The Diegetic Juxtaposition in Reservoir Dogs

The use of diegetic music in an anempathetic way in films can create an ironic effect due to its indifference to the goings on of the scene. Chion notes that there are two different ways for music in film to “create a specific emotion in relation to the situation depicted on the screen” (1994:8), ‘empathetic’ and ‘anempathetic’. Empathetic refers to music that directly conveys the emotion on screen whereas anempathetic means music that is indifferent to the action on screen. This can also be used in terms of sound for example in the thriller Psycho (Hitchcock 1960) the iconic scene where the woman gets murdered in the shower. The audience hears the sound of the shower still running in the background unaffected by the horrific murder taking place. Opposingly, the music in the scene acts empathetically reacting to the woman being stabbed by the knife. Quentin Tarantino is notorious for using the anempathetic music effect with popular songs in his films. In the cult movie classic Reservoir Dogs (Tarantino 1992) there is a scene when Mr Blonde is listening to a radio in this warehouse whilst he is torchering Officer Nash. Tarantino chose to use the song Stuck in the Middle by Stealers Wheel to be played over the radio in the background. The music never alters to reflect the actions of Mr Blonde or the pain of Nash creating irony and the unsettling undertone.

In these examples, diegetic music is used to great effect when it isn’t affected by what is happening on scene. Gorbman notes that “diegetic music [has the] capacity to create irony, in a more ‘natural’ way than nondiegetic music” (1987:23). However, Neumeyer articulates that the diegetic music heard must be reflective of the space and the whereabouts of the character else the audience struggles to be convinced that the characters hear the music (2000). He goes on to further argue that “then any weaknesses in the cinematic illusion of a musical reality, so to speak, undercut the notion of the ‘diegetic’” (Neumeyer 2000:49). With that in mind, this film clip starts out by fitting the brief with Mr Blonde interacting with the song by dancing and singing when he puts it on the radio. Later when we see him leave the warehouse the song fades out and back in sync with Mr Blonde’s position in relation to the radio demonstrating that the music is indeed diegetic.

Theatre and Diegesis

Theatre shares close links with film; the audience is watching a framed area in which the audience is shown the ongoing action. Even when films were silent, they had musicians playing in the picture houses much like how a pit orchestra plays music for a play or musical. Similarly in cinema, the line between diegetic and nondiegetic music is blurred. Robynn J. Stilwell states an instance where the line blurs in theatre:

“The two may converge, for instance, in a ballroom scene, where the live music is pretending to be that of the musicians seen or presumed on screen, but the physical separation is plain to anyone in the audience” (Stilwell 2007:188).

In this example the audience chooses when to accept the musicians into the narrative and the reality of the story. The audience is never told to do so and yet makes the transition between the non-diegetic underscoring of the scenes to the diegetic music of the ballroom. Until the point of transition between diegetic and nondiegetic the audience is accepting of the fact in the reality of the show music is accompanying the action on screen with no source.

There are some other examinations of the term diegetic by Neumeyer who argues that it could be used to refer to the noises within the setting in which you are watching the movie (2009), for example, the sound of people laughing or eating popcorn. If we take this notion and situate it within the context of theatre it could be claimed that watching a recorded show does not give you the same experience as seeing the show in person. A current example of this debate is the American musical Hamilton (Miranda 2015) which was released on Disney+ in the summer of 2020. The filming of the musical took place over three days and was an amalgamation of two shows recorded with a live audience. In the recorded musical we can hear the crowd in the background clapping, laughing, and cheering. But why keep this ambient noise in since supposedly none of it adds to the narrative and may in fact detract from the action on stage? By making the swap over between the two mediums, we begin to lose the magic and emotion of the original piece. Sitting down in the theatre with the unspoken excitement and cacophony of programmes being flicked through all adds to the experience and blurs the line between what is part of the show and what isn’t.

Subsequently, in the context of theatre, Neumeyer's idea that diegesis could include the noise surrounding the audience in the theatre is a valid one. We could link this back to the experiences of the silent era of film where the picture house/cinema you went to had different live music playing making the overall experience unique.