Movies and television have a way of using a soundtrack not just to create a mood but to literalize it. You could always count on a master class in splitting the difference between artistry and obviousness during the so-called Blaxploitation era.
Interpretation
This quote highlights how soundtracks in films and television can enhance emotional depth while balancing artistic expression and clarity.
Wesley Morris reflects on the role of soundtracks in movies and television, particularly during the Blaxploitation era, where music was used not just to set the mood but to reinforce the emotional narrative of the story. He emphasizes the skill involved in balancing subtle artistry with clear messages, illustrating how soundtracks can elevate the overall experience of the film, making emotions more poignant and relatable to the audience.
In practice
In a film analysis class when discussing the impact of soundtracks.
Nudity has never seemed to bother Grace Jones. Her art has thrived, in part, on a physical candor that both shocked people and redrew the boundaries of taste, beauty, and eroticism around her masculinity, ebony skin, and unrelenting intensity.
You didn't have to read 'Playboy,' visit the mansion, wear pajamas, or even be straight: The effects of its ideas about women on the American psyche were totalizing. Women were inferior to men because, for 'Playboy,' they were scenery - pretty, passive, usually white, often blonde, there.
One result of moviemaking - and a side effect of moviegoing - is familiarity. If an actor is particularly good, familiarity opens into something deeper: care, concern, identification, empathy. Yet even those concepts can feel inadequate for some actors.
There comes a point in your moviegoing life where you look at the screen and then you look at the world and you ask, 'What is going on?' You want the movies to show you the chaos and mess and risk and failure that are normal for a lot of us. Generally, the movies hide all of that.
Every film should have its own world, a logic and feel to it that expands beyond the exact image that the audience is seeing.
The role of the artist is to not look away.
My film is not a movie; it's not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam.
Films to the degree that they glorify mindlessness and short attention span they are bad, to the degree that they encourage empathy with people not like ourselves and encourage us to think about life, they are good.
Whether I make them or not, there are always sounds to be heard and all of them are excellent.
I'm looking at a dead event and trying to give it new life. In a sense, I'm a taxidermist.
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