iPod listening as an I-voice: solitary listeners and imagined interlocutors across cinema and personal stereos

Cenciarelli, Carlo ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7162-9509 2021. iPod listening as an I-voice: solitary listeners and imagined interlocutors across cinema and personal stereos. Cenciarelli, Carlo, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Cinematic Listening, Oxford Handbooks, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 669-689. (10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190853617.013.35)

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Abstract

Walkman and iPod devices have often been discussed in quasi-cinematic terms. This typically implies an analogy between the personal stereo user and the transcendental subject of film theory, who is allowed to see and hear without being seen or heard. This chapter offers an alternative route. Taking as starting point a cinematic moment in which iPod listening is turned into a first-person voiceover, it suggests that cinematic and personal stereo listening share not only an orientation towards privatization and individualization but also a fantasy of communication: one that blurs the lines between “self” and “other” and between listening and speaking. Analyzing a wide range of films and historical marketing campaigns by Sony and Apple, the chapter shows how mainstream cinema—through its representational tropes and modes of spectatorial address—feeds into a broader cultural construction of personal stereo listening as a highly individualized activity that is always imaginatively open-ended.

Item Type:	Book Section
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Music
Subjects:	M Music and Books on Music > M Music M Music and Books on Music > ML Literature of music N Fine Arts > N Visual arts (General) For photography, see TR
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
ISBN:	9780190853617
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	9 October 2023
Last Modified:	09 Oct 2023 09:52
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/135577

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