The Hum of the Box: Critical listening in the Buffyverse
- Katy Stevens (University of New South Wales)
Televisual uses of sound esp. voice
Audience - transient, channel flicking, distracted by other activities.
Voco-centrism - to engage audience
Linguistic dexterity esp. in Hush and The Body.
Hush - muteness of silent cinema but with intense score.
Popular tv = radio + pictures
Misty voice image = soul image (Living Conditions)
Voice as material being of itself, of equivalent importance to the soul.
The embodied voice - Buffy's scream (Hush)
The female scream - vulnerability; sexuality vs. masuline idea of the stake.
Combat tool of linguistic prowess.
The Body
- Rejects music
- Voice takes on a "live" quality.
- Unnatural ordering of sounds (vomiting, windchimes, kids yelling)
- Long periods of silence and visual stillness
Relative quiet = heavy/resonant
Rarely used in television (the laugh track as aural filler)
Reliance on sonic cues
Close mikeing techniques
- sense of proximity and density
- breathing (pops and hisses)
Voice is own entity
- Buffy projects "truth" in the voice of the doctor, but it is not what he is saying./p>
Power of the soundtrack - its manipulation leads to Hush and The Body being lauded as two of the best espisodes of BTVS.