Marvel_DC: Are They Radio Plays?

ucarr

An exercise for screenwriters-in-training is watching features with the sound turned down. It sensitizes the screenwriter to effective visual storytelling without dialogue support. A screenplay is not, primarily, a verbal narrative. Instead, it's a production blueprint for telling a story in pictures. This tells us, perhaps surprisingly, that the core talent of the movie director is graphic design, over-and-above verbal narration, the core talent of the novelist.

****Spoilers****

In Psycho, Hitchcock creates a long, visual sequence with no dialogue. Just after Norman Bates kills Marian Crane, we watch him devise and execute a plan for disposal of the body. I'm guessing the sequence has a run time of about 3 or 4 minutes. In his interviews, Hitchcock made it clear visual storytelling without dialogue was the best-loved part of his work. He called it pure cinema.

I'm wondering if the universes of Marvel and DC are doing something almost the reverse of Hitchcock's pure cinema. The thrill of state-of-the-art visuals notwithstanding, could it be that superhero movies deliver most of their bang via soundtracks that launch and sustain an aural assault upon the eardrums? The distinctive feature of superhero movies, as distinguished from the action genre in general, is mayhem on a massive scale, oftentimes entailing the destruction of entire worlds.

I think there's an argument supporting the premise that superhero-movie dialogue has two main components: a) exposition; b) snarky wisecracking that traces back to Stan Lee. Well, this type of verbiage, in this context, is throwaway. The genre is mainly about the action sequence visuals. Or is it?

Has anyone done test screenings with audiences watching a superhero movie with the sound turned down? Probably not, as folks not training as creatives for careers in the business would likely balk at such a proposal.

What's a superhero movie without the slam, bang, crunching, crashing, smashing, blasting, hubcab twirling of auditory global mayhem?

Is the Marvel_DC thrill ride more about the ears than the eyes?

Paul

As an audio drama creator, I can state definitively that radio plays are not meant to be "an aural assault on the eardrums." You can only assault someone's ears if they have other senses remaining. Radio drama is about stimulating the imagination to create visuals using the appropriate minimum of suggestive sound that suggests without over-prescribing.

Aural assault is partly simply an extension of what action movies have been progressively doing, and what theaters have been doing to deafen the last couple generations.

But Marvel/DC is, of course, an extension of comic books. Comic books play things to exaggerated extremes, and when translated to TV or movies that naturally includes exaggerated sound.

It's true of 99% of post-1930 movies that you'll get more out of listening to it with your eyes closed than watching it with your ears plugged and captions off.

ucarr

You can only assault someone's ears if they have other senses remaining. — Paul

If I can't see, touch, smell or taste, then my hearing is desensitized? I've heard that lack of sight, for example, increases aural sensitivity.

Just wild guessing> Did you mean for your statement to be a negative, but you forgot to include the negative?> You can only assault someone's ears if they don't have other senses remaining?

I need help understanding this.

It's true of 99% of post-1930 movies that you'll get more out of listening to it with your eyes closed than watching it with your ears plugged and captions off. — Paul

Interesting. Are you saying that verbal learners outnumber visual learners by a wide margin, or that movie sound design surpasses movie graphic design by a wide margin?

For the sake of clarification,

Audio design - the audio prelap which is so popular right now; recurring musical theme>the bowed notes on bass violin in Jaws

Graphic design - some basic graphic design grammar of the movies: a) wide angle for establishing; b) reverse overs for conversation; c) singles for deep emotions

jgill

Is the Marvel_DC thrill ride more about the ears than the eyes? — ucarr

Not when it's Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn. :cool:

Tom Storm

In his interviews, Hitchcock made it clear visual storytelling without dialogue was the best-loved part of his work. He called it pure cinema. — ucarr

Hitchcock of course said anything he thought the critics would dig. Hitchcock, like many directors today, relied shamelessly on the ultimate special effect - the film score. That sequence you mention is nothing without Bernard Herrmann's superb music. As Hitchcock said to Herrmann after he saw the scored version of Psycho - "You've just saved my movie."

The reality is that most movies would be utterly diminished without the sound effects and music - the cues which give the visuals their power. Hence the tendency for movie composers to Mickey Mouse productions so dreadfully and make use of way too many brassy fanfares, saccharine themes and garish musical ticks - like they do in the Marvel products.

I have a robust dislike of the Marvel films - to my taste they are terrifically vulgar pieces of nascent fascist pap, straight out of the Leni Riefenstahl style manual. Their overstated and simple-minded crassness reminds me of those rich folk who end up with 20 bedroom shopping malls for homes, complete with gold toilet seats and all surfaces festooned with shiny crap. Cliché on a stick.

What's a superhero movie without the slam, bang, crunching, crashing, smashing, blasting, hubcab twirling of auditory global mayhem? — ucarr

Exactly. But it 'works' in combination with all that overstated CGI.

Banno

They're pretty sad narratives. The protagonists hit each other until one side can't.

ucarr

The reality is that most movies would be utterly diminished without the sound effects and music - the cues which give the visuals their power. — Tom Storm

With your statement, you have tossed me a dilemma. I see a lot of truth in what you say, however, personally speaking, I don't feel it all the way down.

I understand Hitchcock is the director the cognoscente love to hate. I hope you're not denying he was a genius filmmaker. Boy, if I had a choice between being a rarely seen darling of the critics vs. being a perennial favorite of the masses, I'd side with Hitchcock immediately.

When the title Psycho is uttered, does anyone first think of Bernard Herrmann?

As for the fascism of the American superhero movie (does anyone else make them?), you never get a thrill of power and preeminence when USA unloads a heep of whoop-ass onto the enemy?

You make an important point about the essential role of music scores. Where would Jaws be without those periodic, bowed bass notes? And that's why I think the eardrum-threatening splendor of the music of world-crunching mayhem is important catharsis for gadget-crazy America.

ucarr

The protagonists hit each other until one side can't. — Banno

And thus the popularity of the boxing match. Humanity will never resist entirely the hot blood of the slain bull.

Tom Storm

I understand Hitchcock is the director the cognoscente love to hate. — ucarr

Not really, they voted Vertigo the best film ever made over Citizen Kane just a few years ago. I personally am not a Hitchcock fan these days, as the films have badly dated to my eye, but in his time he was terrific. Psycho remains in my top 20 - the others not so much.

When the title Psycho is uttered, does anyone first think of Bernard Herrmann? — ucarr

Consider this. Not to think about Herrmann doesn't mean he isn't a primary reason for the film's success, as Hitchcock himself felt. The genius in a score is that it is felt and often remains undetected. But who can think of the infamous shower scene without those staccato violin screeches? There's a reason Martin Scorsese used Herrmann for Taxi Driver twenty years later and there's even a musical quote from Psycho in it.

you never get a thrill of power and preeminence when USA unloads a heep of whoop-ass onto the enemy? — ucarr

It's not power as such; the fascism is in the aesthetics, the fetishisation of weapons, uniforms and the body beautiful, posed and choreographed mawkishly the way Leni Riefenstahl posed her Nazi superheroes. But really I just don't appreciate the overstated visuals and underpowered ideas. Doesn't mean anything much as my views are irrelevant to the Marvel bottom line. Just like my views on McDonald's food.

Banno

the fascism is in the aesthetics, the fetishisation of weapons, uniforms and the body beautiful, posed and choreographed mawkishly the way Leni Riefenstahl posed her Nazi superheroes. But really I just don't appreciate the overstated visuals and underpowered ideas. Doesn't mean anything much as my views are irrelevant to the Marvel bottom line. Just like my views on McDonald's food. — Tom Storm

Eloquent truths.

I hear that the divide between Democrats and Republicans can be seen in things such as how far one is form a public park and which coffee one drinks in the morning. I wonder if there is research on whether republicans or Democrats watch this shit more.

I read it's anti-democratic, authoritarian themes as symptomatic.

Banno

Hmmm.

Who watches the MCU? Race, sex, and the role of on-screen diversity

Seems the largest demographic is progressive non-white men.

Statistically questionable data, but curious.

ucarr

Heath Ledger & Joaquin Phoenix have done excellent work as the Joker. The Dark Knight & Joker, however, are dramas about a super-villain, a genre distinct from the militarism of the superhero genre.

Tom Storm

↪ucarr

I wasn't a fan of The Dark Knight but you're right that it had somewhat more complex characters and dialogue.

ucarr

It's not power as such; the fascism is in the aesthetics, the fetishisation of weapons, uniforms and the body beautiful, posed and choreographed mawkishly the way Leni Riefenstahl posed her Nazi superheroes... — Tom Storm

Human nature being such as it is, what with the individual intimately concerned with issues of power and, moreover, each individual, living within a civil society compartmentalized by specialization, also interested in the power of the group, allowance must be made for the celebration (if not exaltation) of state power within the arts & entertainment.

The people's will to power will be honored. The aesthetics of fascism is power in another mode: the fetishizing of weapons (predominantly phallic), the pageantry of full military dress, the dash & storm of athletic soldiers, these attributes are the golden gleam of martial might. They are the essence of the rhetoric-cum-propaganda that wins the hearts & minds of the masses.

These glorifications within the arts date from Homer to Tolstoy to Riefenstahl. Regarding toxic hero-worship of warfare, I measure culpability of Nietzsche greater than that of Riefenstahl.

Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkim & Lang's Metropolis are celebrated classics. Well, both pictures have nationalism folded into their aesthetics. Has anyone complained about this?

Is not the genre of Dystopian Sci-Fi essentially nationalistic?

Tom Storm

Is not the genre of Dystopian Sci-Fi essentially nationalistic? — ucarr

Is it?

These glorifications within the arts date from Homer to Tolstoy to Riefenstahl. Regarding toxic hero-worship of warfare, I measure culpability of Nietzsche greater than that of Riefenstahl. — ucarr

Culpability isn't really an issue for me. Marvel films are light entertainment for kids (and adults with a particular taste) and they borrow their look from comics and from other sources in the same manner that advertising rips off their ideas to sell sports cars or perfume. It's all surfaces. To me Marvel films are closer to World Wrestling Entertainment than Nietzsche.

Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkim & Lang's Metropolis are celebrated classics. Well, both pictures have nationalism folded into their aesthetics. Has anyone complained about this? — ucarr

Not sure why complaining came up or even matters. I dislike Marvel films for their shrill, derivative banality. The point is that they are not Eisenstein or Lang. But this is a matter of personal taste.

The original question was are they like radio plays? It's a good question. My response to that is they are simple, visual artefacts that depend upon sound and music to drive home the overstated imagery.

ucarr

Is not the genre of Dystopian Sci-Fi essentially nationalistic?
— ucarr

Is it? — Tom Storm

The citizen of civil society maintains a dual interest: a) individual interest; b) group interest. The two interests stand locked within a yin-yang of creative conflict and, as such, are the rich ground of drama. Dystopian Sci-Fi examines the decline into toxicity of an empire_civilization under the adverse influence of a systemic imbalance between the individual interest & the group interest. Usually, it's a case of the individual interest overbearing the group interest such that a consortium of power brokers enslaves the masses to a system of values that upholds & enhances their power while condemning multitudes to servile self-denial & misery. Metropolis examples this configuration. The opposite configuration, not as common, has the masses imposing their benighted will upon a lone wolf alarmist whose narrative of impending doom they scoff at & dismiss. Superman examples this configuration.

Not sure why complaining came up or even matters. I dislike Marvel films for their shrill, derivative banality. The point is that they are not Eisenstein or Lang. But this is a matter of personal taste. — Tom Storm

the fascism is in the aesthetics, the fetishisation of weapons, uniforms and the body beautiful, posed and choreographed mawkishly the way Leni Riefenstahl posed her Nazi superheroes. — Tom Storm

I this isn't a complaint against the narcissism & overweening of fascism, then I don't know the meaning of the words.

Consider this. Not to think about Herrmann doesn't mean he isn't a primary reason for the film's success, as Hitchcock himself felt. The genius in a score is that it is felt and often remains undetected... — Tom Storm

The issue here is determination which is more foundational: a) the audio-visual narrative; b) the musical narrative. While it's true both narratives can stand alone as satisfying artistic experiences, when examining the merits of a movie, an audio-visual narrative whose themes & plot points are enhanced by the score, clearly, the audio-visual narrative is the principal & the score is the subordinate. Being that it occupies a support role, it's merely appropriate that the score's impact be mostly subliminal. Therefore, in this context, being subliminal is not a good yardstick for being sublime.

Tom Storm

↪ucarr

I don't think I've got anything to add to my earlier points. Nice to talk about movies for a change. :up:

Marvel_DC: Are They Radio Plays?

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