Obscene Sounds: Sex, Death, and the Body On-Screen

Corporeality is an incipient theme in the scholarship of on-screen sound, and one with significant scope for additional investigation, coinciding with the argument that the proclivity for corporeal screen media has gathered momentum in recent years. This article examines standout instances of fleshly film sound in titles like There Will Be Blood (2007) and Under the Skin (2013) via an eros and thanatos framework, evincing film's enduring fixation with provocative themes of sex and death. This doublet of instinctual drives is borne of classical ideas and the psychical constructs of Freud and Lacan. It dominates on-screen manifestations of the corporeal, and holds special significance when it comes to auditory aspects of the physical body on-screen. Sex-death duality is a central conceit in Under the Skin, where eroticism and mortality are artfully intermingled, and where seductive and frightening entrapment processes are elicited through foreboding percussive beats and the upward-edging motion of looped and distorted chromatic string figures. Expanding on existent research around cinema's horror heartbeats in titles like There Will Be Blood, along with obscene sonic evocations of eros and thanatos, these investigations are intended as a viable means of framing corporeal research, constituting an appeal for visceral, multisensory spectatorship. This advocates for a move away from ocularcentrism, which staunchly prioritizes film's opticality, toward an actively engaged and embodied mode of film viewership.