Acoustic Disgust: Sound, Affect, and Cinematic Violence

Abstract

Despite film sound’s affective potentialities for sensations of fear, disturbance, revulsion, and horror, film violence is still primarily considered in visual terms. This chapter seeks to refocus and alter this ocularcentrism by analysing the imperative role of sonic aspects of cinematic violence, especially extreme modes of violence that are seen to go too far and are deemed unbearable or unwatchable. In this chapter, I examine what constitutes the ‘unlistenable’ as an acoustic analogue of the unwatchable and interrogate what I contend is a key aspect of this unlistenability: acoustic disgust. Arguing that the envelopment and intimacy associated with hearing create a particularly fecund environment for disgust, I consider what it is that renders some sounds truly disgusting.

I would like to thank SSHRC’s Insight Grant program for their generous funding of this research.