Text & Contexts

Dr. Julie Hubbert's book, Celluloid Symphonies: Text and Contexts in Film Music History looks like it will be an important piece in the growing library on the history of film music and sound. I applaud her inclusion of primary texts within her book allowing the text to "speak for itself" as evidentiary proof of changes in the history of movie sound. However, I find the context in her "Texts and Contexts in Film Music History" to be eerily absent. I was struck by how odd it seemed to be reading primary texts from the early 20^th century stripped of their historicity, reformatted in typed conformity with the original essays by Hubbert. While the language of these early texts clearly speaks from another era, the materiality of each of the documents is lost. We loose the direct context in which these articles were situated within the physical document. We are left without relevant clues as to how this information was situated on the page, for instance how the Jackass cartoons were situated in relation to the text; what advertisements were adjacent to the articles; how articles were situated within the larger journal or newspaper, whether it was located on the front page or in the back of the newspaper with the classifieds. I understand that the decision to reformat the text likely comes from publishing standards and financial restraints but it's interesting to think about all of the evidence that is lost by removing these objects from their material context.

- jenn*