Anxiety Muted: American Film Music in a Suburban AgeStanley C. Pelkey, Anthony Bushard Oxford University Press, 2015 - 298 pages The most familiar entertainment icons and storylines from the 1950s and 60s remain potent signs that continue to resonate within contemporary American society and culture. Both the political Left and Right invoke the events and memories of those decades, celebrating or condemning the competing social forces embodied in and unleashed during those years. In recent decades, the entertainment industry has capitalized on this trend with films and television shows that take a look back on the 1950s and 1960s with a mixture of nostalgia and criticism. Anxiety Muted: American Film Music in a Suburban Age explores how the central concerns of the Fifties and Sixties--and resulting treatment in the motion picture media--can be examined and understood through the music of the time period. With its focus on soundtrack and scoring, the book demonstrates that specific television shows and films offer a more nuanced vision of community and conformity than is usually recognized, revealing much about our own current social anxieties. |
Contents
1 A Survey of History Themes and Trends | 1 |
2 Music and Mimicry in Sunset Boulevard 1950 | 31 |
The Civic Voice in High Noon 1952 | 49 |
Miklós Rózsas Score for Quo Vadis 1951 | 69 |
Gender Equality and the Music of Alfred Hitchcocks The Man Who Knew Too Much 1956 | 87 |
6 Music Maturity and the Moral Geography in Leave It to Beaver 19571963 | 107 |
Music as Truth in The Twilight Zone 19591964 | 129 |
8 Living in Harmony? American Music and Individualism in The Prisoner
19671968 | 146 |
Music the Obsessive Avenger and Eugenics in America | 164 |
10 Masculinity Race and the Blues in the Bizpic Cadillac Records 2008 | 188 |
Mobilizing Music and Performing Politics 19881990 | 205 |
The Twist and the Twentysomethings
in AMCs Mad Men 2007 | 224 |
13 Musically Recreating the Fifties in Far From Heaven 2002 | 239 |
Aaron Copland and Thomas Newmans
Suburban Scoring | 260 |
287 | |
Other editions - View all
Anxiety Muted: American Film Music in a Suburban Age Stanley C. Pelkey,Anthony Bushard Limited preview - 2014 |
Anxiety Muted: American Film Music in a Suburban Age Stanley C. Pelkey,Anthony Bushard No preview available - 2015 |
Common terms and phrases
Aaron Copland accompanied American Beauty American Music anxiety audience ballad Beaver Ben’s Bernard Herrmann Big Chill Bushard Cadillac Records Cathy chapter characters Chess Cinema composer culture diegetic Dimitri Tiomkin disability dissonant early music Elmer Bernstein episode eugenics Example Fifties Figure film and television Film Music Film Score film’s Frank gender Hadleyville Haynes Heaven High Noon History Hitchcock Hobo Code Hollywood horror films Ibid Jo’s Joe’s Kane Kane’s Living in Harmony Love Theme Mad Men masculinity McGoohan McKenna melody minor second Monster Theme moral movie narrative Norma’s notes Number Six opening orchestral Peggy piano plays political popular Quo Vadis relationship Rod Serling role Rózsa scene season sequence sexual Shawshank Redemption sings Sixties Postscripts social society solo song soundtrack strings studio suburban suggests Thomas Newman Tiomkin tion Transcribed Twilight Zone Twist University Press viewer visual voice Wally Wally’s Ward Ward’s Weiner women York Zinnemann