Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Differentiation of Culture
- 2 The Destruction of the Symphony: Adorno and American Radio
- 3 The War with Other Media: Bachmann's Der gute Gott von Manhattan
- 4 Radio Jelinek: From Discourse to Sinthome
- 5 Jokes and Their Relation to Film Music
- 6 Allegories of Management: Norbert Schultze's Soundtrack to Das Mädchen Rosemarie
- 7 Straub and Huillet's Music Films
- 8 The Modulated Subject: Stockhausen's Mikrophonie II
- 9 Music beyond Theater: Stockhausen's Aus den Sieben Tagen
- In Lieu of a Conclusion: Mediating the Divide
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Jokes and Their Relation to Film Music
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 The Differentiation of Culture
- 2 The Destruction of the Symphony: Adorno and American Radio
- 3 The War with Other Media: Bachmann's Der gute Gott von Manhattan
- 4 Radio Jelinek: From Discourse to Sinthome
- 5 Jokes and Their Relation to Film Music
- 6 Allegories of Management: Norbert Schultze's Soundtrack to Das Mädchen Rosemarie
- 7 Straub and Huillet's Music Films
- 8 The Modulated Subject: Stockhausen's Mikrophonie II
- 9 Music beyond Theater: Stockhausen's Aus den Sieben Tagen
- In Lieu of a Conclusion: Mediating the Divide
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I. Theoretical Context
With some notable exceptions (Chaplin, Twain, the Marx Brothers), Adorno was often suspicious of laughter. The critique of its abuse runs like an Ariadne's thread through the most varied topics. In the section on mass culture from Dialektics of Enlightenment, “false laughter” is sharply attacked: “Laughing about something is always laughing at it. … The collective of laughers parodies humanity. … The devilish aspect of false laughter lies precisely therein … that it parodies the best thing of all, reconciliation, in compulsive manner.” In the Philosophy of New Music, too, the stravinsky of Petrushka is accused of the same barbarity; unsurprisingly, this barbaric humor finds its ancestor in Wagner. Yet even Karl Kraus is not immune to Adorno's principled suspicion of humor. Mahler's humor, however, is exceptional, precisely because it does not lead to laughter. Humor is only possible for Adorno if it contains a moment of subjective reflexivity; in this respect, he remains true to the inheritance of romantic aesthetics. Just as Stravinsky or Wagner pursue barbaric desublimation, so the antisublimatory energy of jokes is “on the side of the stronger.” In contrast, romantic humor can still sublimate such aggression. It thus comes as something of a surprise to read near the end of Composing for Film: “that all film music has in principle something of the joke about it, and falls victim to bad naivete as soon as it literally takes itself for that which it claims to be.”
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- Information
- The Differentiation of ModernismPostwar German Media Arts, pp. 96 - 118Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013