Early in Jonathan Sterne’s (2003) book The Audible Past he writes, “hearing is concerned with interiors, vision is concerned with surfaces” (p. 15). This binary is in many ways gospel in sound studies. Martin Jay (1993) has established in his work, Downcast Eyes, a similar division between observations, the ocular, and listening, the speculative (p. 85). Most other literature takes a similar perspective – the sonic interior is a main methodological praxis of sound studies. When deciphering the speculative, listening is still the first, best tool, for interpreting an interior. I wonder, what it means to extend this metaphor into space. What does it mean, interpretively, for a sound wave to ricochet through a reverb spring, to yell in a claustrophobic hallway, or to listen with headphones instead of speakers. What is the culture of the interior, and how is it heard?
One place to look is the fantastic but infrequently publicized (although it has gotten some notable press) Silophone. An abandoned grain silo in Montréal, Silophone has been wired to serve as a medium of anonymous communication, and reverberation since November 2000. It’s easy to reach too, just call 514-844-5555. After the second ring, you are patched in to Silo #5, where your words are broadcast to ricochet around the abandoned building. Contributing to a participatory soundscape where several voices contribute to an ever changing, echoing interior. Silophone is definitely art, it is intrinsically technological, certainly audible, and it is almost social.
One striking question about Silophone is what exactly it means, what are the cultural stakes of an anonymous and collective interior? Can it be read as a critique of the ambiguity of network society, the futility of translation in an increasingly global culture? As the sounds refract against the walls of the silo and compete against one another, it is hard to decipher a clear signal, let alone consider a dialect or source. Conversely, Silophone also represents the possibilities of a network commons. Even though one sound rarely emerges as dominant, this relates to the counter-hegemonic aspects of the interior. Inside, hearing privileges proximity, and quiet. The less participants, and the closer your receiver is to a speaker, the more likely you are to hear a sound. Though this is a similar to the listening politics of everyday life, it should be noted that the silo is an experiment of space; the dynamics of its audible space emulates a virtualization of voices unprecedented in non-abstract spaces.
Listening to an interior is an important way to consider the politics of specific objects and architectural configurations. It is a way to render and think through the spatial configurations of space-less phenomenon: sounds, ideology, opinions and ephemera all belong to the interior, and it is important to develop tools for discussing them in a way which is not degraded to mere speculation. Silo #5, once a hub of cacophonous conversation, is now silent, somewhat forgotten and out of vogue. Does this reflect a social shift away from telephone-mediated relations, a societal shift in the practice of hearing? Although the interior of the silo models an anonymous and semi-random collective, other interiors may model other things. What do the interiors of computers, subways or classrooms model? Further, with listening as a method, can we begin proximate our interior selves?
This year, my first book—Dance and the Hollywood Latina: Race, Sex, and Stardom (Rutgers UP: 2011)—was born. The writing process required nearly a decade of thought and development, a gestation period that reminded me how to listen as well as see.
As a sound recordist in film school, I became acutely aware of the hierarchization of the visual over the aural: it was a challenge to claim space for sound when the director wanted to yell “Action” as soon as camera was ready. Me (covered in grime, Nagra deck over one shoulder and boom pole in hand): “What’s the frame line? Is my mic—or the shadow of my boom pole—in the shot? And, maybe I can get a level-check before we shoot—so the audio levels are as pretty as your exposure? Maybe?”
Yet, most of those instincts and that tenacity dissipated during graduate school. As I honed the language of film and television analysis, I, too, began to privilege the visual over the aural. Over time—and with the help of colleagues like Jennifer Stoever-Ackerman—Dance and the Hollywood Latina reminded me how to listen.
And so, I present a moment from the book that reinforced the scholarly importance of watching with my ears. In the following excerpt, I analyze Rita Moreno’s aural Otherness in West Side Story. The scene, like many others of Moreno’s career, illustrates the tension between the “look” and the “sound” of the Hollywood Latina. While my book is primarily organized around the ways that racialized sexuality is encoded in the dance of the Latina body in Hollywood film, the chapter “Rita Moreno, the Critically Acclaimed ‘All-Round Ethnic'” helps clarify how the Hollywood Latina has been read as both “easy on the eyes, but hard on the ears,” a phrase used to describe Moreno during her appearance on The Muppet Show in 1976.
The excerpt explores a pivotal scene in the film, where Anita (Moreno) confronts Maria (Natalie Wood), whom she discovers has just slept with Tony—the murderer of Bernardo (George Chakiris), Anita’s boyfriend and Maria’s brother:
[T]he nondance musical number “A Boy Like That” illuminates how the Hollywood Latina has also been aurally imagined and reproduced. [The song] expresses Anita’s anger and sense of betrayal, and eventually builds into a powerful duet (“I Have a Love”) between the women. As a backdrop, the setting and bodies of the scene are visually coded as Latino/a: the apartment matches the purples, blues, and reds associated with the Sharks in the film, while the two Latinas in the frame—one real and one diegetic—are colored Puerto Rican through the use of brown makeup. These stylized signifiers set the tone for Moreno’s aural representation in the scene. As the only Puerto Rican in the film cast, Rita Moreno gave a performance that became a touchstone of aural authenticity for non-Puerto Rican actors such as George Chakiris (Bernardo). In one interview, Chakiris notes that he and the Shark actors used Moreno as their sonic “guide” (Gross 2001). [Interestingly, the West Side Story shooting script available in the Bob Wise Collection at the University of Southern California Cinematic Arts Library includes written dialect for the Jets but not the Sharks, suggesting that the sonic expectations of the Latino/a characters were self-evident].
Both Natalie Wood and Rita Moreno lip-synch to prerecorded tracks, but unlike Wood, Moreno performs her other songs herself; “A Boy Like That” is Moreno’s only song that does not feature her real singing voice. While the dubbed vocal performance compensates for Moreno’s higher vocal range, it undercuts the ferocity of her physical performance. As Moreno’s facial expressions and posturing exhibit an angry and forceful delivery, singer Betty Wand’s vocal interpretation of the lyrics overly amplifies the supposed sound of a Latina body in lieu of the emotional urgency of the song. Moreno’s assertive body language is thus mismatched with the generic quality of Wand’s artificial accent, a kind of aural brown-face that flattens the scene’s intensity.
In a 2001 interview, Moreno expressed her disapproval of the vocals in “A Boy Like That,” claiming that Wand’s lack of acting skills resulted in a restricted interpretation that did not match the physical intensity of the scene. She explains: “[Wand] just couldn’t get it the way I wanted it…to sound. It should have almost been a growl…you know, barely sung. And she ended up sounding…almost like a cliché Mexican” (Gross 2001). Despite Moreno’s coaching, Wand could only articulate the song’s Latina-ness, a sonic interpretation that solely relied on a stereotypical accent to tell its story. This racialized vocal performance is incompatible with the emotional depth Moreno produces onscreen because it was only—always, and already—aurally Other. [This shift is most noticeable at the moment in “A Boy Like That” when Rita Moreno’s dialogue as Anita suddenly shifts to the lyrics of the song].
Rita Moreno’s career enabled me to hear the Hollywood Latina, an experience that enhanced my analysis of Dolores Del Rio, Carmen Miranda, Rita Hayworth (Rita Cansino), and Jennifer Lopez—the other women I study in Dance and the Hollywood Latina. I am thankful for Moreno’s (creative/political/critical) voice and hope that she continues to help me listen anew.
And thank you, dear listeners, for your time and attention. I hope to hear from you soon.
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