Jazz in Film: A critique of the 1950s jazz soundtrack
Introduction
Jazz and cinema in many ways share a parallel history in American culture having effectively grown up alongside each other in the early twentieth century; they were both developed and cultivated whilst struggling on the margins of society, they both encountered and overcame technological advancements, and they were both eventually elevated to the status of American art. (Berg in Smith: 1998: 72-73). Parallels cease, however, when considering the way in which the two were actually used in relation to each other: jazz was used by film, rather than the other way around, leading to a direct and immediate imbalance of status. This significant disparity and inequality between jazz and film led ultimately to the striking misuse of jazz in film, of its cultural connotations and of its signifying capabilities by the Hollywood system. The imposed functional role of jazz, as the transmitter of racist undertones is perhaps the most striking misuse of jazz. The long-standing association of jazz by white America as deviant and sinful music resulted in Hollywood's reflection of this embedded societal racism by instilling it into their films. Underscoring objectionable Hollywood protagonists with jazz music rather than the more common classical score could therefore infuse their protagonists with a figurative kind of "blackness". Such undertones can arguably be perceived in Hollywood film in the 1950s.
Of all the theorists that have commented on race and its relation to jazz, Krin Gabbard is perhaps one of the most fruitful and renowned contemporary writers, and his valuable comments will aid any discussion concerning the implications of jazz on society past and present. Indeed, as Dickinson explains, ‘Gabbard interrogates the disjunction between music and the moving image through an examination of how African American jazz musicians have been drawn into the, by and large, racially exclusive spectacle of the cinema... In working through how (African American) jazz has been incorporated into the film industry, Gabbard reveals how integral such cultural spaces have been in creating the harsh regulations of social categories such as "race"'. (Dickinson: 2003: 119). He has explored many theories of jazz, including ideas surrounding the use of jazz in film, contextualizing such concepts in the history, the current climate and the future of jazz.
Townsend argues a very convincing case for the power of cinema, the essence of which must be heeded throughout the proceeding discussions of jazz in film: "The treatment that jazz receives in mainstream film is decisive in establishing the ways in which it is perceived in society as a whole. Jazz is encoded into the cinematic modes and conventions with which a large audience is already familiar and which they have accepted as representing reality" (Townsend: 2000:93). Cinema is a very powerful mass medium, and holds the capacity to shape and mould our opinions of jazz; it also holds the capability also to manipulate our judgment of those apparently objectionable and immoral characteristics with which jazz is forcibly associated. More disturbing still is the potential that the originators of the music (the black African American) could also be scarred by such associations, motivating audiences to be fearful of the music, of those who play it and of those who originally created it.
Throughout my discussions I will theorize why jazz music has been used to signify specific culturally coded representations, specifically that of predominantly connoting negative characteristics, by looking into the history of jazz, investigating the nature of musical representation and by critically analysing three films of the 1950s: The Wild One, The Man with the Golden Arm, and I Want to Live.
CHAPTER 1: Hearing Race
A Brief History of Jazz and Racism
In debates pertaining to jazz, many will initially contest the notion of "what is jazz?" Whilst such a question is interesting and perhaps philosophically challenging, it is of little concern for this immediate discussion. In this context, such an argument would cloud the significance of its meanings and its representational qualities, and in part this undertaking has already been thoroughly contested elsewhere. What is of relevance from the forethought of deciding what jazz actually is, however, is the common notion that jazz represents what some once called "race music": much research has been done regarding the roots of jazz music and although the history of the music is not strongly derivative of one true "source" as such, jazz is widely and rightly regarded as music of the black African American. Accordingly, then, it is important to regard the music as essentially black music, and as a partial reflection of black, African American cultural identity.
To frame any discussion of jazz and race, it is important to offer a brief history of the music. An accurate and unambiguous history can never be truly established, however, because jazz developed from a diverse range of influences, cultural contexts and such a history, although fairly brief, is now probably based as much upon myth as it is factual evidence. This point is illustrated by Postgate, suggesting that ‘Jazz is a hotch-potch of musical influences: French quadrilles, ragtime, hymns, spirituals and work songs, cowboy and folk songs, all contributed to the stuff of jazz'. (Postgate: 1973: 7). With reference to the possible origins of jazz, Ogren offers a suggestion that ‘Because slaves from Africa lacked a common spoken language and because written literacy was restricted for many blacks until well into the twentieth century, music served a crucial role as a medium that conveyed the history and values of black culture.' (Ogren: 1989: 12). This explanation would perhaps account for the lively, syncopated nature of the music, typical of rhythmic, African style. In addition, Ogren's contribution puts emphasis on the cultural substance and history of the music: its birth and development came to pass in white majority culture, in a racist climate whereby Negroes were ‘regarded as a species of farm animal (‘nobody killed, just a mule and a couple of niggers').' (Larkin: 1963: from Palmer & White: 1999).
As a consequence of the cultural and social strains of being a black African American in a very white America in the early twentieth century, the blues (which is often considered a predecessor, precursor, or at least in some way a relative of jazz) was used as a kind of improvisatory, vocal expression of the difficulties of everyday life, often dealing with themes of ‘crops, living conditions, drink, drugs, sex and sex again." (Postgate: 1973: 8). Clearly the poor living conditions of the African American prompted such dependencies on drugs and drink, which possibly consequently set in motion the seemingly immovable link between blues and jazz with images of drink, drug-use and sex. And Ogren points out that the association between jazz and blues is perhaps not a particularly positive one: ‘The strong relationship of jazz and blues meant that jazz, too, was labelled suspect. Since jazz pianists and other instrumentalists accompanied blues singers and performed in shady places, they became practitioners of "devil's music."' (Ogren: 1989: 113). And so began the resolute connection between jazz and "music of the gutter." (Postgate: 1973: 11).
This relationship, of jazz and blues, and social depravity, however, extended beyond the music itself towards a general racism to those to which the music belonged: the black African American. Whilst perhaps conveniently forgetting that such drink and drug habits (expressed originally in the Blues) was possibly a direct result of the use of blacks by whites for slavery, and developed directly from the state of their social conditions, racism thrived in white America. This is because whites, for the most part, ‘blamed jazz for passing of conventions and the relaxation of behavioural constraints.' (Ogren: 1989: 139). Indeed, such traditionalist fears are highlighted in Neil Leonard's book named Jazz and the White Americans, which tracks a succession of accounts by alarmed American traditionalists of the 1920s, and logs their reaction to jazz. Amongst them, Mrs.Obendorfer (the national music chairman of the General Federation of Women's Clubs in the 1920s) exclaims as a title to an article: "Does Jazz Put the Sin in Syncopation?" and in addition argues that, "Jazz originally was the accompaniment of the voodoo dancer, stimulating the half-crazed barbarian to the vilest deeds... [It] has also been employed by other barbaric people to stimulate brutality and sensuality". Such notions helped to spread fears that Negroes under the influence of "jazz" would become violent.' (Leonard: 1962: 39).
During the 1920s, when jazz was becoming popularised in black urban areas, such as New Orleans and later Chicago, it seems that the media was heavy with criticisms, advanced by white moralists, of jazz and the potential influence of this "evil" new music. Mrs. Obendorfer was not on her own in her equation between jazz and sinful behaviour (with an obvious implication, therefore, of the equation between the black musician and his offensive behaviour). Leonard offers a poignant illustration of one playwright, who fears the potential degenerative and offensive qualities and influences of jazz:
‘In 1922, when the jazz controversy was coming to a head, J. Hartley Manners' play The National Anthem opened on Broadway. The plot depicted naïve young people ignoring the counsel of a wise traditionalist parent and debauching themselves into decadence. Manners dramatized the way jazz stimulated the youth's downfall... Throughout the play jazz not only undermined the morality of susceptible young people, but also threatened all civilization, which, if the jazz age continued unchecked, seemed doomed to barbarism.' (Leonard: 1962: 29).
As Leonard points out, this is seemingly an unforgivable equation between the black African American, and a barbaric kind of primitivism. Though it was the case that black jazz musicians found work mainly in New Orleans brothels (when all brothels were closed down in New Orleans, black musicians moved onto Chicago to find employment), this was probably indicative of the segregationist aspect of so-called "polite" society, rather than signifying any defining characteristic of the music itself. With few other places to find employment as black musicians, the urban underworld served as a place to play jazz and get paid for it (albeit very little). However, it is argued that this association between the brothel and jazz music was probably ‘the most damaging' (Leonard: 1962: 36) in terms of its general status and its reputation in white society.
Damaging also in the 1920s was the relationship between jazz and the violent, criminal underworld of gangsters and mobsters. During the prohibition, clubs such as the Cotton Club in Harlem and Club Alabam in Chicago (amongst others, some of which were illegitimate) were often funded and run by gangsters, such as Al Capone. Jazz was a popular music in such clubs, and ‘as a consequence many performers found themselves on a gangster's payroll. Jazz was immediately associated with the carnal pleasures of the cabaret' (Ogren: 1989: 5), and connected also with seedy criminality and urban immorality. As reiterated by Ben Sidran, ‘Practically overnight, the black musician became a symbol of the socially liberated American. This position was reinforced by the black musician's association, especially in Chicago, with the gangsters who ruled the nightlife.' (Sidran: 1971: 56). The black African American jazz musician, and the music he played therefore came to represent for the white American, all aspects of urban decay: of criminality, of sex, of drugs, of the underworld and of prostitutes. Moreover, as Leonard concludes, by ‘Bringing out man's lower nature in number of ways of ranging from crime and suicide to the break-up of the home, jazz seemed to strike at the very heart of the traditional way of life.' (Leonard: 1962: 36).
Jazz and White America
Such associations in the minds of traditionalist Americans did not stop jazz becoming a unique and successful form of black music. Such was the success of the music that it was considered to ‘pose an unmistakable challenge to white cultural domination. The threat was especially severe in the minds of traditional moralists because a significant number of whites themselves found jazz exciting' (Ogren: 1989: 11). The liberating and invigorating quality of the music was to some whites a very welcome, stimulating and self-gratifying experience, but was concurrently in conflict with their opinions of black African Americans and the social reputation of their music. Sidran expresses this conflict between the ideology and morals of the white American, and the simultaneous irresistibility of the music: ‘Hence the image of black culture held by whites was often incongruent with the self-image of black Americans. Basically, the motivations for the white acceptance of black music were at odds with the motivations that created the music. Whites gravitated towards black music and black culture in general because they felt it expressed the abandon and hedonism toward which they liked to think they were moving.' (Sidran: 1971: 54).
A resolution to this apparent inconsistency between the ‘blackness' of the music and its potential white audience was soon to be realised. As Gabbard points out, ‘Although blackness was essential to the art discourse of the jazz press, it has always been an obstacle to the acceptance of jazz by white, majority culture.' (1996: 106): into the 1930s white America took on jazz, therefore, by ‘sanitizing' it as popular ‘white' entertainment, as "symphonic jazz" and "swing". But whilst white America were prepared to enjoy the swing bands in the dance halls, indebted of course to the black African American, racism thrived in America throughout much of the 20th century. Neal notes this very point in relation to the popularity of swing bands, which ‘had a large white audience base and a discriminating "racial-tocracy" that often afforded less talented white musicians access to the better paying venues and the more profitable recording contracts.' (Neal:1999: 19). Gabbard also recognizes the perceptible transformation and commodification of jazz as ‘white', by marking a very interesting case in point: ‘In 1926, Henry Osgood could write a book about jazz without mentioning a single black artist.' (Gabbard: 1996: 8). This ‘causal racism' shows a conscious exclusion of any African American aspect that ever existed in relation to jazz.
Jazz and early cinema
The "whitening" of jazz was not just evident in the dance halls, or on recordings (the first jazz records that caused such a stir in 1917 were recorded entirely by white musicians.' (Gabbard: 1996: 8)), both jazz and representations of the black African Americans were depicted widely in the film industry. In accordance with the aforementioned "racial-tocracy", jazz players were often heard as exclusively diegetic elements of film, but were often not actually seen as part of the on-screen action: to avoid offending delicate white dispositions ‘these portions could be neatly excised without harming the continuity of the plot.' (Rye: 2002). When a black person was screened, it usually fell into a certain category of black stereotype: Ramsey argues that Griffith's ‘Birth of a Nation stands as the symbolic beginning of American cinema, providing a grammar book for Hollywood's historical (and unquestionably negative) depiction of black subjects.' (Ramsey: 2003: 172).
Moreover, ‘The medium of film has communicated, shaped, reproduced, and challenged various notions of black subjectivity in twentieth- and twenty-first-century America' (Ramsey: 2003: 166), and has concurrently offered various negative notions of black music in accordance with this pre-meditated and ‘unquestionably negative' depiction of black subjectivity. Townsend also offers a crucial argument concerning the reception of jazz representations:
"Through the media of film or literature, in proportion to their power, the image of jazz, subject to whatever adjustments are made by these media, is transmitted to a public which may have little or no other experience of jazz as a culture. It is through these transmissions that jazz is interpreted to this wider audience, in the process ceasing to be perceived as a complex and variegated phenomenon, rooted in history, and coming to be apprehended with the simplicity of myth." (Townsend: 2000:93).
It is vital to consider the power of film, as Townsend suggests, in reproducing representations of jazz, as such transmitted representations could potentially be held not as mediated ‘re-presentations' but as truths or partial reality. Crucial too are the cultural and social implications of jazz when used in the scoring of a film: jazz seems historically to have been forcibly tied down to white notions of what the music represents (urban decay, unusual sexuality, immorality and so on), and this discrimination has passed onto the use of jazz in the filmic context. Therefore, it seems that jazz music has the power to "signify" and to uphold its cultural meanings through film and film scoring.
CHAPTER 2: Strains of Dystopia
Music as Signifier and Representational Device
Analysts active in the realm of music criticism are, more often than not, in agreement that music holds the capacity to rouse and bear some kind of "meaning" and significant implication beyond the notes through which the music is originally assembled. It is seemingly a clear-cut conception that music, likened (perhaps wishfully) to a kind of "language", should approach a rendering and connoting of some form of meaning. Of course there is forever speculation surrounding this seemingly straightforward notion, as Jenefer Robinson illustrates in her aptly titled book, Music and Meaning: ‘Can music... signify aspects of human life and experience "beyond" the music? And if so, how?' (1997: 4). Such suspicions and misgivings are ‘an entrancing idea to the many who long for just one small space where such fraught concerns as import and value cannot plague them.' (Dickinson: 2003: 11). This entirely idealised conception of a liberated music, of a music freed from signifying or connotative implication is not the music that is to be discussed; on the contrary, the music of significance, the music of representational value, of connotation and denotation, and of ‘import and value' is of exceptional importance, as this music alone declares its unique possession ‘of a system of signifiers that by and large serve that art exclusively' (Brown: 1994:18).
‘But how does language construct meanings? How does it sustain the dialogue between participants which enables them to build up a culture of shared understandings and so interpret the world in roughly the same ways? Language is able to do this because it operates as a representational system. In language, we use signs and symbols... to stand for or represent to other people our concepts, ideas and feelings.... Representation through language is therefore central to the processes by which meaning is produced.' (Hall: 1997: 1).
Representation, as marked here by Stuart Hall, by its very nature has the power to "re-present" cultural, social and political ideas through the complexity of signs, symbols and other codified material. Although in his discussions he mainly concentrates on visual language (in accordance, perhaps, with the largely visual culture in which we reside), he does ascertain that music too has the ability ‘to communicate feelings and ideas,'(1997: 5), and that it is possible to study the semiotics of music by analysing the signs that act as vehicles of meaning in culture. Accordingly, therefore, it is essential to establish that jazz, as a distinct genre of music, has the capability too, to create, to imply and to impart meaning to its listeners. Moreover, when music (or specifically in this case, jazz music) is put together with film to act as a film score or soundtrack, the representational system of the two combined is inherently rich and worthy of analysis.
‘The tendency to think of jazz as a spontaneous expression of the performer's emotions clouds our awareness of the fact that jazz, like language, is a system of signs.' (Heble: 2000: 31). This is a pertinent proposal, especially when considering the notion that jazz holds the capacity of re-presenting, through this system of signs, its various cultural aspects: of its history and origins, of its disapproval by white majority American culture, of race, of its racist undertones, and of its unshakable reputation as "music of the gutter". These cultural qualities of the music could potentially be "used" by film composers and directors, looking for ways to inflect or underscore the visual track with a certain signification. As Gorbman points out, ‘cultural musical codes' are utilised in such situations, with the ‘music cue's signification- eerie, pastoral, jazzy-sophisticated, romantic'- being ‘instantly recognized as such in order to work.' (Gorbman: 1987: 4).
This, of course, is one of the main reasons that music was originally put to silent film in the early 20th century. Along with practical factors such as blocking out extraneous sound from the rather noisy projector, music used in silent films served the function of aiding narrative development and making meaning, as ‘it provided historical, geographical, and atmospheric setting, it helped depict and identify characters and qualify actions.' (Gorbman: 1987: 53). Putting jazz against a visual sequence will do exactly the same thing: it will be used functionally and arguably subordinately to the image, to anchor the meaning of the image. Brown goes as far as to argue that music, ‘of all the many separate components that make up any given commercial film, plays one of the strongest roles in what has been and continues to be a worldwide tendency in commercial cinema to encode the visual/narrative amalgam with the mythologies, both political and extrapolitical, embedded in a particular culture.' (Brown: 1994: 30). Placing jazz against one visual sequence, and then perhaps trying the same thing with classical music, will send the reading of the whole sequence in a completely different direction. Music, therefore, and more importantly the type or genre of music that is chosen by film composers, is imperative in the construction of meaning in film.
The 1950s Jazz Soundtrack
Claudia Gorbman, in her influential book Unheard Melodies, relates the concept of musical signification and the securing of narrative meaning in film, to the work of Barthes:
‘This primarily semiotic functioning of music, then, is what Barthes called ancrage in connection with the photograph caption. Music, like a caption, anchors the image in meaning, throws a net around the floating visual signifier, assures the viewer of a safely channelled signified.' (Gorbman: 1987: 58).
Arguably, such ancrage or anchorage takes place in certain films in the 1950s, with the use of the jazz soundtrack: the use of ‘black' or so-called "race music" (with all its cultural connotations already in place, as previously discussed) whilst anchoring the visual signifier of the white person, channels the signified in a certain direction, that of imbuing the character with a certain amount of ‘blackness'. Such white ‘baddies' are underscored with jazz music rather than classical Hollywood scoring, to safely assert the nature of the life of the character: jazz music offers up the associations by white Americans of sleaze, seediness, drug abuse, prostitution, criminality and vice. Royal S. Brown also relates film music to Barthesian notions of "icities", suggesting that ‘the entire jazz genre tended to attach itself in the cinema to the "-icity" of "lower-class" people involved in sleazy dramas of sex, drugs, and/or crime.' (Brown: 1994: 183).
Whilst classical Hollywood scoring (initiated by such innovators as Max Steiner and Erich Wolfgang-Korngold) might help cue certain structural moments within the narrative, might herald the approach of a certain character, or may complement the continuity editing technique of Hollywood's ‘Golden Age', it seems that jazz was all the more successful at constructing instantaneous recognition of mood and tone, and of cueing atmospheric signification through its unmistakable ‘cultural musical codes' (Gorbman: 1987: 4). Moreover, the distinct move from the predomination of classical scoring in earlier Hollywood film, to the use of the jazz soundtrack into the 1950s, is very meaningful in itself: the addition of jazz, amongst the multitude of other films that were classically scored, meant that it was drawn on only for certain reasons, to connote certain things and its special inclusion by the composer was always to achieve precise narrative aims and objectives.
Gabbard exploits Barthes's theories further in an argument allied to current discussions, suggesting that ‘the film industry is one of the many institutions that create a mythology by transforming history into nature, by presenting culturally determined situations as the inevitable product of natural law.' (Gabbard: 1996: 2). If this is the case, a kind of naturalised "aural racism" has come about through the use of the jazz soundtrack in 1950s cinema, in which the culturally determined characteristics of jazz have been made acceptable, usual and ordinary, and constitute part of the way jazz and jazz musicians are perceived in society at large. Indeed, as Rye proposes, the overuse of jazz in film and television in the 1950s soon led to ‘complaints from critics, fans and even musicians about the increasing association of jazz with vice, violence and all things sordid.'(Rye: 2002). This asserts in part the power of film representations to normalise and naturalise those characteristics of jazz, which are not necessarily inevitable or predestined, conversely ‘transforming history into nature' produces them.
During the breakdown of the Hollywood studio system, film in the 1950s clearly had a predisposition toward themes of ‘crime, violence, loneliness, alienation, drug addiction, racial and generational conflict, juvenile delinquency, and the brittle antagonisms that were the result of a crowded and stressed existence,'(Rye: 2002) to which jazz seemed the perfect musical accompaniment for (white) directors and composers to exploit. Of course the use of jazz in film in association with such themes, did not just suddenly appear in the 1950s. Indeed, silent film music started the trend (Rye: 2002 & Cooke: 2002), and Sunrise (1927) offers a good case in point.
The original score to Sunrise is very interesting in its characterisations of the protagonists: the man, the wife and the woman from the city. Predictably, the man and the wife are underscored with lush strings, typical of Romanticism from which film music style was originally derived. Conversely, the woman from the city is scored perceptibly differently. As the man approaches the woman from the city (with whom he is having an adulterous affair), he is underscored with foreboding, ominous, low-pitched and brooding music which changes noticeably when, seen from the man's gaze, the woman is seen: her music is characterised by a higher pitched and more frivolous sounding woodwind, with a jazzy melody played by the muted trumpet and saxophone, which of course are typically jazz instruments. Before long the viewer ascertains her murderous intentions toward the wife of her lover, and with this, the connection between jazz, urban city life and criminality is already solidified.
Seemingly it appears that there is a history behind the use of jazz in film (and in society more broadly): a history of serving a functional role ‘configured to serve specific purposes for whites, who have associated it on the one hand with dark-browed primitivism and on the other with ecstatic freedom.' (Gabbard: 1995(b): 2). Jazz serves the role, according to Gabbard's examination, of demonising (and conversely romanticising). Other theorists are in agreement that jazz is often stripped of its improvisatory essence, and is forced into a functional, practical and predictable role, which is totally at odds with its natural inventiveness. Rye pinpoints this filmic functionality by proposing that 'When a film had to evoke imagery associated with crowded urban life or the sophistication of metropolitan living, nothing worked quite so well as a Gershwinesque concert piece with a soaring clarinet glissando.' This is an astute description of a common role that jazz was forced to take on, and such functions can be seen widely in 1950s melodramas and film noir-style films.
The first notable score to use jazz was Alex North's soundtrack for A Streetcar Named Desire, which endeavoured successfully to create a kind of ‘sultry, burlesque-house style type of sound' (Brown: 1994: 184), which is ‘suggestive of urban America, of street life and disenchantment' (Darby & DuBois: 1990: 406). The bluesy title theme recurs throughout the film, working alongside the diegetic "trad" jazz often heard on the wireless, or as characters walk through New Orleans. Such jazz is heard, for instance, at the start of the film as Blanche wanders bewildered through an unfamiliar city: the jazz, seeping from a local club, is coupled with the image of the bustling city at night and with sounds of drunken debauchery, unpleasantly raucous laughter and aggressively beeping car horns. Although North's score increased the "audibility" of jazz in the 1950s and introduced it as a ‘viable contribution to film music' (Darby & DuBois: 1990: 421), arguably, the score also encouraged the promotion of the jazz soundtrack as accompaniment to the ‘symptoms of urban decay: alcoholism, drugs, crime, prostitution, sleaze and corruption.' (Cooke: 2002). The score was hugely influential, and led to many imitations and re-workings of North's techniques: The Wild One, The Man with the Golden Arm and I Want to Live have all taken influence from North's innovative use of jazz in film scoring, and consequently adhere also to the equation between the music and urban decay.
Textual Analyses
THE WILD ONE (1953)
‘While jazz enjoyed unprecedented "audibility" in scores of the fifties, the tacit principles governing its use in cinema remained largely the same.' (Smith: 1998: 73).
Jazz in the fifties was a fresh, exciting and consequently pervasive type of music with which to score film, but as suggested by Smith, it was not free to wander into any filmic context, only those films whose ideologies were in agreement with those inferred values of the music itself. The Wild One, therefore, offers a great opportunity for jazz scoring, as it deals with issues of rebellious juvenile delinquency, anarchy, miscreants, ‘motiveless antisocial behaviour', (Mundy: 1999: 105), sexual predatory actions and criminality.
The opening credits depict the miscreant youths on their bikes, heading toward a local town with their intentions set on causing mayhem at the neighbourhood motorbike rally; the environmental sound of the gang's roaring motorbikes provide the almost entirely diegetic soundtrack, drowning out any other non-diegetic interventions. The result of this is a non-musical but positively auditory threat, as the booming and cacophonic bikes become unbearable to listen to almost to the point of covering the ears. Mundy's interpretation of the initial shots complement my own, as he suggests that ‘the motif of a disturbing, threatening enemy within, of a disruptive force which cannot be placed, located and therefore understood, is privileged in the opening frames.' (Mundy: 1999: 105). Those points at which music is not used are almost as important as those points at which music is used, because in each case the result will be meaningful. In this case, the intervention of music may relieve and comfort the viewer: the absence of music with source sound alone as the audio, the outcome of the opening is much more frightening, disconcerting and menacing.
Music is crucial to the overall development of narrative in film, and in The Wild One the interplay of diegetic and non-diegetic music is most notable for its influence on narrative and dramatic force. This interaction aids the construction of the group of characters, the Black Rebels Motorcycle Club (BRMC), and also assists the ‘integration of music with storytelling and mood progression.' (Leith Stevens in Limbacher: 1974: 120). For instance, the syncopated big-band jazz is heard non-diegetically following the BRMC around as they wreak havoc in the town and follows them diegetically into the bar, playing on the jukebox. Jazz follows the characters from location to location, jumping seamlessly from diegetic to non-diegetic, stepping up the tempo to accompany the motion of the motorbikes and slowing down for more emotional scenes. Jazz is, therefore, unmistakably the music of the miscreants: it is used to accompany the BRMC group scenes, to underscore shots from their collective gaze (for instance, the group see two women walk temptingly past the bar, their entry of which is cued by the big band jazz) and most importantly characterises individuals with their own identities, of which Johnny (Marlon Brando) is the most noteworthy exemplar.
To put it crudely, Johnny represents sex and masculinity. The choice of the jazz soundtrack by Leith Stevens imbues Johnny with those qualities attributed to male jazz artists: ‘the music provides a unique opportunity for sex and gender display.... [of] power, technical mastery and cool strutting.' (Gabbard: 1996: 7?). He puts jazz on the jukebox as he talks for the first time with Cathy, the heavy sounds of which are threatening but seductive and underscore his predatory play for Cathy. The phallic connotations of the motorbike award (stolen from the rally) sat on the bar, complement the sexual undertones of the scene, resulting later in the film with Cathy asking, "Johnny, you were going to give me that statue. Will you give it to me now?". Naturally the linkage between jazz and sex was not a new development in fifties jazz soundtracks: ‘Before the modern era, jazz probably had a sexual reference, perhaps even evolving from an African word for sexual intercourse (Major 1994, 255)' (Gabbard: 1996: 8). Many white Americans in the fifties still recalled the introduction of jazz into white society, and continued to associate it with the "invasion" of the black man with his new, bold salacious music. Johnny's threatening behaviour, coupled with the jazz, perhaps evokes recollections of this original threat to white American culture; therefore Johnny is essentially a metaphorically black man, suitably whitened to accommodate the aesthetic sensibilities of the mainstream white audience.
Jazz in The Wild One was perhaps chosen for its affect on the drama rather than in an attempt to achieve a sense of realism. As Gabbard rightfully points out, ‘the gang of motorcyclists in black leather regalia listen not to rock-and-roll but to Kentonesque big-band music' (Gabbard: 2002). It would perhaps have been more convincing for the BRMC to be rock-and-rollers, but Steven's relations with the director from the very start of the film production process meant that jazz was the use of jazz was ‘motivated by the musical tastes of the film's youthful and rebellious biker gang.' (Smith: 1998: 73). Some members of the gang even speak in jazz: they start scatting a kind of sung-speech in jazzy, syncopated rhythms. Leith Steven's justifies his choice of jazz music for The Wild One:
‘The characters of the play are young people, full of tensions, for the most part inarticulate about their problems, and, though exhibitionistic, still confused and wandering. These characteristics suggested the use of progressive jazz or bop (call it what you will) as an important segment of the score. This music, with its complicated, nervous searching quality, seemed best suited to complement these characters. This is the first score, to the writer's knowledge, to use contemporary jazz in actual scoring of scenes.' (Stevens in Limbacher: 1974: 121).
Arguably, the kind of jazz that is used in The Wild One isn't bop at all, and many jazz fans would also argue that the music is new and confident rather than ‘nervous' and ‘searching'. Though this film represents one of the most successful and earliest examples of the intricate interrelationship between diegetic and non-diegetic music, it seems that the composer himself held prejudices against jazz, using it in a purely functional rather than sensitive way.
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM (1956)
In interview, Elmer Bernstein discusses his choice of music for The Man with the Golden
Arm: "There is something very American and contemporary about all the characters and their problems. I wanted a musical element that could speak readily of hysteria and despair, an element that would localize these emotions to our country, to a large city if possible. Ergo- jazz." (Burt: 1994: 11). This excerpt is taken from George Burt's book called The Art of Film Music: Burt believes the film to be an exceptional example of the correlation between music, emotion and mood, and notes music's involvement in creating atmosphere. Whilst this may be the case, I think that The Man with the Golden Arm offers an even better connection between the jazz idiom and urban decay, criminal deviance and drug use.
Fired up initially with an up-tempo and strident swing beat on the hi-hat, in conjunction with typically Preminger-like stylised graphics, the opening scene of the seedy city is cued by big-band jazz. As Frankie wanders through his street, the sign "Girls, girls, girls" can be seen in the background of the shot: this, in combination with the jazz trumpet, alerts the viewer immediately to Frankie's potentially illegitimate or unlawful life. Frankie wanders into his old drinking hole, where big-band jazz (stylistically analogous to that of the non-diegetic soundtrack) is playing as part of the diegetic soundtrack on the jukebox, and before long he exclaims, "Enough already; buy me a drink!". Already the association between jazz and sex, and jazz and drink has been hinted upon, only two minutes into the film.
A further few moments into the dialogue and it is established that Frankie has just returned from a rehabilitation centre for his dependency on heroin. Declaring thereafter that he has "kicked it for keeps" and that he is now "clean", seemingly the dialogue is presenting the narrative probabilities of the film: it is clear that Frankie will soon fall from grace and be enticed back into his old habits, and these peaks and troughs of temptation and resistance, are cued by jazz and by classical scoring throughout the narrative. The two musical disciplines work as binary opposites during the film: jazz represents illicit temptation, anger, madness, masculinity, dishonesty, and criminality, whilst classical scoring is outwardly a more compassionate musical force, underscoring more emotionally reflective scenes. Darby and BuBois mark such binaries at work, noting that there is noticeably no jazz in the finale of The Man with the Golden Arm: ‘In such scores, for better or worse and perhaps unavoidably, jazz often represents urban malaise, with love and "higher" feelings being supported by more traditional-sounding music' (Darby & DuBois: 1990: 461).
Instances of these juxtaposed musical styles are notable throughout the film. When Frankie recalls how he first started using drugs, for example, sympathetic strings act as an emotional cue, and such classically scored cues additionally occur as he imagines a future as a musician, declaring optimistically, "I'm a musician". This is use of classical music is in complete opposition to Bernstein's use of jazz. A notable and memorable use of jazz to articulate Frankie's downfall, is in the scene where Frankie goes to his drug-dealer desperate for a "fix". The drug-dealer obliges, and with every piece of necessary equipment that is put onto the chest of drawers, a violently dissonant ejaculation of big band brass is heard. Each stab of sound gets louder, the crescendo of which runs parallel to Frankie's increased despair, and is additionally reminiscent of the desperate, piercing and wounding nature of the heroine injection itself. Townsend also remarks on the use of dissonant jazz on the radio in the scene of Frankie's attempt to get "clean": ‘At the peak of Novak's distress, the music enters as an additional stimulus, serving both to symbolize and to intensify her emotions. In a dark urban world of betrayal, corruption and addiction, a form of jazz is considered, as Gabbard points out, the appropriate music." (Townsend: 2000:100-01).
Noteworthy too in The Man with the Golden Arm is the combination of diegetic and non-diegetic music in relation to the furthering of narrative. At the very beginning, jazz is played on the jukebox, throughout the film jazz is used to underscore the often criminal activities of the card games, jazz can also be heard at the seedy strip clubs where Molly and Frankie meet, and in addition, Frankie's ‘role as a drummer digetically solidifies the presence of jazz on the music track' (1994: 184). All instances of which lead to a saturation of jazz from within the action, and from outside of it, to prompt narrative development and musical unity, both of which are intended to underpin the continuity editing technique typical of classical Hollywood film production (Gorbman: 1987: 73). As the jazz soundtrack was still in its infancy at this time, Bernstein's score proved highly influential in its approach: Smith argues that ‘By using the protagonist and the film's various nightclub and bar settings, Elmer Berstein's score became a prototype of how jazz might be dramatically motivated as diegetic music' (Smith: 1998: 73-74). As well as being decidedly influential on film scoring in general, Bernstein's concentrated interlacing of jazz from both inner and outer sources throughout the majority of this film actually highlights the absence of jazz in the final episode of the film, which, as previously discussed, refers in essence to themes of sin and salvation, to good and evil, and to classical and jazz.
I WANT TO LIVE! (1958)
Based upon the true-life story of Barbara Graham, I Want to Live continues the trend set by previous jazz-and-film combinations, as it retells Graham's life which ‘eventually led to her execution in San Quentin. Mandel's score helped to establish a mood suitable for vice, drugs, and crime' (Rye: 2002). Interestingly, the first music heard is that of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, used at a moment of equilibrium as the action begins in order to completely contrast with the subsequent jazz, and make the jazz seem even sleazier, dirtier and more sordid.
In the conventional manner, jazz underscores the opening scene in a club, but the jazz style is notably different to previous films that have been discussed. The jazz is not "symphonic", swing or composed, but rather it is modern kind of jazz. Much of the score is in the bebop style, whilst Gerry Mulligan is perhaps better known for his post-bop and "cool" jazz style: "Both bebop and cool had been widely linked... with the subcultures of drug use and antisocial behaviour. Fifties jazz could be a restless, jittery music, and these film scores use it to generate an unstable nervous intensity." (Townsend: 2000:100). In 1958, when the film was made, bop was still slightly controversial and not what one would expect from a film score. Indeed, due to its ‘complex rhythm and melodic structures' and ‘its intricate chord inversions and improvisations' (Neal: 1999: 22) bop was still music for real jazz fans, rather than for fans of the popularised swing bands. Bop music was arguably a reaction to the dominance of swing ‘as an increasingly corrupted form of jazz' and also allowed ‘black musicians to seize their discourse from the white-dominated culture industry' (Elworth in Gabbard: 1995: 59).
White American moralist Dr. E. Elliot Rawlings wrote in the 1920s that ‘"Jazz music causes drunkenness... [by sending] a continuous whirl of impressionable stimulations to the brain, producing thoughts and imaginations which overpower the will. Reason and reflection are lost and the actions of the persons are directed by the stronger animal passions."' (Leonard: 1962: 33). It seems that this impression of jazz was still alive in I Want to Live, when considering the opening scene in the New Frisco Club in which the Mulligan group are playing: whilst showcasing close-ups of the musicians, the camera shots are askew and slanted in all different directions. Far from the continuity editing techniques of the earlier Hollywood period, the shots seem "drunk" and under the influence of the dangerously intoxicating jazz that it depicts. The choices of shots, in addition, further reiterate this correlation between jazz and drunkenness, by showing a direct shot of the trombonist drinking on the job.
Barbara is heard throughout to wax lyrical about "Gerry Mulligan; I know all of his sides by heart", and listens to bop throughout the film. The music, especially in the opening scene where it is given three or four minutes of its own, is celebrated but also has a tempting and dangerous quality, of the threat of falling into criminality and an illegitimate life. Similarly to The Man with the Golden Arm and The Wild One, the protagonist's status as a debauched criminal and passionate jazz fan is in each case very telling because they are both implicated in one another: seemingly if you are a jazz fan you must be a criminal, and accordingly the two cannot be thought of as mutually exclusive.
CONCLUSION
It has already been established that jazz is essentially black or "race music", through which a partial expression of African American culture filters. It has also been ascertained that jazz is partially derived from the repression of black culture by the white American, with racism at its foundations and prejudice surrounding the music throughout its growth. The use of jazz in 1950s Hollywood cinema came not long after the accusations of white American moralists that jazz (and the black musician that played it) brings about social depravity, urban decay and loosening of morality. This forceful alliance of jazz with sinful behaviour leads me to the opinion that jazz music was chosen (due to its implicit cultural codes, shared by majority white culture) to equate this "sinful" music with "sinful" characters in popular Hollywood film in the 1950s, thus infusing those characters with a metaphorical "blackness". At the heart of such abuses of the music is deeply embedded racism within the Hollywood system. Whilst it is true that classical music (rooted in European musical traditions) can also underscore the "baddie", it is also true that it is not specifically targeted, like jazz, to exclusively represent sin, wantonness, immorality, illegality and ethical deprivation.
Brando, Sinatra and Hayward all play characters that have been effectively "blackened" by the Hollywood system of the 1950s: the exclusion of black people on-screen (except for the occasional stereotypical role as a servant, for example) in order to suit white visual susceptibilities, meant that black people could not play protagonists in mainstream cinema, consequently resulting in white protagonists being musically signified as metaphorically black, of being able of behaving immorally and criminally. In each case, this theory can be tested: Brando's character, Johnny, is the leader of a delinquent mob, using violence and sexual intimidation as they inflict mayhem on a quiet town: Frankie is a drug-using ex-convict whose gambling habits lead him back to a criminal life: Hayward's character, Barbara, prostitutes herself, drinks, gambles and smokes, and ends up convicted of murder for which she is executed in the gas chamber. Clearly jazz does not follow those characters that lead a "square" life, but those who's principles are questionable and morals dubious. In addition, for each of the protagonists, jazz represents their own personal music: Johnny repeatedly chooses it to be played on the jukebox, Frankie actually plays jazz, and Barbara enthuses about and listens to jazz throughout the film. The music belongs to them, and therefore the music selectively characterises them and their individual immoralities.
With each combination of sound, music and image, the result is inevitably meaningful, so when any music is put against any filmic image or scene, it begs the question, why? Why has jazz been chosen over the classical idiom? Why is jazz targeted as the chief characterising agent of urban decay in film? When these questions and the history of jazz have been addressed, conclusions can therefore be drawn: it is my opinion that jazz is besieged by requests to be used as a signifier of urban degeneration due to the historically determined, deep-seated racism of the white American culture industries in the early twentieth century. The introduction of the black African American was feared by white majority culture, and likewise their music was also feared, resulting in its misuse and abuse by whites for their own artistic and cultural purposes. Such representations of aberrant characters as have been addressed in the textual analyses are symptomatic of an essentially racist system, offering implicit yet apparent associations between black music with all things unwholesome and objectionable. Unlike other forms of expression, music arguably has the ability to transcend more complex signifying languages, allowing for a more hidden but plainly perceptible "aural racism".
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Jazz in Film: A critique of the 1950s jazz soundtrack
By Laura Callaghan
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