Musical sublime in the film Life of Pi: From Ang Lee's Cross-cultural Perspective
Date Issued
2015
Date
2015
Author(s)
Cho, I-Hsiu
Abstract
This paper focuses on the sublime in the film Life of Pi from Ang Lee’s cross-cultural perspective. The sublime has been a popular topic among musicological studies. In most of these studies, the sublime refers to either the feelings aroused by a particular religion, or the aesthetic value mentioned in Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Their research subjects center on the late eighteenth-century Western repertories, such as works from Handel, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Little has the musical sublime of non-Western music been discussed. In addition, despite growing concerns about film music, few studies have examined the notion of the sublime in film music. Ang Lee’s film, Life of Pi, (Ang Lee, 2012) involves the issues of religion, natural disaster, which are also commonly referred to in discussion of the sublime in Western tradition. However, both the concept and musical signification of the sublime in Life of Pi are distinctly different from the ones discussed so far in the academia. Different from “a process of self-transcendence aroused by reason” (as in the Kantian sublime), Pi’s attitude toward the limitless and the overwhelming power shows “introversion”, “letting go”, and “self-salvation”. Except for mild tempo, the film music uses “stasis chord progression”, “repeated melodies”, and “plagal cadence” to express “introversion” and “letting go”. Through detailed analysis, I try to explore (1) the concept of sublime being presented in Life of Pi (2) the ways of how this concept is connected with the music, sound and intermedia (medias including music/sound, image, synopsis, plots, etc.) interaction in the film (3) the differences between the sublime in Life of Pi and what is hitherto found in the academia. With this multimedia analysis I hope to bring up a discussion of the sublime in film music from a cross- cultural perspective.
Subjects
the sublime
film music
Ang Lee
Life of Pi
Type
thesis
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