Musical Geopolitics: Masculinity, Nationhood, and the Scoring of Superman (1978–2006)

ABSTRACT

This article explores the potential for the field of popular geopolitics of close attention to the form and structure of instrumental film music. Specifically, it analyses the film scores for Superman (1978) and Superman Returns (2006), showing how these, in conjunction with the films’ visual components, communicate a series of geopolitical logics and ideas about gender and nationhood. In so doing, this article extends existing concerns in popular geopolitics with music, principally lyrical popular music, contributing to a new research agenda that offers detailed readings of musical scores and notation, informed by semiotic perspectives. It advocates an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of film music, drawing on research in the rich and expanding field of film music studies. It supplements the close reading of the scores here with an analysis of audience reviews.

Introduction

Popular geopolitics has addressed a wide range of media – most frequently feature films (AlAwadhi and Dittmer 2020; Benwell and Pinkerton 2020; Hastie 2021), but also cartoons (Thorogood 2020), computer games (Bos 2020), and documentaries (Holland 2020). As yet, however, music has attracted substantially less attention. There have been several book length treatments of the popular geopolitics of film (e.g. Carter and Dodds 2014; Funnell and Dodds 2017; Power and Crampton 2007), but none of music. Where music has been considered, this has generally addressed music with lyrics, rather than the instrumental component of music (Grayson 2018). In other words, music has been understood principally as text in popular geopolitics. Building on recent calls in human geography to better attend to the subtleties of acoustic phenomena (Paiva 2018a, 2018b), this article offers a detailed geopolitical case study of instrumental music.

Specifically, this article considers instrumental film music: original music composed for a specific film or films, which is prominent in, but not exclusive to, the Global North. Film music’s instrumental components include tonality, harmony, pitch, timbre, rhythm, dynamics, and instrumentation. Film and television music permeates everyday life, with over half of households in the UK, for example, subscribing to one or more video-on-demand services, such as Amazon Prime Video or Netflix (Ofcom 2020), where the majority of content (films, television series, documentaries) possesses original instrumental score. The proportion of the population viewing such content has increased substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic and, depending on the restrictions that follow, is likely to remain high.

In popular discourse, such as film reviews, instrumental film music is generally considered an accompaniment to a film’s visual component, rather than a specific object of interest. This characterises the majority of references in popular geopolitics, too, where film music is usually referenced tangentially (Carter and McCormack 2006; Pinkerton 2008), if at all. These brief references are built upon here, alongside emerging work on this topic (Brownrigg 2007; Kirby 2019, 2021), to examine how instrumental film music communicates a rich array of geopolitical information to audiences. Previous research has generally considered film music in the aggregate or the oeuvres of particular composers, this article undertakes a close reading of a single case study, the Superman film franchise, focusing on the era in which the composer John Williams’ music chiefly represented this character.

Superman has long been considered an avatar for an idealised, morally just United States (Gordon 2017), embodying norms of whiteness (Lund 2016), Christianity (Kozlovic 2002), heterosexuality (Shyminsky 2011), and, of course, masculinity (Jonita Aro 2016). This article draws attention, in particular, to the connections between masculinity, nationhood and geopolitics in two film scores representing Superman, Superman (1978) and Superman Returns (2006), exploring in particular their employment of structural features of neo-Romantic film music. As such, this article’s primary contribution is to the geopolitics and geographies of music, with a secondary contribution to ongoing feminist work in popular geopolitics (e.g. An, Liu, and Zhu 2016; Glynn and Cupples 2015).

Theoretical Frameworks of Music in Geography, Geopolitics, and Film Music Studies

How has music been considered in geography generally, and in popular geopolitics specifically? What might greater engagement with fields that specialise in music bring to geopolitical analyses of music? This section provides a critical overview of how music has been conceptualised in geography and geopolitics, and suggests a need for close readings of how musical form and structure communicate geopolitical information. It then highlights the potential of further engagement with the field of film music studies in expediting this goal, focusing on research that has considered questions of gender and identity.

Music in Geography and Popular Geopolitics

In the past decade, a series of authors have beaten the drum for more sophisticated sonic approaches in human geography, bringing together the disparate strands of research on sound that have historically characterised the discipline (Paiva 2018a). Their topical interests have ranged from the potential of acoustic methods in geographical research (Gallagher and Prior 2014), to the role of sonic violence in ‘carceral soundscapes’ (Lovatt 2015), to the politicised experience of listening (Gallagher, Kanngieser, and Prior 2017). Their chosen aural phenomena have included radio (Peters 2018), voice (Revill and Gold 2018), even silence (Johansen 2020), to name just three of myriad sonic subjects. Their theoretical approaches have traversed critical perspectives on ethnicity (Saldanha 2005), phenomenology (Revill 2016), and affectual geographies (Woods 2019).

In part, such interest in the sonic has stemmed from an older concern of human geographers: the geographies of music. Music was one of the first aural phenomenon to attract geographical attention (Revill 2017). When one thinks of space, place, landscape, and other recurrent geographical concerns, music is an acoustic form that comes early to mind (Knight 2006).

How, then, have geographers approached music? Broadly, there have been three ways. First, regional accounts, prominent in North American cultural geography, have traced the geographical diffusion of musical styles and of the music industry (Carney 1994; Florida and Jackson 2010; Nash and Carney 1996; Sadler 1997). Second, ‘representational’ accounts have sought to deconstruct the geographical meaning of music (Bennett 2000; Connell and Gibson 2003; Revill 2000; Smith 1994, 1997; Tweed and Watson 2019), primarily focusing on lyrical music with exceptions (Jazeel 2005; Knight 2006; Leyshon, Matless, and Revill 1995; Lowenthal 2006; Smith 2000). Third, ‘non-representational’ accounts have jettisoned the representationalist notion that music itself possesses extra-musical meaning (Anderson, Morton, and Revill 2005), focusing instead on the practice and performance of music (Kruse 2019; Wood 2012; Woods 2019).¹

The literature of popular geopolitics, the branch of critical geopolitics that incorporates the majority of work on music, has generally adopted the second and third of these approaches. ‘Representational’ accounts have primarily considered lyrics, such as expressions of nationality in Australian indigenous music (Dunbar-Hall and Gibson 2000; Gibson 1998), the ‘Jacksonian’ sentiments of post-9/11 US country music (Boulton 2008), and the geopolitical content of songs at the China Central Television Spring Festival Gala (Liu, An, and Zhu 2015). ‘Non-representational’ accounts, albeit not always by that term, have considered the political geographies of musical performances, including those of the Russian band, Pussy Riot (Street 2013), of Taiwanese-American rock musicians (Hsu 2013), and of digital grime artists (Woods 2020).

The representational/non-representational binary, while providing a point of theoretical approach, is something of an illusory dichotomy (Cresswell 2012). For example, the work of Lily Kong on popular music in Singapore addresses nationality, identity and other ideas that have traditionally been considered part of the ‘representational’ school of human geography, but it also considers the role of practice and performance in the production of these (Kong 1995a, 2006). Criticisms of representational approaches by later non-representational theorists have been, as Cresswell (2012) notes, at least partly based on a ‘straw person’, ‘the notion of a geography that treats representation as a form of stasis in a stable achieved world. This is supposed to be what cultural geographers of the 1980s and 1990s did. I still find that hard to recognise. Geographers who wrote about and write about representation (at least the good ones) were and always are trying to figure out how representation works in and with the world’.

This article seeks to chart a path between these two approaches. Non-representational accounts, in the case of music, have usefully drawn attention to how music is ‘lived’ (Anderson, Morton, and Revill 2005, 640), ‘performed’ (Wood 2012, 208), ‘felt’ (Woods 2019, 182). Thus, as the first concerted application of non-representational theory to music in human geography suggests, such accounts demonstrate ‘a shift towards the manifold and unpredictable entanglements of musical practice and performance rather than focusing on music or sound as textual objects […] [or] as simply representations of and for something extra-musical’ (Anderson, Morton, and Revill 2005, 640). However, there are limitations to the non-representationalist position, too, making it important to retain more conventional representational approaches.

First, while non-representational accounts of music have largely avoided consideration of lyrics, presumably to depart from representational geography’s focus on the same, neither have they considered in detail music’s non-lyrical or instrumental components. As such, they have not been well placed to determine whether music does (or can) express the ‘representational-referential system’ that non-representational approaches critique (Anderson 2019, 1112). Second, by conceptualising music as without extra-musical meaning, non-representational geographies remain subject to criticisms of their resistance to traditional forms of identity (Cresswell 2012); forms that remain crucial in contemporary life, especially in popular culture where simplified portrayals of people and place (stereotypes) remain common (Dittmer and Bos 2019).

What representational geographies might benefit from, though, in the case of music, is greater attentiveness to the styles and forms of particular representations. One way that this can be achieved is by embracing interdisciplinary perspectives that better engage with the mechanics and subtleties of musical form and structure.

Film Music Studies, Gender, and Musical Semiotics

The origin of film music studies is conventionally traced to Claudia Gorbman’s (1987) monograph, Unheard Melodies (Neumeyer 2019). There, Gorbman considered the ability of film music to influence the audience’s perception of a film’s narrative. Since then, the interdisciplinary field of film music studies has expanded, now incorporating, inter alia, film studies, literature studies, media studies, and musicology (Neumeyer, 2014a). The field as a whole remains small, but showcases a variety of publications, including surveys (Cooke and Ford 2016; Donnelly 2001; Neumeyer 2014b), collections dedicated to particular genres (Buhler and Durrand 2021a; Hayward 2004; Lerner 2010), and critical accounts by film composers/editors that also serve a pedagogical function (Burt 1994; Hill 2017).

As the interdisciplinarity of film music studies might suggest, theoretical approaches within the field are plural. They include, in a recent review, perspectives informed by neoformalism, narratology, psychoanalysis, semiotics, and critical theory, with frequent overlap between these approaches (Buhler 2019). For example, the analytical purchase of critical theories is often predicated on semiotic interpretations of film scores (Buhler 2019) – that is, close readings of how certain musical passages signify ideas in a structured way (see van Leeuwen 1999). Critical theories have been especially attuned to how representational forms construct identity/difference, and to questions of ideology and power that underly these constructions. In this way, work in film music studies at the intersection of semiotics and critical theory is perhaps that most closely aligned with the aims of popular geopolitics, in which such questions are also prominent (Dittmer and Bos 2019). This article is located at this nexus.

Gender, in particular, has been a form of identity of sustained interest in film music studies (Fülöp 2021), not least because of the history of Western film music itself. The earliest fully-realised film scores from the 1930s were composed by European émigrés, notably Max Steiner, Erich Korngold, Franz Waxman, and Miklós Rosa. These composers wedded instrumental film score to the Romantic-era symphonic style in which they were schooled (Franklin 2011). While composing techniques for Hollywood film are continually changing (Buhler and Durrand 2021b), the Romantic style remains influential in contemporary film music, especially in the work of leading composers such as John Williams, whose approach is based on a style that has been called ‘neo-Romanticism’ (Lehman 2018, 244).² Given Romantic music’s origins in the 19^th century, its approaches to gender can seem conservative to the modern listener.

What are these approaches? There are several, and the tight alignment that they often exhibit between signifier and signified makes them especially amenable to semiotic approaches. The classic example is the leitmotif: a short musical refrain, developed by Richard Wagner, which recurs throughout a score to signify a person or place or idea (see Bribitzer-Stull 2015). Historically, leitmotifs have been employed in Hollywood film music both for the love theme and for the heroine’s theme (Buhler, Neumeyer, and Deemer 2010), ‘suggesting that the heroine existed in the film primarily to be the love object for the hero’ (Buhler 2013, 2). Beyond specific kinds of Romantic musical expression like this, the gendering of neo-Romantic film music is also conveyed by the different kinds of instruments and rhythms that frequently accompany male and female characters (Deaville 2021; Edgar 2021; Fülöp 2021).

The receptivity of audiences to such cues remains debated, but a substantial body of research in the psychology of music finds a relationship, of varying strength, between musical form and its interpretation (see, in the case of emotional reactions, Juslin and Sloboda 2010). Even accounts that view musical meaning as the product principally of subjective interpretation still refer to structural explanations to explain commonalities across these interpretations, including those pertaining to gender. For example, Sergeant and Himonides (2016, 13), in the case of classical instrumental music (as sampled for their study), suggest that ‘gender impressions experienced by a listener are imposed onto the incoming musical stimuli subjectively by that listener’, but also that these are predicated on ‘a network of previously established gender schemata, operating at subliminal level, which rely on universal socially acquired stereotypical perceptions of relative characteristics of men and women’. Those authors find, for example, that high tempo music is more likely to be associated with masculinity and vice versa (Sergeant and Himonides 2016).

In the case of film music in the Romantic style, especially that for action and adventure films, such psychological research is supported by techniques that are known to be commonly employed by composers: masculine figures are frequently represented by ‘heroizing brass fanfares, driving, assertive percussion, and upward-striving melodic figures’ (Deaville 2021, 85), while female characters, in Rebecca Fülöp’s (2021) words, are more likely to be scored by ‘unhurried tempo; lyrical, rounded melodies with rhythms in which slower note values contrast with faster ones … major mode with poignant harmonic variety; and instrumentation featuring the strings and flute rather than brass and untuned percussion’. Indeed, so common is the latter construction in film music in the Romantic style that Fülöp (2021) has coined the descriptor, ‘Feminine Romantic Cliché’.

An umbrella term for ideas like leitmotif and the ‘Feminine Romantic Cliché’, and one that draws together these ideas for the purposes of this article, is the ‘musical topic’ (Monelle 2006). For Buhler (2014), ‘A musical topic can be defined as a conventional musical sign with an unusually clear signification’. Examples include ‘fanfares to signal heroism, so-called hurry music for chases, and jazz to suggest an urban milieu, and they often follow the logic of racial stereotyping such as the use of “Indian” music in westerns’ (Buhler 2019, 190). As these examples suggest, musical topics are, by their nature, often reductive; they are used to provide an aural shorthand for people and place, recognisable to diverse audiences.

Musical topics, including the leitmotif and the ‘Feminine Romantic Cliché’, also permit an interpretation of film music, at least that written in a neo-Romantic style, which goes beyond the notion of indeterminacy through which non-representational geographies have generally conceptualised musical form. Musical topics highlight that instrumental music, while not usually denotative in the fashion of language, can nevertheless possesses connotative meaning. This is not to deny that the origins of musical meaning are social, rather than innate (Martin 1995), and so that meanings differ around the world (Brown 1994), but highlights that, like any social construction, neo-Romantic film music frequently possesses tropes that can be subject to geopolitical analysis.

Methodology

To permit a detailed, but not over-burdened, study, this article looks at two closely-related film scores: Superman (1978) and Superman Returns (2006). Superman, scored by John Williams, is the first instalment of the ‘original’ (four-part) Superman series (1978–1987); Superman Returns is a part remake, part sequel to Superman, scored by John Ottman. The two films are connected by John Williams’ music, with many of the cues in Superman Returns inspired by, occasionally first employed in, the score for Superman, alongside original compositions by Ottman. In other words, both scores possess what might be called a John Williams ‘sound’, with some key exceptions in Superman Returns, discussed below.³ The analysis here focuses on three musical passages in these two scores for practicality: the opening fanfare, the Superman march, and the love theme.

This article unpacks these musical passages through a semiotic analysis. As mentioned, instrumental music does not communicate in the same way as language, the original focus of semiotics, albeit there are certain similarities (Kalinak 1992). Nevertheless, simplified musical expressions like musical topics, and the associations of certain instruments with specific extra-musical characteristics, mean that patterned relationships between signifier and signified do exist (van Leeuwen 1999). Instrumental film music, which seeks to convey information about people and place quickly and efficiently, and especially film music predicated on late Romanticism, is particularly rich in this type of musical meaning. The semiotic approach taken here, then, provides an appropriate first step into this new terrain, highlighting the potential for popular geopolitics of closer attention to musical form, and opening up questions of identity/difference that future musical geopolitics might explore.

The analysis here was conducted with the first published CD soundtracks of the two films (Ottman 2006; Williams 1987), in dialogue with publicly available transcriptions.⁴ In Williams’ score for Superman (1978), the main title is technically called ‘Theme from Superman (Main Title)’ (duration: 04:28); in Ottman’s score for Superman Returns (2006), the main title is technically called ‘Superman Returns – Main Title’ (duration: 03:47). The single term ‘Main Title’ is used here for ease of comparison. Other tracks from the soundtracks are discussed where they reprise themes from the main title. Transcriptions of specific passages are reproduced in this article to better illustrate the relationship between musical form, structure and meaning in this case study. This is a common approach in film music studies, but has hitherto not been the norm – or even the exception – in either the popular geopolitics of music or the geographies of music.

To support the contention that certain structural features of the musical scores discussed here signify to audiences in patterned, if not prescriptive, ways, this article also undertakes an analysis of audience reviews on the online reviews aggregator, the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) (for previous uses of this method, see Dodds 2006; Hastie 2021; Ridanpää 2014). For this, data were collected from the IMDb webpage for Superman during March 2021, and for Superman Returns during January 2021. At the time of data collection, Superman had 584 reviews, Superman Returns had 2,433 reviews. After trial and error, it was determined that the search terms ‘music’, ‘score’ and ‘soundtrack’ returned the overwhelming majority of comments on the films’ music in these 3,017 reviews. These comments were then coded by the adjectives used to describe the film’s score, providing an overall impression of users’ opinions of the same. Reviews that discussed the films’ music in detail were examined to gauge the depth, as well as breadth, of audience engagement with these scores.

Masculinity, Nationhood, and the Scoring of Superman

Superman (1978) and Superman Returns (2006) both possess scores rich in musical meaning, and the following sections analyse each of them in turn. The sections begin with summaries of the films, before offering close semiotic analyses of their music, showing how geopolitical information is communicated in each through a series of musical techniques and characteristics. These interpretations of the music are then compared to audience reviews of the films and their scores. These reviews demonstrate a high level of sensitivity to how the scores of these films construct the Superman character, and also highlight listeners’ preferences (often strong) for certain characterisations of Superman over others.

Superman (1978)

Superman (1978) is the first entry in Hollywood’s Superman franchise. The film begins with the imminent destruction of the planet, Krypton. A father who predicted the calamity saves his infant son, Kal-El, by sending him to Earth in a space capsule. There, Kal-El’s extra-terrestrial biology provides him with superhuman strength, alongside other powers, including the ability to fly. On Earth, Kal-El adopts twin personas: Clark Kent, a journalist at the Daily Planet newspaper, and Superman, the titular superhero. The film’s central plot concerns Superman’s efforts to thwart the machinations of Lex Luthor, who seeks to destroy the West Coast of the United States to increase the value of land he possesses inland. Superman is assisted by Lois Lane, a fellow journalist at the Daily Planet, who is also his love interest and vice versa. Superman is triumphant after he single-handedly holds together the Pacific and North American tectonic plates, and travels back through time to save Lois.

The film is scored by John Williams, active from the late 1950s and amongst the most celebrated of Hollywood film composers. Williams’ scores include those for Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977) and its sequels (1980–2019), the original Indiana Jones trilogy (1981–89), and Schindler’s List (1993). His orchestral compositions for Star Wars and Indiana Jones, in particular, have been described as part of a ‘hyperclassical’ renaissance in Hollywood film music from the 1980s (Kassabian 2001, 89). While Williams’ and Hollywood’s stylistic repertoire is far broader than this might imply (Cooke 2008), Williams’ approach is rooted in the Romantic approach of the earliest film composers (Scheurer 1997), especially that of Erich Korngold (Flinn 1992). In terms of Williams’ characterisation of male and female characters, this lineage has generally lent itself to more traditional interpretations of gender, including via the use of leitmotif (Moormann 2012; Paulus 2000).

The most famous passage in Williams’ Superman score is the ‘Main Title’, which consists of three elements – a fanfare, the Superman march, and the film’s love theme – which recur throughout the score (Richards 2013).⁵

The fanfare lasts less than a single minute (approximately 25 seconds, followed by a linking passage to the Superman march), but is rich in spatial and geopolitical meanings. As remarked previously, fanfares are a musical topic commonly employed to connote heroism (Buhler 2019). Geopolitical information is also communicated in the fanfare via instrumentation. Here, the fanfare’s opening is performed by the French horn; an orchestral descendant of the animal horns of antiquity used to mark significant events, both celebratory and perilous. In the Early Modern Period, horn playing was further codified via its employment during the hunt; a largely male and aristocratic European practice, in which the horn communicated various spatial information, including the direction of the quarry and the hunt’s ultimate success (Heater 1995). For Monelle (2006), the horn’s association with grandeur and nobility, but also the mystery of the sylvan landscape where the hunt took place, precipitated its initial inclusion in orchestral music in the late 17^th century. John Williams speaks of the French horn in similar terms:

When I’ve tried to analyze my lifelong love of the French horn, I’ve had to conclude that it’s mainly because of the horn’s capacity to stir memories of antiquity. The very sound of the French horn conjures images stored in the collective psyche. It’s an instrument that invites us to ‘dream backward to the ancient time’ (quoted in Audissino 2014, 75).⁶

In addition to instrumentation, harmonically the fanfare employs the perfect fifth and perfect fourth (Figure 1), commonly used to connote heroism in Hollywood score; and is based on a triplet rhythm, frequently associated with military music (Richards 2013) – an association cemented by the following Superman march. The emphasis on the tonic (first note) and dominant (fifth note) in the fanfare lends the overall ‘Main Title’ stability; and the gradual chord progression foreshadows the film’s narrative progression (Superman’s encounter with, but also overcoming of, various trials) (Richards 2013). The fanfare’s dynamics, including a crescendo timpani roll that climaxes with a cymbal clash, emphasise a building sense of anticipation.

Figure 1. Superman fanfare (with ‘first notes’ and ‘goal notes’ highlighted in top staff). Source:Reproduced by kind permission of Mark Richards (www.filmmusicnotes.com).

The march that follows the fanfare (approximately 40 seconds into the ‘Main Title’) further highlights the martial aspects of Superman’s character – his adventurousness, his physical ability, his uniformed service to the United States (and to the broader Western world). A gradual crescendo is employed again, which, supported by the credits that fly past on-screen, possesses spatial resonance, suggesting something dramatic approaching from a distance (Richards 2013). Structurally, the march employs the forceful rhythms, vivid intervallic leaps (differences in pitch) and ascending melodic patterns that frequently characterise heroic action in Hollywood film (Scheurer 2005) (Figure 2). The brass and strings are performed staccato, associated in classical music, especially opera, with masculinity; when the love them enters after the march (‘Main Title’, 02:21), the orchestra, especially the strings, shift to legato, commonly linked to the feminine (McClary 1991).

Figure 2. Superman march. Source: Reproduced by kind permission of Mark Richards (www.filmmusicnotes.com).

The musicologist, Mark Richards (2013, np), who has undertaken a detailed analysis of the Superman score, notes that the love theme reworks one of the musical ideas of the fanfare (Figure 3); ‘The similarity not only lends unity to the piece, but subtly suggests two sides of the same personality: the brawny hero and the gentle romantic’. Notably, then, there is a separation between the heroic (masculine, spatially expansive) and romantic (feminine, spatially intimate) elements of the ‘Main Title’, even if Superman is seen to embody both. Moreover, the Superman march represents Superman both in a generic sense and when he is performing a specific heroic act. The love theme, though, appears generally when Superman is with Lois, typically returning after she has been rescued, when Superman’s attention turns to her, or when they are flying together (e.g. ‘The Flying Sequence’). In other words, the heroic aspects of the score are Superman’s alone; the romantic aspects of the score are synonymous with his relationship with Lane.

Figure 3. Re-employment of idea from Superman fanfare in love theme.

Source: Reproduced by kind permission of Mark Richards (www.filmmusicnotes.com).

Relatedly, there is an innate conservativism in the structure of Williams’ music. For Buhler (2000), Williams’ music (in Buhler’s case study, Star Wars, but the point applies equally to Superman) is ‘heavily implicated in the task of elevating restoration and recurrence over substantive change. Thus, all musical development in the trilogy is without consequence, as time and again the music merely celebrates a return to what has already occurred’. This is an aesthetic point, but it possess a geopolitics, too. In Superman, the titular character is associated with the heroic fanfare and the march from the ‘Main Title’. This is neither challenged nor substantively varied at any point in the score. The heroic aspects of the ‘Main Title’ could not apply to Lois Lane musically, even if she performed a heroic act (as she sometimes does), because she is not Superman.

In this way, the score for Superman speaks to a traditional gendered dichotomy of (masculine) geopolitical action and (female) geopolitical reaction and/or passivity (Enloe 1989). Romantic affection, as embodied by Lois, is embedded in the score as a response to the execution of a heroic act. In addition, the timbre of Williams’ score is carefully designed to evince a particular conception of America, drawing from an established musical discourse of ‘Americana’ based on the work of widely-known and influential American composers, such as Aaron Copland. Thus, for the musicologist, Tom Schneller (2014):

Williams’ ‘American’ sound has several components, including plain hymnal textures, pandiatonicism, and blues or folk song pastiches. In harmonic terms, one of the key ingredients is ♭VII, which typically appears either as a predominant chord (♭VII–V), a dominant substitute (♭IVsus4 [suspended] chord. The lowered seventh degree in major has long been associated with American roots music (Appalachian folk, blues, jazz, and rock). It is also an integral part of Aaron Copland’s nationalist style: VII features prominently, for example, in the iconic Fanfare for the Common Man … the shadow of which looms large in Williams’ oeuvre. This cluster of associations helps to explain why Williams (along with [Jerry] Goldsmith, [James] Horner, and other film composers) resorts to ♭VII again and again as a musical shorthand for ‘America.’

Notably, as Williams himself has stated elsewhere, ‘A lot of these references are deliberate. They’re an attempt to evoke a response in the audience [when] we want to elicit a certain kind of reaction’ (quoted in Schneller 2014, 17).

IMDb reviews of Superman suggest that Williams has been successful in this effort. Of 584 reviews of Superman on IMDb (2021a), 190 comment on the score (the overall rating for the film is 7.3/10). Overwhelmingly, references to Williams’ score are positive (98.4%), the majority employing superlatives. Where reviewers discuss the film’s music in detail, these generally highlight its appropriateness for this film (e.g. ‘fit with the movie perfectly’, ‘fits the film perfectly’, ‘perfectly crafted around a film’) and/or its appropriateness for the titular character’s embodiment of heroism, mythological grandeur, and American exceptionalism (e.g., ‘the stuff of legendary heroes’, ‘synonymous with a legend’, ‘a tribute to a distinctly American myth’). The reviews also suggest that audiences appreciate and delineate between individual cues, typically employing terms like ‘heroic’, ‘majestic’, ‘iconic’ for the Superman fanfare and march, but ‘melancholic’, ‘lovely’, ‘poignant’ for the love theme. In addition, specific passages of the score are deconstructed in detail by reviewers, such as the rhythm of the second idea of the ‘Main Title’ (Figure 1), the ending of which seems to express ‘Superman’ phonetically (Su-per-man) (‘Main Title’, 00:12–00:15).

A full discussion of Superman and its relationship to Cold War geopolitics, the film’s obvious geopolitical context, is beyond the scope of this section, but has been undertaken elsewhere (Soares 2015). For the purposes of this early engagement with the geopolitics of film music, several points are noteworthy: first, that music is a key mode through which Superman’s gendered heroism is realised in Superman; second, that this music, at a structural level, delineates between the active (masculine) geopolitical role of Superman, and the generally reactive role of other characters, most obviously Lois Lane; and third, that this musical structure further links Superman’s heroism with an optimistic view of the world in which American beneficence (and muscle) is ultimately and inevitably triumphant.

Superman Returns (2006)

Superman Returns (2006) is a reboot of the Superman franchise; part remake, part sequel to Superman (1978). In the film, Superman must thwart an attempt by Lex Luthor to radically increase the value of his land holdings by destroying part of the United States. Superman’s love interest, again, is Lois Lane; a series of set pieces showcase Superman’s physical and moral prowess, as in the earlier film. Subtle changes to the plot differentiate this instalment from Superman, though. As the title suggests, this is not Superman’s first visit to Earth; he has been absent for several years to investigate the fate of his home planet, Krypton (a plot device that also explains why Superman did not disrupt the events of 9/11). In Superman Returns, Superman re-introduces himself to the public by saving a falling NASA airplane; in Superman, the airplane is Air Force One. Similar nods are made throughout. The most significant change to the film, though, is to its characterisation of Superman himself.

On its release, Superman Returns was greeted with mixed reviews as an aesthetic spectacle. However, a trope common in media coverage was speculation over Superman’s sexual orientation (Duralde 2006; Gross 2006; Guardian 2006; Sydney Morning Herald 2006). Hitherto, representations of Superman, including Superman (1978), emphasised his heterosexuality (Palmer-Mehta and Hay 2005; Shyminsky 2011). In the case of Superman Returns, justifications for Superman’s hypothesised homosexuality referenced factors both external and internal to the film. Reviewers drew attention to the fact that the film’s director, Bryan Singer, is gay (albeit the implied cause-effect relationship here was not explicated). In addition, commentators highlighted specific aspects of Superman’s depiction on-screen, including his ‘lack’ of machismo (Guardian 2006, np), the fact that he is ‘simply too pretty’ (Sydney Morning Herald 2006, np), and his atypical relationship with Lois Lane (Gross 2006) (Superman and Lois’ relationship is depicted as emotional rather than physical, not least because, during Superman’s visit to Krypton, Lane married another man).

For his part, Singer acknowledges an effort to destabilise conventional gender norms in the film, contending that, in distinction to Superman’s traditional audience of teenage boys, Superman Returns is targeted at ‘more of a female audience’ (Brock 2014). Certainly, the visual component of the film undercuts stereotypical tropes of masculinity: Superman exercises his superhuman strength, but is reserved about his physical abilities; Superman’s key on-screen parental relationship is with his mother, Martha, rather than his father, Jonathan (who figures centrally in Superman); Superman is more willing to express his feelings and emotions, especially to Lois, than in previous iterations of the character.

One aspect of the film that engages with these questions, but has hitherto gone unexplored in both popular and academic accounts, is the film’s score.⁷ Given the popularity of John Williams’ score for its predecessor, John Ottman elects to recycle many of the cues from that film, most notably the ‘Main Title’. In the ‘Main Title’, Ottman dispenses with the opening fanfare, beginning instead with the Superman march, before shifting to a highly similar version of Williams’ love theme. While this makes Ottman’s score leaner, the bravura of Williams’ opening fanfare, and its associations with a particular kind of Western, overtly masculine heroism, is lost. Although the love theme in the ‘Main Title’ is the same as that of the earlier score, its employment later in the film suggests that the Superman of Superman Returns is a different kind of character, too.

The fullest elaboration of the love theme in Superman Returns, as in Superman, takes place during the flying scene towards the middle of the film. In Superman, this is Superman’s first prolonged meeting with Lois; in the later film, this is Superman’s first reunion with her. Both scenes begin and end on the rooftop of a Metropolis (a thinly-veiled Manhattan) skyscraper, Superman providing Lois with an aerial tour of the city in the interim.

In Williams’ score for Superman, a type of theme-variation structure is employed. As the central idea of the love theme is reiterated and developed, so, too, the intimacy between Superman and Lois deepens; in this way, the music offers an acoustic version of the film’s visual dimension. Ottman’s orchestration of the love theme, however, is more ambivalent than Williams’, reflecting the plot of Superman Returns: Lois is still in love with Superman, but resents him for abandoning her during his hiatus on Krypton (indeed, while he was away, Lois won a Pulitzer Prize for her essay, ‘Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman’). To capture this ambivalence, Ottman inverts the theme-variation structure. Instead, partial, tentative versions of the love theme are introduced, but the full motif is heard only once, towards the end of the scene (‘How Could You Leave Us?’, 05:03/5:47). This fleeting restatement of Williams’ theme emphasises a brief rekindling of the past love between these two characters, but the variation immediately following returns, via an unexpected cadence, to the passage’s overall ambivalence.

John Ottman (2021) has discussed the difference between his and Williams’ approaches to scoring Lois, noting that, while he felt Lois required new music in Superman Returns, he did not want to completely cut Williams’ original and iconic theme for the character. As such, Ottman (2021) describes how he elected to integrate Williams’ music into his own score – in the partial, tentative manner described above – while composing new passages to better capture Lois’ conflicted feelings towards Superman in Superman Returns.

The flying scene also links the twin complexities of Superman’s personal (emotional) and professional (geopolitical) lives. In the middle of the scene, with the thematic elements of the score refusing to resolve, Superman asks Lane what she can hear. ‘Nothing’, she responds. ‘I hear everything’, he replies; ‘You wrote that the world doesn’t need a saviour, but every day I hear people crying for one.’ The geopolitical symbolism here is clear: Superman, the embodiment of the United States as a benevolent superpower, cannot help everyone; indeed, it is not always clear whom he should help and whom he should not. The film’s production coincided with the early years of the insurgency in Iraq, in the wake of the US- and UK-led invasion of that country in 2003. It also coincided with the acknowledgement, even by more hawkish members of the George W. Bush administration, that ‘freedom’s untidy and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things’ (Loughlin 2003). That this specific cue is a reflection of this geopolitical context is, of course, improbable; but structurally it is an ambivalent passage, orchestrated to match an ambivalent scene that reflects on the complex personal and geopolitical aspects of Superman’s character.

The same ambivalence is present in Ottman’s employment of the Superman march. This motif is hinted at throughout the film, with partial versions prefiguring its full rendition whenever Superman is performing a heroic deed. Yet, Superman’s performance of such deeds is not synonymous with the march as in Superman. Rather, Ottman employs more equivocal scoring techniques, such as choirs performing non-lexical vocables (e.g. ‘Rough Flight’, ‘Saving the World’), communicating ‘a spiritual, religious [musical] topic rather than [a] military one’ (Halfyard 2013, 184). Even in the film’s final act, in which Superman triumphs over Luthor by throwing Luthor’s new continent into space, the scoring is ambivalent. The music here (‘Saving the World’, 02:40–03:04) is reminiscent of György Ligeti’s ‘Requiem for Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, Two Mixed Choirs and Orchestra’, most famously used to score the disquieting first sight of the alien obelisk in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Superman Returns ends musically with an inversion of the thematic order of the ‘Main Title’. Superman parts from Lois, with no guarantee that their love affair will resume. The final iteration of the love theme omits an expected cadence (‘Reprise/Fly Away’, 03:27), emphasising the ambiguity of this parting. A truncated version of the Superman march and the fanfare is then heard, emulating the ‘End Title’ of Superman. Finishing on the theme that accompanies Superman the hero, rather than Superman and Lois as lovers, does substantial geopolitical work; it communicates to the audience that Superman’s geopolitical role as superhero is the main aspect of his character; that Lois, and his romantic life, are subsidiary.

The more ambivalent score of Superman Returns, as compared to Superman, is evidently appreciated by reviewers on IMDb (2021b). Reviews are more difficult to classify as straightforwardly positive or negative than those for Superman, because of the influence of the earlier score on that for Superman Returns (the film’s overall rating is 6.0/10, over one point lower than that for Superman). For example, reviewers frequently praise the score for Superman Returns, but, upon examination, they are referring to the Williams-inspired motifs of the score, rather than the original passages composed by Ottman. Reviews for the film are voluminous (N = 2,433), but a sample of reviews (here, all the films’ one-star and ten-star reviews, n = 700) provides an illustration of audience views.

In the most negative (one-star) reviews of the film, 17 of 217 reviews mention the score. Of these, ten mention the re-employment of Williams’ original music, stating that it is either the film’s sole saving grace (e.g. ‘The only thing I liked was John Williams’ music’, ‘Thank God they kept the music intact’), or that its use was a betrayal of Williams’ original music (e.g. ‘Even John Williams’s legendary music seems out of place here’, ‘The recycled John Williams score felt tired and dull where it felt fresh and original in the [1978] film’). Comments on Ottman’s original compositions for the score are negative (‘cliché’, ‘uninspired’, ‘comedic’). Many of these same reviews embed their critiques within conservatively gendered denunciations of the overall film (e.g. critiquing that Lois and her partner have a child, but are unmarried, or that Lois has a child at a young age).

In the most positive (ten-star) reviews of the film, 88 of 483 reviews mention its music. Like the one-star reviews, comments on the reiterated themes of Williams are uniformly positive (e.g. ‘John Williams’ music is still as triumphant and incredible as ever’, ‘John Williams’ legendary theme tune stands out’, ‘John Williams’ theme music is used in all its heart-pumping and adrenaline flowing glory’), but praise is also awarded to Ottman’s original compositions. Some of these reviews highlight the place of Williams’ music in the contemporary geopolitical zeitgeist, mentioning, for example, its role as ‘part of American mythology and tradition’. Like the one-star equivalents, many of these reviews note that Superman Returns provides a more emotional take on the Superman character (e.g. ‘moving’, ‘emotional’, ‘angelic’, ‘sensitive’, ‘grieving’) than does Superman, but, in these reviews, this is considered a positive.

Several points are notable here. First, these IMDb reviews, as with those for Superman, evidence the sensitivity of many listeners to the structural components of film music, including the similarities or otherwise of the score for Superman to that for Superman Returns. Second, there is a clear allegiance of reviewers to the earlier score, with the majority sentiment being that Williams’ themes better exemplify Superman’s character. Even the most positive reviews to mention the score for Superman Returns reserve their highest praise for Williams’ original music, rather than Ottman’s newer cues. What is interesting is that, as discussed, William’s scoring of Superman is more tightly aligned to the notion of Superman as a quintessentially American hero, and to the traditionally gendered binaries of masculinity with (active, global) heroism and femininity with (passive, domestic) intimacy, predicated on conventionalised features of the Romantic style. This correlation suggests, perhaps, a preference for societal and geopolitical clarity over the ‘messy geopolitics’ of actual life (Flint 2006, 189), even in the realm of film music.

Conclusion

This article has analysed the popular geopolitics of instrumental music in the Superman film franchise, focusing on Superman (1978) and Superman Returns (2006). Empirically, it has offered the first in-depth reading of a single case study of instrumental film music in popular geopolitics, suggesting that such music offers a substantial new terrain for geopolitical enquiry, enriching existing visual approaches to film and television. It has highlighted the potential of interdisciplinary engagement with film music studies in undertaking this project. Conceptually, it has sought to further existing approaches to music in geography and geopolitics, from both representational and non-representational perspectives, highlighting that instrumental music can be a structured, if not fully transparent, mode of communication, rich in geopolitical information.

Specifically, this article has shown how the score for Superman is predicated on a series of traditional understandings of gender, and that these are frequently linked to geopolitical claims. These include: the doubling of the love theme with the female lead; the gendered musical association between the types of actions undertaken by male and by female characters; and a portrayal of Superman that affords primacy to his role as a national and international saviour, rather than to his intimate relationship with Lois Lane. These understandings are rehearsed, but also contested, in Superman Returns, which offers a more ambivalent musical representation of Superman, in keeping with the film’s atypical rendering of the Superman character.

Through an analysis of audience reviews on IMDb, this article has shown that there are patterns to listeners’ understandings of these scores, and that the more ‘heroic’ timbre of Williams’ score for Superman, relative to Ottman’s for Superman Returns, is appreciated by audiences. At the same time, there are limits to using pre-existing audience responses. IMDb reviews are likely to be written by persons especially interested in film, meaning that their understandings are not necessarily representative of all audiences, nor do we possess demographic information about reviewers. It is notable that, even in a forum where views on film music were not specifically solicited, substantial proportions of reviewers were sensitive to the music of Superman and Superman Returns. Further research might convene focus groups that work with viewers to understand in greater depth the kinds of geopolitical ideas and emphases that are received via instrumental film music, with findings that can be tested for statistical significance.

This article is only a step into this vast area of potential geopolitical scholarship, and there might be several aims for future research. While film music is a common form of instrumental music – and, as this article has hopefully demonstrated, an often elegant and interesting one – it is only one form, in which narrative and extra-musical ideas are foregrounded. Moreover, the neo-Romantic style of film music discussed here represents only one sub-type of film music. As such, future research might consider the extent to which other kinds of music are amenable to the present approach, and the strengths and weaknesses of other theoretical and methodological approaches. Relatedly, the internationalism of the film industry offers substantial promise for future research. The focus here has been on Hollywood film music, but the enormous film industries of China, India, and Japan, to name three, with their own cultures of film music, offer rich terrains for future analysis.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Mark Richards for his kind permission to reproduce the figures used in this article, and to the three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Any mistakes, despite this assistance, remain the author’s.

Notes

1. For previous reviews of the field, see Kong (1995b), Smith (1997), Waterman (2006), Revill (2017), Kirby (2021).

2. In this article, ‘Romantic’ refers to the era of classical musical from the beginning of the 19^th century to the early 20^th century; ‘romantic’ refers to the colloquial definition of the term.

3. A third Superman film series began with Man of Steel (2013), scored by Hans Zimmer. This series has departed from the sound of its predecessors, putting it beyond the scope of this article.

4. The order and exact performance of the music in the official soundtracks is not always identical to that in the films themselves, not least because of different ‘cuts’ across cinematic and televisual presentations, but versions are highly similar.

5. Where tracks are referenced from the official soundtrack, they are placed in inverted commas; ideas and cues within tracks are not so marked.

6. For further discussion of the French horn and masculinity in film music, see Deaville (2021); for an account of the gendering of musical instruments, including the (masculine) French horn, see Zervoudakes and Tanur (1994).

7. Halfyard (2013) has considered these two film scores and the Batman franchise from a technological perspective, addressing the shift from analogue to digital scoring techniques.