SEMIODISCOURSIVE TRANSLATION IN THE FILM PARANOID PARK: NON-ORIGINAL MUSICAL SOUNDTRACK AS A STRATEGY FOR MEANING PRODUCTION

ABSTRACT

The article examines the use of the non-original musical soundtrack in the film Paranoid Park , which is an adaptation of a homonymous novel, analyzing music as a discursive tool and, in the case of non-originality, a bricolated element related to the film through genre, melody and lyrics. Based on semiodiscourse theory, which combines narrativity, discourse and tensivity, the musical texts will be discussed from the point of view of two theorists: Pietroforte and Zilberberg. From the former, we will discuss the typology of musical discourse regimes, which understands the musical text as more or less related to the verbal language and natural sounds. From the latter, we will approach the discursive notion of the rhetoric of the event , which will be important to understand the discursive strategy of the novel and the film, and the construction of the character’s inner space. Departing from three genres played in the movie, we will observe how non-original songs and music are used as rhetorical devices that are symbolic and part of shared beliefs and knowledges of social groups; and motivated by the narrative in which they are inserted, sharing their semantic elements with the image, and supporting semi-symbolic operations.

Film soundtrack; discourse semiotics; tensive semiotics; semiodiscoursive translation; Paranoid Park

RESUMO

O artigo examina a utilização da trilha sonora musical não-original no filme Paranoid Park , que é a adaptação de um romance infanto-juvenil homônimo, analisando a música como ferramenta discursiva e, no caso da não-originalidade, elemento bricolado que se relaciona ao filme a partir de diferentes características, entre elas a melodia e a letra. Adotando o ponto de vista semiodiscursivo, que combina narratividade, discursividade e tensividade, as obras musicais serão vistas principalmente a partir de dois teóricos: Pietroforte e Zilberberg. Deste, abordaremos a noção discursivo-tensiva da retórica do acontecimento , que será importante para entendermos o regime discursivo do romance e do filme, e a construção do espaço interior do personagem. Daquele, discutiremos a tipologia de regimes de sentido do discurso musical, que prevê a música relacionada ao texto verbal e aos sons do mundo natural. Observaremos como canções e músicas não-originais ao texto fílmico são utilizadas como elementos retóricos contendo cargas semânticas verbo-sonora-musicais que são simbólicas e fazem parte de crenças e saberes sociais compartilhados; e são motivadas pela narrativa na qual foram inseridas, partilhando elementos semânticos com a imagem, apoiando construções semissimbólicas e a tradução dos percursos temáticos e figurativos construídos no texto literário.

Trilha sonora de cinema; semiótica discursiva; semiótica tensiva; tradução semiodiscursiva; Paranoid Park

Introduction ¹

This article discusses parts of the musical soundtrack of the film Paranoid Park , directed by Gus Van Sant ( PARANOID..., 2007 ), which is an adaptation of the homonymous novel written by Nelson (2006) , and tells the story of a teenager who, due to a traumatic event , goes through a moment of transformation and maturity. Our approach to music will be semiodiscoursive, and will assume that natural (verbal) language works as a metalinguistic tool for human translation/adaptation² of the natural world, in which music is inserted. Thus, we will focus on the film’s musical track from a narrative-discursive point of view, relying on the Greimasian theory and its developments, such as Tensive Semiotics, and will understand music as one of the meaning components of the filmic text, which is syncretic, and combines audio and visual content.

It is important to consider, however, that composing the repertoire of human languages, music and cinema belong to socially shared beliefs and knowledges, which exist within semantic orientations related to socio-historical, anthropological, ethical and aesthetic issues, which are discursive, mythological and symbolic. As the color, for example, semi-symbolically³ associated to semantic notions of death, life, pleasure and pain, such as black, white and red, music will be signified cognitively, pragmatically and effectively by different social groups, building connotations related to ritually practiced ideologies, or their breaking.

Friederich Marpurg’s musical typology, for example, developed in the 18th century, which relates musical expression (melody) to emotion, reveals how beliefs and knowledge about musical sense are socially shared, defining some moods and emotions according to specific rhythms, tonal progressions and harmonies. This typology is still valid today and used in films:

Table 1
– Acoustic expression of emotional states according to Friederich Marpurg (1718-1795)

Emotion	Expression
Sorrow	Slow, languid melody; sighing; caressing of single words with exquisite tonal material; prevailing dissonant harmony
Happiness	Fast movement; animated and triumphant melody; warm tone color; more consonant harmony
Contentment	A more steady and tranquil movement than with happiness
Repentance	The elements of sorrow, except that a turbulent, lamenting melody is used
Hopeness	A proud and exultant melody
Fear	Tumbling downward progressions, mainly in the lower register
Laughter	Drawn out, languid tones
Fickleness	Alternating expressions of fear and hope
Timidity	Similar to fear, but often intensified by an expression of impatience
Love	Consonant harmony; soft, flattering melody in broad movement
Hate	Rough harmony and melody
Envy	Growling and annoying tones
Compassion	Soft, smooth, lamenting melody; slow movement; repeated figures in bass
Jealously	Introduced by a soft, wavering tone; then an intense, scolding tone; finally a moving and sighing tone; alternating slow and quick movement
Wratch	Expression of hate combined with running notes; frequent sudden changes in the bass; sharp violent movements; shrieking dissonances
Modesty	Wavering, hesitating melody; short, quick stops
Daring	Defiant, rushing melody
Innocence	A pastoral style
Impatience	Rapidly changing, annoying modulations

Source:Sonnenschein (2001

Sonnenschein (2001) , who follows the same path of music classification, recalls the know-how of music therapy in the use of the various musical genres to manipulate the listener’s energy, which show that physical, mental and emotional changes can also be applied to the film’s dramatic elements to manipulate the viewer:

The tables above show how musical composition, its melodies and genres, on the one hand exist as a kind of widespread popular knowledge, independent of any deeper scientific knowledge in the area; on the other hand, as musical expression (according to Marpurg), it carries fundamental semes such as euphoria/dysphoria, life/death, and nature/culture ,⁴ being charged with symbolic connotations. Musical symbolization seems to be socially linked to what Gorbman (1987) calls the displeasure of the uncertainty of meaning, as music can present intensely codified and motivated values, generating the same effect as the caption in the photography, that is, complementing the visual text, and helping the interpretation of the image, suggesting interpretations and preventing ambivalence in meaning; or the opposite, creating ambivalences, contradictions and double meanings, oscillating between the more objective and the more subjective utterance. The breaking of the shared symbolic connotation creates effects of mismatch and estrangement between image, sound and the representation of the natural world, interrupting the “naturalness” of meaning.

But if the use of music in films, with its rhetorical effects, has already been widely discussed and seems to be obvious, and films have had original musical soundtracks for at least a century now, the relationship between non-original music and adaptation has been less discussed and studied. From a semiotic point of view, these issues are related to the polysemy inherent to the sign, to bricolage, and to a kind of “implicative or motivated syncretism”, which allows musical texts which are foreign to the original work, when condensed into audiovisual texts, lend to the filmic narrative some of their verbal and/or musical semantic characteristics, becoming symbolic and semi-symbolic, to compose an idea of unique textual meaning conveyed by the filmic text. In this syncretism, which combines and condenses musicality and visuality, and turns the sound into visual and the visual into sound, music (original or not) and image are blended on the linear duration of the filmic discourse, semantically feeding each other back to generate meanings, in which visual values are at the same time sound values.

In our analysis, we will assume that, due to these intersemiotic dynamics of “meaning-borrowing”, audiovisual adaptation/translation will combine three types of texts, namely: literary, filmic and musical, seeking and motivating (or breaking) equivalences of meaning of thematic and figurative processes⁵ of the original work. As we are dealing with a literary adaptation and a film that chooses an eclectic non-original soundtrack, composing a mix of musical genres that extends from classical music to punk rock, what will guide our analysis, in addition to the notion of genre and musical symbolism, will be Pietroforte’s semiotic approach (2015), who characterizes musical discourse in four basic regimes of meaning: the referential, the oblique, the mythological and the substantial, and relates them to the more or less musical, that is, beyond the musical itself, the verbal text and other sound/sonic manifestations, including the human voice, its intonations and modulations.

As the soundtrack of Paranoid Park is used to adapt a novel about a traumatic accident experienced and narrated by a teenager who tries, through writing, to understand and minimize the impact of the shock he suffers and its psychological consequences, we will bring to the discussion tensive semiotics, and the notion of a sensitive meaning production, based on discursive modes of efficiency, existence and junction. Such modes establish two basic regimes of signification, generators of discursive-rhetorical behaviors linked to implication and concession, and enabling the subject to establish a semiotensive relationship with the world. As such semiotic modes are related to a subject who elaborates the meaning as more or less intense, present and understandable, tensive semiotics, in our discussion, will be especially important to relate the musical genres used in the film to the construction/description of the character’s inner space, who narrates recent memories of a traumatic event and inner afflictions.

Before analyzing the soundtrack itself, we will make a short summary of the novel, discuss its relationship with tensive semiotics and the rhetoric of the event , and present the typology of Pietroforte’s musical discourse, relating it to some songs and music used in the film in the process and dynamics of the translation/adaptation of meaning.

1. Paranoid Park: summary of the novel

Paranoid Park is a teen novel which mixes psychological thriller and confessional narrative, in a story that can be seen as a sort of rite of passage, a moment of self-knowledge and maturation. Written in the first person singular, the novel has an epistolary form, being the account of a sixteen-year-old boy, Alex, to a schoolmate, Macy, about a tragic event to which he is directly related: the death of a man, and the consequences of that event in his life in following months. Alex, the narrator//protagonist, tells his misfortune in seven letters, of a fatal accident that occurred in a train yard located next to the skate park, a place recently discovered by the teenager, famous for its users and danger: Paranoid Park was built illegally by underprivileged youth in the North American community of Portland, Oregon.

Alex explains that a family crisis, the separation of his parents, drives him away from home, and he meets Jared, an older student who teaches him how to skate around town and takes him to Paranoid Park. Excited about this new place, Alex plans to return to the skate park with his friend over the following weekend, at night, but Jared cancels the engagement because of a sexual adventure. Alex, then, decides to go to Paranoid Park, alone, in which he meets Scratch, a young homeless person, who invites him to invade the train yard next to the skate park. The protagonist follows Scratch, and the naive and exciting adventure turns into tragedy: as they board the passing train, the two young men are chased by a security guard, who attacks them. Alex, in a gesture of self-defense and protection of his new colleague, hits the man several times with his skateboard. Trying to defend himself from the attack of the teenager, the security guard loses his balance and falls on the railroad tracks, being run over and killed by the train. The boys flee the place, going different ways. The protagonist, frightened, throws his skateboard that is covered in blood, in the river, near the accident site, and hides in Jared’s house, which was vacant on that weekend.

Alex tells Macy that the next day he returns to the house and tries to resume his student routine, keeping the secret of the event, which apparently has no witnesses. However, afraid of being discovered and arrested, he pretends everything is normal and lives his routine. Torn between the dilemma of confessing and being arrested, and going to jail or continue his life and routine, Alex is unable to confide his secrets to anyone or shake off the anguish that dominates him: he lies to the police (who finds his skateboard near the crime scene), to his parents and friends, becoming paranoid and withdrawn, a young man integrated into a new life that seems lost and obscure. Macy, one of his schoolmates and neighbor, notices his friend’s behavior, advising him to write down what bothers him.

During school vacations, and after realizing that the crime has been filed by the police, which does not solve the case, the teenager takes Macy`s suggestion and quickly narrates the reasons for his behavior and concerns to his friend, telling her about the accident and its terrible consequences. The shock of the event, still present in the memory of the boy, the fear of being discovered and arrested, and the anguish caused by the weight of the terrible secret, make the narrator address several subjects in his letters, such as family, friends, love, fear, life, God, school, and the adult world. At the end of the last letter, however, calmer and more relieved, the young man thanks the interlocutor for her friendship and concern, and confesses his love for her. Alex does not send the letters to Macy, and in the last sentence of the letter, he explains he is going to burn them.

2. Paranoid Park: the rhetoric of the event and the construction of the inner space

Claude Zilberberg (2007) , from a semiotensive point of view, inserts the sensitive subject in the production of meaning, and proposes a discourse guided by two great forces that translate, or build, what can be understood as exercise , term related to the expected, or the routine ; and the event , a term related to the fracture, the unexpected, which is built by the discourse. The event and the exercise , the impact of the unexpected and the surprising, and the already known, presupposed, or expected, despite being philosophical and psychological issues, are also encoded in all textual, verbal and non-verbal levels: in intonations and pauses, inconclusive, implicative or adversative conjunctions, in exclamations, interjections and unexpected gestures, in the most hyperbolic and synesthetic rhetoric, which can exist in verbal and non-verbal texts.

According to Zilberberg, based on the idea of precipitation of meaning and the unexpected, the event solicits modes of efficiency , existence and junction of the sensitive discursive subject, which point to opposite and complementary correlates in the production of meaning: the efficiency mode, which designates the way in which a magnitude is installed in the subject’s field of presence, is characterized by the tension between occurrence and achievement ; the existence mode, which designates how the subject exists in relation to the world of meaning, being more or less focused, or active or passive, is characterized by the tension between intent and apprehension ; and the junction mode, which corresponds to the “condition of cohesion by which a data, systematic or not, is affirmed” ( ZILBERBERG, 2007 , p. 23), is characterized by the tension between the event , related to the more concessive discourse, and the exercise , related to the more implicative discourse. Thus, from a semiodiscursive tensive point of view, achievement , intent and exercise are of an implicative discursive nature, while occurrence , apprehension , and event are of a concessional discursive nature.

In the occurrence , apprehension and event modes, the meaning suddenly imposes itself, being of the order of the exception and producing the effect of impact, so that it is less recognized and understood completely than apprehended in parts or incompletely by the subject. As the excess of meaning of the event produces the occurrence , the subject is apprehended while apprehending it, because “to apprehend an event , an occurrence is, first of all, and perhaps mainly, to be apprehended by the occurrence ” ( ZILBERBERG, 2007 , p. 23). In this way, the apprehension can be related to passivity and suffering. In the achievement, intent and exercise mode, the meaning is configured progressively and linearly, corresponding to the expectations of the subject, intentions, beliefs, shared knowledge etc., so that the subject, when achieving , must be able and capable. If in achievement the subject is intended, or focused, or exerts the intent, it can be concluded that in the occurrence mode he or she lacks intention, is unfocused, confused, overwhelmed, thrown into a “surprising” and “epiphanic” reality. In the epiphanic world, related to the contemplation and reaction against the wonderful or the terrible, the subject suffers a momentary loss of notions of subjectivity, spatiality and temporality, related to the shock and the sudden recomposition of meaning⁶ .

Each mode will present its tensive morphosyntax, or syntactic style: an intensive syntax of increase and/or decrease in tension, for the efficiency mode, making the ocurrence or achievement emerge, according to the tensive variation updated by tempo and tonicity; an extensive syntax of triage and/or blending of perceived magnitudes, for the existence mode, summoning the subject through intent or apprehension according to the tensive variation updated by spatiality and temporality; and a junction syntax of concessions or implications, proper to the logic that determines the constitution of the field of presence of the perceptual interaction translated by language(s). In the implicative junction syntax there is a cause and a consequence (if a then b); in the concessive junction, even without causal and casual links caused by the event , the concession operates a resistant junction (although a, not b). Tensive semiotics, assuming a gradation between and among these modes, believes that they can be related in various gradual ways, which can be more or less intense, stressed or mixed, threatening the stability or instability of the other mode, discourse and event/exercise dynamics. In the tensive logic, the event and the exercise can be euphoric or dysphoric, introducing the subject to different types of reality, which can range from the wonderful and terrific to the traumatic and terrible event , or from the expected and desired, to the monotonous and frustrating exercise , or routine. Thus:

Table 3
Tensive modes and syntactic styles

Semiotic modes	Syntactic styles
Efficiency mode (occurrence and achievement)	Intense syntax Increase and Decrease (more or less) (intensity: tempo and tonicity)
Existence modes (intent and apprehension)	Extensive syntax Triage and Blending (more or less) (extensivity: time and space)
Junction modes (event and exercise)	Junction syntax (more or less ) (concession and implication)

Source:Zilberberg (2012⁷

Tensive semiotics allows us understand Paranoid Park, an epistolary novel about the maturation of a young man related to the death of a man and the report of a trauma, as a discourse modalized by the rhetoric of the event, which builds an existential syncretism articulated by the event , apprehension and occurrence modes, used to describe the insertion of the character in a new, intense, dysphoric, traumatic reality, and specially his inner space., through a concessive syntax present both in the novel and film. After the fatal accident, the character becomes introspective and monosyllabic, lost in thoughts about life and existence, trying to understand the event retrospectively, and momentarily losing his focusing power,⁸ which only starts when the young man decides to write and tell his story.

The accident in the train yard makes Alex plunge into an inner and secret world, full of fears and anxieties, and in which beliefs and knowledge are uncertain. Living a concessive existence and a disconcerting affective sensation, a break from the daily routine, the young man is neither dead nor alive, neither free nor imprisoned, neither innocent nor guilty, and despite having directly participated in the death of a man, is still free to tell his tale of woe. The word “paranoia”, which is in the title of the novel and used to refer to the skate park, expresses the semiotensive mode /+occurrence/, /+apprehension/ and /+event/: it means clouding of reason and madness, and is also used as a term which encompasses the chronic forms of relationship delusions, jealousy and persecution, and the so-called paranoid schizophrenia, related to psychological problems that manifest in the form of a systematized delusion⁹ .

In Paranoid Park , the junction with reality marked by the event inserts the subject into a kind of stupor, or “sideration”, causing doubts about the objectivity of time and space, and creating the sensation of trance. Distressed, Alex tries to understand the event that plagues him and its meaning surplus that unbalances his life and routine: the occurrence . His panic is so intense that when he goes to his friend’s house after the incident he hallucinates, imagining he is going mad. Hidden in Jared’s house, the teenager prays and cries uncontrollably until he falls asleep amidst nightmares.

The day after the incident, the young man describes himself as a “zombie”, unable to control his own body, and confesses that this feeling lasts strongly for the first ten days after the tragic event: the young man has the impression that such a sensation will last forever, which means it is intense and lasting. In his last letter, from January 8th, and almost four months after the event, the protagonist describes himself as “catatonic”. The word “zombie”, in addition to its more popular meaning, which is “undead”, has also other meanings related to death, such as “soul that wanders at dead hours, and ghost of a dead animal”¹⁰ . Likewise, the term “catatonic”, used in psychopathology, alludes to the form of schizophrenia that presents an alternation between periods of passivity and negativity and periods of sudden excitement¹¹ . Alex explains that he doesn’t feel happy, nor sad, just sick: it’s the efficiency of the occurrence mode that needs to be minimized.

Passively guided by the routine dampened by the shock of the event, Alex is plunged into the epiphanic world, which is marked in the text:¹² after the night of the terrible incident, the young man feels in a dream from which he cannot wake up. According to Tatit (2010) , who uses the term based on discursive semiotics, the ephemerality of epiphanic signs is due to the simultaneity, in the subject’s imagination, of two narrative processes: the exercise one, which tends to overcome the limits imposed by antagonistic forces and its uninterrupted evolution; and the epiphanic one, which represents an interval, a duration without internal limits, being intense and having a high density of presence for the subject. Caught between an adolescent routine existence and its fragmented and euphoric day-to-day dynamics, and the epiphanic world and its continuous, dysphoric dynamics, the actor lives both the duration of the occurrence generated by the event , and the urgency of its ending. While going through a secret and terrifying routine, Alex has constant nightmares, has panic and anxiety attacks following the news of the security guard’s death in the media, cannot relate to people, becomes a absent and weak student, and thinks about running away from home and country.

From this narrative modalized by the junction - event mode, the apprehension-existence mode and the occurrence-efficiency mode, we will see how the musical soundtrack, which contains different types of songs and music, is used in the figurativization of the protagonist’s narrative and thematic processes, helping the construction of the inner space and the epiphanic world of an apprehended character who lives the intensity of event and the overwhelming pressure of the occurrence .

3. Paranoid Park, the referential and the oblique musical discourse ¹³

According to Pietroforte (2015) , the musical discourse can be classified, semiodiscursively, into four types: referential, oblique, mythical and substantial. The ones that most interest us for the discussion are the first two. Referential speech is related, or anchored, to verbal speech, in at least two ways: what is known as “lyrics”, which can be more “spoken” or “sung” (and the voice follows the plan of musical expression, composed of pitch, tempo, duration and timbre), and the verbal titles of the compositions and parts, which can refer to various aspects of the natural world. In this way, the verbal title assumes a narrative function, proposing themes and figures subordinated to narrative schemes. The oblique discourse, in turn, is related to the world of things, created by the destabilized and strange referential discourse, from a problematization and a tension between sound references and musical language, as in some kinds of concrete music or in instrumental compositions mixed with sounds from the natural world. Thus, it can be said that the referential thematization of things in the world is denied by the musical thematization, which transforms the sounds of the natural world into music, generating an obliqueness in the referencing “which forwards, in addition to the perception of sounds referring to things, the musical perception” ( PIETROFORTE, 2015 , p. 62)¹⁴

Such discursive regimes, based on tensive semiotics, can also be understood as semiotic practices articulated within syntactic styles of more or less increase and decrease , triage and mixture , concession and implication . It is from the referential discourse and the oblique discourse that we analyze parts of Paranoid Park’s musical score, which has an eclectic compilation of musical genres, observing how they contribute to the translation of the meaning of the literary text modalized by the concessive event .

Paranoid Park’s soundtrack contains non-original music and songs from different genres, which are also related to the emotional and sensitive states of the narrator//protagonist Alex: the instrumental musical score of other films (music: Nino Rota of Fellini’s movies), Blues (music: instrumental), Indie Rock/Folk (song), experimental/progressive/techno rock (song), Country music (song), Hip-Hop (song), Electronic/electroacoustic (music: instrumental/soundscapes), Classical (music) and Punk rock (song). Relating Pietroforte’s musical typology commented above, we will classify as referential musical discourse all songs our music that have lyrics, including Beethoven’s choral symphony, whose fourth movement is entitled “Ode to Joy”, and has a verbal text performed by a choir; as oblique music, we will consider all electroacoustic compositions with sounds from the natural world. In this case, as this kind of music deals with the strangeness of obliquity, an oscillation between the referential and the mythical (constructive or self-referential)¹⁵ regime is identified, which we will not be discussed here.

A1. The referential musical discourse: the songs Angeles and The White Lady loves you more (Elliot Smith; genre: indie rock/folk)

These two songs will be discussed together as they are compositions by the same artist and have similar characteristics: they are extremely melodious and melancholic, and sung in a timid and whispered way, in the style of the author. Scaruffi (1999) and Calvert (2010) explain that Smith’s characters are misfits consumed by a passion that can be literal, alcohol or drugs, or metaphorical, and whose lives seem to be in degenerative states. In Angeles, a song that can be interpreted as the representation of a Faustian bargain accepted by musicians co-opted by major labels, who exchange their talent for money ( YALCINKAIA, 2015 ), what interests us is precisely, in addition to the hoarse voice, which expresses suffering and weakness, and a melancholy tone, the theme of a dysphoric and evil-dominated world, in which man struggles for survival and money, in a life with no promises of redemption. The lyrics are the following:

Angeles Someone’s always coming around here, trailing some new kill Says: “I’ve seen your picture on a hundred dollar bill” And what’s a game of chance to you, to him is one of real skill So glad to meet you, Angeles Picking up the ticket shows, there’s money to be made Go on and lose the gamble, that’s the history of the trade And you add up all the cards left to play to zero And sign up with evil, Angeles Don’t start me trying now ‘Cos I’m all over it, Angeles I can make you satisfied in everything you do All your secret wishes could right now be coming true And be forever with my poison arms around you No one’s gonna fool around with us No one’s gonna fool around with us So glad to meet you, Angeles

Angeles

Someone’s always coming around here, trailing some new kill Says: “I’ve seen your picture on a hundred dollar bill” And what’s a game of chance to you, to him is one of real skill So glad to meet you, Angeles Picking up the ticket shows, there’s money to be made Go on and lose the gamble, that’s the history of the trade And you add up all the cards left to play to zero And sign up with evil, Angeles Don’t start me trying now ‘Cos I’m all over it, Angeles I can make you satisfied in everything you do All your secret wishes could right now be coming true And be forever with my poison arms around you No one’s gonna fool around with us No one’s gonna fool around with us So glad to meet you, Angeles

The song is played in the final moments of the film, when the young protagonist writes the last letter and burns it on the beach,¹⁶ putting an end to the weight of the secret that torments him, and marks the beginning of his return to a normal life, his exercise/routine. On the one hand, the song delimits not only the end of what has happened, but also the character’s process of maturity, a new understanding of life. By living with the memory of the image of the body of a man cut in half, and whose death he understands as accidental, and lying to everyone so as not to harm himself or lose the pleasures of freedom, Alex, in a way, justifies and minimizes his act, and learns the evil and violent side of survival. In the novel, he confesses his fear of losing his teenage life and the pleasures his social class allows, and he knows the importance of freedom for the future. Thus, by lying and denying his responsibility in the act, Alex protects his status quo, which is a strong destinator of his actions after the event , and which makes him keep secret of his involvement in the man’s death.

Figure 1
The song Angele s, at the end of the movie, marks the decreasing of occurrence and apprehension, and the beginning of a new routine and focus

In the song “The While Lady loves you more”, which can be described as a romantic ballad, there is the central figure of the White Lady, who despite being originally related to cocaine, heroin or other drugs, in the movie acquires euphoric features, possessing spiritual, maternal and erotic connotations¹⁸ . The song White Lady begins after an interview with the detective, who finds a skateboard near the crime scene, and gathers testimony from young skateboarders in the community. The enunciator relates most of the song to scenes of young skateboarders, in images that connote different themes as social exclusion, abandonment and contravention. The song’s lyrics are the following:

The White Lady loves you more Keep your things in a place meant to hide But I know they’re there somewhere And I know that’s where you’ll go tonight I’ll be thrown over just like before The White Lady loves you more Need a metal man just to pick up your feet It’s a long time since you cared enough for me to even be discrete I know what this metal is for The White Lady loves you more I’m looking at a hand full of broken plans And I’m tired of playing it down You just want her to do anything for you There ain’t nothing she won’t allow You wake up in the middle of the night From a dream you won’t remember flashing on like a cop’s light You say “she’s waiting” and I know what for The White Lady loves you more

The White Lady loves you more

Keep your things in a place meant to hide But I know they’re there somewhere And I know that’s where you’ll go tonight I’ll be thrown over just like before The White Lady loves you more Need a metal man just to pick up your feet It’s a long time since you cared enough for me to even be discrete I know what this metal is for The White Lady loves you more I’m looking at a hand full of broken plans And I’m tired of playing it down You just want her to do anything for you There ain’t nothing she won’t allow You wake up in the middle of the night From a dream you won’t remember flashing on like a cop’s light You say “she’s waiting” and I know what for The White Lady loves you more

The song is played in its entirety, and the film seems to work, intertextually, in the language of the video clip or indie/amateur film. The song’s lyrics mention a secret place, a hiding place and, therefore, a space of protection provided by the White Lady who, related to young skateboarders on the street, creates semantic ties with the mother figure and the idea of a protector angel of a lost youth in an authoritarian society (some scenes show the police questioning the teenagers: a young black man holds what appears to be a ticket for the camera); at the same time, being a quiet and whispered song, it resembles a lullaby, something that brings comfort, a metaphor of peace and innocence.

In the visual sequence in which the song is played, the images of the young people are washed out, grainy and with fluid framing, as if made by a hand-held camera (Super 8 or video). On the one hand, the actor of the enunciation Gus Van Sant establishes a connection with an equally independent artist, a singer not only young and with his own style, but dead in his youth; on the other hand, the relationship between the indie rock song and the indie image (that is, with traits and styles of independent film) projects semes such as freedom, independence and culture outside of imposed standards: in the relationship between music and image, visual and musical themes and figures are constructed related to maternal protection and innocence, as well as rebellion and alternative community life, which are themes addressed by the character or related to his existence:

Figure 2
– Abandonment, protection, innocence and freedom in The white lady loves you more

A2. The referential musical discourse: Ode to Joy (Ludwig Van Beethoven; genre: classical music)

The excerpt of the fourth movement with choir is played in the scene we call the event , whose impact will change the type of junction between the character and his world, and placed in the film at the moment when, after Alex and Scratch invade the train yard next to Paranoid Park, they climb a passing train. The music, which starts low and only instrumental, will have its volume gradually increased (from less to more) until the moment when the protagonist sees the body of the security guard cut in half, which is the climax of the sequence and the film.

Although not a song, the last symphony written by Beethoven has a choir of male and female voices that sings a poem by Schiller, slightly altered by the musician. Overall, the symphony is extremely complex both in its expression and content, and is intertextually related to other genres. According to Buch (2001 , p. 9), in Beethoven’s work, the expansion of the symphonic form is allied to a true rhetoric of musical genres that evokes the military and religious universe, from which the hymn, sacred or profane, emerges, “by which men celebrate being together” ( BUCH, 2001 , p. 9). From such a grand and abstract ideal, related to brotherhood and community celebration, “Beethoven creates a syncretic musical text that embraces singing, poetry, anthem, folk music, march, fanfare, Turkish music, the oratory etc.” ( BUCH, 2001 , p.12). According to Cook (1993) , this symphony proclaims the ideas of universal brotherhood and joy (compatible with the values of the time), but at the same time casts a veil of doubt over them, sending incompatible messages, and resisting an interpretation definitive.

In our case, and despite the celebratory and festive tone of the fourth movement, it is worthwhile to note that the enunciator of the film does not use the most well-known part of choral music, usually performed in other films, but its second part, much slower and more lugubrious, and based on deeper, darker tones. It is the use of the oratorical genre, which has the following stanza:

Seid umschlungen, Millionen! Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt! Brüder, über’m Sternenzelt Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen. Are you collapsing, Millions! Do you sense the creator, World? Seek him, above the starry canopy Above stars must he dwell. 19

Seid umschlungen, Millionen! Diesen Kuß der ganzen Welt! Brüder, über’m Sternenzelt Muß ein lieber Vater wohnen.

Are you collapsing, Millions! Do you sense the creator, World? Seek him, above the starry canopy Above stars must he dwell. 19

It is not difficult to imagine how such impacting music as the Ninth Symphony redimensions the time and space of the narrative, intensifying the impact of the scene, and lending mythical, religious and tragic connotations to the description of the event. The symphony sustains the figuration of shock and the installation of the occurrence , and creates the impact of the surprising and of the fracture, the sinful and the overwhelming, themes equally present in the novel. Through this romantic composition the event gains more dimension and depth, becoming more palpable and concrete, and the feeling of dread experienced by the teenager is well translated by the syncretism of music and image, in spite of the language. The voice syncretized with the musical expression and its symbologies. In the film, the scene in which the dying security guard and the protagonist look at each other is accompanied by the most intense and darkest part of the choir part.

Beethoven’s composition lends to the scene the very grandiosity of the tragic, on one hand making allusions to the fatality of destiny, linked to the event ; and on the other hand, seeking the effect of catharsis, through a musical passage marked by the duration, or the extensity of the intensity (the more more). At the apex of the fourth movement, which corresponds to the moment when Alex sees the dead man’s body, there is a series of filmic narrative strategies (diegetic) that accompany the impetuosity of the musical text, such as the use of close-ups, a plan also related to intensity ( BORDWELL; THOMPSON, 2013 ), which show the character’s face and tormented feelings both in the past of the memory as in the present of writing the letters, on the beach; the face of the helpless and dying security guard; and the cop’s face, who becomes a father figure in the novel.

Another visual strategy used with the symphony is a plan of the body of the security guard cut in half, which we call, based on Zilberberg (2011) , the image-event , as it is related to the extreme shock proposed by the texts (novel and film), and to the image of an indelible scar, as it is described by the young man in the novel. The image-event works also as a metaphor of the infant hero who challenges and confronts the adult world, figured by the attack and victory over the security guard and his brutally severed body:

Figure 3
The event described by an intense and lugubrious passage of the fourth movement with choir

B. The oblique musical discourse: Song One; Song Two; Song Three; The chambre blanche; Walk through resonant landscape 2, Dedan, Dehors (genre: electroacoustic with soundscape).

In addition to songs and classical music, the film brings together a series of electroacoustic compositions mixed with soundscapes, which can be classified as oblique, since natural sounds are inserted in these works, such as human voices, animal and nature noises. A quick inspection of the titles of the compositions reveals their status as /less referential/, as they make little reference to the real world and bring little, if any, adherence to any subject, time or space. Thus, related to sounds and resonances, or generic indications such as song “1, 2, and 3 “, “the white room” or “inside and out”, the titles themselves seek a differentiated identity that escapes from conventional references and reveals an equally mythological and self-referential status.

In cinema, soundscapes, being less of the order of music than of “sound effects”, generate awareness of the sonic space and create depth in the image, adding other layers of meaning and building polysemy. In semiodiscursive terms, these types of composition, similar to some kinds of concrete music, oscillate between the non-musical and the musical, based on the negation and neutrality of the fundamental semantic semes nature vs. culture. Katharine Norman²⁰ refers to this type of composition as “real world music [...] a form that is based on the balance between the naturalism of the recorded environments that make up the composition blocks and their mediation through recording and electroacoustic transmission technologies” (NORMAN, 1996 apudJORDAN, 2012 , p. 249).

Norman believes that the soundscape montage strategy is to mimic the work of the imagination so that, through an imaginative listening to what is ‘immanent in the real’, it is possible to discover what is immanent in the subject. Thus, the objective of this genre would be to rediscover the world through the construction of a limit that separates the internal experience from the external world. By working on this frontier, such compositions are capable of reconstructing subjectivity immersed in a continuous space and time. Truax²¹ in turn, understands that the genre is premised on a dialectic between the real and the imaginary, as well as between the concrete and the abstract (TRUAX, 2001 apudJORDAN, 2012 ).

Such epithets and observations point to the discussion of a sound phenomenology that involves a vibrating receiving body, and questions of construction and deconstruction of the nature of sounds, which can be understood, by semiotics, as more or less figurative/abstract discursive operations of natural world sounds constructions, including the mind/body sonic configuration. Electroacoustic compositions, in turn, into which soundscapes are added, evading any form of referential representation, contribute to the meaning of the text in another way: existing as timbres, frequencies and continuous pulsations that build the impression of a temporal subjective duration that can be related to the continuity of the epiphanic.

According to Jordan (2007) , Van Sant creates films based on the disarticulation of conventional relations between sound and cinematographic image to explore the cultural environment of a youth that is also disarticulated and that suffers all kinds of deprivation. While the sound of a film usually contextualizes the environments presented on the screen, the electroacoustic soundtrack of Paranoid Park reverses this relationship, “because what is heard often becomes a surface that frustrates the coherent understanding of the spaces presented in the image” ( JORDAN, 2007 , p. 1), so that logical spatiotemporal continuities are transformed into a pulsating and continuous synesthetic experience which, combined with a fluid observation (handheld camera) transform the images in abstract and expressive experiences aesthetic and kinesthetic elements. The electroacoustic sounds propose new meanings and a “reflective and attentive listening”, since what is seen is different from what is listened, in other words, what is seen would not have the same sound in a realistic genre.

As they are works that evade rhythm, melody, harmony and tone, eliminating the idea of time and tempo, such compositions suggest depth, interiority and subjective and introspective temporal duration. Increasing the feeling of estrangement, and added to a narrative about the memory of a traumatized, fearful and reserved subject, the electroacoustic composition is used to connote the inner world of the character, his inner space, functioning as a sonic envelope which relates to other sounds. Used to describe the character apprehended by the event, the electroacoustic music both alienates him from and relates him to other environments (the other noises and sounds of the natural world of fiction are erased or diminished), serving as a sonorous surface of contact between the character and his surroundings, and figuring a differentiated outer space. Thus, operating as a kind of envelope, with a vibrating and porous skin, such compositions serve both as containment of the protagonist, suggesting the limit of a enclosed, solitary and vibrant interiority, as well as his connection with the spaces and sounds that surround him, operating as outside and inside screenings. In general, the use of this type of composition increases the sensation of estrangement from the fictional natural world. It is the music used for the construction of Alex’s epiphanic world, modalized by the occurrence, the apprehension and the event.

An example of the narrative use of this type of composition is the bath scene, right after Alex runs away from the place where the security guard was killed and hides in his friend’s house. The sequence is long and the audiovisual enunciator manipulates the image in such a way that expressive plastic, chromatic and eidetic categories, related to the sharpness of shapes and colors, are gradually and intensely manipulated. In this scene, the electroacoustic soundtrack is composed of a vibrating sound whose volume increases as it extends, mixed with other sounds that can be partially recognized: footsteps on dry leaves and the chirping of birds. The images and sounds, which do not connect, are used to create the protagonist’s feelings of panic and anguish:

Figure 4
The occurrence and electroacoustic music

During the scene, the filmic text achieves an experimental and surreal quality, and while the sounds of birds are heard in the soundtrack, drawings of birds can be seen on the bathroom tile, to the left of the young man’s head.

Figure 5
The occurrence and the oblique and concessive musical discourse

Seeking precisely the concessive tone of the event , the electroacoustic composition in this scene, blended with the sounds of birds and unstable lighting, denaturalizes the natural world, and points to ambiguous and confusing spaces and times. At the same time, the mixture of such sounds and images creates poetic and ludic moments, where the lightness of the birds’ chirping is contrasted with a vibrant, ascending and ubiquitous electronic sound, which prints a sonic tension which seems to be unlimited, semi-symbolizing again the apprehended inner space of the teenager, who covers his face with his hands and cries, as slides along the bathroom wall his image leaves the frame.

Conclusion

In our discussion on adaptation and musical score, we sought, from discursive semiotics, to discuss the use of music as a narrative element, observing some basic characteristics of musical discourse, such as: its belonging to a textual genre and shared social symbolic operations that produce a believing/knowing that goes beyond scientific discourse, programming sensations and feelings; its textualization, which can be more or less supported by verbal language, and more or less focused on sounds of the natural world accepted as “real”; its capacity of being semi-symbolic; and its existence within a basic and recursive tensive regime of meaning, which can be discriminated textually, and oscillate between the event and the exercise discursive modes of existence, efficiency and junction of the sensible utterer. In our case, we emphasize that these discursive characteristics were applied in a bricolated fashion, in a context of non-original music which, due to syncretic operations of meaning, blend some of its semantic values to the semantic values of the visual text.

The notion of rhetoric of the event was important to tensely situate the semiotic mode of the proposed narrative, which is adapted and retextualized by the filmic text, and to observe how the soundtrack is used in this mode of meaning. From the semiotic and syntactic modes of occurrence/apprehension/event , related to the concessive discourse, a narrative reported in the first person and in a epistolary novel, we examined non-original music as a rhetorical tool used in the reconstruction of several related themes addressed in the literary text, such as affection, maturity, marginality, abandonment, the adult world, the mother figure etc., and especially in the construction of the inner space of a narrator/protagonist who, suffering the event and the occurrence , remembers, confesses and suffers, finding himself in a state of “astonishment”, and trapped in an epiphanic world where time, subject and space are fragmented.

In conclusion, and based on what was discussed, we present a synthesis of the use of the music and songs discussed in the film adaptation of a narrative, which is about an adolescent who goes through a traumatic experience, a maturation process, and a rearrangement of personal and social values:

Table 4
Symbolic and semi-symbolic relations between music and film narrative

Music and song	Genre	Symbolic and semi-symbolic relations between music and the film narrative
Angeles	Indie/folk rock	The wickedness of the world; survival related to material goods; the dark-side of human relationship; sadness; frailty (emotional states)
The White Lady loves you more	Indie/folk rock	Innocence; lack of affection; maternal care; hiding place; sadness; frailty (emotional states)
The fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony	Classic	Trauma; shock; emotion; heat (event; image-event; occurrence)
Song One; Song Two; Song Three; La chambre blanche; Walk through resonant landscape 2, Dedan, Dehors	Electroacustic and soundscapes	Paroxysm; strangeness; epiphanic world; affective memory; grant ( occurrence and apprehension )

Source:

Concerning the two Smith’s indie/folk songs, we observed slow, languid melodies that Marpurg, in the 18th century, related to suffering and grief (able 2), and from a semiodiscursive point of view, how they are used to account for the adolescent figuration, creating his sensitive and cognitive world. The melancholy musical expression, and the singer’s weak, almost whispered voice also connote introjection, suffering, fragility and the inner world. Themes like money, pact with the devil, and tainted purity, in the song Angeles, and themes like maternal love, innocence and hiding in the song The White Lady loves you more, with its lullaby tones, are also present in the novel and are part of the character’s description.

In relation to classical romantic music, such as the fourth movement of Beethoveen’s Ninth Symphony, Marpurg can again be accurately quoted in relating this genre to heat and emotion. We observed in our analysis that this symphony is played in the scene of the security guard’s death, functioning, on the one hand, as a hyperbolic construction that amplifies the power of the scene and the description of the traumatic event; and on the other hand, as a description of the shock and despair of the young man, and the beginning of a semiotic existence modalized by apprehension and occurrence . We also noticed a different kind of exploration of this very famous musical passage, which focuses on the lesser-known part of the fourth movement, being related less to joy than to death, composed in the form of an oratory and accompanied by a verbal text that quotes the power of God.

Finally, we observed that the electroacoustic compositions with soundscapes of the natural world, and their continuous, vibratory, pulsating and semi-referential, which can be partially related to the new age style, which Sonnenschein links to the expansion of time and space, contemplation and body disconnection ( table 2 ), on the one hand created a concessional rhetoric, as they disfigured knowledges and beliefs of the natural sonic world, establishing relationships between sound and image that are ambiguous or absurd. Thus, they are also used to characterize the character’s inner space, marking an unique interiority, connoting also the epiphanic, confused and paradoxical world in which the young man is immersed after the event .

Table 2
Physical, mental and emotional impact of musical genres

Genre	Emotional Impact
Sacred, hymns, gospel, shamanic drumming	Grounding, deep peace, spiritual awareness, transcend and release pain
Gregorian chants	Regular breathing, openness, lowered stress, contemplation
New age	Expansion of space and time, calm wakefulness, gentle detachment from the body
Slower barroque (Bach, Vivaldi)	Security, precision, orderliness
Classical (Mozart, Haydn)	Lightness, visionary, regal, three-dimensional perception
Romantic (Tchaikovsky, Chopin e Beethoven)	Emotion, warmth, pride, romance, patriotism
Impressionist (Debussy, Ravel)	Feelings, dream images, daydreaming
African American – jazz, blues, Diexieland, reggae	Joyous, heartfelt feelings, sly, playful, ironic
Latin: salsa, rhumba, samba	Sexy, heartpouding, body stimulating
Big band, pop, country/western	Centered, feeling of goodness, contained movement
Rock	Aggressive movement, building or releasing tension
Heavy metal, punk, rap, hip-hop, grunge	Animating the nervous system, rebellious behaviour

Source:Sonnenschein (2001

REFERÊNCIAS

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• CATTRYSSE, P. Film (Adaptation) As Translation: Some Methodological Proposals. Target , Amsterdam, v.4, n.1, p. 53-70, 1992. Disponível em: https://www.academia.edu/279966/1992_Film_Adaptation_As_Translation_Some_Methodological_Proposals_ . Acesso em: 25 jun. 2022.
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• COOK, N. Beethoven: Symphony n 9. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. (Cambridge Music Handbooks).
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• This article is a development of the discussions about film, music and adaptation, elaborated in the doctoral dissertation presented at the University of São Paulo in 2019, entitled: The cinematographic adaptation of the novel Paranoid Park: a semiodiscursive perspective .
• 2
  In relation to translation/translatability, discursive semiotics considers it one of the fundamental properties of semiotic systems, and the foundation of the semantic approach, existing between the judgment of the existence of meaning and saying something about it (even its lack). In general, between perceiving and enunciating (uttering), translation takes place. From the understanding of translation as a fundamental principle of semiosis, it can be concluded that this operation encompasses both the so called “original” texts (which would not exist without a “fundamental translational activity”), whether verbal, non-verbal or hybrid (and always social), as well as literary translations and film adaptations, which can now be understood as grounded in a single semiotic operation. According to Octavio Paz (2009 , p. 13), who seems to follow the same line of reasoning, “each translation is, to some extent, an invention, and thus constitutes a unique text”. In the discussion of the relationship between translation and film adaptation, we also follow, in addition to Greimas and discursive semiotics, Cattrysse (1992) , who absorbs Yuri Lotman’s cultural semiotics, and Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory, who understands translated literary texts and filmic adaptation as the same procedures, which can be seen as semiodiscoursive practices: approaches oriented to the source text and (in)fidelity in its (re)construction/enunciation; expectations regarding the adequacy and equivalence norms of the adapted text to the original; and scope restricted to comparisons of individual text pairs (source and target). Looking for a deeper and more comprehensive theoretical space on the question, and understanding translation as the basis of human meaning, discourse semiotics understands that the translational operation can be decomposed into an interpretive operation of the source text, or a quo , a production operation of the target text, or ad quem ( GREIMAS; COURTÉS 2011 [1979], p. 508; entry: translation) and a persuasive operation ( MANCINI, 2020 ) of the enunciator (utterer). Thus, in translation and adaptation, which can be equated, the source text is always incorporated and recreated, in its various levels of meaning, by the target text, from a textualizing enunciation (utterance) that operates a socio-historically enunciative project, and with the intention of persuading/manipulating the enunciatee.
• 3
  Semi-symbolism occurs through a conformity between the planes of expression and content of a text/sign, through the construction of a relationship between signified and signifier. A repeated sound in a poem, for example, can mean the sound of bombs, waves on the sea, or a train; light and shadow effects in a frame or photography are able to connote life, death, happiness, sadness, etc. These semi-symbolic constructions exist as textual and very particular poetic creations in each text, which creates its own semi-symbols. The question of symbolization, however, goes beyond the text and invades the social sphere, since society creates symbols that are shared: we know, for example, that the white dove is related to peace and the holy spirit, the fish and bread to Christianity, hammer and sickle to communism, etc. It is in this sense that verbal and non-verbal texts, including musical genres and melodies, can build symbols and semi-symbols.
• 4
  Greimas and Courtés (2011) explain that semes are minimal semantic units of meaning, comparable to the pertinent or distinctive features of the phonological plane of expression, but situated in the content plane. Euphoria/dysphoria, for example, would be effective semes; life/death, semes related to the individual universe; and nature/culture, to the collective universe. As minimal categories of meaning, the seme points to a semantic universal, that is, minimal units of meaning present in all texts, at their most fundamental and abstract level, but concretized in the discourse in a differentiated way, based on subjects, spaces, times, themes and figures (entries in the Dictionary of semiotics: seme; universals).
• 5
  According to Fiorin (2011 , p. 96), thematic and figurative paths are chains, relational networks of themes that are expressed in figures, and figures that support these themes, which occur in the text. A theme like freedom, for example, can be figured in several ways: birds in flight, a letter, a prisoner looking at a vast blue sky through bars of a jail window, and so on. Such figures and themes will be chained during the narrative.
• 6
  According to Greimas (2002 , p. 45) in his book Of Imperfection, which tries to account for the sensitive discourse, “the outbreak of an extraordinary event has the power to leave the subject exposed and vulnerable to the charms of the object”.
• 7
  The logic of concession allows that the boundaries of more and less (plus/minus) to be increased, so that the increase can increase; or decrease, so that a minimization can be minimized. The combinations, or semantic-tensive ciphers less...more and more...less can give rise to hyperbolic and accelerated forms of adding and subtraction; you can screen a triage and blend a mixture. The relationship between event ( intensity = occurrence, apprehension and concession ) and exercise ( extensity = achievement, intent and implication ) can be converse (the more intensity, the more extensity, or vice versa) or reverse (the more intensity, the less extensity, or vice versa). Zilberberg (2007) explains that in the case of concession, law and fact are in disagreement with each other, and the sphere of concession, according to grammarians, is that of an inoperative causality, having as emblem the duo formed by although and however and, we add, its various semantic synonyms in all levels of the text.
• 8
  Zilberberg (2007 , p. 22) understands that: “The case of apprehension is similar to that of focusing, as it designates the state of the subject of state ‘dealing with’ the occurrence , in Cartesian ‘admiration’, in the state of subject initially amazed, impressed. From then on, the subject is marked by ‘what happened to him’, a state that corresponds to the potentialization, to the formation of this mystery: the occurrence ”.
• 9
  Available at: https://www.dicio.com.br/paranoia-2/ . Access on: July 15, 2022.
• 10
  Available at: https://www.dicio.com.br/zumbi/ . Access on: July 15, 2022.
• 11
  Available at: https://www.dicio.com.br/catatonia/ . Access on: July 15, 2022.
• 12
  The rethoric of the event in both texts is explained in detail in the dissertation.
• 13
  Much of the movie’s soundtrack is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiJ068QT6os&list=PLBkXW jf0sMS5FAkC1nkyBTm5Vl8myXvgd. Access on: Jun. 23 2022.
• 14
  In the mythical musical discourse, any kind of reference to the natural world is abandoned, and music speaks only of itself, turns to itself, becomes pure, assuming no longer a referential but a constructive or self-referential function: we can think of jazz, for example, or some kinds of classical and contemporary music. The substantial musical discourse points to the scene in which the presupposed musical enunciation/utterance takes place, the enunciative scene, whose co-utterers are, roughly speaking, the musicians and the audience, where the utterance manifests itself over specific times and spaces, in the rite of the musical performance. In our opinion this type of discourse can also be considered in movie theaters.
• 15
  Within the electroacoustic compositions, one can also deduce the mythological (constructive) musical discourse, which would be compositions without the sounds of the natural world, and only performed as a collection of timbres and pitches that pulsate. However, as this type of composition is long, it is possible that works they have been edited for the film. Thus, in our discussion, and with only partial access to the compositions, we will consider all electroacoustic compositions as oblique, or obliqueness as its most important feature. The mythological musical discourse and substantial musical discourse are not dealt with in this text.
• 16
  This scene does not exist in the novel, in which, at the end, the character says he is going to find some matches.
• 17
  All the following images are from the film Paranoid Park (2007).
• 18
  Camus (2013) explains that “with a sad and melancholic melody and a title which makes once again reference to a drug addiction and a holy figure at the same time, the song has a solemn delivery and anguished lyrics”.
• 19
  Wikipedia contributors. Ode to Joy. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. October 30, 2021, 12:53 UTC. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ode_to_Joy&oldid=1052663307 . Access on: November 8, 2021.
• 20
  NORMAN, K. Real-World Music as Composed Listening. Contemporary Music Review, Abingdon, v.15, n.1–2, p.1–27, 1996.
• 21
  TRUAX, B. Acoustic Communication. 2nd ed. Westport, CT: Alex Publishing, 2001.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  17 Oct 2022
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  11 June 2021
• Accepted
  12 Oct 2021