by Paul Klemperer

Film music, like film, is often pigeon-holed according to market considerations. Even indie films have become niche oriented, and their soundtrack music is part of that demographic earmarking. It is not for a want of creativity, but a more or less natural result of centralization of the industry, especially when indie filmmakers are bankrolled by the majors, or cut distribution deals with them.

This is not to say the music used in indie films becomes formulaic, but only that marketing considerations can narrow the sonic palette. Think of a movie you've seen recently, and categorize it according to the time and geography of its subject. Then specify each scene by its setting and mood. You can then place the soundtrack music accordingly.

The Hollywood formula for soundtrack music is of course a conservative one. The movie industry has always been linked to Tin Pan Alley, the commercial music industry. A major effect of this linkage is that musical clichés, icons and stereotypes have been readily transferred to the big screen. Visuals are thus tagged with common denominator musical markers. The hero flies down to South America? Salsa music! (usually played by L.A. studio musicians; often the particular Latin music on the soundtrack is not even indigenous to the region depicted on the film. No matter! It sounds "ethnic" enough for Hollywood). A scene opens in Eastern Europe? Gypsy violins! Or, if it is near Russia, some depressing military band dirge to evoke the Soviet legacy. Maybe, if the characters drink enough vodka, a balalaika can be thrown in.

And so on. Indie films have often provided a breath of fresh air with their soundtracks as well as their visual art. Many creative bands and artists have found wider audiences by lending their music to indie films. The underground hit, the sleeper, and the cult film, are ways that alternative culture, regional groupings, and just plain non-lobotomized audiences make their voices heard through dollar votes. It is a way that the movie industry can be used to infuse new ideas into mainstream society.

The downside, of course, is that fresh ideas appearing in a static, shallow and materialistic society are usually either chopped into bite-size pieces small enough to become meaningless, or incorporated wholesale into the next commodifiable fad or trend. For example, the ironic self-reflexive stance in the movie Swingers was enhanced by the use of 1960s lounge music and 1940s swing music. As "lounge" and "swing" became fads for middle-class white America in the 1990s, this ironic stance was lost in an uncritical embrace of material culture. Icons of lounge and swing now appear regularly in American film and TV, down to the level of the ubiquitous Gap ads.

Another example that comes to mind is the use of rural country music signifiers, such as the banjo, dobro guitar and mandolin. One of the first films to give a modern ironic connotation to these musical markers was the Coen brothers Raising Arizona. As this movie worked its way into American mainstream culture, a nouveau-bluegrass soundtrack style emerged, blending experimental and traditional musical techniques, which has come to sonically represent, I believe, modern rural America, or the interface between contemporary American culture and its rural heritage. It is similar in some ways to the way the modern American art music of Copeland came to be recycled as orchestral soundtrack music for Hollywood cowboy films in the 1940s and '50s.

So is all creative film music destined to become ripped-off recycled clichés? Perhaps, just as perhaps we will all one day have bar codes tattooed on our foreheads. On the other hand, the essential characteristic of creative film music, and filmmaking itself, is that it contains commentary in its iteration. It is only when this commentary has been squeezed out by mindless imitation and formulaic commodification, that film music loses its creative possibilities. So let's not do that, ok? Except for the films of Arnold Schwarzenneger. For the action "heroes" all one really needs is a sampling keyboard and a watermelon dropped off a 10-story building.