Musical Echoes of a Trauma: Listening to Phantasms in the Dark Fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) Cover Image

Musical Echoes of a Trauma: Listening to Phantasms in the Dark Fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
Musical Echoes of a Trauma: Listening to Phantasms in the Dark Fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Author(s): Rastko Buljančević
Subject(s): Music, Fascism, Nazism and WW II, Film / Cinema / Cinematography
Published by: Muzikološki institut SANU
Keywords: Pan’s Labyrinth [El laberinto del fauno]; Guillermo del Toro; soundtrack; phantasm; cultural trauma; distribution of the sensible

Summary/Abstract: This article examines how music in the film Pan’s Labyrinth [El laberinto del fauno] conceptually generates opposing phantasms. Reflecting the trauma of early Francoism, specifically the Spanish Civil War, the soundtrack oscillates between the disquieting chronological reality and the fascinating yet terrifying fairytale world. A special space is devoted to the musical redistribution of the sensible, mirroring the strong affective, aesthetic, emancipatory, and phantasmatic potential of Foley sounds. Such musical resistance undermines phallic authority, fostering a phantasmatic conflict that blurs the boundaries between imaginable and unimaginable reality.

  • Issue Year: 2/2024
  • Issue No: 37
  • Page Range: 111-135
  • Page Count: 25
  • Language: English
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