John Williams's Film Music: Jaws, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the Return of the Classical Hollywood Music Style

Prefaceon Methodology

xix Pref­ ace on Meth­ o­ dol­ ogy It has been ­ twenty years now that I have been stud­ y­ ing John ­ Williams’s music. Along the jour­ ney, one thing has kept strik­ ing me as ex­ tremely odd: there was no ­ English-language book on John ­ Williams. So, I re­ solved that I ­ should try and fill the gap. The book you are about to read is, hope­ fully, my an­ swer to the prob­ lem. This book is the re­ sult of the re­ vi­ sion of part of my PhD dis­ ser­ ta­ tion that cen­ tered on John ­ Williams’s neo­ clas­ si­ cism. The text has been “de-academized” and many hard theo­ ret­ i­ cal parts re­ moved. How­ ever, since it stems from the­ o­ ries and em­ ploys meth­ o­ dol­ o­ gies that might not be fa­ mil­ iar to every­ one, a few ex­ pla­ na­ tions are in order at the out­ set. More­ over, some terms that are com­ monly used in ­ film-music stud­ ies are de­ lib­ er­ ately dis­ carded or em­ ployed with res­ er­ va­ tions, while new ones are pro­ posed, which are more pre­ cise to ex­ press my point—among them, a ­ custom-made ­ method to an­ a­ lyze music in films. In order not to bur­ den the fol­ low­ ing chap­ ters, all such ter­ min­ o­ log­ i­ cal, me­ thod­ o­ log­ i­ cal, and theo­ ret­ i­ cal ­ points are gath­ ered here. Meth­ o­ dol­ ogy The me­ thod­ o­ log­ i­ cal ap­ proach ­ adopted is David ­ Bordwell’s and Kris­ tin­ Thompson’s neo­ for­ mal­ ism.1 The film is seen as an art­ work ­ created ac­ cord­ ing to spe­ cific norms in a spe­ cific his­ tor­ i­ cal con­ text in order to pro­ duce spe­ cific xx • Preface on Methodology aes­ thetic ef­ fects. Un­ like semi­ ot­ ics, neo­ for­ mal­ ism sees the film not so much as a text con­ vey­ ing a mes­ sage to be stud­ ied in terms of its com­ mu­ ni­ ca­ tional strat­ e­ gies, but ­ rather as an ar­ ti­ fact to be stud­ ied in terms of its per­ cep­ tual strat­ e­ gies. Each film is a for­ mal ­ system con­ sist­ ing of an inter­ play of a se­ ries of de­ vices. De­ vices are all those ele­ ments of a sty­ lis­ tic, nar­ ra­ tive, or the­ matic na­ ture that com­ bine to shape the ­ film’s over­ all form: ­ three-point light­ ing, track­ ing shots, fades, cos­ tumes, set­ tings and scen­ ery, flash­ backs, mon­ tages, cross­ cut­ ting, char­ ac­ ters, ex­ tra­ tex­ tual al­ lu­ sions, phil­ o­ soph­ i­ cal/po­ lit­ i­ cal ideas, and so on. These de­ vices ful­ fill a spe­ cific func­ tion ­ within the film and their pres­ ence must jus­ tify it­ self by some mo­ ti­ va­ tion. There are four types of mo­ ti­ va­ tion for the pres­ ence of a de­ vice in a film: (1) com­ po­ si­ tional mo­ ti­ va­ tion—a de­ vice is in the film be­ cause it is es­ sen­ tial to build ei­ ther the cau­ sal, tem­ po­ ral, or spa­ tial ­ system of the nar­ ra­ tive; (2) re­ alis­ tic mo­ ti­ va­ tion—a de­ vice is in the film be­ cause its pres­ ence is plau­ sible ac­ cord­ ing to our ex­ pe­ ri­ ence of how ­ things are in the real world; (3) trans­ tex­ tual mo­ ti­ va­ tion—a de­ vice is in the film be­ cause it fol­ lows the con­ ven­ tions of a given genre; and (4) ar­ tis­ tic mo­ ti­ va­ tion— a de­ vice is in the film for no other mo­ ti­ va­ tion than an aes­ thetic one. Music is one of the many de­ vices used in films and its pres­ ence in a given scene is ex­ plained by one or more of the ­ above-mentioned mo­ ti­ va­ tions. The open­ ing scene of The Abom­ i­ na­ ble Dr. ­ Phibes (Rob­ ert Fuest, 1971) is a good ex­ am­ ple. The film tells the story of a dis­ fig­ ured theo­ lo­ gian who re­ tal­ i­ ates ­ against the doc­ tors...