Daniel Alexander Apatiga
Professor David
12/17/2014
English: Science Fiction class
The Motif of Music in a Few Science Fiction Short Stories
and the film, Children of Men, by
Alfonso Cuaron
While
Samuel Amago argues in regards to Alfonso Cuaron’s film Children of Men, through “various audiovisual stimuli… we are drawn
into the dystopian world envisioned,” what the music conveys in the film often
serves as a reminder of different eras and, therefore, as reminders of how the
characters in the dialogic, or narrative, are reliving the past (Amago, page
213). Amago mainly considers the visual
universe of the film—not the sonorous. He
does talk about the tone and diction of the various characters though. But he does not show the impact that music
has on the reader or viewer. This essay will look at purposes the motif of
music might serve that are dichotomous to those discussed in Samuel Amago’s
critical essay, “Ethics, Aesthetics, and the Future in Alfonso Cuarón’s Children and Men.” Furthermore, the essay will look at how music
can play an important role despite it lacking a sonorous (listenable) quality in
sci-fi narratives.
The
motif of music can also be ambiguous or symbolic to the audience, often
eliciting a certain mood or indicating change of setting. Music can be very harmonious or very
dissonant, the typically conveying chaos to the listener; likewise, harmonic
melodies that have been composed typically convey beauty, sadness, or any
“ordered” phenomenon that is easily relatable.
In Cuarón’s film, music conveys meaning more readily and easily
graspable by the listener than in Zoline’s short story. For instance, mentioning a composer from
within a text, like Bach, evokes an atmosphere reminiscent of the baroque
period but the reader cannot possibly hear the notes unless one has a strong
imagination. Likewise for Mozart, who
evokes a classical timeframe, or Tchaikovsky for romanticism and
nationalism. Cuarón includes more
contemporary genres towards the middle part of the film. For some reason, while all the totalitarian
police force are busy caging people and removing people’s freedoms, Mahler,
Handel, and Penderecki’s music is playing in the background. The significance of this is that they’re all
German except for one, and the listener immediately remembers the totalitarian
history of Germany from history lessons.
Although these composers had nothing to do with it—for instance,
Penderecki was Polish and alive during the Holocaust and subsequent sacking of
Poland by the communist, totalitarian U.S.S.R.
Likewise, the mentioning of composers and/or music in science-fiction
texts also can convey specific meanings.
Music
can help create the place and/or time of a text. In the movie Children of Men, Cuaron skillfully sets
the scene by including music that correlates with the setting. During the opening scenes of the movie, where
Theo is sitting at the café sipping a coffee, marching music is played by an
orchestra. Viewers are likely to infer
from the choice of music that this is not a normal society. Because of the way Theo is brooding over his
coffee and sipping it, the viewer also can glean that there is something
troubling about his world. People are
marching to-and-fro, and the music is an agent to convey the war-like nature
and totalitarian government of what has become of Great Britain. If the viewer is not a musician or
knowledgeable about western musical genres, the music, which is clearly
military, is still likely to achieve the end of helping set the tone of the narrative. When a composer is mentioned, or a well-known
melody of a composer is heard, the composer is associated with being both
great, with this certain style, having lived from this date to that, and having
influenced so and so, which has a specific symbol that applies to the surrounding
narrative. Anyone who can hum a melody who has listened
to a Bach fugue for instance or a string quartet can imagine the sound that the
text is trying to convey. Similarly,
readers of science-fiction texts may decode messages from within texts.
The
mentioning of music can suggest order within chaos (or vice-a-versa). I do not mean to imply that music is
inherently either chaotic or ordered, as the organizational quality of music
relies mainly on the competency of the composer, who controls its form and structure. Rather, music exists as either well-formed or
poorly formed, depending on the medium it will be present in. For example, music might be situationally
ironic to the narrative. In “The Heat
Death of the Universe,” Zoline’s short sci-fi story is about a seemingly
schizoaffective or schizoid woman who is borderline psychotic. This is because the narrator’s children are driving
her nuts. Amidst the chaos, which is
interwoven skillfully into the plot, she is shown to have tastes in various
subjects, such as music. She loves
Bach’s music and repeats the motif of his name twice throughout the short
story: once on page 417 and once on page 420.
She also mentions Mozart on page 424.
At first, she mentions that “music [is the] best of all the arts, and of
music, Bach, J.S.” (Zoline, page 417).
The setting is set in a particularly dismal location: her home. In this setting, her children have apparently
drawn words on her wall—or was it Sarah Boyle all along and she had imagined
the existence of her children?—that certainly is possible. She mentions the motif of music again,
stating, “music [is] the formal articulation of the passage of time, and of
Bach, the most poignant rendering of this” (Zoline, page 420). If it can be agreed that the ending ends, for
Sarah Boyle, in a chaotic, psychotic state just because a turtle had been
drowned by one of her children, then music plays a situationally ironic role (from
earlier in the text) because of its ordered nature: “She picks up eggs and throws
them into the air. She begins to cry…
they go higher and higher in the stillness, hesitate at the zenith, then begin
to fall away slowly, slowly, throughout the fine clear air.” While the eggs and the various noises and/or
ambient sonority of the destruction in her path is not music, the character has
a chaotic mind. The motif of music
earlier in the text serves as a contrast to the chaos that ensues her life,
which builds on the drama aspect of the sci-fi short story.
Music
can act in the situation as a symbol of intelligence in light of the
overarching theme of the sci-fi narrative.
As a means of characterization, a musically knowledgeable protagonist is
generally viewed as more nuanced and wise than if his or her preferences were
omitted. The same is true for other
professions, however I will not delve into those topics. For instance, in “Day Million” by Frederik
Pohl, the narrator comments on the nature of “aptitude” of which he implies
that if someone goes to Julliard and receives a degree from that school, then
he or she must be acknowledged as having a strong ability: “if we find a child
with an aptitude for music we give him a scholarship to Julliard” (Pohl, page 381).
And this intelligence would have a
significant impact on the reader’s general view of the protagonist, making him
or her more attractive: “Don was tall, muscular, bronze, and exciting” (Pohl,
page 382). While the quote does not
mention music, it has already been provided to us earlier on in the story as
support for the argument that he is “exciting,” since music has an overarching
effect on the structure of the plot. If
a character did not have an “aptitude” for music, then he/she would not truly
be as human as we’d like to imagine. I’m
sure there are counterexamples that contradict my argument, however. The best counterexample to my prior arguments
can be the absence of music—however there is an example in the world of
contemporary music literature that silence exists as a piece of music: namely,
a piece by John Cage. In “Aye, and
Gomorrah,” by Samuel Delany, the narrative does not mention the word music at
all and the narrator focuses purely on the dialogue between a man who’s a
spacer and a woman who’s a frelk. Well,
the absence of music can also be interpreted as music as I aforementioned,
however, this does not add much to the narrative and we would be doing a disservice
to this short story if we criticize it vehemently for lacking any mention of
music. Nonetheless, the characterization
of the two protagonists is limited without the motif of music existing within
the text as either part of the setting, or in the dialogue, or simply as a
characterization tool by the author.
Music
can have an impact on the conclusion and moral of the story if it is mentioned
within the text/film. Multiple examples
of music, or the motif of music, within science fiction is prevalent out of the
short stories I read for class (in addition to works by Arthur C. Clark, whom
is one of my favorite authors). Critics
and readers are focused on the visual rather than the sonorous, and this is a
detriment to the meaning that one can decode from literature. Characterization—while some authors are
better at it than others—does not have to be vastly improved in short stories
with the mentioning of music, as these short stories do include the motif of
music. Music can be scary, emotional, or
just plain uncanny moments with the dissonance of strings with the right lighting,
visual effects, and uncanny moments in a film scene. Like an opera, good science fiction
literature in movies includes music to evoke particular melodies and eras of
music in the reader’s mind. Critics,
like Amago, neglect this philosophical realm that is not wholly unrelated to tone
and diction in the English philosophy. Not
coincidently, those elements are present in good music, and if the selection of
music were criticized more in media and science fiction, we could discern more
meaning that these composers are or have intended (if they’re dead) to convey.
Bibliography
Delany, Samuel R. "Aye, and Gomorrah..." The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction.
Ed. Arthur B.
Evans. Middletown: Wesleyan
University Press, 2010. 405-414. Print.
Zoline, Pamela. "The Heat Death of the Universe" The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction.
Ed. Arthur
B. Evans. Middletown: Wesleyan
University Press, 2010. 415-429. Print.
Pohl, Frederick. "Day Million" The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction.
Ed. Arthur
B. Evans. Middletown: Wesleyan
University Press, 2010. 379-484. Print.
Cuarón, Alfonso, dir. Children of Men. Universal
Pictures, 2007. Film.
Amago, Samuel. “Ethics, Aesthetics, and the Future in
Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men.” Discourse 32.2
(2010): 212-235. Project
MUSE. Web. 18 Dec. 2014.
