Switching it up a bit this week! After (almost) 20 years of listening to power, this week Sounds Curious returns to the source of one producer’s love of televisual media –the series that sparked a lifetime of research: Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This special episode is a through-composed audio essay capturing but a few of the manifold ways in which power is demonstrated, negotiated or perpetuated through sound and silence in the series.
From thematic music and underscoring, foley and sound design, the audio in the series is a rich palette – even before we add voices. As for voices, we get out of the way and “let her speak for herself” as we celebrate the power to interrupt, disrupt, invert and subvert power, not unlike apocalypses, through the layers of narrative, sound and music. Inspired by several published video essays on the series, we strip away the visual layer and revel unabashedly in the multilayered audio worlds present, recomposed and often juxtaposed as meditation on the myriad ways power is expressed through diegetic and non-diegetic sound.
But mostly, it’s a love letter to the sonic dimensions of a series that posed a million questions about media and culture we may spend a lifetime answering.
Links to all the episodes and performances featured in this essay, along with further watching, listening and reading based on the essay themes over at the show notes at bansheemedia.com