The Self-Aware Soundtrack: Music as Metaleptic Device in Comedy Film

Abstract

This chapter examines the concept of metalepsis, that is, the transgression of narrative levels (Genette, Discourse du récit. Paris: Seuil, 1972), to analyse moments where the soundtrack in comedy film demonstrates a sense of self-awareness and becomes both the subject and vehicle of the joke. Metalepsis, as an interaction between two worlds, for example, the narrated world and the narrating world, provides opportunities of critical self-reflexiveness. This is part of a long tradition of metafiction, which found its apotheosis in postmodern culture. I argue that metalepsis is a potent vehicle to convey messages of satire, parody and/or irony and encourages a more critical engagement with the conventions, mechanisms and constructedness of cinematic representation. The musical metaleptic moments include characters that can become aware of and interact with the soundtrack and its apparatus, films that discuss and emphasise the commerciality of its soundtrack, films that address the clichés and the artificiality of the mechanisms of film music, a deliberate form of musical anachronism as a comedic device.