Steven Connor
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198184331
- eISBN:
- 9780191674204
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198184331.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Why can none of us hear our own recorded voice without wincing? Why is the telephone still full of such spookiness and erotic possibility? Why does the metaphor of ventriloquism, the art of ‘seeming ...
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Why can none of us hear our own recorded voice without wincing? Why is the telephone still full of such spookiness and erotic possibility? Why does the metaphor of ventriloquism, the art of ‘seeming to speak where one is not’, speak so resonantly to our contemporary technological condition? These are the kind of questions which impel this inquisitive history of ventriloquism and the disembodied voice. This book tracks the subject from its first recorded beginnings in ancient Israel and Greece, through the fulminations of early Christian writers against the unholy (and, they believed, obscenely produced) practices of pagan divination, the aberrations of the voice in mysticism, witchcraft and possession, and the strange obsession with the vagrant figure of the ventriloquist, newly conceived as male rather than female, during the Enlightenment. It retrieves the stories of some of the most popular and versatile ventriloquists and polyphonists of the 19th century, and investigates the survival of ventriloquial delusions and desires in spiritualism and the ‘vocalic uncanny’ of technologies like telephone, radio, film, and internet.Less
Why can none of us hear our own recorded voice without wincing? Why is the telephone still full of such spookiness and erotic possibility? Why does the metaphor of ventriloquism, the art of ‘seeming to speak where one is not’, speak so resonantly to our contemporary technological condition? These are the kind of questions which impel this inquisitive history of ventriloquism and the disembodied voice. This book tracks the subject from its first recorded beginnings in ancient Israel and Greece, through the fulminations of early Christian writers against the unholy (and, they believed, obscenely produced) practices of pagan divination, the aberrations of the voice in mysticism, witchcraft and possession, and the strange obsession with the vagrant figure of the ventriloquist, newly conceived as male rather than female, during the Enlightenment. It retrieves the stories of some of the most popular and versatile ventriloquists and polyphonists of the 19th century, and investigates the survival of ventriloquial delusions and desires in spiritualism and the ‘vocalic uncanny’ of technologies like telephone, radio, film, and internet.
Todd Decker
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520282322
- eISBN:
- 9780520966543
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520282322.003.0006
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Disembodied voices resound across the post-Vietnam Hollywood combat film. Some are heard in real time by way of military technology, such as radios which let soldiers and audiences experience battles ...
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Disembodied voices resound across the post-Vietnam Hollywood combat film. Some are heard in real time by way of military technology, such as radios which let soldiers and audiences experience battles which are heard but not seen (acousmatic battles, in Michel Chion’s term). Different wars present different technological opportunities to unify the dispersed nature of modern combat by way of the soundtrack. Disembodied voices also enter these films by way of tape recordings sent from home, allowing the voices and perspectives of women into otherwise all-male films. Letters heard in voice-over frequently deliver the voices of soldiers who died in the line of duty. When present, voice-over narration in these films is assigned to specific characters who offer their individual perspective on events. Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line takes this approach an extreme, combining voice-overs attached to specific characters with acousmatic voices that speak from a kind of soldier’s over-soul.Less
Disembodied voices resound across the post-Vietnam Hollywood combat film. Some are heard in real time by way of military technology, such as radios which let soldiers and audiences experience battles which are heard but not seen (acousmatic battles, in Michel Chion’s term). Different wars present different technological opportunities to unify the dispersed nature of modern combat by way of the soundtrack. Disembodied voices also enter these films by way of tape recordings sent from home, allowing the voices and perspectives of women into otherwise all-male films. Letters heard in voice-over frequently deliver the voices of soldiers who died in the line of duty. When present, voice-over narration in these films is assigned to specific characters who offer their individual perspective on events. Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line takes this approach an extreme, combining voice-overs attached to specific characters with acousmatic voices that speak from a kind of soldier’s over-soul.
C. Scott Combs
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231163477
- eISBN:
- 9780231538039
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231163477.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines the nondiegetic soundtrack as registrant in the early sound film. In theory, the sound camera can capture the last audible breath or spoken utterance, and it can produce the ...
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This chapter examines the nondiegetic soundtrack as registrant in the early sound film. In theory, the sound camera can capture the last audible breath or spoken utterance, and it can produce the medial equivalent of such a stop. The body has an acoustic “off” switch, and the continuity of sound can be suddenly muted. But the theory of an instant does not translate well to screen practice: final words are reinforced by the slide to bodily inertia, and sudden silence leaves an echo. This chapter analyzes disembodied death sounds in films such as The Jazz Singer, Applause, and Frankenstein and the role played by the disembodied voice in ending life onscreen. It also considers the microphone as a death technology and how dying can be heard from the external space surrounding it. Finally, it explains how offscreen sounds of singing, talking, and crying registrants affect the fundamental flow of the deathwatch.Less
This chapter examines the nondiegetic soundtrack as registrant in the early sound film. In theory, the sound camera can capture the last audible breath or spoken utterance, and it can produce the medial equivalent of such a stop. The body has an acoustic “off” switch, and the continuity of sound can be suddenly muted. But the theory of an instant does not translate well to screen practice: final words are reinforced by the slide to bodily inertia, and sudden silence leaves an echo. This chapter analyzes disembodied death sounds in films such as The Jazz Singer, Applause, and Frankenstein and the role played by the disembodied voice in ending life onscreen. It also considers the microphone as a death technology and how dying can be heard from the external space surrounding it. Finally, it explains how offscreen sounds of singing, talking, and crying registrants affect the fundamental flow of the deathwatch.
Theresa M. Senft
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- August 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780262013901
- eISBN:
- 9780262289696
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262013901.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter offers a first-person narrative of the disembodied fantasies of telephone sex, the use of audio tapes to prepare for invasive surgery, teaching a computer to recognize a person’s voice, ...
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This chapter offers a first-person narrative of the disembodied fantasies of telephone sex, the use of audio tapes to prepare for invasive surgery, teaching a computer to recognize a person’s voice, and meditating about a work of sound art in which the voice is rerecorded until all meaning is gone and only rhythm remains. It describes voice technologies experientially, with the author interacting with the multiple disembodied voices surrounding her and reflecting on the often ambivalent and complex emotions they trigger.Less
This chapter offers a first-person narrative of the disembodied fantasies of telephone sex, the use of audio tapes to prepare for invasive surgery, teaching a computer to recognize a person’s voice, and meditating about a work of sound art in which the voice is rerecorded until all meaning is gone and only rhythm remains. It describes voice technologies experientially, with the author interacting with the multiple disembodied voices surrounding her and reflecting on the often ambivalent and complex emotions they trigger.
