Tracing the Borders of Spanish Horror Cinema and Television by Jorge Marí

Author:Jorge Marí [Marí, Jorge]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367886882
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2019-12-10T00:00:00+00:00

Conclusion: From the Mechanical and the Mental to Magical Sound

Sound functions in order to frighten characters and spectators alike. It builds-up the suspense in films that can be classified under very different genres: thriller, horror, gore, intimate drama, war and horrific fairy tale. Bass vibration refers to evil. The Devil in El Día…, the toad in Nadie… and El Laberinto…, the killer in Tesis and the captain in El Laberinto…, have harrowing breaths. Even the lovers’ puffs in Secretos… can provoke anxiety. In many cases ‘machines’ interpose between the heroes and the evil. Acousmatics sounds, and acousmêtres, fool the spectators and the heroes into hoping to discover the real danger. Radio, TVs, VCRs and computers give oppressive sounds. Synthetic voices and digital sound effects tormented the spectator in the 1990s. The music played in a radio drama from the 1950s. In Secrets of the heart, is mixed with “ghost voices”. In the Labyrinth of Pan, the last trace of a mechanical sound machine is the captain’s gramophone, but it is no longer a horrifying sound. It suggests that the fascist is not human; he is just a mechanical killer, without any feelings. Because of the gift of his dying father—a clock he constantly has to repair—the man is suspended in the gearwheels of a monstrous death machine. Because of the injunction given by his father, he has no choice but to kill and be killed.

In the 1990s acousmêtres invaded Spanish films. By the end of the films they were ‘de-acoumatised’, and the monsters took on a human appearance and could then be killed. These feelings of distress could also be linked to the misunderstanding of simple sounds. In 2006’s Guillermo del Toro’s imaginarium, monsters are part of an animist vision of the world. Only the child can hear and see them, and even though they can be dangerous the real world is far worse.

The films we analysed illustrate how religious beliefs are replaced by superstition, perhaps caused by the media. Media, from the radio to the computer, create horrendous sounds. They manipulate people. Digital sound effects, made with complex sound-mixing techniques, become the frightening elements since they come out of machines. Here, the filmmakers and their sounds designers provide us with an interesting mise en abyme. When those sounds are simply natural elements, like a human sigh of pleasure, they help to understand life (e.g. in Secretos…). New technologies in Spanish films seemed to be dangerous in 1990s, this was mainly due to the subjective interpretation of the sound made by a character. Internal subjective sound explains the harrowing sounds. The real sound space is the brain of the characters, the place where fear resonates is our head.

From the 1990s to the 2000s, the suggestion of fear and danger that was contained primarily in sound then found its way into images. Mental sounds heard only by one person, or by two frightened kids, became a powerful music surrounding the characters, and the killing of an innocent person is shown directly.

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