Altman's "Material Event" and Critique of Image-Centric Film Theory

Redefining "Film Sound": From Text to Event

Most film analysis, and indeed much of your practical experience as a sound mixer, focuses on the sounds deliberately crafted for the soundtrack. Rick Altman challenges this narrow focus. He argues that by concentrating only on the authored sound of the film, we miss the bigger picture and, in doing so, unconsciously adopt an ideology promoted by the film industry itself.

To understand his argument, we'll start with a key essay where he lays out this foundational critique.

Altman argues that to truly understand sound in cinema, we must stop thinking of the film as just a self-contained text and start thinking of it as a material event. This "event" includes every sound produced in and around the exhibition space. He breaks this down into four categories:

1. Textual Accompaniment: This is what we traditionally call "film sound"—the dialogue, music, and effects on the soundtrack.
2. Apparatus Noise: The sounds of the technology of exhibition, such as the hum of the projector, the buzz of speakers, or even the squeak of theater seats.
3. Audience Sounds: The entire range of sounds produced by the spectators—talking, laughing, crying, eating popcorn, rustling wrappers, or even, as we will see, silence.
4. Advertising Sound: Sounds used to attract customers, historically known as "ballyhoo," like music played into the street or a barker's patter.

By proposing this expanded definition, Altman reframes our object of study. The phenomenon to be analyzed is not just the soundtrack, but the entire acoustic environment of the cinema experience.

The Historical Silencing of the Event

If there are four categories of sound, why do we—as practitioners and theorists—overwhelmingly focus on just one? Altman's answer is that this is not an accident. His critique of image-centered film theory is rooted in a historical argument: the film industry deliberately and systematically suppressed the other three sound categories to create a specific kind of spectator.

The next reading delves into this history. It's a crucial part of his argument, as it reveals the ideological project behind what we now consider "normal" cinematic experience.

Altman's historical account is the backbone of his critique. He argues that the move to silence the cinema event was a move to:

• Conceal Commercialism: Suppressing "ballyhoo" helped elevate cinema's status from a cheap carnival attraction to a respectable art form.
• Hide the Apparatus: Hiding projectors in booths and carpeting floors erased the material reality of production and exhibition, fostering a more seamless illusion.
• Discipline the Audience: Most critically, the industry transformed the active, vocal, communal audience of early cinema into a collection of silent, passive, individual voyeurs. This "disenfranchisement of the audience" was necessary for the dominance of Hollywood's immersive, narrative style, which requires spectators to lose themselves in the story rather than interact with each other.

This is Altman's core critique of image-centered theory: by accepting the soundtrack as the sole object of study, film theory has historically ignored the social and material reality of the cinema event and has inadvertently reinforced the industry's ideological project of creating the silent spectator.

Sound as Representation, Not Reproduction

Altman's critique goes even deeper, questioning the very nature of recorded sound itself. He argues that the sound we hear in a film is not a simple copy of a sound that occurred in reality. This idea is central to understanding sound as a material event—the recorded sound is a new event, not a transparent window onto an old one.

This concept is sometimes referred to as material heterogeneity.

As the text explains, for Altman, the process of recording, mixing, and re-presenting sound fundamentally changes it. The microphone's placement, the acoustics of the space, and the choices made in post-production create a new sonic reality. What we hear is an "illusion of presence," a representation designed for effect, not a neutral reproduction of an original phenomenon.

This reinforces his argument that film sound is a material thing in its own right. The sound event in the theater has its own physical properties and performs its own work on the listener, distinct from whatever "original" sound it purports to capture.

A New Analytical Framework: Local and General Economies

If we accept Altman's premise—that cinema is a material event and that its sounds are constructed representations—how do we analyze it? He proposes moving beyond simple textual analysis to a model that accounts for the complex interactions of sound within and outside the theater.

Altman provides two interconnected spheres for analysis:

1. The Local Economy: This refers to the interplay of all sound sources within the single soundscape of the exhibition event. It's about analyzing the rapport de forces—the tensions and interactions—between the textual accompaniment, apparatus noise, and audience sounds as they co-exist in the theater. For example, how does the rhythm of a comedy film have to account for predicted audience laughter? How did the need for street-level "ballyhoo" influence early film accompaniment to be louder and more percussive?

2. The General Economy: This expands the analysis beyond the theater walls to include the cultural circulation of sound. It considers "displaced" sounds—those that occur before or after the screening but are still part of the film's overall event-hood. This includes everything from the sheet music and soundtrack albums that allow songs to live on outside the film, to the post-screening discussions in a cine-club or academic class.

This framework is particularly powerful for your own research. The "local economy" prompts you to consider the specific exhibition contexts in Morocco—are audiences there more or less vocal than in other cultures? How does the material condition of cinemas affect the sound event? The "general economy" invites you to trace how the sounds of Moroccan cinema (its music, its languages) circulate in the wider culture, contributing to a national sonic identity.

Conclusion

Today, we have explored Rick Altman's fundamental challenge to traditional film sound theory. By moving from the notion of film as a text to cinema as a material event, he radically expands our field of inquiry.

Key Takeaways:

• Critique of Image-Centered Theory: Altman argues that traditional theory, by focusing only on the soundtrack's relation to the image, has ignored the broader acoustic reality of the cinema event and has been complicit in the historical silencing of audience and apparatus sounds.
• Sound as a Material Event: Cinema is a physical, social, and acoustic event. "Film sound" should encompass all sounds within this event: textual, apparatus, audience, and advertising.
• Representation vs. Reproduction: Recorded sound is not a neutral copy of reality but a new, constructed representation—a material object in its own right.
• Local and General Economies: Analysis should account for both the immediate interactions of sound within the theater ("local economy") and the broader cultural circulation of sound outside the theater ("general economy").

Preview of the Next Lesson:

We have now examined two of the most important theorists of film sound: Michel Chion, with his precise, text-focused analysis of the diegesis, and Rick Altman, with his expansive, materialist critique of the cinema event. In our next lesson, we will put these two thinkers into direct dialogue, comparing and contrasting their theoretical approaches to build a more comprehensive understanding of how to analyze film sound.