Well-known and unknown music as an emotionalizing carrier of meaning in film

ABSTRACT

For many years, research has been conducted on film music in general and on its potential to convey meaning in particular. Surprisingly, some fundamental research gaps have remained. Does unknown film music express and induce emotions and convey meaning in a way that is equally distinct and predictable, compared with well-known music? Does the same music simultaneously influence more than one of the (as yet mostly individually tested) aspects through which music can convey meaning? This study, with 139 participants and a 2×2 between-subjects design, manipulated the emotional connotation and level of familiarity of an ambiguous film scene’s background music. The results provide an empirical basis for the practical knowledge that carefully selected and edited film music can communicate specific emotions, thereby inducing predictable emotions in the recipients. As an instrument of nonverbal communication, a music track influences several aspects through which music can convey meaning: the attributed film genre, the perception of the general film atmosphere, and the protagonists’ emotions, social behaviors, and relationships to each other. The genre associated with film music and the music’s expressed emotions have a significant impact, whereas whether the music is well-known or unknown to the audience is not crucial, as predicted.

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Supplementary material

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Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. Some films have utilized the referential function of well-known music. For example, Birdman (2014) featured a large amount of preexisting classical music, and The Artist (2011) prominently used the love theme from Vertigo (1958), prompting Kim Novak to publicly express her indignation about this musical recycling of – in her opinion – one of the most important love scenes in motion picture history (Mera, 2017). Additionally, some very successful directors (e.g., Kubrick, Malle, and Scorsese) classified the use of well-known music as a dramaturgical enrichment of their films and made it one of their trademarks (Merten, 2001, p. 1; Powrie & Stilwell, 2006).

2. Within the dimensional theories, emotions are categorized in broad affective dimensions. Although there are also one- and three-dimensional approaches, Russell’s two-dimensional circumplex model (Russell, 1980) is considered the most influential (Sloboda & Juslin, 2010, p. 78).

3. Particularly research focusing on the locus of emotion addressed the different types of relationships of music’s expressed and induced emotions (Gabrielsson, 2002). Possible is a positive relationship (e.g., happy music makes listeners happy), a negative relationship (e.g., happy music makes listeners sad), an unsystematic relationship (e.g., happy music has no effect at all) or no relationship at all. What determines the connotation of the relationship? Sometimes well-known music could induce emotions other than those expressed by the music, for example, by evoking memories of a contrary emotion (Schubert, 2013). Likewise research on sad music indicated that music expressing sad emotions can make listeners feel more positive, for example by being relaxing or cathartic (Sachs, Damasio, & Habibi, 2015; Van den Tol, 2016). However, general research on music’s expressed and induced emotions found a positive relationship in the majority of cases, even for familiar music (Evans & Schubert, 2008).

4. Although the film was not always correctly named in the case of Mission Impossible (correctly named in 24 out of 34 cases), the other films mentioned also belonged to the action/crime context and, therefore, conveyed the same meaning (e.g., James Bond), which is why the somewhat lower recognition rate was not considered problematic.