Text/Nanke Documentary
Editor/Nan Ke Documentary
<<——Preamble——>>
"The music of the cat and mouse gives everyone half the credit."
Seemingly simple mechanical music, in fact, a lot of it is symphonic base, which is why cat and mouse cost so much per episode back then.
These music, along with Tom and Jerry's cheerful chase and fight scenes, together form an indelible memory of our childhood, do you remember the children who watched cats and mice laugh and laugh?
Now, after so many years, Cat and Mouse has become the object of competition for many cartoons in terms of animation quality and soundtrack coordination, but few works that surpass Cat and Mouse have come out.
This animation has become a classic, and even today, decades later, when you imagine Tom and Jerry chasing, you can still think of the familiar and unfamiliar symphonic melody in your mind.
I have to say that this soundtrack is really the soul of the whole animation, and it is one of the important factors why this animation can become a classic, so much so that these soundtracks have left a deep imprint on our minds.
<< · - Western music theory and animation materials blend - >>
In films, musical elements are always accompanied by visual elements and story elements.
The hierarchical structure of film music elements is often destroyed by extra-musical sound elements such as dialogue and sound effects, and its surface unity is often weakened by the layout of the whole film.
Therefore, it is often difficult to effectively apply the techniques used to analyze the pragmatics of Western classical music to analyze the development of film music pragmatics, especially the study of metaphors, which has gone beyond the scope of linguistics and entered a broader field of perception and cognition.
The understanding of film music is similar to the cognitive process by which we understand metaphors.
How does film music map visual elements or story elements to auditory media through metaphorical processing?
A metaphor refers to a comparative relationship between two different components. These two components are usually named: "origin domain" and "target domain". Our understanding of metaphor relies on us highlighting similarities between the origin and target domains.
We construct the similarity between the two domains by projecting some features of the origin domain onto the target domain.
Accordingly, Lakeff and Jensen argue that "the essential characteristic of metaphor is to borrow one thing to understand and experience another." ”
They believe that "metaphorical thinking" is the basis of human cognitive processing, and that several similar linguistic metaphors can be grouped into a more all-encompassing category of conceptual metaphors.
For example: "You're wasting our time", "I'm investing a lot of time in her", "How are you spending your days these days?"
The above examples can all be categorized into a conceptual metaphor of "time is money". We understand the concept of time as having the attributes, functions, and values of money.
In the conceptual metaphor theory, it is represented by "AISB", where A is the target domain and B is the origin domain, the target image is more abstract, the origin domain is more concrete, and the metaphor mapping is projected from the more concrete origin domain to the more abstract target domain, which is the most basic theory.
In order to reveal the fundamental similarities between the origin domain and the target domain, Jensen went on to develop the "image schema theory".
He argues that embodied concepts such as imagery schemas can be systematically extended to provide structure to more abstract concepts or conceptual domains, and imagery schemas can act as the origin domain of metaphorical mapping.
One of the distinguishing features of imagery schemas is that they can serve as the basis for other concepts. Because the image schema is derived from our interaction with the objective world, the basic objective experience of human beings itself produces the image schema, which in turn provides a structural justification for the metaphorical extension of many abstract concepts.
Therefore, the importance of imagery schema lies in the fact that it can provide concrete justification for metaphorical mapping.
<< - Metaphors in film and video - >>
"Cat and Mouse" is a 1939 animated film produced by Gome Pictures, which features a farce depicting a battle between Tom and Jerry, who are incompatible with each other and cats and mice.
Tom often uses cunning tricks against Jerry, and Jerry often takes advantage of the loopholes in Tom's tricks to escape his persecution and take revenge.
In films, musical elements are always accompanied by visual elements and story elements.
However, unraveling the relationship between these different domain elements depends on our ability to recognize and highlight some of the similarities between them.
The similarity associations between different conceptual domains can be expressed by the conceptual metaphor models A, IS, and B proposed by Cai Kefu and Jensen. By revealing the relationship between the "two domains" based on the "linear image schema", the metaphorical mapping relationship between different perceptual domains in the film is analyzed.
"Linear image schema" usually represents continuous and coherent particles in one-dimensional space, and the resulting "simple metaphor" mainly relies on the relationship between the origin domain and the target domain based on the linear image schema.
The following three examples of metaphors from Cat and Mouse about mapping between different perceptions belong to the conceptual metaphor "vertical spatial motion is fundamental frequency fluctuations".
In this conceptual metaphor, upward movement is an increase in the fundamental frequency, and downward movement is a decrease in the fundamental frequency.
Episode 1 "Sweet Home". Rather than depicting the upward movement of an object or character, the plot depicts a tall stack of plates held by Tom the Cat with both hands through a (virtual) shot that is quickly raised.
The soundtrack for this fragment uses a long sequence of ascending chromatic scales and cohesive rhythms until Jerry the Mouse appears at the very top of the plate.
Episode 3, "Christmas", depicts Jerry jumping on a candy bar and slowly sliding down the stick while licking the food, and after tasting it again, Jerry continues to climb up and lick it again.
The soundtrack uses strings to play a descending chromatic scale and two small reverse glissandos to represent Jaeley's movement from top to top and up and down on a candy bar.
In particular, the strings here use just the right glissandos to play, which makes the image of Jerry the mouse more funny and optimistic, and the music is more infectious and expressive, which directly raises the character's action portrayal to a higher level.
Episode 11 "Young Society". It depicts Jerry the rat landing from an airplane, making a short stop in the middle of the descent with the help of a bra that acts as a temporary landing.
The soundtrack of this video is played multiple times in sequence through a descending chromatic scale, interspersed with a pause in between, indicating a short pause in the middle of the fall.
Moreover, a trill appears at the very beginning of the descending chromatic scale, which just shows Jerry's stagnation and horror in the air.
It contains linear parameters such as "tone" and "rhythm" in film music, analogies the vertical movement in visual elements, and provides a concrete example of how the soundtrack and other elements interact with each other through metaphors in film.
We can understand that the conceptual metaphor theory of Lakeff and Jensen can be effectively applied to the analysis of film music, and this validity depends on the prominence and understanding of the structural characteristics of film music.
<<·——经典的童年回忆——·>>
We still have a deep understanding of this cartoon, especially many people who have seen it since childhood will have a deep feeling, those pictures that we looked very funny when we were children, but they can make us cry when we grow up.
For example, there is an episode about little Jerry who is tired of country life, so he decides to leave his hometown where he has lived for a long time, and then writes a farewell letter to his old buddy Tom, and gently presses the letter under the cat's paws.
Then little Jerry took a hitchhiker to the big city of his dreams, and the bustling streets and busy traffic in the city dazzled Jerry, just like "turtles entering the city", little Jerry was very curious about what he saw.
Jerry was fascinated by all this seemingly beautiful view, but then the crisis also came, and Jerry came to the mansion restaurant to overlook the whole city, and even danced with the dolls at the dinner table.
But then Jerry almost fell into a "rat piece" because of a little accident, fortunately he picked up a "parachute" to land safely, but the crisis was not contacted, and the alley where Jerry landed was full of wild cats, and they stared at this little mouse from the countryside with fierce eyes.
Frightened, Jerry fled in a hurry, and finally accidentally smashed the jewelry display case and was surrounded by the police, and then Jerry ran home without twisting his head, found Tom and kissed him violently, and also tore the parting letter to shreds.
Each of these images has a unique background music that echoes, and this sense of harmony is not something that can be replaced by modern electronic music.
<<·——Conclusion——·>>
Jerry's little figure into the city to work hard we didn't understand when we were young, but looking back and carefully savoring little Jerry's experience, we are not a little Jerry, Jerry is also our little projection.
Growing up in the countryside and tired of the comfortable life, attracted by the bright lights of the city, and finally decided to go into the city to work hard, and only after ending up physically and mentally exhausted did he find that the previous comfortable life was the beautiful that many people dreamed of.
Each of us should be as unique as the soundtrack in "Cat and Mouse", and having our own life is the first step to realizing the value of life.