The Schizophonic Imagination: Audiovisual Ecology in the Cinema
Randolph Jordan
A Thesis
in
The Humanities Program
Presented in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada
September 2010
© Randolph Jordan, 2010
CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES
This is to certify that the thesis prepared
By: Randolph Jordan
Entitled: The Schizophonic Imagination: Audiovidual Ecology in the Cinema and submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (Humanities) complies with the regulations of the University and meets the accepted standards with respect to originality and quality.
Signed by the final examining committee:
Chair Dr. D. Salée
External Examiner Dr. C. O’Brien
External to Program Dr. P. Rist
Examiner Dr. R. Mountain
Examiner Dr. J. Sterne
Thesis Supervisor Dr. C. Russell
Approved by Chair of Department or Graduate Program Director Dr. B. Freiwald, Graduate Program Director
August 27, 2010 Dr. B. Lewis, Dean Faculty of Arts and Science
ABSTRACT
The Schizophonic Imagination: Audiovisual Ecology in the Cinema
Randolph Jordan, Ph.D. Concordia University, 2010
This dissertation examines a set of films that deal with narrative issues of ecology using innovative formal approaches to sound/image relationships. The guiding concept for these analyses is schizophonia: a term coined by R. Murray Schafer to refer to the split between sound and source by electroacoustical transmission, an aspect of modern soundscapes that Schafer ties to increasing alienation of the people that live within schizophonic environments. Although problematic in its implied anti-technological bias,
I argue that the term schizophonia can be used as an analytical tool for addressing how sound in film can evoke ecological issues pertaining to alienation. I re-cast the “split” between sound and source to the technical division between sound and image inherent to sound cinema. This technical split, although conventionally obscured, informs the ideologies that govern approaches to synchronization. Thus I address sound/image relationships in film by way of acknowledging their separation, a strategy that I refer to as audiovisual ecology.
I argue that schizophonia is best understood as the subjective experience of mediation, and I develop the idea of environmental engagement as the awareness of mediation that allows for the synchronization between interior psychological experience and the external world. My chosen films present characters in various stages of achieving this environmental synchronization, developing themes of alienation and engagement through reflexive approaches to audiovisual synchronization that foreground the mediation at work between sound and image. The films under discussion are: