Indiana State University Pop Songs Essay

How have films incorporated pop songs (or other pre-existing music) for effects that go beyond the functions of traditional “inaudible” underscoring?

Describe at least three different ways popular songs and other pre-existing music have been used to create new meanings in films (vs. traditional “inaudible/invisible” underscoring). In the support of your response, describe how music is used in at least three specific scenes from different films that we have discussed in class since Midterm 2.

In your essay incorporate at least 5 of the terms/ideas below (forms of the word are fine). Please underline or bold these terms when you use them in your essay. Your use of the terms should demonstrate that you understand what the term means and how it is applied in specific filmic contexts. (Be explicit! Don’t assume I know what you mean when you use the term.) Good essays will demonstrate a breadth of knowledge about course content (i.e., don’t just choose 5 closely related ideas).

• acousmatic
• “Aesthetic of the self”
• Anti-mainstream
• Avant-gardism
• Bollywood
• Compilation soundtrack (or compilation score)
• Deterritorialization
• Exoticism (or Orientalism)
• Globalization
• Indie (or independent) film
• Intertextuality
• Localization
• Mediation (and/or “mediated selves”)
• Metadiegetic
• Minimalism
• MTV (influence on film music)
• “New Auteurs”
• Non-period music
• Postmodernism
• Rap aesthetic
• Song picturization
• Startle effects
• Stylized diegetic
• World music