The Shining, rethought

In the three years I worked as a videographer/editor for a production company, I came to the realization that, especially with short form pieces (at our company, demos for documentaries and commercials) the music used can drastically alter the meaning. After retiring to a career in academia, one of my fields of research has been what I refer to as the “strategic deployment” of popular music; specifically with the goal of maximizing its affective qualities. One of the introductory activities I used to assign my first-year students learning video production was the creation of a movie trailer, comprised of clips from a film spliced together with pop music. I got a variety of submissions, but the most entertaining ones tended to subvert the traditional “meaning” associated with a song, imbuing it with new meaning by association with often ironic imagery.

I was, needless to say, incredibly entertained and impressed by the re-contextualization into a family drama of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, as part of a contest sponsored by the New York arm of the Association of Creative Independent Editors to reimagine a classic film in a different genre. Editor Robert Ryang’s Shining spoof (download here) circulated virally, ending up on iFilm, and eventually in the hands of a Hollywood producer, interested in new talent, reports the New York Times. Ryang’s version features a montage of clips from the film with saccharine canned music as an underscore, and adds a layer of schmaltz with a voice-over soundalike of that tried-and-true trailer narrator–comforting but authoritative. The icing, however, is the deployment of Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill,” which, by association, transforms Jack Torrence’s psychotic glare into the frustrated visage of an author with writer’s block.

An exercise like this exposes the fundamental hollowness of this type of promotional item, and the fascinating tendency of the modern human brain to instantly recontextualize established memories when offered a novel, yet familiar context within which to approach them. Film critic Claudia Gorbman wrote, regarding narrative film music, “Whatever music is applied to a film segment will do something, will have an effect–just as whatever two words a poet puts together will produce a meaning different from that of each word separately.” This is all the more appropriate for a format that relies on directness and immediacy as much as does the film trailer. Over the years, certain indelible stereotypes have attached themselves to film trailers–in order to quickly attract viewers, draw some associations for them, and, most importantly, compel them to return to the theatre, often via a less than authentic representation of the film.

But this fact is obvious–the trailer is nothing more than an extended commercial for a film, given a bit more breathing room than the 30 second TV spot. But I run out of fingers when trying to count the number of times I’ve kicked myself after being fooled into wasting my money by one of them. And this fooling is often accomplished aurally, with external narration (there’s the “scary” and “soothing” voices, both male, among others) and recognizable popular music–try and count the number of times you heard any number of songs from Moby’s Play on trailers a few years back, or James Brown’s “I Feel Good,” or, for our purposes here, “Solsbury Hill,” especially over the last few years? That song in particular draws on the supposed associations viewers have with the song, released in 1977 on Gabriel’s first post-Genesis album. The lyrics deal with his newfound freedom after splitting with his band, but film trailers approach a song much more generically. Producers would hear the light acoustic rhythm, the flute, the gentle pastoral imagery, not to mention the fact that many adults, the target audience for romantic comedies and other life-affirming films, would recognize the song, a hit when originally released, and conjuring some nostalgic reveries. So, while Ryang probably didn’t take much of this into consideration when editing this spoof, he clearly understands that adding music to a visual will do something. In this case, something hilarious.

Filed under: film  film music  Peter Gabriel  The Shining