“There
is no terror in the bang, only
in the anticipation of it.”--
Alfred Hitchcock
Mainstream
Indian
cinema is known throughout the world for its excessive and much debated
use of
songs. Anyone familiar with mainstream Indian cinema can tell you how
different
it is from films of any other country. Through the years it has also
been
observed that any Indian film that is a commercial success, owes a lot
to its
dialogues. But it is quite surprising to observe that film sound per se (i.e. background score, effects
sound, etc.) has been a neglected area in the study of Indian cinema
until
recently, with a few exceptions.
Hindi
‘horror’
films have been operating mostly in the “B” grade halls, offering a
sleazy kind
of entertainment to a lower class audience. Such films have suffered
from all
sorts of problems arising out of working in the underbelly of the
industry.
These used to be typically low budget films. But recently, one can
observe a
change in the production of horror films. Films dealing with
supernatural
subjects have been catching up with their romantic or other generic
counterparts. But what is more interesting about this phenomenon is the
use of
sound in them. There is much debate whether Indian films can be
classified into
genres, but definitely there are instances where a certain group of
films can
be clubbed together according to thematic preoccupations. The Indian
horror
film, in that sense, can constitute a generic object for us.
In
this paper I
will try to investigate the reasons behind this sudden upsurge of the
films
which can be loosely clubbed under the ‘horror’ genre. But I do not
intend to
limit the study to horror, but will try to address a larger domain,
i.e., the
realm of ‘dread’. While doing so, I will also touch upon films that use
sound
to invoke the atmosphere of ‘dread’. One could take into account any
mainstream
Hindi film having some emphasis on
the
sound design to create the atmosphere of ‘dread’. But before I start my
analysis, I would like to suggest a distinction between two terms,
‘dread’ and
‘fear’, which will help me explain my point. Let me say what I mean by
the
distinction between ‘dread’ and ‘fear’. By ‘fear’, I point to emotions
of a
more visceral kind, something like a physical threat, which does not
leave its
impact on a psychological level for a prolonged period. I do not mean
fear does
not have any psychological impact or it does not have any psychological
basis attached
to it. I am trying to point out that ‘fear’ is more inclined towards an
instant
reaction and is definitely a short-lived one. In short, ‘fear’ is more
of a
bodily reaction. ‘Dread’, on the other hand, is a purely psychological
phenomenon. It is meant to stay and it is often culture and class
specific.
‘Dread’ does not lie in the threat of being physically hurt, but in the
anticipation of an unknown attack. I will try to elaborate on these
terms
further as the discussion proceeds.
It
is evident
from the nature and subject of the films that there is a definite
difference
between films with supernatural subjects and those dealing with other
subjects
but using sound to invoke ‘dread’. Therefore, I have tried to treat
these two
categories differently. Firstly,
I will
take up the case of horror films. The primary purpose of these films is
to
frighten the audience. Now, in the process of frightening people,
horror films
use two methods: either create some kind of a monster, or adopt a
device to
produce some kind of shock, Indian horror films can be divided
distinctly in
two different generations depending on their visual style, treatment
and target
audience. But what intrigues me is the marked shift in sound design
over the
last few years in horror films. Definitely, there is a shift in the
visual
style as they move from monsters to shock, from visceral ‘fear’ to
psychological ‘dread’. But to study the change in sound design I would
draw
attention to the devices used to create ‘dread’ and ‘fear’ on screen.
According
to Nic
Ransome, screen writer and script consultant, “By definition, the
Supernatural
cannot be contained, circumscribed or erased. Horror, at its most
fundamental
level, plays out Freud’s return of the repressed, and as all humanity
is only
too painfully aware, you can’t ever fully destroy the repressed. The
best you
can do is repress it again…”[1].
Now, if we look
at the earlier sleazy, ‘B’ grade horror films made by the Ramsay
Brothers and
circulating mostly in the underbelly of mainstream Hindi cinema, we
will find
out that those films involved monstrous figures, which came back at
regular
intervals and scared the audience. With their not so convincing make-up
and
antique behaviour they lacked ‘realism’. But since the whole
construction of
the monster was a visual one there was not much scope for
sound-designers,
except for adding ghastly effect sounds. Take, for example, the case of Purani
Haveli (Shyam and Tulsi Ramsay, 1989). The plot is somewhat
like the following: Kumar
buys an old
mansion deep in the countryside from Rana. When Kumar goes to take
possession
of the mansion, he takes his orphaned niece Anita and her friends,
Shobha and
Anand. Kumar’s wife Seema and her brother, Vikram, who wants to marry
Anita,
also join them. Anita’s friends secretly invite Anita’s lover Sunil
over. They
in turn invite several other friends, including Sunil’s assistant,
Manghu, and
travel in a bus. What the group does not know is the mansion holds an
evil
secret, and that beneath the mansion, locked in a dungeon by its very
own
biological father, lies a monster - and its primary diet is human meat.
The
plot conforms to Ransome’s claim and shows that the source of fear has
to be
generated visually through the evil acts of the monster. Several other
films
such as Do Gaz Zameen Ke Neeche
(Tulsi Ramsay, 1972), Darwaza
(Shyam
and Tulsi Ramsay,1978), Guest House (Shyam
and Tulsi Ramsay, 1980), Sannata
(Shyam and Tulsi Ramsay,1981), Dahshat
(Shyam and Tulsi Ramsay,1981), Purana
Mandir (Shyam
and Tulsi Ramsay,1984), Haveli
(Keshu Ramsay,1985), Saamri (Shyam
and Tulsi Ramsay,1985), Veerana
(Shyam and Tulsi Ramsay,1988), Tahkhana
(Shyam and Tulsi Ramsay,1986), Dak Bangla
(Keshu Ramsay,1987)
and Shaitani Ilaaka (Kiran
Ramsay,1990) seem to support this claim.
With minimal variations the plot remains more or less the same, and so
does the
visual and aural invocation of fear.
But
as we move
towards the late 90’s horror films, we see a growing charge of realism.
This
second generation of horror films does not depend on the scary
monsters, but
more on everyday figures. In Ram Gopal Varma’s horror films, for
example,
ghosts are not monstrous; they look very much like us. Now, if you do
not show
the monster, you need to create some audio clues that suggest the
uncanny-ness
of the characters or the plot. But I would like to inquire why Varma
cannot
show the monster. It can very well be a director’s decision to use or
refrain
from using certain cinematic devices, but my question is: Is there
anything
else that forces this decision? If
we
take a closer look we may find that unlike the Ramsay films, Varma’s
films are
not meant for the ‘B’ circuit film halls, they are targeted towards a
more
urban, literate and affluent audience; these are multiplex films. There
is a
marked difference between the target audience and reception pattern of
the two
kinds of horror films.
What
is common to
all supernatural narratives is that they all deal with something of the
unworldly origin. Keith Hennessey Brown draws upon Tzvetan Todorov’s
work on
The Fantastic (1973)[2] in
his discussion
of Hollywood
horror films. Todorov, in a study
of literary narratives of the supernatural, proposes five categories,
‘marvellous’, ‘marvellous/fantastical’, ‘fantastical’,
‘fantastical/uncanny’
and ‘uncanny’, with the point of distinction lying in the attitudes
taken
towards phenomena beyond our everyday experience. In the ‘marvellous’, the existence of a supernatural being
is not to be called into question—it simply is. In the
‘marvellous/fantastical’, the real existence of a supernatural being
would
initially be questioned, but ultimately accepted, other explanations
having
been exhausted. In pure ‘fantasy’, the existence or non-existence of a
supernatural being remains undecided. Its existence cannot be proved
but it cannot
be disproved too. In the ‘fantastical/uncanny’, as opposed to the
‘marvellous/fantastical’, we would initially wonder about its
existence, then
finally find a natural explanation to prove it was not something
supernatural.
Finally, in the ‘uncanny’, we would be in no doubt from the outset that
such
beings do not exist and the supernatural being in question, therefore,
must be something
else. The earlier
films like Bandh Darwaza (Tulsi
and
Shyam Ramsay, 1990), Purani Haveli or Tahkhana
belonged to the ‘marvellous’ category; whereas recent
films like Darna Mana Hai (Prawal
Raman, 2003) or Bhoot (Ram Gopal
Varma, 2003) belong more to the categories of ‘marvellous/fantastical’
or
simply ’fantastical’.
Therefore,
what
is evident here is that from a purely unquestioning and passive
attitude horror
films are shifting towards the domain of doubt. Though the earlier
films added
effects sound to establish the monstrosity of the ghost, it had little
to do
with its frightening effect. Since in the later films there is no
monster
present on screen to frighten people there has to be an alternative way
to
create the effect of ‘dread’, and that has to be something else than a
visual
clue. What is peculiar to these films is their minimal use of
background music.
Unlike other Hindi films, these depend heavily on ambient and effects
sound. As
the supernatural world is supposed to be beyond the reach of living
people
using only ambient sound may be a statement to underline that we are
merely
intruders there. All supernatural audio incidents are overheard by us.
Elisabeth Weis’s argument of “eavesdropping” as an aural-analogy to
“voyeurism”
notes, “Although psychoanalysts vary in their interpretations, all
agree that
overhearing is a primal phenomenon that invokes anxiety. Freud thus
prefigured
the very cinematic axiom that a threat that is heard but left unseen
can allow
the audience to imagine something more terrifying than anything a
filmmaker
could embody in a specific image.”[3] The
transition from sleazy ‘B’ circuit horror flicks to the sleek
multiplex films is therefore a journey from spectacle to anxiety.
Rather than
showing a scary figure directors are using the psychological impact of
a shock
and to creating the ‘atmosphere’ of fear. If we try to investigate the
reason behind
this shift we will have to think of the fact that urban space is based
on
distractions. The visual style of these films relies heavily on short
takes and
close ups, whereas sound works more or less in continuum. So, a planned
jerk in
the audio track immediately grips the audience with an eerie feeling.
In this connection,
one can investigate the specific effect that is used to create ‘dread’.
Take
for example the soundtracks of Bhoot or Darna Zaruri Hai (by six directors
including Ram Gopal Varma, 2006) that are full of such planned audio
jerks. If
we carefully listen to the soundtrack of the horror films of recent
times, we
will find there is not much music in them. Most of the film relies on
natural
ambient sounds. This is the result of the growing realist tendency in
Indian
mainstream cinema. This trend restricts the commercial directors in
using
music, or in abruptly breaking into a song. These films rarely have any
song
sequences; and even if they have one it is not likely to be used in the
main body
of the film.
As
the crowd
grows more urban for horror films in India,
the city dweller’s fear of
the countryside, Urbanoia, is now being turned into the uncertainty of
the
modern city life. Fear and anxiety come from the unpredictability and
ever-changing
surroundings of the city life. As the city keeps changing at an
incredibly
rapid speed, one is always uncertain about the next change, and perhaps
one
also starts believing in the possibility of the impossible happening.
In the
city you don’t even know whether the man living next door exists at
all. Take,
for instance, one of the episodes of Darna
Mana Hai involving John Rodriguez (Nana Patekar) and Amar
(Vivek Oberoi).
John hitches a ride in Amar’s car in a place close to a desolate
cemetery and
claims himself to be a ghost during the conversation. In spite of
Amar’s dogged
skepticism John keeps on claiming he is a ghost and resorts to more and
more
unrealistic and weird means to frighten Amar. Finally, when Amar tries
to throw
him away out of disgust from his car, he finally admits that he is
playing his
part in a famous television programme to fool people. But when he
wonders why
Amar never got afraid for a single moment, Amar reveals he is the ghost
and
disappears, leaving John in utter shock. Closer examinations of such
plots
simply suggest the source of ‘dread’ in the new horror films remains in
the
intelligent play of the cinematic devices. A monster just cannot do it;
the
shock effect stems from the stratling similarity of the ghost with a
common man.
The
other group
of films that involve scenes which deal with ‘dread’ are the underworld
films.
Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay (1975) is
definitely a milestone in sound design in Indian cinema. Sholay
for the first time tried to link a specific background score
to a specific person and successfully created the atmosphere of fear
through
sound. One more thing to note about Sholay
is that it convincingly used eerie sounds for which the
source cannot be
determined. Curiously enough, Ram Gopal Varma uses the same kind of
effects
sound in Sarkar (2005) to
establish
the fear and awe about the character of Subhash Nagre (Amitabh
Bachhan). Now,
films about underworld are definitely of a different kind altogether.
They do
not operate in the zone of horror but can be linked to terror.
This,
crucially,
is something that distinguishes works of horror from works of terror,
“which,
though eerie and unnerving, achieve their frightening effects by
exploring
psychological phenomena that are all too human.”[4] In
other words, going back to Todorov, we may say
that, whereas the domain of horror is the marvellous/fantastic, that of
terror
is the fantastic/uncanny and the uncanny—those narratives in which the
existence of the supernatural is posited only in order to be denied or
the supernatural
plays no part; that the domain of terror is that of ‘reality’. Another
formulation might be that where horror emphasizes the transgression of
the
‘natural’, terror foregrounds that of the human or social. My question
is why
sound becomes so important in the recent films to create the sensation
of
‘dread’ as a whole? The above cases show that these films have started
to
address the dilemmas of the urban mind rather than just emphasizing the
performance. Both at the level of content and treatment, these films
show an
increasing complexity of characters and plots, and an enhanced realism.
The
world around us does not present any monsters in that way but we often
face
atrocities from fellow beings. A realist film cannot show monsters, but
it may
be required to keep the atmosphere of ‘dread’ alive. Sound originating
outside
the scopic world can be easily related to the fear of unknown. Through
years of
viewing practice we have learnt to interpret the visual codes, but the
aural
world of cinema still largely remains outside our explanatory
competence.
Therefore, anything done through the soundtrack strikes us more
immediately. In
the case of terror films, my suggestion is, there is a shift in the
primary
emphasis from visual to audio-track in an attempt to do away with
onscreen
violence. I will have to bring in the question of the urban spectator
once more
here. For the urban literate audience, the blood and gore on screen may
prove
only too disturbing and unrealistic. The everyday encounter with
violence in
the city life often works towards making people both hyper- and
non-sensitive
to such issues. So, the visual depiction of violence often does not
affect them
psychologically as much as sound does. It is always more effective to
hear a
gunshot than to actually see a man die. Think of the gang-war of Sathya (Ram Gopal Varma, 1998) that
climaxes on a railway overbridge in the killing of a ganglord owes its
share of
shock and dread to the magnified double gun burst sounds of Sathya and
Bhikhu,
mixed with ambient rail station sounds. Similarly, the surprise of a
the
underworld network spreading through phone calls owes its invocation of
the
atmosphere of dread to the use of the very common ringtone sounds mixed
and
magnified in a
chaotic manner in Company (Ram
Gopal Varma, 2002).
In
the recent
years, there has been a significant change in the technology involved
in
film-making and film-screening facilities. While the filmmaking process
has
started to move towards sync-sound, film-viewing facilities have grown
towards
the surround sound experience. Today, any theatre has a multi-channel
sound
projection facility. More channels mean more clarity in sound.
Therefore not a
single little sound goes unnoticed by the audience. They can pick up
the
slightest clues in audio. This technological advancement plays a major
role in
the sound design of a film. With incredibly clear audio reception one
can take
the risk to experiment with sound-design knowing it will be heard by
the
audience. The sound mixers today are capable of producing synthetic
sounds that
cannot be produced naturally. Now, such a sound keeps one guessing
about its
origin. Along with this, there has been an increased interest in
producing
lower frequency sounds. With the new woofer, sub-woofer and bass-boost
facilities, one can now produce sound of extremely low frequency. The
background score of the opening credit of Bhoot
is a perfect example of privileging low and medium
frequencies and
underplaying higher ones. The peculiarity about low frequency sound is
that it
can give the audience a sense of pseudo-silence. By the term
pseudo-silence I
mean an intense atmosphere of unrecognisable sounds.
The audience actually has to hear the sound
less and feel it more. The urban cityscape provides sound-designers
with an
array of weird and unidentifiable sounds. Someone living in a city for
a long
time loses his/her capacity to individually identify each of those
sounds, as
one always keeps hearing a mixture of a thousand of them. Therefore,
when
someone hears the bang of a door, ten times magnified than it usually
is, and
isolated from the mix of other sounds, it comes as a shock. If a
director uses
this kind of a sound with no visual clue attached to it, the effect is
dramatic. Most of those who have seen Bhoot
in a movie theatre will understand the experience I am talking about. So, there is a new
viability for low
frequency, isolated and magnified sound to create the atmosphere of
dread. The
new class of films are targeted towards an urban literate audience, who
are not
ready to see those sleazy, low budget horror films. They have a hunger
for
crime-thrillers that have complex characters, plot and narrative
density. These
facts contribute to a film viewing practice that demands the filmmakers
to
impact psychologically and not just show, but also make one hear and
feel the
sounds of horror.
References:
1 Nick Ransome, “Fear is the
key”, Scriptwriter, Issue 15, March 2004.
2 Keith Hennessey Brown,
“Notes
on the terror
film”,
Forum: The University of Edinburgh
Postgraduate Journal of Culture and Arts, Issue 2, Spring
2006.
3 Elisabeth Weis,
“Eavesdropping : An aural
analogue of voyeurism?”, Cinesonic: The
World of Sound in
Film, ed. Philip
Brophy (North Ryde: Australian Film Television & Radio School,
1999)
4 Nöel Carroll, The
Philosophy of Horror: Or, Paradoxes of the Heart. (New York:
Routledge, 1990)
