Portrayals of Music Lovers

[Joe Barron]

From Roger Ebert's Little Movie Glossary, a compendium of cinematic tropes and clichés:

Roll Over, Beethoven
Any character seen intently enjoying classical music (especially opera) will do evil. Any character seen dancing and grooving to rock and roll will redeem and enlighten.

This is true. It's been my experience that in TV and movies, classical music lovers are usually portrayed as either pompous if intelligent fools (Frasier, Charles Emerson Winchester) or serial killers (Hannibal Lecter). This may simply be writers' shorthand, a way of tossing off a few character traits without expending effort, but more to the point, it makes education suspect, establishing the common-man bona fides of the filmmakers and any common-man characters. As with any stereotype, it has little basis in fact. I've made a few friends here, and none of them are snobs. Of course, for all I know, there may be a few serial killers in the bunch.

On the other hand, I've been listening on Thursday morning to a radio personality named Teri Noel Towe, who broadcasts on WPRB, Princeton, and he is indeed pompous. He plays great music, though.

[karlhenning]

From Roger Ebert's Little Movie Glossary, a compendium of cinematic tropes and clichés:

Roll Over, Beethoven
Any character seen intently enjoying classical music (especially opera) will do evil. Any character seen dancing and grooving to rock and roll will redeem and enlighten.

This is true. It's been my experience that in TV and movies, classical music lovers are usually portrayed as either pompous if intelligent fools (Frasier, Charles Emerson Winchester) or serial killers (Hannibal Lecter).

Goes back a ways, too (Otto Preminger's Laura, 1944).

[Joe Barron]

Goes back a ways, too (Otto Preminger's Laura, 1944).

Clifton Webb was something of an archetype in that film: a cultured, vaguely homosexual villain modeled somewhat on Alexander Woolcott.

Then there was A Night at the Opera, but at least in that movie, opera was OK as long as Allan Jones and Kitty Carlisle were singing it.

[Florestan]

Then again, if we shift to literature, the music lovers got much more sympathetic portrayals: Mann, Hesse, Proust...

[Joe Barron]

Then again, if we shift to literature, the music lovers got much more sympathetic portrayals: Mann, Hesse, Proust...

True, but I was thinking more of popular media, particularly movies and TV.

I've been reading John Updike since he died, and I notice that for such an inteectual polymath, he doesn't write  about music much. The visual arts figure much more prominently in his work. (He did publish art criticism.) For updike, it seemed, music wasn't so much an art practiced by grat masters as it was a kind of memory-trigger. When he he mentioned music at all, he tends to stick to the hits of his youth, stuff that can launch a meditation on the past and lost time. While he will say, for example, that some sight resembles a Goya or a Francis Bacon painting, he will never say that some sound is reminiscent of a Beethoven Symphony.

I'm reading his last book of short stories, "My Father's Tears," right now. It's excellent. The stories tend to cover the same ground over and over, but then that's true of Jane Austen's novels, too.

[Herman]

Not necessarily opera. There is also the typical evil man who has chopin or mozart-like piano music playing in the background, waiting for his date to arrive, and she will barely escape with her life.

This music is part of his overly sophisticated and fastidious lifestyle, which is a clear sign of a destructive personality, according to popular culture.

[Joe Barron]

I remember watching an episode of Boston Public once in which the prissy assistant principal was seen in his office after hours listening to Barber's Adagio for Strings on the radio. Great, I thought: another tight-assed white guy who likes classical music.

The only good guy I can remember liking classical music was Columbo. (His wife was said to love Madame Butterfly.) Woody Allen has had nice things to say in his movies about Mahler and Mozart, too, but he tends to go the other way, judging people who like music he regards as unfit for human consumption.

[karlhenning]

I thought that they went overboard in the I, Claudius series, with Caligula listening to Webern at the beginning of one scene.

[Florestan]

Caligula listening to Webern at the beginning of one scene.

[Drasko]

The villain, Hugo Drax playing Chopin (raindrop prelude, I think) in James Bond Moonraker

[Florestan]

True, but I was thinking more of popular media, particularly movies and TV.

I've got the idea, but IMO popular media, particularly movies and TV, with their anti-intellectualistic bias, are the least qualified to portray music kovers, witness the whole bunch of classical-music-lover serial killers, freaks and frankensteins.  

[Scarpia]

Actually serious music doesn't often come up in popular culture, and when it does I'm not so convinced it is always in a negative light.  One of the few that comes to mind, Sherlock Holmes was a skilled violinist and lover of music, both in the written stories and in the various popular adaptions.

[Florestan]

Actually serious music doesn't often come up in popular culture, and when it does I'm not so convinced it is always in a negative light.  One of the few that comes to mind, Sherlock Holmes was a skilled violinist and lover of music, both in the written stories and in the various popular adaptions.

True, but S. H. was portrayed as such by Arthur Conan Doyle. I wonder what the producers / directors would have made of him absent this reference.

[Joe Barron]

I've got the idea, but IMO popular media, particularly movies and TV, with their anti-intellectualistic bias, are the least qualified to portray music lovers, witness the whole bunch of classical-music-lover serial killers, freaks and frankensteins.  

Agreed, but then that's kind of the point of this thread.

Now, to repair to my basement and continue the torture of my prisoners.

[Joe Barron]

True, but S. H. was portrayed as such by Arthur Conan Doyle. I wonder what the producers / directors would have made of him absent this reference.

And the novels come from the 19th and early 20th centuries, before the advent and industrializaton of movies.

[Scarpia]

And the novels come from the 19th and early 20th centuries, before the advent and industrializaton of movies.

I'm not referring to the written stories (I'd hardly call them novels) but to the film and TV portrayals, specifically to the Basil Rathbone series, which spanned the 1940s and 50's.

I also recall an episode of the sopranos where a sympathetic person who can identify the main character (Tony Soprano) at the scene of a crime is shown listening to some odd atonal piano music.  (Later the witness finds out who he is going to identify and is too frightened to cooperate.)

[snyprrr]

This is one of the saddest threads ... ah, sigh...

...on so many levels...

To me, this is like my dirty little secret. I can practically remember the day when I realized that this kind of music wasn't going to make my life any easier;itslike John Wayne with an effeminate toy poodle.

Never mind "classical" music:the bad guys always love Bach or Chopin. What is the depiction of the "avant" music lover (besides null)?

I do remember the day in the music store many years ago, when I finally rung up a guy who brought me Ligeti and Xenakis. Finally! I thought, here's a guy who likes the same stuff I do. So I began to engage him, and, woooah... the guy was the snootiest sniffy (oh please, say it with that daaahling accent).

"Yes, yes...I know."

We like to say "I know" a lot, don't we?

Anyhow, the premise of OP's assertion seems to hold true. On top of this, FIND me a character, good OR bad, who can stomach anything beyond Mahler (and I don't think serial killers listen to Mahler... no guilt!). The bad guy ALWAYS seems to be playing the same Chopin or Bach piece (Bach organ= Phantom of the Opera).

Ha! then there's a bit of that 'ole Ludwig Van in A Clockwork Orange.

Well, I've been formulating my thesis on this topic for quite some time, but you caught me off guard . Classical music in "film" certainly has psychological meaning and use. When was the last time you tried to play just about ANYTHING classical to someone and were told:

SOUNDS LIKE MOVIE MUSIC!

The "elite cabal that run the world (and make movies)" have usurped the achievements of western culture and put them in context for us, through their pervasive control of all media.

...calling robnewman ...

It's because of the truth that I've found concerning OP's thread that I can get such a miserable FU attitude towards "non lovers". Who's elitism-ing whom?

First they will come after our guns...then they will come for our headphones!

[Joe Barron]

I'm not referring to the written stories (I'd hardly call them novels) but to the film and TV portrayals, specifically to the Basil Rathbone series, which spanned the 1940s and 50's.

Yes, but Florestan's point was that the character trait was already there in Conan Doyle's books long before anyone ever thought of making them into movies.

I have never watched The Sopranos, and in any event, no rule is so rigid that it does not admit of exceptions.

[Joe Barron]

Anyhow, the premise of OP's assertion seems to hold true.

Who is OP?

[Josquin des Prez]

I'm reading his last book of short stories, "My Father's Tears," right now. It's excellent. The stories tend to cover the same ground over and over, but then that's true of Jane Austen's novels, too.

That's because neither Updike or Austen are geniuses. :josquin: