Musicalized Characters : A study of music, multimodality, and the empiric child perspective on mainstream animation

Sammanfattning: This thesis is an audience reception study of film music and animation film. It focuses on the musical construction of characters, looking at how music becomes meaningful in film and how this meaning becomes part of child audiences' interpretation of filmic characters.To examine these questions, the thesis combines an interdisciplinary theoretical framework based on audience studies, multimodality, and film music studies with an empirical enquiry into child audiences' reception. Drawing on this theoretical and empirical synthesis, the thesis proposes two models of relevance to our understanding of reception and film music:A new model for conceptualising film music as a multimodal system that combines with other semiotic systems to construct a multimodal dimension – the way this multimodal dimension is constructed affects the film's interpretive openness.A general model for understanding reception as an active encounter between a multimodal text and an active audience. The model proposes that reception is constrained on three interconnected levels: 1) the affordances of the multimodal text, 2) the framing following from the communicative situation as well as from the social position, personal experiences, and knowledge of the audiences, and 3) the multimodal dimension.In the thesis, the musical strategies and multimodal semiotic potential of Frozen (2013), Up (2009) and Shrek the Third (2007) are discussed and compared with Danish children's (aged 7-11) expressed understandings of the films (obtained through interviews). In this way, the thesis sheds light on how children relate to and use filmic form, particularly music, in negotiating the films’ content. The thesis shows that children are active and critical viewers with a broad film-musical literacy. The children draw on knowledge of film-musical conventions for creating mood and narrative expectations, and they comment on leitmotif techniques and make references to famous film music. The aesthetic elements of music and visuals are moreover a motivational factor for their enjoyment of the films, and the children use their personal experiences and cultural background for creating a frame within which to evaluate both the music, the characters, and the film as a whole.