Would someone out there please set me
right by giving me a film expert's
definition of 'lyrical'?
jeremy asks a very good question, but the answer is not in the
ballpark of the "film expert" . . . his own adduction of music
as narration gets closer to the heart of the issue . . .
like many other nodal words in the discussion of cultural
expression and representation, "lyrical" has a range of
complementary [and sometimes discordant] meanings . . .
because of its association with musical expression it
has come to refer to those emotions/feelings/states of mind
that have TRADITIONALLY been expressed in music . . . so
lyrical has come to mean something roughly like "emotional"
"internal" "ruminative" "expressive" usw, but above all, "gentle". . . .
this, of course, ignores the fact that music has always also
represented more violent things, and it might be argued that
in the post rock age music is much ore centrally an expression
of violence . . . still the overriding sense of lyrical music as gentle,
and the use of the word "lyrical" as suggesting gentleness
in the discourse of the music community, provides the discursive
background against which the opening of PVT RYAN is anything
but lyrical . . .
BUT . . . it's important to remember that jeremy's other sense of
lyrical operates there too . . . for RYAN seems to want to give us
direct access to war raw [as it were], unmeditated by the consciousness
of any of the characters . . . while in TRL war is filtered through
consciousness of characters and, in the processe [apparently]
softened and made more "lyrical" . . .
i suppose it's the interpenetration of these two axes of meaning that's
the most interesting thing here . . .
mike frank
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