The Music of Fantasy Cinema - Janet K. Halfyard
Numinous Ambience: Spirituality, Dreamtimes and Fantastic Aboriginality
The Music of Fantasy Cinema - Janet K. Halfyard
Philip Hayward [+]
Southern Cross Univeristy
View Website
Philip Hayward has taught film and popular music studies in Australia and the United Kingdom and is Professor and Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor (Research) at Southern Cross University, Australia. His previous books include Off The Planet: Music, Sound and Science Fiction Cinema (2004) and he is a performer in an avant garde chainsaw quartet performing work written by composer Michael Hannan.
Description
This chapter deals with the musical construction of the Other, the Australian Aboriginal Otherness in Peter Weir’s The Last Wave (1977), a film that Hayward concludes could probably not have been made in a later, more politically correct, time, because of the way it constructs a fantasy around Aboriginal spirituality. The film represents a significant point in fantastic music, with a move away from the orchestral timbres of classical Hollywood practice into soundtracks characterized by synthesized, atmospheric and ambient sound.