the chords, provides a kinetic
anaphone of the retreating water gathering itself for the next crash of water/music. These
‘waves’ of chords (which anticipate Isolde’s singing of the phrase “surging swell” {Porter,
1980: 92}) are tactile anaphones for the waves of emotion that she feels at that point in time
(in the same way that we might feel ‘waves’ of hot flushes when experiencing intense
emotion). They furthermore recall, through their anaphonic visualisation of the ocean, the
setting of Act I, where Tristan and Isolde fall in love on the Irish Sea.
Following these three heavy chords, the speed of the music increases, as does its
anaphonic feeling of heightened anticipation and delayed resolution. The second (rising)
half of the ‘Love’s Bliss’ motif is repeated five times in succession, each repetition moving
up the chromatic scale, with a loud crescendo. This crescendo abruptly ends at the fifth
repetition, but the musical phrase continues in a diminished dynamic and in diminished
instrumentation, once again providing a musical feeling of suspension. This feeling of
suspension is the strongest to date, and has the anaphonic effect of focussing the audience’s
musical attention on the increasingly upward-circling melodic line, which seems finally to
slow down in clear anticipation of musical resolution. When viewed through the visual
imagery associated with Isolde’s words, this musical focus and suspension can be seen to
suggest the composite tactile and kinetic anaphone of shedding the physical body behind, in
an effort to pursue a spiritual goal.
After a very large crescendo through this musical anticipation, resolution is finally
offered at Isolde’s words “world’s breath” (Salter, 1966: 61) in five huge chords:
alternating between G# and C#. The size, volume, and solidity of instrumentation of these
chords offer the musical resolution anticipated from the beginning of the entire opera, let
alone the beginning of the ‘Liebestod’ itself. Anaphonically, the tactile feeling of musical
and emotional satisfaction is profound. These five climactic chords offer tactile anaphones
for death and for emotional/sexual satisfaction, and of course for the kind of physical,
spiritual and emotional finality that combines all of these elements.
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After the ‘Liebestod’s musical climax in the form of these chords, the music quickly
sheds the heavier instruments as it winds down into the mystical section of the piece.
Sustained, suspended phrases on the woodwinds ease into the reappearance of the ‘Love’s
Bliss’ motif, which is repeated slowly three times. This time, however, the rhythmic pulse
of this motif is substantially slowed and the motif generates wave upon wave of melody as
Isolde sings “to drown, to sink unconscious – supreme bliss!” (ibid). The prevalence of
‘lighter’ instruments such as flutes and oboes acts as a tactile anaphone for physical and
spiritual/emotional transcendence, as the soul of Isolde is suggested to be ‘rising’ up to
heaven and Tristan. In addition, the down-scale movement of the ‘Love’s Bliss’ motif, here
rendered so slowly, provides a contrast with the generally up-scale ‘Love-Death’ motif
predominant in the first part of the ‘Liebestod’. As a composite kinetic and tactile
anaphone, this slow down-scale progression suggests a ‘settling-in’ or a ‘grounding’ effect,
returning the listener to some kind of axial equilibrium after the flights of longing offered
by the ‘Love-Death’ motif. The dotted-rhythm repeated note at the end of the motif is
particularly effective in reinforcing this grounded feeling.
Isolde’s final word is “bliss!”, sung during the second slow repetition of the ‘Love’s
Bliss’ motif. After Isolde has sunk lifeless upon Tristan’s body, the final bars in the
orchestra return us to the very beginning of the opera. As they did there, oboes and cor
anglais play the chromatic four-note ‘Longing’ motif which emerges from the ‘Tristan
Chord’. This final time, however, the motif comes to a satisfying resolution in the major,
anaphonically marking the final transfiguration of the lovers. The two final chords are
linked by a single sustained oboe note. William Mann suggests that they are “the orchestral
voices of that ivy and that vine” (1960: 1) referring to the version of the legend in which the
ivy from one grave and the vine from the other entwined, uniting Tristan and Isolde
eternally.
Through Wagner’s success at communicating such abstract notions as longing and
desire via musical anaphones, the ‘Liebestod’ has come to represent a leitmotif itself, in the
world of classical music. The entire aria stands as representative of tragic love and the
transfiguration of lovers united in death. The assumption that this is a self-evident fact can
be seen in the way that authors such as Flinn (1992: 115) and Huckvale (1988: 60)
respectively add the phrase “of course” in order to justify their rhetoric on this point. This
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assumption can also be evenly applied to the entire opera Tristan and Isolde, and its other
‘pop’ number, the ‘Prelude’. Noël Carroll goes so far as to claim, “For example, that the
‘Prelude’ to Tristan and Isolde is expressive of yearning . . . [is] part of the incontestable
data of aesthetic theorizing” (1996: 141).
As with both Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ and Strauss’s Also sprach
Zarathustra, Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ carries with it ‘Third Meaning’ connotative information,
beyond the mere sum of its parts. The complex chromatic weaving of Wagner’s
orchestration manages to anaphonically communicate emotional sensations of agonised,
emotional turmoil and anguish, and transforms feelings of grief and loss and longing into
an experience of Grief and Loss and Longing. There is a suggestion of what Flinn (1992)
calls ‘utopia’ in the five chords that provide the musical resolution of the ‘Liebestod’, and
the musical size of the ‘Liebestod’ ensures that this vision of utopia is painted on the largest
possible emotional canvas. Citing Maróthy, Flinn points out that dissonance and
chromaticism are particularly well suited to communicate this notion of musical-emotional
apotheosis:
The occasional inclusion of musically dissonant elements works to lend special force to the final
tonal achievement of a piece. By retarding tonal resolution – and thus delaying the return “home” –
Maróthy observes how Western music conveys the idea that this goal is truly difficult to attain,
elevating what he rightly perceives as a banal conceit into a grand and noble conquest. (1992: 94)

Owing to the heavily emotional and psychological nature of the ‘Liebestod’

narrative, narrative congruence between Wagner’s music and Hollywood film can be
assessed in terms of two inter-related narrative concepts, essentially two parts of the same
whole: visual narrative, and emotional/psychological narrative. The staging of Tristan and
Isolde in Wagner’s own time offered a conventional visual setting (Carnegy, 1981: 29), but
subsequent productions of Tristan and Isolde reinforced the internal nature of the opera’s
narrative by offering increasingly simple and unadorned stages. The 1994 production of
Tristan and Isolde at Bayreuth depicted Tristan’s ancestral home Kareol as a bare, dead-
leaf strewn floor with one moth-eaten dilapidated armchair, whereas Wieland Wagner’s
1952 staging in Bayreuth showed Kareol as an empty stage with one plain wooden bench
(Osborne, 1982: 81).
In spite of this modern movement towards existential simplicity, the staging of Act
III of Tristan and Isolde, and of the ‘Liebestod’ still brings with it certain concrete visual
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images from its historically Celtic roots. As supported by Thomas, Béroul, Malory and
Gottfried, Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde and the ‘Liebestod’ in particular are concerned with
the visual image of a man and a woman tragically in love. By the time the ‘Liebestod’ is
performed at the very end of Act III, Tristan is invariably lying dead on the ground, usually
cradled in Isolde’s arms, who sings as she looks down on him with grief and growing
transcendent joy. The simple visual image of two lovers intertwined on the threshold of
death provides the narrative congruence with Wagner’s music, a visual image that finds
congruence from Wagner’s intertextual sources in the twelfth and fourteenth century
through to the 1997 film Heaven’s Burning.
The emotional/psychological narrative that makes up the second part of this
narrative fills in some of the details lost in the simple visual imagery. The inner narrative of
these two lovers is involved with seeking and finding death in order that they be united in
their love for each other, and the recognition that only in death will the various restrictions
imposed on the relationship (political, geographic, social, cultural) be overcome. The
utopian nature of the ‘Liebestod’ invariably imposes a “grand and noble” (Flinn, 1992: 94)
connotation to the emotional/psychological narrative of the lover’s struggle to finally
become united.
One of the earliest combinations of Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ with contemporary
Hollywood film can be found cited in Flinn’s book Strains of Utopia (1992), where she
discusses Siodmak’s 1944 film Christmas Holiday, “. . . a little-known film noir that
features Gene Kelly in a non-dancing, sinister role of bad guy Robert” (1992: 114). A video
copy of this film has unfortunately resisted discovery, and so Flinn’s comments will have to
suffice, although the narrative information of the film can still be gleaned from her off-hand
comments. Flinn cites in full the conversation that Robert and his love-interest Jackie
Lamont have over Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’:
Earlier, the two fare better by music and in fact are first brought together because of it. As they leave
a concert – a performance of Wagner’s “Liebestod”, of course – they share their different
impressions of the music:
Robert: Sometimes when a concert’s over I get a feeling I’ve left myself for a long time. Of course you
wouldn’t know it, but that’s the greatest thing that could happen to me – I’m the most wonderful
person in the world to leave. Unfortunately you can’t make a living out of being absorbed in
music. Y’know, sometimes when I listen to it I feel there’s nothing man is capable of that I
can’t
do. Then it stops, and then it’s over.
Jackie: Well, not for me. When I hear good music I feel, well, I feel as if something had been added to
my life that wasn’t there before.
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Robert: I’d like that. Think you could teach me?

(1992: 115)

A wealth of information can be extracted from that one comment, “of course”. Clearly
Flinn felt that the use of Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ in this diegetic context was rather heavy-
handed, and that highlighting the emotional relationship between Robert and Jackie with
this music was so obvious that any further discussion of Siodmak’s music choice was
unnecessary.
Flinn’s description of Christmas Holiday as a film noir strongly suggests that genre
conventions were met, and that the film offered some kind of emotional relationship
between Robert and Jackie, who may or may not have been a femme fatale. At any rate, it is
safe to assume that a diegetic performance of Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ in Christmas Holiday
would still support a narrative congruence with the ancient Celtic Tristan legend, Gottfried,
and Wagner. All of these texts offer the visual image of two lovers, and the film noir nature
of Christmas Holiday suggests that death and violence might well have been involved in
the film’s conclusion, most probably for Robert.
In 1987, producer Don Boyd tried an interesting experiment with the film Aria.
Ten renowned directors (Robert Altman, Bruce Beresford, Bill Bryden, Jean-Luc
Godard, Derek Jarman, Franc Roddam, Nicolas Roeg, Ken Russell, Charles Sturridge,
and Julien Temple), were asked to film versions of their favourite opera arias. The
results were narratively connected by Bryden’s segment, which follows John Hurt
preparing for a performance of ‘Vesti la giubba’ from Leoncavallo’s opera Il Pagliacci.
Director Franc Roddam, who previously directed The Who’s ‘rock opera’ Quadrophenia
(1979), The Lords of Discipline (1983) and The Bride (1985), contributed a version of
Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ which reflects the narrative congruence set in motion by Wagner’s
interpretation of ancient Celtic myth, in spite of the aria’s thoroughly pop cultural
recontextualisation (Video Clip 30).
Roddam’s film clip for Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’, which is sung by Leontyne Price
and performed by the Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Henry Lewis, is set in
contemporary Las Vegas. The clip opens with a young man staring out through a
venetian-blind window, before cutting almost immediately to a desert landscape viewed
from a car window, suggesting an introspective framing device. As Isolde begins singing
her opening phrases, the desert landscape files by the car window with the kind of
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variable speed noticeable from a car (the immediate roadside detail moving much faster
than the slower horizon). On Isolde’s third phrase, the perspective changes to inside the
car, viewing out the front window, with the bonnet of the car visible. The desert
landscape is extremely sparse, the sky looms large in the frame, and the only other thing
visible is a police car on the right hand side of the road, where a police officer is
arresting a young Indian man. A reaction shot shows us the inhabitants of the car: the
young man from the opening framing scene, (James Mathers) and a young woman
(Bridget Fonda, in her first screen role). Both are watching the arrest take place as they
drive by, and the next shot is slowed down to allow the arrested Indian man time to look
into the car and lock eyes with the young couple inside. The young couple turn away as
their car passes, but they are clearly troubled, and the young man looks into the rear
view mirror with an expression of concern. The next shot returns to the passing desert
landscape.
As the first minor climax of the ‘Liebestod’ is reached and the first dramatic cut
in dynamics and instrumentation is heard, the scene cuts suddenly to the Las Vegas
skyline, at sunset, with the neon lights bright against the glowing horizon. Isolde
continues to sing, and the next shot shows the front of the car in the immediate
foreground, the young couple visible in the car, gazing at the Las Vegas architecture as
they drive past. Several shots follow, cut between slow pan shots of typical Vegas neon
(signs for Stardust, Dunes, Sands, the Lido) and the couple’s mute appreciation. A
quartet of elderly women draped in gauze scarfs cross slowly in front of the car as it sits
at a red light, and the bemused young couple turn their heads to follow their passage.
More Vegas scenes are shown, all from the couple’s perspective inside the car, which
passes in slow motion along side. A Vegas wedding party is shown outside the neon
chapel, the newly-weds posing for a photograph.
At this point Isolde is approaching her end of her second cycle of the ‘Love-
Death’ motif. At the second transitional musical climax, where the cut in dynamics and
instrumentation leaves a feeling of musical suspension, the scene cuts back to the young
man looking out the window from the first shot, and we understand that the framing
device has closed, and that the drive into Vegas has been offered in flashback. The
young couple are established in a cheap Vegas motel room. As the ‘Love-Death’ motif
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continues, the two walk slowly towards each other, kiss and embrace, bathed in the neon
lights of Vegas pouring in from the windows. The young man slowly removes his
partner’s underpants, leaving them both naked, and the camera slowly follows the
passage of the underpants down the young woman’s legs.
During this shot Isolde has been approaching the first of the ‘Liebestod’s
substantial musical climaxes. As the first of the loud heavy chords falls, the couple is
shown intertwined on the motel bed, centred squarely in the screen. The positioning of
the bodies and the timing of the visual image/music edit suggests that sexual penetration
has occurred. As the ‘Love’s Bliss’ motif begins its cycle of repetitions, the young
couple are shown making love, with various close-ups of limbs and the young woman’s
face. A close shot cut in the middle of this sequence shows an empty liquor bottle falling
off the bed onto a glass, next to a full ashtray: the impact sends shards of broken glass
bouncing off the cheap pile carpet. More close-up shots of the young woman’s face
show her approaching her physical orgasm at the same time that Isolde can be heard
approaching her musical climax. Before either occurs, however, the shot returns to the
broken glass at the head of the bed, and slowly, carefully, a hand reaches down and
picks up a particularly sharp-looking shard.
As the music slows down and the dynamics increase, in clear anticipation of the
long-delayed musical resolution, the camera slowly tracks down the motel room corridor
to the bathroom, where the couple are shown huddled together in a heap at one end of
the bathtub. Right at the first climactic resolving chord of the ‘Liebestod’, the young
woman sits back to reveal a slashed wrist, pouring blood (see Illustration 16). The
second resolving chord is matched with a close-up of the young woman’s face, sobbing
in grief and pain. The next chord shows a similar close-up of the young man, breathing
deeply in preparation, as the fourth chord shows him slowly cutting his wrist with the
glass shard, lengthwise down the vein. On the last chord the shot returns to the young
woman, who manages a half-smile amongst the tears, clearly satisfied that her lover has
kept his promise.
The instrumentation drops and the mystical transcendent section of the music
begins, with a close up of the tiled edge of the bath, on which rests the bloody shard of
glass and a single drop of blood, joined swiftly by several other drops of blood. The
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young couple are shown moving back into their entwined embrace in the bathtub,
holding each other tightly in their arms, as the woodwinds play their sustained phrases.
The next shot is a close up of the young woman’s back and the young man’s arm around
her neck, as a thick stream of blood flows slowly down the young woman’s back. This
shot is timed to match the return of the ‘Love’s Bliss’ motif, played so slowly this
second time around in the music. Immediately after this shot, the outside of a Las Vegas
casino is shown, in dawn light, with an elderly woman emerging to slowly cross the
street with her plastic cup of coins. An extreme close-up of the bathtub drain is shown
next, with the dregs of heavily bloodied water curling slowly around the chrome drain in
a clear reference to an identical scene in Hitchcock’s film Psycho.
As the final phrases of the ‘Liebestod’ begin, the scene changes suddenly back to
the Arizona desert, moving slowly past the car window just as in the segment’s opening
scene. At the point where the ‘Tristan Chord’ is heard in the final phrase, the scene cuts
to a rear view of the young couple’s car, driving straight ahead down the road stretching
in front of them. The chromatic four-note ‘Longing’ motif slowly draws out at the same
time as the car pulls away from the travelling camera, which slows down and comes to a
rest on the verge of a heavily shadowed section of the road. The final stop of the camera
is timed to perfectly match the final B major chord that resolves the chromatic
dissonance of the ‘Longing’ motif. The young couple’s car, however, drives with
increasing speed into the light, towards the horizon, as the final chords of the
‘Liebestod’ are heard.
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Although Aria was considered neither a financial nor a critical success,

Roddam’s ‘Liebestod’ section emerged as a clear favourite amongst the various arias in
the film. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote:
Of the 10 segments, I particularly enjoyed Franc Roddam’s interpretation of “Liebestod” from
Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde”. He uses Bridget Fonda and James Mathers as young lovers who
arrive in Las Vegas, drive slowly and (given the music) sadly down Glitter Gulch, check into a cheap
hotel room, make love and kill themselves. Despite, or perhaps because of, the unlikely setting, the
episode is truly poignant in its portrait of the two doomed lovers. (1988)

Ebert’s comments are an interesting acknowledgment of mutual implication, and of the

pop culture recontextualised setting for Tristan and Isolde’s final embrace. Ebert
recognises that Aria placed opera arias in a pop culture, music video context, describing
the film in his opening comments as “an operatic hit parade” (ibid), and in his closing
statements as “the first MTV version of opera” (ibid). Critic Mark Leeper writes:
I was not fond of Roddam’s films The Bride and Quadrophenia, but I have to give him the prize for
Aria. This had to be what the people who thought of the film had in mind. This is a very sensual
adaptation of Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ that in some ways fits the music as well or better than Wagner
did originally. (1988)

Both Ebert and Leeper’s respective high opinions of Roddam’s ‘Liebestod’ segment can
be attributed to Roddam’s use of narrative congruence, something that all of Aria’s other
directors failed to use or acknowledge to the same degree (when, in fact, narratives were
used at all).
Roddam parallels Wagner’s narrative by depicting two doomed lovers who unite
with each other in death. The narrative connection between Roddam’s young couple and
Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde is thus fairly straightforward. Roddam’s confidence in the
narrative congruence between his story and Wagner’s can be seen in the fact that no
explanation for the young couple’s suicide pact is given or seems to be required – all
such details are adequately suggested by Wagner’s music and his associated narrative.
The use of the desert as a setting for the drive into Las Vegas is congruent with
the sparse, bleak setting in Act III of Tristan and Isolde, where the ‘Liebestod’ is set.
The desert, traditionally a place of death and the Devil in the Old Testament, is a bleak
wasteland that barely supports life, and similar descriptions could be make of traditional
stage settings for Kareol, Tristan’s decaying ancestral home. Roddam’s use of the Indian
arrest effectively creates visual tension in his film clip, as the Indian and the young
couple lock eyes as they pass on the highway. The Indian looks worried and disturbed as
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he is being patted down for weapons by the State Trooper (a modern version of the
demons that the Old Testament have residing in the Wilderness), and yet the expression
on his face suggests that he is more horrified by what he sees in the car than by what is
happening to him, as serious as that seems. The Indian conveys the impression that the
couple in the car are headed for genuine trouble, trouble that makes mere arrest and
incarceration pale in comparison. Roddam’s moment of visual tension echoes the
musical tension in Wagner’s music heard at this point, as Isolde sings variations of the
‘Love-Death’ motif in shifting, chromatic, unresolved keys.
Roddam’s cut to the Las Vegas setting is timed to match Wagner’s dramatic cut
in instrumentation and dynamics, a sudden change in focus that Roddam illustrates well.
The following scenes of Las Vegas nightlife offer a classic example of Gorbman’s
mutual implication (1987: 15), and Tagg’s ‘Letter’ example (1992a: 19), where the
emotional narrative of Wagner’s music suggests a melancholy, ironic subtext to images
of marriage, happiness, and entertainment. The segment of the quick, easy, Vegas-style
wedding is particularly poignant given Tristan and Isolde’s inability to consummate their
relationship in this way.
Physical consummation is not a problem for Roddam’s young couple, however,
and Isolde’s growing emotional, spiritual, and psychological ecstasy is visually
paralleled by Roddam’s erotic vision of the young couple having sex for the last time.
Roddam offers more close ups of the young woman’s face than that of the young man in
this segment, and Isolde’s growing feeling of spiritual bliss can be seen directly reflected
in the young woman’s growing physical bliss. Rather than equate the young woman’s
physical orgasm with Isolde’s love-death orgasm, though, Roddam stresses his narrative
congruence with Wagner and depicts the young couple’s final physical union as one
through suicide (the affirmation of death), rather than through sex (the affirmation of
life).
The progression of Roddam’s images here is remarkably effective in recreating
Wagner’s musical tension (through the delaying of the music’s resolving chords) in
visual images. The sudden jump-cut to the close-up hand slowly picking up a sharp
shard of glass, right at the moment when the young woman’s physical passion seems to
be peaking, effectively introduces tension into the narrative, as sharp, broken glass is
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invariably an instrument of pain and suffering. As the final cycle of suspended,

unresolved chords unfold, the steady tracking shot down the motel corridor into the
bathroom where the couple sit seemingly in post-coital embrace works with audience
expectation and anticipation in the same way. Wagner’s music is insisting that the final
climax of the piece is still being delayed, and yet Roddam’s visual image suggests that
physical orgasms and lovemaking are over. Thus, by narrative transference (and the
larger contextual understanding that the musical codes are driving the visual codes in
this film), the audience understands that physical orgasm is not the final climax of the
narrative. By the time this narrative dissonance sinks into the audience, the solution is
offered visually by Roddam and musically by Wagner, simultaneously.
Isolde’s first climactic chord is visually articulated in Roddam’s young woman
leaning back to show her slashed wrist pouring blood, rendering her effectively dead.
Both the young man and the young woman have slashed their wrists along the length of
the vein, ensuring almost impossible recovery. All of the five climactic, resolving G#
and C# chords focus on either a slashed wrist pouring blood or the pain and anguish-
wracked faces of the young couple, which reflects Wagner’s original narrative intentions
in his ‘Liebestod’. The young woman’s silent, ragged sobs of pain offer an articulate
visual counterpoint to the melodiousness of Price’s singing at this point. The harsh
bright bathroom lighting renders the slicing of the young man’s wrist almost tangible to
the audience. Wagner’s Isolde in particular can be said to have committed suicide over
Tristan’s dead body, in her utter abandonment of the physical world. Similarly,
Roddam’s focus on the young woman in the bath seems to suggest that the suicide was
her idea, given her apparent satisfaction with her lover’s willingness to follow.
The final, transcendent section of Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ is also given narrative
congruence in Roddam’s ‘Liebestod’. The sustained woodwind phrases that lead into the
slower return of the ‘Love’s Bliss’ motif are given visualisation through the embrace of
the young couple in the bath. The couple’s expressions of resignation and acceptance of
death are congruent with Wagner’s music, as Isolde also waits for the final moment of
death represented musically by return of the ‘Love’s Bliss’ motif. This motif is signalled
visually by the thick stream of blood that pours slowly down the young woman’s back.
The following shot, of an elderly woman emerging victorious from a casino in early
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morning light, strongly suggests that the couple have died, in its acknowledgment that a
new day has dawned and that life will go on as usual (although ironically, the young are
dead and the elderly are still alive). This is reinforced by the next shot of the emptying
bath drain, which not only suggests that the bodies have been found and the motel room
is being cleaned (and thus the bath water emptied), but also through its none-too-subtle,
Hitchcockian visual pun about life ‘gone down the drain’.
The final scenes of Roddam’s ‘Liebestod’ also offer satisfying narrative
congruence with Wagner’s original narratives. The visual return to the car driving
through the desert setting in Roddam’s clip can only be explained in transcendent,
metaphysical terms. The car is clearly offered as a visual metonym for the young couple
in some kind of mystical post-death state, and the state highway becomes a visualisation
of the ‘road of life’ trope. This short segment is timed to match the final musical phrases
in Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’, after Isolde has actually died. In this way we are led to draw a
parallel between Isolde’s successful reunion with Tristan in death, and the young
couple’s successful reunion in death, where they are back ‘on the road’ together,
figuratively and visually. This narrative congruence also finds visual articulation in the
similar images that accompany the final ‘Tristan Chord’, the four-note ‘Longing’ motif,
and the resolution of the ‘Tristan Chord’ dissonance in the final B major chord of the
aria. During this music, the metonymic car passes through the shadow of the small
valley (of death) created by the bluff in the desert, and travels into the metaphysical
light, clearly attaining the kind of spiritual resolution suggested by Wagner’s music. The
audience, as represented by Roddam’s camera, seems restricted by its mortal status and
is resigned to watch the transcendent couple from the shadow on the road, coming to rest
during the final, resolving B major chord.
In addition to the visual narrative congruence between Wagner and Roddam, the
actual photography of Roddam’s ‘Liebestod’ provides many visual anaphonic
equivalents to Wagner’s musical anaphones, thus cementing the narrative congruence
between the two. Roddam’s clip is beautifully filmed, and in fact the credits for the
‘Liebestod’ cite ‘special stills photography by Annie Leibovitz’, which might explain
the composition of certain scenes. The continual use of slow-motion photography and
slow physical movements (such as the hand reaching down for the glass shard or the
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slow passage of the young woman’s underwear down her thighs) are congruent with the
slow tempo of the music. The introspective, thoughtful, wistful expressions on the young
couple’s faces are congruent with Wagner’s description of Isolde’s gradual withdrawal
from the external, physical world in Tristan and Isolde, as she contemplates becoming
submerged with Tristan in the “world’s breath”. Even the slow, steady, hypnotic
movement of the desert horizon filing by the car window matches the slow tempo of the
‘Liebestod’, and as the music speeds up during Isolde’s third repetition of the ‘Love-
Death’ motif, the rhythm of the couple’s lovemaking increases accordingly.
Roddam’s faithful narrative congruence, and his obvious devotion to Wagner’s
original narrative intentions, works in tandem with Ebert’s comments about Aria being
the first MTV opera, as cited above. Aria, and Roddam’s ‘Liebestod’ segment in
particular, demonstrates that a pop culture recontextualisation of classical music can
fully satisfy MTV-style cultural tastes without losing any inherent narrative integrity.
Roddam’s credentials as a rock music film director are impeccable owing to his
direction of the 1979 classic Quadrophenia, an early rock movie entirely scored by the
music of The Who. Roddam’s ‘Liebestod’ shows that applying music video image-
sound politics (where the music takes editorial precedence over the image) can work as
successfully with classical music as with pop music. More importantly, it shows that the
results of such a combination are grounded in popular culture, as pop music, and not as
traditionally 'high culture' classical music.
Three years later, in 1990, Barbet Schroeder’s film Reversal of Fortune was
released, starring Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close as Mr. and Mrs. von Bülow. The film
follows the true story of Mr. von Bülow’s appeal trial, in which Harvard law professor
Alan Dershowitz successfully defended Mr. von Bülow against the charge that he
murdered his wife through an overdose of insulin. The film is partly narrated by Sunny
von Bülow from her coma, and largely avoids reaching any conclusions regarding Claus
von Bülow’s guilt or innocence, instead exploring the complex wealth of legal details
and the interwoven family relationships of the von Bülow family.
Reversal of Fortune also sets up a running exploration of class difference (the
von Bülows are wealthy and aristocratic, whereas Dershowitz and his legal team are
decidedly lower middle class), and it is in this capacity that Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ is
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heard diegetically in the film (Video Clip 31). After being contacted by von Bülow over
the phone, Dershowitz is shown arriving at von Bülow’s upper East side Manhattan
home. As the private elevator door opens, Dershowitz is confronted by the audio-visual
trappings of von Bülow’s wealth and social class: opulent and expensive furniture and
décor, and Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ playing diegetically on the stereo. Dershowitz’s
middle-class response to this high-culture ostentation is “Holy shit!”, somewhat
predictably. As the ‘Liebestod’ plays, Dershowitz wanders through several rooms of von
Bülow’s flat, calling out “hello?” until von Bülow turns the ‘Liebestod’ and the stereo
off and welcomes Dershowitz into his home. von Bülow has clearly been listening to the
‘Liebestod’, which was playing loudly enough to mask Dershowitz’s initial calls.
The segment of the ‘Liebestod’ that can be heard in this scene, which is
inaccurately cited as “Tristan und Isolde, performed by Eva Marton, with the London
Philharmonic” (and “written by Wagner”) in the credits, is very short. Only twenty-three
seconds long, this fragment of the ‘Liebestod’ is taken from the last of the three minor
climactic ‘waves’ of chords that follow the introduction of the ‘Love’s Bliss’ motif,
starting from the point where Isolde sings “ . . . wafting around, are they waves of
refreshing breezes?” The bulk of the twenty-three seconds of music follows the
repetitions of the second (rising) half of the ‘Love’s Bliss’ motif which lead to the
climactic resolution of the ‘Liebestod’. The musical fragment ends abruptly in the
middle of Isolde’s phrase “as they swell and . . .” as von Bülow turns off the recording.
Schroeder’s use the ‘Liebestod’ in Reversal of Fortune, while not contributing
much to the recontextualisation of the ‘Liebestod’ as popular music, does ably support
the narrative congruence articulated by Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde. The choice of the
‘Liebestod’ is rather a subtle choice of diegetic music for this scene, and von Bülow’s
taste in music throws an interesting commentary on the narrative of the film, and the
question of von Bülow’s character. As a technique for establishing von Bülow’s class
and place in the high culture-low culture hierarchy, the use of the ‘Liebestod’ as generic
Romantic tradition classical music – and opera in particular – is a well-established filmic
tradition. The ‘Liebestod’ is a genre synecdoche in Reversal of Fortune. As classical
music, it communicates notions of wealth, cultural sophistication, education, good
breeding, and other ‘high culture’ connotations that have come to be associated with the
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late nineteenth century. This connotative technique can be found in films ranging from
Ridley Scott’s Someone To Watch Over Me (Delibes’s aria ‘Dôme Épais’) to the Jackie
Chan Hong Kong martial arts film Project A II (Mozart’s Eine klein Nachtmusik), to
countless television commercials such as the 1998 ad for Pinot Noir sparkling wine
(Handel's Zadok The Priest).
The narrative congruence behind Schroeder’s use of the ‘Liebestod’ in Reversal
of Fortune serves to reinforce Wagner’s synaesthetic, anaphonic associations, and adds a
valuable insight to von Bülow’s character. Wagner’s original narrative is congruent with
that in Reversal of Fortune. Both Tristan and Isolde and Reversal of Fortune narrate the
story of two lovers, a man and a woman, who are doomed to unhappiness and pain in
their mortal life. In both narratives, one of the lovers dies before the other, leaving the
other to suffer the aftermath of their partner’s death: in Tristan and Isolde, Isolde is left
behind (if only temporarily) to suffer anguish and longing so intense that she follows
Tristan not long after. In Reversal of Fortune, Claus von Bülow is left behind after his
wife Sunny slides into the living death of the vegetative coma. The extent of von
Bülow’s anguish is one of the unresolved questions of the film, but the suggestion is
made that von Bülow’s emotional pain at his wife’s fate is not any less for his inability
to express it openly. At one point von Bülow explains his cold behaviour to Dershowitz
by pointing out that he (von Bülow) does not “wear his heart on his sleeve”.
The narrative behind the ‘Liebestod’ is also followed congruently in Reversal of
Fortune. Through tactile and composite anaphones, Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’
communicates longing, the pain and suffering of unresolved love, and the desire for
death and oblivion. Clinically depressed, addicted to alcohol and drugs and living in
despair, Sunny is portrayed as an emotionally bankrupt character with a strong desire to
die. The film makes the daily suffering of Sunny von Bülow very clear. Reversal of
Fortune also takes pains to explore the moral vacuousness of the upper class, and the
emotional emptiness that can result from being spoiled, wealthy, and aimless. At one
point in the film, after her first coma, she viciously accuses her husband of letting her
live, apparently in contradiction to her obvious intentions. Sunny cannot understand why
her husband allows the pain of her life to continue, when death offers such a sweet
alternative. This theme has resonance with Wagner’s Isolde and Tristan, who reach a
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similar conclusion through slightly different circumstances. In this way, Sunny von
Bülow is aligned with Isolde, both of whom desire to leave the ongoing pain of mortal
existence in order to be free of the physical world. Isolde grows tired of the world
because it is keeping her from Love, whereas Sunny grows tired of the world because
she feels she has exhausted Love (amongst everything else the world has to offer), but
the desire of Oblivion is the same.
Schroeder’s depiction of Claus von Bülow listening to the ‘Liebestod’ places an
interesting gender reversal of Wagner’s narrative, with von Bülow in the traditionally
feminine role of the survivor Isolde, who longs to follow his partner Sunny (Isolde) into
death. If the audience follows a reading of Reversal of Fortune that concludes with
Claus von Bülow’s innocence, however coldly and heartlessly expressed, then his
‘performance’ of Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ is the closest von Bülow gets to expressing his
true feelings for his comatose wife. In addition, Schroeder might also be making a joke
appreciable only to Wagner fans: the first performance of Tristan and Isolde in 1865
was conducted by Hans von Bülow, a close friend and supporter of Wagner in spite of
the fact that Wagner cuckolded him for years with his wife Cosima (whom Wagner
eventually married).
The next sonic appearance of Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ in popular culture can be
found in Roger Donaldson’s 1995 film Species. In many ways the use of the ‘Liebestod’
in Species operates in a similar way to Schroeder’s Reversal of Fortune, also as genre
synecdoche. In Species, Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ is also heard diegetically and briefly, and
partly to establish the same standard, generic connotative values as it did in Reversal of
Fortune. The use of the ‘Liebestod’ in Species is a further step in its recontextualisation
as popular music, however, due to the horror genre of Species (with science-fiction
generic elements), and the narrative congruence that Wagner maintained from ancient
Celtic myth.
Species is a modern reworking of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Government
scientist Xavier Fitch (Ben Kingsley) creates a monster by genetically crossing alien
DNA with human DNA. The result is Sil (played by Natasha Henstridge), who has the
temporary physical appearance of a 21-year old Scandinavian supermodel but the nature
and composition of an alien predator. When Fitch belatedly tries to kill Sil in the
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laboratory, because of her extreme strength and fast growth-rate, Sil escapes to Los
Angeles where she is driven by an insatiable desire to breed. This involves seducing
various Los Angeles men who then discover Sil’s murderous alien nature too late (Sil
loses her supermodel appearance and becomes pure alien when she becomes threatened).
By this time Sil is being hunted by a team of government employees, who are trying to
stop Sil before she (a) conceives an alien male child who can then impregnate thousands
of human women with his alien seed, thus heralding the Darwinian end of the human
race, and (b) kills any more unsuspecting male victims. Sil is portrayed as a somewhat
sympathetic character, who is puzzled and confused by her lack of self-knowledge and
her alien nightmares, and who kills only out of self-defence. Eventually Sil does
conceive a child, but both Sil and her offspring are killed in the film’s violent climax.
Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ is heard in Species diegetically, at low volume, and it
competes with composed nondiegetic score as well as dialogue (Video Clip 32). After
being hit by a car, Sil is brought to hospital by a kindly observer, John Carey (Whip
Hubley). Carey’s status as a ‘nice guy’ is demonstrated when he offers to pay for Sil’s
medical attention himself, unprompted, although clearly Sil’s supermodel looks have
much to do with it. Carey is then amazed when Sil walks out of the hospital seemingly
in perfect health (having healed herself in her alien way), and is further amazed when Sil
invites herself back to Carey’s house. As the scene opens at Carey’s house, Wagner’s
‘Liebestod’ can be heard, playing in the background on Carey’s stereo. Entertaining Sil
on the back patio, Carey continues to exemplify stereotypical ‘SNAG’ (‘Sensitive New
Age Guy’) characteristics: he offers Sil fruit and cheese, identifies his hot tub, and
comments on how peaceful he finds his home, away from all the noise and traffic of Los
Angeles.
After a scene cut to show the pursuing government hit team closing in on Carey
and Sil’s location, Carey comes out onto his deck to find Sil waiting for him, naked in
the hot tub. The ‘Liebestod’ continues to play in the background. Once in the hot tub, Sil
pursues Carey with thinly veiled sexual urgency, at one point abruptly dunking him in
order to remove his swim trunks. The aroused Carey is first bemused and then concerned
by Sil’s desperation, and this turns to outright alarm when Sil blurts out her desire to
conceive a child. Carey’s realisation that he is in trouble comes too late, however, and
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the arrival of hit team members at the door prompts Sil to adopt her alien physique and
murder Carey in the hot tub.
A tense stalking game between government assassin Preston Lennox (Michael
Madsen) and Sil occurs through the house, and Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ can still be faintly
heard behind the composed score. Eventually Lennox comes across Carey’s dead body
floating facedown in the crimson water of the hot tub. Lennox’s visual discovery of
death is timed nicely with Isolde’s sonic discovery of death, as Carey’s corpse is
revealed at the precise moment that Isolde’s sings her final word of the
‘Liebestod’(“bliss!”), on which she dies. Sil escapes to the overgrown garden, and the
‘Liebestod’ fades diegetically as the action moves away from the house.
In addition to the popular recontextualisation of Wagner’s music in Species,
Donaldson’s use of the ‘Liebestod’ supports Wagner’s basic narrative congruence.
Given the diegetic nature of the music in this film, Donaldson’s use of the ‘Liebestod’ is
clearly deliberate and chosen specifically to further underline the themes of love and
death in Species. The alien Sil is obsessed with sex and has a casual penchant for
murder, and in fact with her, sex and death are packaged in the same supermodel
physique. All of the characters with whom Sil either attempts or succeeds in having sex
are immediately killed afterwards. If one assumes a thematic connection between love
and sex (‘making love’), then Sil is aligned with Isolde, for whom love and death are
also interchangeable. Both Isolde and Sil are Freudian creatures for whom Eros and
Thanatos are one and the same.
The visual iconography of the scene from Species in which the ‘Liebestod’
sonically appears also supports Wagner’s narrative vision. Just as Wagner portrayed the
tragic emotional love of Isolde and Tristan as involving Tristan’s death (and ultimately
Isolde’s death), so does Donaldson visualise the tragic physical love of Sil and John
Carey, which ends in Carey’s death (and ultimately Sil’s death). The physical love
between Carey and Sil is explicitly shown in Species, as the two engage in passionate
kissing in Carey’s hot tub while the ‘Liebestod’ plays in the background (see Illustration
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17). As the ‘Liebestod’ begins in Tristan and Isolde, Tristan leaves Isolde in the physical
world, emotionally unsatisfied. In the same way, as the ‘Liebestod’ ends in Species,
Carey leaves Sil in the physical world, physically unsatisfied and still without child.
Even the verbal and musical/anaphonic description of waves find visual articulation in
the thrashing hot tub water, and Carey arguably dies of drowning as much as by alien
tentacle penetration. Donaldson’s timing of the discovery of Carey’s corpse, floating
face down in the water, is surely not accidentally timed to Isolde singing “to drown, to
sink unconscious – supreme bliss!”
Donaldson also establishes narrative congruence between Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’
and the hot tub sequence in Species through the evocation of tension. The unresolved
chromatic chords in the ‘Liebestod’ are anaphonically representative of emotional and
psychological tension, as analysed at the beginning of this chapter. Donaldson parallels
the musical tension in Wagner’s music with several levels of tension in the scene. This
tension arises as the audience wonders whether the government hit team, led by Lennox,
will finally catch Sil at Carey’s house, and whether Lennox will successfully warn Carey
of the danger he faces. Tension is further established when Carey enters the hot tub in a
vulnerable, half-naked state, as the audience wonders whether Sil will successfully mate
with Carey before Lennox catches and stops her – especially given Sil’s established
tendency to murder her male victims at the slightest provocation.
Carey’s diegetic choice of Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ in Species operates in a similar
way to von Bülow’s choice of Wagner in Reversal of Fortune. Carey is being
established as a character of intelligence and good breeding, and of upper middle class
stock. Like von Bülow, Carey surrounds himself with the ‘finer’ things in life: a luxury
house in the Pacific Palisades, a hot tub, a fun Polaroid camera, and Wagner on the
stereo. In particular, Carey is being contrasted with Sil’s first Los Angeles victim, a
long-haired nightclubber called Robbie. Robbie is misogynistic and amoral, and his
seduction music of choice is a generic, bass-heavy mellow dance song, music Robbie
theatrically turns on with the snap of his fingers (apparently using the same sound-
sensitive technology used to clap house lights on and off). In contrast to Robbie and his
calculated seduction aids, Carey’s lifestyle benefits from all of the connotations outlined
in the discussion of Reversal of Fortune above.
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At the same time, the juxtaposition of the ‘Liebestod’ with conventional pop,
both played diegetically in similar scenarios, helps to recontextualise Wagner’s music as
pop music, and this reinforces the recontextualisation suggested by the film’s
horror/science fiction genre. Horror films in particular are considered to be more
grounded in popular culture than drama films, especially popular culture in its
disposable, youth-oriented ‘pop’ manifestation. Horror films are generically Popular,
and this can be seen in the way that both horror and science fiction films are marketed
towards a younger demographic, such as for recent horror film sequels like Alien:
Resurrection (1997), Scream 2 (1997), I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998)
and Urban Legend (1999). The sonic presence of the ‘Liebestod’ in Species, alongside
pop songs such as ‘Keep Hope Alive’ performed by The Crystal Method and ‘Come Into
My Life’ by Joyce Sims, and supported by Natasha Henstridge’s appeal as a naked
model with a propensity for violent death, effectively recontextualises Wagner’s music
as popular.
A year later in 1996, Baz Luhrmann’s version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and
Juliet was released, a perfect example of the successful pop culture recontextualisation
of classic texts. The entire film Romeo + Juliet is a sterling example of narrative
congruence, as Luhrmann carefully updated Shakespeare’s text with 1990s imagery in a
thoroughly modern, urban setting. Luhrmann places the story of Romeo and Juliet,
played respectively by Leonardo DiCaprio and Clare Danes, in mythical Verona Beach
(actually shot in Mexico City), described as “a cross between Miami, Mexico, and Los
Angeles” (Giammarco, 1996: A14). In spite of the contemporary setting of the film, and
the incorporation of modern details such as automatic handguns, pool halls, X-ray
security gates, souped-up hot rod cars, and loud Hawaiian shirts, Luhrmann remained
faithful to both the language of Shakespeare and the play’s narrative structure. While
much of Shakespeare’s poetry has been dropped, the characters still recite the play’s
original lines, and the plot and flow of Shakespeare’s play remain unchanged. Romeo
and Juliet and Romeo + Juliet have the same narratives. Luhrmann himself is quite
articulate about his desire to recontextualise Romeo and Juliet in a pop culture
environment:
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I spent a great deal of time researching the economic and social realities of the Elizabethan world in
which the piece was written, the language for which it was written, and the sound for which it was
written, and then converted those ideas into contemporary 20th-century images. (ibid)

Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ appears sonically at the very end of Romeo + Juliet (Video
Clip 33). Juliet awakens from her drugged coma to find Romeo dying from poison before
her very eyes, and within moments he is dead. Juliet looks around her and finds Romeo’s
handgun, with which she shoots herself in the head. She falls down dead beside her lover,
and the camera slowly tracks straight up from the two of them, looking straight down. As
this motion begins, the ‘Liebestod’ gently fades in, right at the very end of the piece. Isolde
in fact only sings her four last words: “. . . sink unconscious – supreme bliss!” as the last
repetitions of the ‘Love’s Bliss’ motif that end the ‘Liebestod’ are heard. During this music,
the camera continues to spiral gently away from the two dead lovers, while being cut with
images drawn from the rest of the film. Four of Romeo and Juliet’s best, happiest moments
are shown. As Isolde (performed again by Leontyne Price) sings her last word, “bliss!”, the
film cuts to Romeo and Juliet meeting for the first time through the Capulet aquarium,
followed by a shared laugh at the Party and a close up of their betrothal ring (the inside of
which is engraved “I Love Thee”). Another shot of Romeo and Juliet frolicking under
Juliet’s billowing bedsheets is next, after a further pan shot of the corpses, and lastly the
underwater kiss from the balcony scene. This final shot of Romeo and Juliet kissing is
slowed and then held frozen as the penultimate chord of the ‘Liebestod’ is heard. The final
chord of the piece is heard as the epilogue to Romeo + Juliet begins, with the Police Chief
(Vondie Curtis-Hall) berating Capulet and Montague (Paul Sorvino and Brian Dennehy,
respectively) for the fatal results of their feuding.
Tristan and Isolde and Romeo and Juliet enjoy flawless narrative congruence. Both
texts are concerned with star-crossed lovers who are doomed to unhappiness during their
mortal lives, as a result of family politics. The final acts of both texts involve the death of
the male lover, Tristan/Romeo, quickly followed by the death of the female, Isolde/Juliet.
In both texts, the surviving, female lover consciously chooses to embrace death in order to
join with her partner in a transcendent, metaphysical state. Tristan and Isolde and Romeo
and Juliet both explore the overwhelming strength of true love, and how true love can
transcend all social and physical boundaries – including death. The final scenes of both
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Romeo and Juliet and Tristan and Isolde are narratively identical in this way. With Tristan
dead in her arms, Isolde cannot bear the weight of mortal life and so embraces death in
order to join with Tristan, and in Romeo and Juliet, Juliet makes the same decision with the
dead weight of Romeo in her lap.
Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet follows this narrative congruence. At the end of the
film, Juliet kills herself with Romeo’s handgun, in the Capulet tomb, in order to follow her
Romeo into a transcendent state of death, where their souls can be together as one without
the interfering burden of family politics. Luhrmann’s choice of Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ to
musically parallel the visual images here is in accordance with broad narrative congruence.
The slow unsteady track of the camera away from the two bodies suggests the passage of
the lover’s souls as they make their way to heaven, which matches the transcendent nature
of the ‘Liebestod’ at that point in the piece. The montage of Romeo and Juliet, which
suggests that they have returned to their moments of true bliss through death, begins
directly on Isolde’s last sung word “bliss!”, the word on which she dies in Wagner’s opera.
By the time the extract from the ‘Liebestod’ fades in to full volume (on Isolde’s word
“unconscious”), the ‘Love’s Bliss’ motif becomes the strongest element of the music.
Luhrmann is using Wagner’s musical flashback to parallel his visual flashback here, as the
return of the ‘Love’s Bliss’ motif at the end of the ‘Liebestod’ evokes Act II of Tristan and
Isolde, which was the lover’s happiest time together. In a multi-layered example of
narrative congruence (encompassing ancient Celtic myth and other sources, Shakespeare’s
text, Wagner’s music, Wagner’s libretto, and Luhrmann’s imagery), the musical ‘Love’s
Bliss’ motif synaesthetically connects with the montage of visual images drawn from
Romeo and Juliet’s blissful love.
The final shot of Romeo and Juliet’s dead bodies, from a camera now suspended
some fifty feet above them, encompasses hundreds of the candles covering the floor of the
crypt, and the effect of the glittering candles is to show Romeo and Juliet embraced in a
field of stars (see Illustration 18). Romeo and Juliet have clearly reached the heavens
together. The final suspended, frozen kiss underwater, with the water bubbles matching the
star-effect of the candles, indicates that Romeo and Juliet’s unity has passed beyond time
into eternity. Again, this is perfectly timed with the penultimate chord of the ‘Liebestod’,
when all chromatic discord has been resolved. Interestingly, Luhrmann has excised the final
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‘Tristan Chord’ progression from his film version, and the ‘Liebestod’ moves
directly into the three final resolving chords. The non-diegetic source of the music, coupled
with the transcendent nature of both the sonic and the visual texts, suggests that the
‘Liebestod’ is metadiegetic music.
In addition to the narrative congruence, it is in Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet that
Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ reaches its fullest recontextualisation as popular music. Romeo +
Juliet arguably stands as a late twentieth-century benchmark in popular culture. Critics
either celebrated or reviled Luhrmann’s film for its pop culture excesses, but they were
unanimous in their recognition that Romeo + Juliet captured the zeitgeist of 1996 pop
culture. Leah Rozen, writing for People Magazine, complains that
. . . you might mistake this audacious version of his [Shakespeare’s] tale of star-crossed lovers for an
extended music video. Loud, garish, violent and determinedly in-your-face, it more accurately should
be billed Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet (sic). (1996)

Roger Ebert also complains that Luhrmann’s film is a “punk rock version of ‘Romeo &
Juliet’” (1996), and suggests that the marketing of the film is skewed towards a “promise of
gang wars, MTV-style” (ibid). Drobnic (writing for the Weekly Wire ezine), is a little more
enthusiastic:
Updated to modern Miami Beach, this one has all the pop and zip one would expect from a tale of
family feud, star-crossed lovers and bloodthirsty vengeance. Lots of music, fast cuts and super-artsy
sets and costumes make it the lively adventure it was meant to be. Call it Natural Born Killers
meets Stratford-Upon-Avon, a kind of Shakespeare MTV. (1996)

Ray Greene, under the auspices of Boxoffice Magazine, identifies even more intertextual
influences in his review:
Now comes “Strictly Ballroom” director Baz Luhrmann’s 90s rendering of what he calls “William
Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet”, a gun-crazy, up-to-the-minute cine-collage with art direction that
crosses “Reservoir Dogs” and “Mad Max”, camerawork and editing blending Hong Kong action ace
John Woo with Jean-Luc Godard, and a grafted-on recasting of Shakespeare’s event structure by way
of urban-themed `70s-era TV shows like “Baretta” and “Starsky and Hutch”. Post-modernism and
the odd inflection borrowed from MTV struggle for mastery here, creating visual pastiche of a very
high order – a gleeful pictorial souffle comprised of contemporary movie violence and Elizabethan
melodrama that succeeds quite nicely as long as Luhrmann sticks to his (very large) guns. (1996)

Sean Means seems to concur with Greene’s list of influences:

You could spend a week nailing down the visual and pop-culture influences within William
Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet – Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, John Woo and Quentin
Tarantino movies, episodes of “Dynasty” and “Miami Vice”, Harold Robbins potboilers, and a
strong Jesuit training – and you still wouldn’t fully comprehend the overpowering fervor within.
(1996)
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Many other critics used the reference to MTV as convenient shorthand for Romeo + Juliet’s
pop culture context. Doug Thomas (Cinemaven Online) points out that Kenneth Branagh’s
film Henry V
. . . doesn’t hold a candle to the new champion of Shakespeare for MTV fans. “William
Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet” ( out of four) is a daring, original-text version of the play
from “Strictly Ballroom” creator Baz Luhrmann. His star-crossed lovers live in Verona Beach, a
bustling, smarmy, sun-drenched town (shot in Mexico City) set to pulse-pounding music, giddily
sped up action and cheeky humour. In many ways it plays like an MTV video. (1996)

Andy Jones (Rough Cut magazine) writes

Somewhere between Prospero’s Books and West Side Story on acid lies this hyperventilated,
surreal, technicolor-splashed version of Romeo and Juliet for the MTV-set. It’s a tasty bit of eye
candy with a post-modern edge . . . (1996)

Empire Magazine succinctly sums up the recontextualisation of Shakespeare’s play in a pop

culture context:
The Bard’s tale of tragic young love is once again made contemporary, this time by the man behind
the Aussie winner, “Strictly Ballroom”. As the MTV-style editing kicks in, Baz Luhrmann takes the
audience on a unique ride through one of Shakespeare's best-known texts, illuminating the story,
occasionally subjugating the language, but always delivering a vision that is bold, accessible and, in
a strange way, just right. Luhrmann has contextualised the text in a modern visual idiom; Verona has
become Verona Beach, and while a rapier is still a weapon it’s now a brand of handgun. (1996)

The constant reference to MTV in connection with Romeo + Juliet in part

acknowledges the strong role that music plays in the film. The soundtrack to Romeo +
Juliet is full of artists considered to be on the leading edge of pop culture in 1996, including
the massively popular Radiohead, Garbage, Everclear, and the Butthole Surfers. The first
soundtrack CD spawned six hit singles, and the first soundtrack (of two) went on to be one
of the most popular film soundtracks of the 1990s, selling over five million copies
(quintuple platinum) within a year of release (Mengel, 1997: 15). As a musical context,
Romeo + Juliet could not get any more popular or contemporary, and the film plays as a
dizzying visual and sonic montage of pop culture images and sounds. At the film’s climax,
its most crucial and emotional moment, and after two hours of leading edge pop music, the
final piece of music played in the film is Richard Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’. The choice of
Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ as the last piece of music heard in Romeo + Juliet, given its musical
context of absolutely current pop music and given Luhrmann’s willingness to use
composed score music elsewhere in the film, strongly suggests its role as recontextualised
popular music.
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To consolidate this pop status, Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ is presented in Romeo + Juliet

in very much the same way as all the other pop tracks in the film. Just a portion of the
music is actually heard in the film, like most pop songs, whose on-film sonic presence
sometimes lasts only a few bars. The constant reference to ‘MTV-style’ editing in reviews
of Romeo + Juliet refers to Luhrmann’s tendency to reverse the usual image-sound
relationship in film, and allow the music to dictate the visual image as it does in music
videos. Luhrmann’s use of Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ is no exception, with the final visual
montage of Romeo and Juliet’s transcendent bliss carefully edited to match Isolde’s sung
last word. In a way Luhrmann has offered a fragment of a ‘Liebestod’ video, suggesting
that Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ is just a pop song like any other in the film, recontextualised in
popular culture. The entire end sequence that features the extract from Wagner’s
‘Liebestod’ is even offered as a track on the second soundtrack album, along with extended
remix singles by the Butthole Surfers & The Dust Brothers.
The overall effect of Luhrmann’s perfect narrative congruence seems startling, even
for a film notable for its impressive visual effects and set pieces. Reviewer Evan Williams,
who disliked the film, admits that “. . . Luhrmann gives us a supremely beautiful image of
the lovers in their deathly embrace; we are wrenched by the sadness of the tale . . .” (1996).
Thomas writes:
If the jumble of music, sound and arresting visuals is too jarring and confusing at the beginning, it
reaches the level of a fever dream in the end, a dazzling fusion of emotion and vigor. It leads to an
astonishing, powerful finale. Whether you are unfamiliar with the material or have seen the play
several times, Luhrmann’s heartbreaking, confident deathbed sequence is a knockout. I’ve not been
with an audience so overwhelmed by a finale all year. (1996)

Luhrmann’s fusion of all audio-visual texts in this final musical sequence, and its apparent
resonance with audiences, suggests that the ‘Liebestod’ clip from Romeo + Juliet achieves
more than the mere combination of its parts. The sequence achieves an emotive affect that
cannot be qualified through semiotics and can only be explained via Barthes’s Third
Meaning. It is of course fitting that Luhrmann’s sonic and visual fusion on the theme of
transcendence should itself transcend its media material.
In 1997, Lahiff’s film Heaven’s Burning continued the tradition of narrative
congruence, incorporating much of the same automotive imagery used so effectively in
Roddam’s ‘Liebestod’ clip for Aria. Lahiff’s use of the entire ‘Liebestod’, albeit in an
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instrumental version, allowed for greater expression than Luhrmann, and Wagner’s
‘Liebestod’ came one step closer to achieving status as a pop culture metaleitmotif.
Heaven’s Burning is an Australian road movie, following the adventures of Colin
(Russell Crowe), a local tough with a talent for driving, and Midori (Youki Kudoh), a
Japanese housewife who has just left her businessman husband. Colin falls foul of a local
crime boss by killing his son after a botched bank robbery (which resulted in Midori being
held hostage), and so both Colin and Midori end up being chased by the police, the local
Australian mob, and Midori’s psychotic and cuckolded husband Yukio (Kenji Isomura).
Along the way Colin and Midori fall in love, in spite of their cultural differences, as Colin
reveals his tender side (notably through a visit with his estranged father) and Midori reveals
her wild side (as evidenced by her new peroxide-blond hair colour).
Eventually Colin and Midori publicly celebrate their new-found love for each other
at a local dance, with Midori fetchingly dressed in an antique wedding gown found in a
local shop. After a slow dance together, Midori’s husband finally catches up with them and
shoots both Colin and Midori, but is himself shot dead by Midori (Video Clip 34). Both
badly wounded and dying, Midori and Colin continue their journey to the beach, a nostalgic
destination for Colin since the middle of the film. The couple are pursued by the two
detectives who have shadowed them since the beginning, Bishop (Anthony Phelan) and his
younger partner Moffat (Matthew Dyktynski). As Midori speeds away down the highway,
the police in hot pursuit complete with helicopter, Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ begins, performed
non-diegetically. As the music fades in, Midori and Colin have this dialogue concerning the
beach, their ultimate destination:
Midori: Tell me . . .
Colin: Tell you?
Midori: Tell me about the beach.
Colin: About the beach! This is the first beach I ever went to, with my Mum and Dad, and my
sister.
I didn’t know it was going to be so big. It just went on and on. The horizon made me happy.
Midori: Happy?
Colin: It meant there were other places to go. Places I didn’t know anything about. The beach
makes things better. It fixes things. You wait.

The car chase finally reaches the beach, after winding down a coastal road. Several shots of
the chase are given from various perspectives, including one from the police helicopter.
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Colin and Midori are both bleeding heavily and going into shock, and both are nearly
unconscious during this entire chase sequence, with Colin looking sleepy and almost
tranquil. On the beach access road the police veer off to try a different approach on an
adjacent side road, and when the two roads connect again, Colin and Midori’s car is thrown
into a barrel roll through the near-collision. The first spectacular roll of the car is timed to
match the first ‘wave’ chord of the ‘Liebestod’ that acts as the first substantial climax,
immediately prior to the ‘Love’s Bliss’ motif. Colin and Midori’s car comes to rest, upside
down, in the beach sand, and an upside-down shot of the beach is given from Colin and
Midori’s inverted perspective. The two detectives approach, but Colin’s old car has cracked
its petrol tank, and the leaking petrol catches fire through an electrical short.
As the fire begins to burn around and on the car, and the ‘Liebestod’ begins its final
run of the ‘Love’s Bliss’ motif fragment, Midori has only eyes for Colin, who is
unconscious as a result of the crash. She slowly touches her fingers to her lips, and then
tastes his blood on her fingertips, as a final kiss. Picking up the handgun kept in the car,
Midori raises the gun to her head and pulls the trigger, but the gunshot is only heard, not
seen. The camera has cut to a shot from the perspective of the detectives who have retreated
to a safe distance to see if the car explodes, and the gunshot is timed to go off a half-beat
before the first of the huge G# chords that resolves the ‘Liebestod’(timed, in other words, to
occur simultaneously while still allowing both to be heard). Returning again to the car
interior, a close-up of Midori is given while the other four climactic chords of the
‘Liebestod’ are heard. Midori is shown dead, with her eyes open, blood on her face, her
hands clasped together, with the light of the flames flickering on her face like candlelight.
Outside the car, the detectives throw themselves down in the sand in anticipation,
and the car duly explodes in an impressive fireball. With the heavily burning car throwing
off billowing clouds of black smoke in the background, the elder detective Bishop
resignedly swings himself in a sitting position and looks away, off to sea, with a sad
expression. The final, slow repetitions of the ‘Love’s Bliss’ motif are heard. Bishop gives
the impression that the seemingly unnecessary loss of life has hit him hard, and he
apparently fails to see the point of even standing up, given the finality of the gunshot and
the explosion. The shot switches to a medium-long shot some distance above the breaking
surf, and the camera slowly and unsteadily tracks away from the scene of the burning car,
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off to sea, while the final ‘Tristan Chord’ progression and the final chords of the
‘Liebestod’ are played.
Heaven’s Burning is a peculiar film that was not successful either with critics or the
box office, and was categorised as being typically Australian by overseas reviewers
(Kirkland, 1998; Stone, 1998). Kirkland in fact described it as a “. . . wacky, stylized film”
and “a sensationalistic romp that trades on tawdry romance, senseless crime and wanton
death” (ibid). Heaven’s Burning is also interesting in its use of Wagner’s ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ as well as the ‘Liebestod’, and the different ways in which these two pieces of
music were used illustrates the unevenness of the film. As mentioned in the previous
chapter, Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ is played (on an accordion) largely as comic
relief, as is befitting the use of a metaleitmotif in a film. The ‘Liebestod’, however, not only
is delivered with narrative congruence, but Lahiff’s tone is decidedly serious, and the film’s
‘Liebestod’ sequence gives Heaven’s Burning a tragic and poignant conclusion.
Lahiff maintains the overall narrative congruence established by Wagner and
followed, directly or indirectly, by Siodmak, Roddam, Schroeder, Donaldson, and
Luhrmann. Heaven’s Burning, like most road movies, follows the story of two star-crossed
lovers, who are destined for emotional frustration in their mortal lives due to political and
cultural differences: she is Eastern and married; he is Western; and both have broken the
law. Midori is thus playing the Isolde/Juliet role, and Colin is following Tristan and Romeo.
Like Tristan and Isolde and Romeo + Juliet before it, the third act of Heaven’s Burning
finds the two lovers alone, contemplating death and the role it is playing in their love for
one another. Much of the visual imagery employed by Lahiff in the ‘Liebestod’ sequence is
remarkably similar to that used in Roddam’s Aria segment, and Luhrmann’s Romeo +
Juliet. The car chase sequence is strongly reminiscent of the opening car sequence from
Roddam’s Aria contribution. Both feature tight shots of car interiors as the ‘Liebestod’
plays non-diegetically and/or metadiegetically in the film. The car interior set-up suggests
personal intimacy, and this is congruent with the anaphonic affect in the music.
Lahiff establishes several layers of narrative congruence in his ‘Liebestod’
sequence. Colin and Midori, although seriously wounded and bleeding to death, are
desperately trying to reach their goal of getting to the beach, and by extension to the ocean.
This desperation translates to tension on the screen, as the desire and longing for the beach
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is apparent in Midori’s effort to remain conscious enough to reach the sand. This longing is
accentuated by the physical pain that both Colin and Midori are suffering as a result of
being shot, and the emotional pain and mutual longing both are sharing as a result of their
love being thwarted by the police and Midori’s (now) ex-husband. Tension is also created
through the car chase trope. This multi-layered pain and longing is narratively congruent
with the longing and suffering experienced by Isolde as she sings her ‘Liebestod’ in
Wagner’s opera.
In addition, Midori is shown expressing more pain than Colin, who has slipped so
deeply into shock as to be almost beyond pain. He wears a beatific, half-unconscious look
on his face and keeps his eyes largely closed, suggesting a satisfaction with the fact that his
lover Midori is at least making the effort. This is congruent with Wagner’s original libretto
and stage directions, which have Tristan already dead in Isolde’s arms as she sings. Just as
Isolde is left alone with the burden of dealing with the aftermath of Tristan’s death, so is
Midori left alone with the responsibility of delivering Colin to the place that “fixes things”
and “makes things better”. Wagner’s imagery is evoked in Colin and Midori’s earlier
conversation, which is timed to coincide with the beginning of the ‘Liebestod’ music. Colin
talks about the size of the ocean horizon, and how it made him happy because it held the
promise of brave new worlds, about which he could know nothing. This parallels Wagner’s
libretto, in which he describes the transcendent new world of boundless love with an
oceanic metaphor, of “drowning” and “sinking” in a “vast wave” and “surging swell”
(Salter, 1966). Wagner’s ocean metaphor was inspired by the philosophy of Schopenhauer
and by Buddhist teachings25 (Rose, 1981: 12, 16; Newman, 1949: 204, 701; Robb, 1965: xi-
xiii; von Westernhagen, 1978: 255), both of which were having a tremendous influence on
him at the time of Tristan and Isolde (Gregor-Dellin, 1983: 256-268; Mann, 1981: 4; Stein,
1960: 131; Kunze, 1983: 47; von Westernhagen, 1978: 231).
As the musical climax of the ‘Liebestod’ approaches, Lahiff finds a visual
congruence with Wagner’s musical representation of tension and anticipation in this scene,
as the leaking petrol ignites and begins to burn on and around the car. Years of film-

25
Rose states: “Much of his symbolic interpretation of the drama [Tristan and Isolde] in the light of Schopenhauer and Buddhism,
can be read his fascinating letters to Mathilde Wesendonck and to Liszt . . . In his programme notes for the Prelude, he touched upon
musical and poetic elements that apply to the whole work” (1981: 16). Rose then cites a long passage from these notes, in which
Wagner discusses the ‘Desire’ motif in terms of “that unslaked longing swell”, “the heart sinks back”, and “a path into the sea of
endless love’s delight” (ibid, emphasis added).
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watching experience, supported by common sense, inform the audience that the car is about
to explode, and that the lives of the car’s occupants are in immediate danger. This
musical/visual tension is enhanced by the approach of the policemen, as the audience
wonders if they will rescue the couple in time, or instead be killed also by the blast. Midori
finds even deeper narrative congruence with Isolde and Juliet in these seconds of musical
and visual tension. Finding Colin dead or unconscious beside her, Midori finds herself in
the same position as Isolde and Juliet, still alive after her lover has gone on into death
without her. As the ‘Liebestod’ slows down in agonised anticipation of the musical
resolution, Midori lifts the handgun with the same degree of tension-filled deliberation.
Lahiff is visually articulating the tension of Wagner’s music as the ability of Midori to find
the strength to aim and shoot the gun becomes an issue. The resulting gunshot, offered so
close to the first of the resolving G# chords, explicitly connects Wagner’s musical and
narrative resolution and Lahiff’s visual and narrative resolution. In the same moment that
the ‘Liebestod’ is musically resolved, Midori’s life has also finally resolved, finding the
strength to follow Colin into death at last. The slow pan close-up shot of Midori in death,
beautifully lit, offers a congruent visual image to the four resolving climactic chords of the
‘Liebestod’ and beginning of the mystical, transcendent ‘Love’s Bliss’ motif repetition. The
close-up of Midori’s gently clasped hands and open, blank eyes suggest an inner peace and
reflection only possible in a transcendent, metaphysical plane. Lahiff communicates
through this shot the notion that Midori has successfully satisfied her physical and
emotional longing by escaping into death, in direct narrative congruence with Wagner’s
original musical intentions.
In the musical and visual denouement to this sequence, Lahiff still observes
narrative congruence with Wagner’s vision. The loud violence of the car explosion falls
neatly into the musical pause just before the beginning of the sustained, suspended
woodwind phrases that precede the ‘Love’s Bliss’ motif. As the slow, ‘Love’s Bliss’ motifs
unwind, detective Bishop sits in the sand and looks sadly away, a visual articulation of
Wagner’s musical expression of physical resolution and transcendence. Bishop knows that
Midori and Colin are dead and thus are paradoxically together and forever separated, and
the heavy knowledge of this tragic end is clear in his facial and body language. His
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touching reluctance to get to his feet gives his character back much of the dignity lost in his
graceless fall to the sand seconds earlier, in self-defence from the exploding car.
The final slow, unsteady tracking shot away from the beach echoes Luhrmann’s
final slow, unsteady tracking shot in Romeo + Juliet. Lahiff’s tracking shot is equally
effective for the same reasons of narrative congruence. The slow moment of the camera
away from the beach, which anaphonically matches the speed of the music, seems to
parallel the slow passage of Midori and Colin’s joined souls away from the physical world.
The final passage of the camera over the ocean is fitting, especially given Colin’s
comments about the ocean horizon and their narrative congruence with Wagner’s libretto.
The ocean is traditionally a visual metaphor for chaos and eternity in ancient mythology
(e.g. Genesis 1.2), and Wagner was inclined to use oceanic vocabulary to communicate
Schopenhauerian and Buddhist philosophy, as discussed earlier. Thus Isolde’s last sung
phrase describes her transcendent journey into death in terms of “waves of refreshing
breezes” and a desire to sink and drown in “the surging swell . . . in the vast wave of the
world’s breath” (Salter, 1966). Lahiff is observing narrative congruence with Wagner’s
texts (music and libretto) right up to the last image of his film.
Lahiff’s use of Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ in Heaven’s Burning is a good example of
how the effective use of musical-visual narrative congruence can transform a film about
love into an epic statement about Love, in accordance with Flinn (1992) and Dyer’s (1981)
respective comments on musical Utopia. The tension and violence of the car chase to the
beach, and the resulting violent death of Midori and Colin, are transformed from a sordid
incident of violent crime into a grand example of Tragedy, on a large emotional scale,
through Wagner’s music. Some confirmation of this can be gleaned from detective
Bishop’s reaction to the deaths of his suspects in the car, in his inability to find the
emotional strength to stand. Bishop seems to be mourning Colin and Midori in the way that
he hangs his head (in manner befitting his ecclesiastical name) but also seems to be
overwhelmed by the Epic scale of Colin and Midori’s death, and of their decision to choose
a transcendental, mystical union.
To sum up: Heaven’s Burning demonstrates a continuing musical narrative
congruence for Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’, which is also displayed to a significant extent by
Christmas Holiday, Aria, Reversal of Fortune, Species, and Romeo + Juliet. Wagner
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himself developed the narrative from ancient Celtic myth, filtered through numerous
medieval authors, notably Gottfried, making his musical narrative an intertextual reference
reaching back to the early eleventh century. All six of these twentieth century films offer
similar visual imagery for Wagner’s music: the doomed love between a man and a woman,
who struggle against various societal pressures in order to be together. In each film, death is
the only solution to their love, a death invariably found by at least one of the couple, and
usually the male. In films where the final musical phrases of the ‘Liebestod’ are used (Aria,
Romeo + Juliet, Heaven’s Burning), the imagery is that of metaphysical transcendence,
recognising Wagner’s specific narrative associations for that music in Tristan and Isolde.
As a result, Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ has an undeniable presence in popular culture. In
the small, elitist world of classical musicians, Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ has metaleitmotif
qualities, standing for transcendent love. And yet, in spite of the clarity and accuracy of this
narrative congruence, and the purity of this tmesis’ intertextual reference, Wagner’s
‘Liebestod’ appears to be one step away from becoming an established metaleitmotif in
popular culture. Its use in Heaven’s Burning is fascinating in its contrast with Wagner’s
‘Ride of the Valkyries’, which is used as a metaleitmotif to full comedic effect. This inter-
film comparison underlines the difference between these two pieces of music, and the
crucial step in narrative congruence between a metaleitmotif and a metaleitmotif-in-
waiting. Since 1979, ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ has referenced Apocalypse Now as much as it
references The Valkyrie, in the same way that Strauss’s ‘Introduction’ references 2001: A
Space Odyssey as much as it references Also sprach Zarathustra. Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’
lacks only that single large, consolidating film to achieve this status, after which the music
would synaesthetically fuse with the visual image to such a degree that one would be
instantly associable with the other. Box office success, and the volume of audience that
implies, plays a factor in this. None of the ‘Liebestod’s films have achieved the kind of
critical or box office success necessary to consolidate that director’s visual image as a
‘Liebestod’ metaleitmotif. While all the films are faithful to Wagner’s vision, Heaven’s
Burning does not specifically reference, for example, Romeo + Juliet. The faithfulness to
narrative congruence demonstrated by the film directors discussed above, however,
suggests that this final stage in the evolution of Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ in popular culture
will not be long.
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Conclusion

The evolution of the music texts examined demonstrates a direct or indirect

application of narrative congruence in the pursuit of ‘metaleitmotif’ status. The
theoretical trajectory that explains how classical music and visual image can aspire to
‘metaleitmotif’ status as a result of perceived narrative congruence can be retraced
through this thesis. The fusion of audio and visual media texts is amply supported by
both musicology and visually-hegemonic film music theory, before ultimately finding its
proper theoretical context in applied pop culture intertextuality theory and a
metasemiotic aesthetic.
The ‘Liebestod’ from Wagner’s opera Tristan and Isolde, Wagner’s ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ from The Valkyrie, and the ‘Introduction’ from Strauss’s Also sprach
Zarathustra all present degrees of narrative congruence between their composer’s
original narrative intentions (themselves drawn from ancient mythology and history),
and their subsequent recontextualisations in feature film narratives. Directly or
indirectly, the films that employ these pieces of music have retained some significant
narrative congruence with an original, contemporaneous reading of the music, regardless
of how banal or ironic the application of that music might appear.
Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ musically represents the metaphysical culmination of the
love between Tristan and Isolde, an archetypical love story that has endured centuries of
oral and written communication. Through composite anaphones, Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’
musically communicates abstract, emotive content such as Love, Longing, Grief, and a
feeling of physical transcendence. This is combined with Wagner’s visual narrative,
which involves a man and a woman deeply in love with each other, in spite of the array
of social and political forces massed against them. In Wagner’s musical and visual
narratives, the only resolution to a love this profound and intense is death, the only state
in which complete emotional and spiritual union can be realised. Wagner’s basic
narrative is consistent with all his ancient and medieval sources, including the version of
Tristan and Isolde by Gottfried von Strassburg.
This basic narrative can be found to some degree, seriously or ironically, in a
possible reading of all of the film texts examined in Chapter 7: Christmas Holiday, Aria,
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Reversal of Fortune, Species, Romeo + Juliet, and Heaven’s Burning. In Christmas

Holiday, Robert and Jackie apparently play the roles of Tristan and Isolde, and
presumably the film noir genre of Christmas Holiday suggests that death finds at least
one if not both of the lovers. In Roddam’s ‘Liebestod’ segment of Aria, two nameless
lovers carry out a death-pact with each other in Las Vegas, finding release and
transcendence in each other’s arms. Reversal of Fortune suggests that Claus and Sunny
von Bülow could be cast in the roles of Tristan and Isolde, with Sunny finding the
oblivion she so desperately sought in an insulin-induced coma. The alien Sil plays Isolde
to Carey’s Tristan in the science-fiction horror film Species, with both lovers eventually
finding death in their pursuit of love. In Romeo + Juliet, the close narrative similarity
between the main characters of this eponymous play and those in Tristan and Isolde are
expressed in beautifully-realised imagery at the film’s conclusion, with Romeo and
Juliet finding transcendent union in a field of candle-stars. Lastly, in Heaven’s Burning,
Colin and Midori play Tristan and Isolde, finally leaving the physical bounds of law and
family for an eternal union in death at the end of a car chase to the beach.
After its use as an intertextual reference in these films, Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’
emerges as music on the verge of becoming a metaleitmotif, in which the contextual film
is referenced as much as the music’s own inherent codes. In his film Romeo + Juliet,
Luhrmann’s use of the ‘Liebestod’ seems to have established its new context as pop
music, employed and consumed in the same manner as other Romeo + Juliet soundtrack
singles by Radiohead and the Butthole Surfers.
Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ is thus shown to be much more than a disposable, “blank”
(Jameson, 1991: 197) and casual musical joke, and instead a different reading of this text
– that of a complex, tightly coiled intertextual reference – emerges.
Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ follows a similar pattern, spread out amongst a
greater number of films. As with his Tristan and Isolde, Wagner based his 1856 opera
The Valkyrie on mythology for his narrative sources, basing characters such as Wotan
and Brünnhilde on ancient Teutonic myths found in poems like Das Niebelungenlied.
The characters of the Valkyries and their visual representation can be traced through
Wagner’s music in ‘Ride of the Valkyries’: Valkyries are strong, heavily armed and
armoured, noisy warrior women, who ride through the sky on armoured horses.
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Valkyries are arrogant and confident in their tasks, which include gathering up dead
human warriors from the battlegrounds on which they have fallen. Wagner musically
expressed this narrative in ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ though sonic, kinetic, tactile and
composite anaphones and genre synecdoche. Subsequently, from D.W. Griffith’s The
Birth of a Nation in 1915 through Bugs Bunny in ‘What’s Opera, Doc?’ (1957) to South
Park in 1998 (as well as the other sixteen film texts examined in this case history), the
‘Ride of the Valkyries’ has enjoyed varying degrees of narrative congruence with
Wagner’s original narrative intentions. In The Birth of a Nation, Ben Cameron is cast as
a Brünnhilde-figure, the leader of Valkyries recontextualised as mounted Ku Klux Klan,
who ride into the battlefield of Piedmont to engage in battle while ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ is heard. Bugs Bunny becomes Brünnhilde so recognisably that Elmer Fudd
the Teutonic God knows her by name, in ‘What’s Opera, Doc?’ Even in ‘The Mexican
Staring Frog Of Southern Sri Lanka’ episode of South Park, Jimbo and Ned are
portrayed as warriors who descend to the battlefield in an armed and armoured
helicopter, to spread death and destruction to the tune of ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ (albeit
orchestrated for a Deliverance-style banjo).
The defining film for Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ status as a metaleitmotif
in popular culture was Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979). So close was Coppola’s
narrative congruence with Wagner, and so evenly-weighted was the mutually-implied
play of music and visual image in this sequence, that ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ became
commonly associated with Apocalypse Now and, by extension in pop culture, the
Vietnam War. Thanks to Apocalypse Now, ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ can be seen as a
metaleitmotif in popular culture, a self-referential iconic particle in the metasemiotic
fabric of intertextual media texts. Sonic references to ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, especially
as a multimedia tmesis in a feature film, now very probably bring with them associations
of Apocalypse Now and the Vietnam War, although the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ narrative
in Apocalypse Now (visual and thematic) can be seen as Wagner’s original narrative
updated by Coppola’s apparently faithful narrative congruence. In spite of the humorous,
throw-away nature of Wagner’s music in texts such as South Park and The Simpsons,
‘Ride of the Valkyries’ can now be seen as a semiotically complicated, theoretically
sophisticated exercise in pop culture intertextuality.
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Strauss’s ‘Introduction’ from Also sprach Zarathustra demonstrates that Wagner

is not the only composer who can write music that might evolve into a metaleitmotif.
Like Wagner, Strauss drew from older narrative material to write his Tone poem Also
sprach Zarathustra, such as the writings of Nietzsche (who in turn was referencing the
ancient religion of Zoroastrianism). The ‘Introduction’ to Also sprach Zarathustra
anaphonically communicates the narrative of ‘dawn’ and ‘enlightenment’, both
celestially and metaphorically, in terms of knowledge and/or self-awareness. One way or
another, this narrative finds degrees of congruence in all of the visual texts examined in
this case history: Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Scorsese’s Casino, Groening’s The
Simpsons, and Heckerling’s Clueless.
Kubrick’s use of Also sprach Zarathustra in 1968 arguably completed this
music’s evolution into a metaleitmotif. Kubrick seems to have followed Strauss’s and
Nietzsche’s narrative with a high degree of congruence in all three repetitions of Also
sprach Zarathustra in 2001: A Space Odyssey, using the music to complete his story
about the transcendent evolution of mankind from ape to Nietzsche’s Superman. Like
Coppola’s use of Wagner in Apocalypse Now, Kubrick’s effective deployment of
narrative congruence in 2001: A Space Odyssey was so effective and so striking, that
Also sprach Zarathustra emerged for some audiences as a metaleitmotif. From 1968
onwards, employing Also sprach Zarathustra as an intertextual reference or multimedia
tmesis would now very probably evoke Strauss’s and Nietzsche’s narrative mediated
through Kubrick’s imagery: primates, monoliths, dawns, the communication of
knowledge/enlightenment, and celestial bodies such as stars and planets.
This can be seen in Scorsese’s film Casino, where Sam Rothstein uses Also
sprach Zarathustra as the partial theme song for his TV show ‘Aces High’, designed as
a political forum for the exposure of corruption in Nevada. Rothstein is promoting the
dawn of political consciousness and the communication of information regarding corrupt
politicians, and his choice of music follows general narrative congruence even to the
accompanying ‘star field’ visuals. Groening’s placement of the Also sprach Zarathustra
tmesis in The Simpsons (twice) makes an even more pointed reference to 2001: A Space
Odyssey, in its recreation of that film’s opening primate sequence and closing Star Child
sequence (in each episode, respectively). Heckerling’s film Clueless uses Strauss’s Also
 305

sprach Zarathustra as a multimedia tmesis (in the same cinematic breath as a Ren &
Stimpy tmesis), but also observes a kind of ironic narrative congruence. Strauss’s music
parallels Cher’s dawning awareness and self-knowledge regarding herself and the
relationships with which she is concerned, and on a smaller scale, with the receipt of
information via the modern incarnation of Kubrick’s monoliths, the cordless telephone.
With the inclusion of Also sprach Zarathustra into the pop culture context of Clueless,
along with additional musical tmeses by The Muffs and Cracker, Strauss’s music is
consolidated as a recontextualised pop music metaleitmotif for many audiences.
Once again, instead of a dismissible musical cliché, Strauss’s Also sprach
Zarathustra can be read as a rich, semiotically dense intertextual reference.
All three case histories demonstrate that these readings of the complex
combination of classical music and film reward substantial semiotic unpacking and are
characterised by multiple layers of semiotic relationships. The textual sophistication of
this multimedia combination is fully supported by three cross-disciplinary theoretical
axes (although within these axes, some additional theoretical tools are proposed):
intertextuality/pop culture theory, popular music theory, and film (and film music)
theory.
Current film music theory is revealed to be well behind the times in the analysis
of the rich and subtle relationship between classical music and film, choosing instead to
concentrate on musical scores composed specifically as background music for particular
films. Most film music theory is derived from a visually hegemonic ideological stance,
suffering what Gorbman calls “visual chauvinism” (1987: 2), and most classical music is
clearly considered too culturally independent to fit comfortably into this hegemonic
position. In spite of the wide-spread neglect in taking the classical music and film media
combination seriously, film music theory nonetheless offers at least three theoretical
tools that can be profitably applied to the combination of classical music and film:
musical narrative, mutual implication, and the issue of diegesis. All of these theoretical
tools proved invaluable in the analysis of the three case histories summarised above.
Identifying the diegetic source of classical music in a film is necessary in order
to assess its narrative content accurately, and the body of theoretical writing on the
question of musical diegesis is well-developed. Gorbman writes of “metadiegetic” music
 306

(1987: 22), which she defines as the “musical thoughts” of a diegetic film character
(ibid). In this way, metadiegetic classical music has its diegetic roots both inside and
outside the diegesis of the film: the psychological source of the music is diegetic (the
minds of the characters) and yet the technical source is non-diegetic, being of soundtrack
volume and quality.
Mutual implication is also a theory explored by Gorbman (1987: 15) and
independently by Tagg, who calls it “The Letter Example” (1992a: 19). Mutual
implication states that in the combination of music and filmic visual image, that music
will have an effect on the visual image at the same time and to the same degree that the
visual image will have an effect on the music (Gorbman, 1987: 15-16). This crucial
theoretical tool has wide-spread applications and ramifications not realised in either
Gorbman or Tagg’s respective works. Both Gorbman and Tagg (respectively) apply
mutual implication to variable musical texts and static visual texts, but this thesis
completes its trans-ideological application by applying variable visual texts to static
musical texts, namely, Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra, and Wagner’s ‘Ride of the
Valkyries’ and the ‘Liebestod’. Mutual implication also suggests that musicology is as
relevant a theoretical context as film studies, when analysing film music combinations,
and that an evenly-weighted free-play of theoretical contributions from both musicology
and film studies provides a profitable assessment of film-music media. In addition, the
important role that music and musically-hegemonic textual analysis plays in popular
culture suggests that mutual implication might have larger applications in the fields of
film, music video, television, and advertising: ads can be consumed equally as film clips
or music videos; film can be consumed as music, and music as film. This suggests a
profound shift in pop culture media text consumption politics, and further supports the
notion of a self-conscious, metasemiotic aesthetic. Clearly, this warrants further study.
Mutual implication is also associated with the affective nature of certain music-
film combinations, where the fusion of audio and visual texts results in a whole larger
than the sum of its parts. This in turn is supported by Flinn’s work on musical utopia in
film (1992), and Dyer’s contribution to utopian theory (1981). Correlations with Negus,
Altman, and Berland (respectively) give rise to a theoretical notion best expressed by
Barthes as “The Third Meaning” (1977: 54), which is used to explain particular emotive
 307

affects in the combination of film and music that cannot be otherwise explained in
conventional semiotic terms.
The issue of musical narrative plays perhaps the most important role in the
analysis of classical music and film, the relationship between them, and their pop culture
contextual conclusion. Again, film music literature about musical narrative is relatively
extensive, but two developments are suggested in order to fully apply the theory of
musical narrative to the narrative play between two equally-weighted multimedia texts:
narrative congruence, and the metaleitmotif. As demonstrated above, narrative
congruence follows the varying degrees of general parallel between the musical
narratives of a given piece of music, and the narrative of the film into which the music is
placed or with which the music is contextually associated. Narrative congruence occurs
when the thematic and visual narratives of the film are broadly similar to those of the
music, either directly (seriously) or indirectly (ironically, comedically). This process
seems to suggest some degree of understanding of the music’s narrative by the film
director or producer in question. The extent to which narrative congruence is observed
and followed in the case history film texts arguably mitigates the chance of purely
accidental or coincidental congruence.
Musical narrative is also the source of the theory behind the metaleitmotif, the
final stage in the evolution of Strauss’s Also sprach Zarathustra and Wagner’s ‘Ride of
the Valkyries’ in popular culture. As shown above, Strauss and Wagner’s two pieces of
music have enjoyed consistent applications of narrative congruence to such a degree that
it is probable that they bring with them concrete visual imagery mediated through well-
known Hollywood films – Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Coppola’s Apocalypse
Now, respectively. Wagner’s ‘Liebestod’ demonstrates the difference between classical
music that seems to have followed narrative congruence to metaleitmotif status, and
music that has enjoyed narrative congruence but apparently not the single defining film
that metaleitmotifs seem to require to become truly self-referential in popular culture.
The metaleitmotif emerges as a component element of Eco’s “metasemiotic” (1986:
210) aesthetic, in which conscious self-referentiality plays a role in the production and
consumption of media texts in popular culture.
 308

Following the implied suggestion latent in Gorbman’s definition of mutual

implication, musicology is also brought to bear on the media combination of classical
music and film. Popular musicology in fact offers the most comprehensive and useful
theoretical tools available for the analysis of music and musical affect, in the form of
Tagg’s typology of musical signs (1992a: 22), in turn supported by Negus’s “repeated
semiotic particles” (1996: 94) and Goodwin’s typology of synaesthesia (1993a: 58-59).
This theory provides the means by which the music in the case histories can be
addressed directly, in terms conducive to its articulation in narrative and visual image.
Musical anaphones and genre synecdoches (and the mechanics of synaesthesia, which
neuropsychologically connects them to music) are particularly effective here, and much
of the musicological analysis in the case histories is couched in these terms.
The application of popular musicology to the classical music texts analysed in
the case histories is justified due to the extensive recontextualisation of classical music
as popular music in pop culture. This is examined in detail in this theory chapter, citing
the marketing and market positioning of classical music in the music industry (CDs such
as EMI’s Heavy Classix or Twilight of the Gods), the cross-over success of groups such
as Fourplay (who play the Beastie Boys as classical music) and Endorphin (who plays
Satie as drum & bass pop music), and the use of classical music sound bites in films
such as Se7en and the aforementioned case history film texts. The success of classical
music recontextualisation, and the possible role of the metaleitmotif in creating audience
recognition and consumer demand under a metasemiotic aesthetic, suggest that classical
music marketing could successfully travel in directions proposed by leading-edge pop
music marketing. This might include utilising CD-ROM and DVD technology to
combine audiovisual multimedia texts in a single hardware format, which can already be
found in enhanced CDs for bands like Regurgitator (Unit Re-Booted {1997}).
Unlike film music theory, which assumes the hegemony of the visual image, or
musicology, which often assumes the hegemony of the lyrics/libretto, intertextuality
theory has been shown to offer a useful theoretical paradigm to explain the close
relationship between film and musical texts. Intertextuality was originally a literary
theory developed by Kristeva, Barthes, Riffaterre, Derrida, and Genette, and it was
subsequently applied to cultural texts by authors such as Fiske, Goodwin, Moliterno,
 309

Eco, and McQuail. Only recently has intertextuality theory been applied to the pop
culture media texts of television and popular music, by Fiske (1987, 1989a, 1989b),
Owen (1997) and Beadle (1993) respectively, but neither author applies intertextuality
theory in any kind of formal way: their application is implied and inarticulated. This
thesis, then, offers a step towards the application of formal intertextuality theory to a
specific media form. One immediate result of this application is the identification and
definition of a common form of technologically-mediated, multimedia intertextuality,
here termed the multimedia tmesis. The multimedia tmesis has characteristics of the
palimpsest, in its cross-media technical transparency.
The net result of applying formal intertextuality theory to pop culture media
forms is a textual reading in which the blistering pace of intertextual allusions contained
in some media texts (for example, South Park or The Simpsons) is given theoretical
ratification and a context that allows the potential for understanding and catharsis,
instead of confusion. Filtered through applied pop culture intertextuality theory, films
such as Heckerling’s Clueless or Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet can be read not as pastiche
films filled with thoughtless clichés, but rather dense, multi-layered texts of evolving
intertextual references and icons. Not only are media texts such as Clueless or The
Simpsons offered as sophisticated forms of twentieth-century culture, but a new
relationship between media texts, popular culture, and cultural consumption is
suggested. This reading of pop culture suggests that this culture is radically intertextual,
and implies that intertextuality infuses all aspects of its component parts: film, music,
television, theatre, literature, advertising. All these textual forms are interrelated,
although the degrees of intertextual relationships between them have yet to be accurately
charted.
The volume of detail that fills the three case histories in this thesis explores the
varying degrees and modes of narrative congruence between music and film. The three
theoretical axes developed and expanded above, and the suggested relationship between
them, propose a new theoretical context for assessing multimedia texts in pop culture.
This thesis demonstrates that the interplay between classical music and Hollywood film
is possibly richer and more complicated than previously assumed by some film music
scholars, musicologists, and cultural analysts. In other words, one can read the use of
 310

classical music in film as but one small element in the rich texture of metasemiotic,
intertextual popular culture. Contrary to the belief of authors such as Jameson (loc. cit.),
the volume and frequency of intertextual references and multimedia tmeses in popular
culture can be seen as not merely ‘pastiche’, or characterised as empty references.
Instead, they can be seen as supporting a complex, mutually-implied mesh of continually
evolving intertextual cross-media relationships generally following the broad structural
parameters of narrative congruence. As a result, this thesis proposes several theoretical
tools to abet analysis of suggested textual readings of this kind: the multimedia tmesis,
the metaleitmotif, multimedia narrative congruence, and the reappropriation of the term
‘metasemiotic’ to describe modern pop culture and pop culture audiences in a non-
pejorative sense.
“Metasemiotic” is Eco’s description of the complex, interwoven relationships
between intertextual references in pop culture media texts (1986: 210). Eco’s
‘metasemiotic culture’ is supported by Rosen’s views on a “new aesthetic” (1997: 57)
which he seems to feels defines a new way of producing and consuming film texts
through intertextuality, and Krauth’s comments on the dissolution of high/low art
distinctions for young audiences (1998: 3). Although Eco originally coined the phrase
‘metasemiotic’ in order to disparage films by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, his
concept of a “metasemiotic culture” (1986: 210) still offers a media theory through
which most of pop culture media texts might be understood and consumed. It is
furthermore supported by the development of ‘metaleitmotif’ theory, as seen in the film
music theory chapter above. Incorporating Rosen’s comments, this entire cross-media
paradigm might be more accurately seen as part of a ‘metasemiotic aesthetic’. As Eco
predicted and Rosen confirms, not only can pop culture texts be constructed in
fundamentally intertextual terms, but one can postulate the existence of a knowing,
understanding and intertextuality-literate audience who read pop culture texts with the
assumption of intertextuality and saturated semiotic meaning. The investigation, via
audience research, of the existence of such an audience, might well form the basis of
further valuable field research. In his theoretical description of “metasemiotic” (loc.cit.)
audiences, Eco cites films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it seems clear that texts
such as The Simpsons, Apocalypse Now and 2001: A Space Odyssey (both extensively
 311

analysed in earlier case history chapters) can be considered new metasemiotic classics in
their conscious use of intertextuality. This thesis proposes that these texts might provide
new benchmarks for the analysis of audio-visual texts to come.
Clearly, metasemiotic aesthetics and a metasemiotic culture represent an interesting
context for intertextuality in popular culture and for the multimedia fusion of music and
visual image examined in this thesis. Pop culture can be seen as metasemiotic in nature, and
both (pop culture and metasemiotics) can be defined in terms of intertextuality.
Metasemiotic aesthetics claims that pop culture audiences are consciously semiotic, and can
be consciously self-referential in their consumption and use of pop culture media texts.
Metasemiotic aesthetics and the intertextuality theory that supports it, thus emerge as useful
theoretical contexts for the analysis of media texts in popular culture. The richness and
complexity of the relationships between pop culture media texts, intertextuality, and
metasemiotic aesthetics – ideally quantified with empirical data – promises a direction
with huge potential for exciting new research.
 312

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