The sound of the unsound: the role of film sound design in depicting schizophrenia and schizophrenic hallucination in The Soloist

ABSTRACT

This article considers the crucial role that film sound design and music play in the representation of schizophrenia, with a particular focus on the construction of schizophrenic hallucination, in the Joe Wright directed film The Soloist (2009). In undertaking close textual analysis of the film’s blending of various sound effects, music, dialogue and language, as well as considering important production insights from the director’s commentary on the film’s DVD, this work explores the creative approach taken to portray the film’s biographical subject, Nathaniel Anthony Ayers Jr, and his schizophrenic hallucinations in the film primarily through the use of sound design and sound editing. Important areas considered include the context of the Hollywood biopic and its current fascination with the issue of mental health; the role of music and sound as a means of creating a compelling and nuanced psychological portrait in the film; and a consideration of the impact that hearing voices has for Ayers as a vulnerable and homeless black schizophrenic man, whose auditory hallucinations frequently manifest in ways that implicate racist discourses and racial anxiety in the onset and exacerbation of his mental illness.

KEYWORDS:

• Film sound
• music
• schizophrenia
• hallucination
• mental disorder
• The Soloist
• biopic

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Matt Selway

Matt Selway is lecturer in Media and Film in the school of Humanities, Religion and Philosophy at York St John University. His research concerns the representation of mental disorders in the media (primarily, though not exclusively, the biopic film), with a particular focus on the intersections of mental illness with other discourses of identity such as national identity, race, gender and class, and how narratives focussed on mental illness can be interpreted in ways that tell us more about the wider social context in which they were produced. He holds a PhD in film studies from the University of East Anglia and currently teaches a wide variety of media and film studies modules.