BA, Oberlin College, 2017, Music

With a career spanning almost forty years, Canadian composer Howard Shore has become one of the most respected and sought after film composers working in the industry today. Much of his work, in particular his scores for the Lord of the Rings films, have received much academic attention; his longstanding working relationship with Canadian horror filmmaker David Cronenberg, however, has not yet benefited from such academic inquiry. Using the films The Brood, Videodrome, The Fly, and Naked Lunch as case studies, this thesis examines the way that Shore uses the arena of Cronenberg's films as a laboratory for personal musical experimentation. Examples include Shore's use of electronic synthesizer sounds alongside a string orchestra for Videodrome, implementations of against-the-grain writing for The Fly, and the incorporation of free-jazz aesthetics in Naked Lunch. Using as sources Howard Shore's words and what academic inquiry exists in this field, but more often utilizing my own analysis and observations of the music and films, I argue that Shore's scores incorporate such musical experimentation to work in tandem with Cronenberg's own experimental art. As such, Shore's scores for Cronenberg's films are a prime illustration of the practical value of experimental composition, showing that there is room for experimental composition in music outside of the realm of academia and indeed that such music can have commercial potential.

Committee: Stephen Hartke (Advisor); Charles Edward McGuire (Committee Chair); Rebecca Fülöp (Committee Member); Jesse Jones (Committee Member) Subjects: Film Studies; Music

BA, Oberlin College, 2014, English

First made available in the United States in 1962, William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch and those who ventured to sell the illicit book were brought before obscenity courts on three separate occasions within the book's first four years in print. Despite breaking a different law on each separate occasion, Naked Lunch was judged to be equally obscene in all three cases. However, as Allen Ginsberg's testimony during the 1966 Massachusetts State Supreme Court trial that eventually exonerated Naked Lunch from its prior obscenity convictions demonstrates, there exist multiple interpretations and functions of the term "obscene". The discrepancy of usage between Burroughs, Ginsberg and the Court demonstrates a fundamental characteristic of obscenity, its ambiguity. The difficulty in definitively articulating the obscene is best characterized by United States Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart, in his famous quote, "I shall not today attempt to further define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description [pornographic]… But I know it when I see it." Despite the transparency and moral certitude Justice Potter assumes in his widely quoted remark, the inability of the Supreme Court to standardize or elucidate a description of the obscene beyond the subjective acts of 'knowing' and 'seeing' represents a serious lapse in an otherwise exacting mode of discourse. To understand the significance of this lapse and to begin to gauge its influence on the critical reception of Naked Lunch, it is first necessary to approach the legal origins of obscenity.

Committee: Harrod Suarez (Advisor); Jeffery Pence (Committee Member); Kelly Bezio (Committee Member) Subjects: Legal Studies; Literature