Music in The Sopranos: Offering Humanity in a Show Absent of It

                If you’re looking for a show that explores the kindness and generosity of the human spirit, than The Sopranos is not your best option. David Chase's television classic focuses on the anxieties and personal struggles of middle aged mobster Tony Soprano, played by James Gandolfini, as he goes through therapy. The show's viewpoint of people and the psychological makeup that makes them tick is deeply pessimistic. Everyone is selfish and self-serving. Conversations are not exchanges of thoughts and ideas as much as a series of thoughts spoken aloud to one another with little to no value given to what the other participant says. Characters store emotions up inside of them for years until they explode, often at the expense of people entirely uninvolved with the situation. And by the end of the show, many characters who claimed to have changed themselves and their evil ways find themselves in a far worse place than they ever started. There are moments of empathy and humanity, and these scenes are indeed powerful, but they are few and far between, more often the exception to the rule. Basically, the show seems to believe that people are often no good. This is such a deeply pessimistic viewpoint runs the danger of being far too oppressive viewpoint. But it never does, in no small part thanks to the music.

                The use of licensed music in film and television is nothing new. Ever since movies like Mean Streets, Easy Rider and American Graffiti, licensed music has become a means of accentuating and commenting upon the emotional core of any scene in a variety of films and television shows. And certain television shows, such as LOST, Twin Peaks and Breaking Bad, have used music to great effect. But The Sopranos truly stands out amongst them all with the strength of aural landscape. Songs are deftly utilized to convey any number of sentiments. Sometimes they will be an indicator of the times or a character’s interest, such as when Britney Spears plays in the background of a fast food restaurant. Often the music is used as a means of getting into a character’s head, such as at the end of the episode Blue Comet, when a sparse piano piece lays as Tony sits on a bed alone holding onto a machine gun, his friends either fatally injured or killed. Sometimes it serves as a means of juxtaposition, such as in the pilot when a Doo-Wop song plays as Tony beats a man so he can get his money. One of the most notable uses of music is the montage that begins season two, which plays to Frank Sinatra’s “It Was A Very Good Year.”

                As we watch the characters live their everyday lives, Frank sings nostalgically about his days of youth. But intertwined with this nostalgia is a sense of melancholy. As each verse passes, the character gets older and older, yet he still finds himself dwelling on the past. The song ends in the autumn, with the character reflecting on all the good times. Autumn, the season where the weather gets colder and the plants and trees start to die. The brutal winter is not here yet, but it is on its way. But these are the good times. This may be as good as it ever gets. Revel in it, enjoy it. Because it may not always be this way. And so as we watch these characters live their everyday life, there a combined sense of comfort at how things are and one of dread for what is to come. I was able to articulate this by analyzing the song, but it is understood on an emotional level as soon as one watches it. That the show could conjure such a complex emotion out of a short three minute montage is laudable. Magical moments like this are strewn all over The Sopranos seven year run, to the point where it makes the perfect mesh of song and image seem easy.

                There is such a consistency to the one of the music, with much of the selections being a heavy dose of classic rocks songs such as The Rolling Stones and The Kings mixed with a hint of deeply humanistic, sometimes spiritual songs. The music landscape almost becomes, if not another character, than an entirely different viewpoint for the show to articulate and further its overall perspective. A song does not only comment and accentuate the single scene it plays against; it works alongside the established musical palette  and deepens our understanding of the overall show. The song selections come together and form a shading of the show’s viewpoint as important and tangible as the writing, acting and cinematography. And whereas the other shadings of this perspective typically work to further the show’s pessimistic declaration of humanity, the music instead offers with a deeply emotional and sentimental tone that allows us to enjoy the characters and occasionally empathize with them. This is not the only aspect of the show to make these characters and the shows viewpoint tolerable, humor also being quite important to what makes the show work, but it may be the most affective one. 

The Sixth Sense is just so good!

I stumbled across  "The Sixth Sense" the other night, and with that being about the fifth time seeing it, it still managed to blow my mind. In case you haven't seen this thriller, (which I HIGHLY recommend you should) here is the plot in a nutshell...    A children's psychologist played by Bruce Willis, becomes heavily attached to one child's problem when the boy, (Haley Joel Osment) begins to claim that he sees "dead people" walking around his presence. During his case, the doctor's marriage begins to crumble, as he focuses too heavily on the child's issue.      

To begin the review, all I have to say is "woah," what an incredible ending. Every time the ending concludes, I just say to myself that it may very well be the best conclusion of any thriller to this day. It is simply moving and powerful, but words do not do it enough justice. I am obviously not going to spoil anything from the film, but the end of this film allows the viewer to see the plot from a completely different point of view, which is simply an incredible achievement by writer/director M. Night Shyamalan After the fifth viewing of this film, and also taking a lot of film classes I began to notice more aspects of plot development that really interest me. Something else that stood out to me was the fact that unlike its trailer, (that I watched after the movie) it portrays the film as a chilling thriller. BUT this movie is sort of a supernatural drama with a ton of emotional and heart-stopping scenes to support it. But I still refer to it as a great "thriller".       

I noticed that the film is also purposely very slow paced, which allows for plenty of time for the characters to mold and shape the subtle but important material at hand. Haley Joel Osment does a phenomenal job as the troubled child who is going through mysterious mishaps that no child should ever have to go through. Tough-guy, Bruce Willis even pulls off a fantastically solid performance, with an emotional side that we, the viewers, rarely see. But, the "twist ending" of the film raised it to a new level. My friends and I could not help but discuss the various intricacies of the plot which were The alterations of the plot through the captivating ending could not help but further my absolute appreciation for the film. With incredible acting, incredible film style, and an incredible score, The Sixth Sense is most-definitely one of my favorite thrillers of all time. Even though it may not be an all-out thriller, please believe me, you will definitely be startled in a lot of scenes, and sincerely moved in others. It is without a doubt, an impressive movie.      

Go watch it now, before someone ruins the ending!

Psychological Thriller: "Donnie Darko" v. "The Butterfly Effect"

Recently I watched the films “Donnie Darko” by Richard Kelly and “The Butterfly Effect” by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber back to back.  Both of these films are categorized as psychological thrillers and both films have many similarities in their plots. Both films played with the time space continuum, both films had characters who have supernatural experiences/powers, and both films featured a troubled protagonist you follow through it all.  Despite these films similarities at the end I found that I disliked “Donnie Darko” but loved “The Butterfly Effect,” and I had to ask myself, “Why?”

            “Donnie Darko” is the story of a teenager named Donnie Darko who hallucinates and sees a demonic bunny named Frank.  The bunny will put Donnie in a trancelike state and Donnie will do his bidding.  One day Frank makes Donnie sleepwalk out of his house, saving his life as a jet turbine that falls from the sky and crashes into his room.  As the story goes on Donnie feels like he owes the bunny for saving his life and his hallucinations get progressively worse until he feels as though he has discovered time travel.  In the end Donnie uses his “new found knowledge” to alter the past (I don’t want to ruin the ending so I wont get too specific).   However at the end of the movie I felt disappointed and almost annoyed.

As I mulled the movie over in my head I began to realize why I found the story so disinteresting.  When the plot is broken down the entire film is based off a hallucination bunny saving Donnie from a mysterious airplane turbine.  Although the airplane turbine was eventually explained it was still too far fetched of a conclusion to be satisfying. I feel that although it was well filmed, directed, edited and shot but the fact of the matter was the plot was not cohesive or believable enough for me.  I feel as though if the central event of the film was more realistic then I would have been able to get more into the movie. 

Inversely, this idea that the script and plot are central to the film is a main reason why I enjoyed “The Butterfly Effect” so much.  Although the central plot point of this film is about a young man named Evan Treborn has a supernatural power to travel into his past it was so well set up and well developed that this seemingly far fetched idea became believable. The teleportation of Evan back in time in order to save his future and the futures of those he loved was beautifully executed.   The ability of the film to catch the audience up to the “new present,” transforming years into only seconds was amazing. However what really impressed me was the preservation of cause and effect in the film and the realism of the outcomes, or new futures, that were created though Evan’s travels into the past.  The writer/filmmakers also had an understanding of their audience.  This is apparent when the filmmakers play into everyone’s worst fear that the protagonist Evan is in fact insane and that he has been imagining his flashbacks the whole thing.

I feel as though these movies stand as prime examples for what good writing can do as well as the determents of having an unbelievable storyline.  In the genre of “psychological thriller” the plot is imperative to the success of the film in the eyes of the viewer.  In my opinion if things do not come full circle and there is no clear/or realistic revolution, especially for this genre of film, the film will not satisfy the viewer.  It goes to show that, for the most part, even if you shoot a beautiful film if the script/storyline are not compelling or believable then in the end the audience will not be satisfied.

¡Ay Machina!

My father, who grew up on a farm, served in WWII as a ship’s navigator. He said that he decided to go to sea because there might be more of a chance to survive the war. Though he was a consummate storyteller, I never heard him talk much about his experiences, except for a few references to sailing up the Thames while watching explosions on either side of the bow. His message was that War is a brutal business, that cruelty and hardship are commonplace, and that it is not to be admired. It wasn’t until much later, after he died, that I heard about the deadly Murmansk Run, and how he navigated his crew to safety, at a time when the a majority of the convoy crews were killed by submarine attacks. In a way, it was not a surprise because he taught me most of what I know about how to navigate this life: how to look beyond the surface, how to listen to the wisdom of others from very different backgrounds, and how to find one’s own moral compass.

As a returning student, artist/designer, and experienced parent, my views on media might come from a slightly different perspective than those who are more enamored with technology for its own sake. From my vantage point, there is a prevalent mindset in the American culture that status, including academic status, is directly related to funding and which areas chosen to receive it. Therefore, it seems to me that Science and intellectual pursuits, which apply scientific methods of inquiry, have come to be treated with a reverence that the Humanities are not (unless we are talking about the famously lucrative entertainment industry). Additionally, it is said by many that the world of academe suffers from what is termed “the silo effect,” which can describe a lack of cooperation between an institution’s departments, or a lack of emphasis on interdisciplinary research due to specialization.

One aspect that I appreciate about New Media is that it straddles many of the realms of knowledge, which have previously been relegated to their respective corners, creating marriages of Music and Physics, such as in the elegantly designed game Auditorium, or melding technology with new ways to present history, art, and storytelling, such as at the Rijksmuseum. The attitudes of some disciplines being more “pure” than others are being challenged and new possibilities are being explored due to an increased ability for interconnection, literally and figuratively.

Therefore, after reading the article by Tim Lenoir, “All but War Is Simulation,” and being asked to express my reaction, I have to say that I found it both revealing and deeply disturbing. I have wondered before why game designers have focused so often on violent games. From what Lenoir has detailed, it has much to do with funding and how the military routinely underwrites and directs projects. This funding pipeline leads research in certain directions, and helps to create cozy business relationships once researchers learn how to jump over the necessary hurdles to become government vendors.

The same week that I read the Lenoir article, I began reading The Language of New Media by Lev Manovich. In the foreword written by the founder of Rhizome.org, Mark Tribe describes the debate, which took place on his email list during the time the book was being written. He recalls that the more theoretical Europeans criticized Americans for having a “ ‘California ideology’ (a deadly cocktail of naïve optimism, techno-utopianism, and new-libertarian politics popularized by Wired magazine)”. I think this criticism still has the ring of truth today since Lenoir’s article does not stray into observations on whether the alliance of the Military-Entertainment Complex has moral complications, training as it does entire generations of (mostly) boys to think of war and gaming simultaneously, death and enjoyment. Perhaps "Military-Entertainment Complex" should also be a psychological term.

Cartoon courtesy of artist and physicist Randall Munroe at www.xkcd.com

And what about civil law?

Several recent links and posts have discussed the blur between real and virtual in the realm of criminal acts. The link regarding "Ageplay sim eyes new grid," for example, explains that child porn may be available in SL (if it's not already). Porn is obviously alive and thriving in SL, which is not illegal.. but the idea of sex acts with children is very disturbing, even in a virtual sense. Obviously, no real child is being harmed... in this case... but, where do we draw the line of illegal behavior. It's like the people who have asked... is it infidelity if you have virtual sex outside of marriage? I have heard strong opinions from both sides. Even Dennis' comment about virtual rape raises many questions. We don't know the people involved and what their emotional state is. For some, it is not merely "lighthearted play" and such an act could be very traumatising and could carry into their RL just as some nightmares haunt us.

On a less dramatic note, there have been many issues raised recently about fraud and privacy, especially among social networking sites that have made it into the courts. It would seem inevitable that the same will filter into SL. Even with all sorts of consent forms at sign-in (which maybe that was the small print most us never read in the "terms of agreement") which release not only Linden but the players of any liability, legal questions will emerge and be challenged. As one final example, there are many people now offering "advice" in SL. In RL we have to have licenses to "practice" in certain fields, such as psychology, and usually for good reason. To do so without a license is a felony offense. Who are these people offering such advice in SL and what are their credentials? Or... do avatars even care? Should they care? In RL, Dr. Phil has made kabillions of dollars offering advice... without a license... for years. Is it simply entertainment and we should let it go at that? I guess it's just a case of "buyer beware" at this point.