Sonic Codes in "Hush"

So the peer-reviewed article I wanted to use for my blog post was in a book at Colgate, and Interlibrary Loan just got it to me today! Here is what I’ve gathered from reading it:

I read “Battling the Buzz: Contesting Sonic Codes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer” by Katy Stevens. Her central thesis is that sound in television is often the primary means of securing a viewer’s attention, and that “Hush” is an attempt to defy this tendency. What’s interesting about her viewpoint is that she very tightly intertwines sound with subjectivity in its many forms – language, voice, and body. She even associates the use of vocal imagery in television with life itself: “…the voice often takes on the responsibility of embodying and bringing to life the complex acoustic environments within the text. In this sense the human voice becomes accountable for materializing the ‘liveness’ of the originating body of utterance (the subject) and the surrounds it inhabits” (81).

So when Buffy and the others lose their ability to speak, they also lose the ability to buoy the sonic information that is presented to the viewer both narratively and emotionally. This goes back to what we were talking about in class; some of us argued that our heightened awareness of the music in the Buffy soundtrack allowed us to generate our own emotions and not feel tied to what Joss Whedon might have wanted us to feel. Other people in class thought that it did just the opposite – that it more firmly directed our response to the text. I think Stevens would agree with the former, but I’d say the main idea is that without the characters’ “linguistic prowess,” as Stevens puts it, the viewer experiences more ambiguity with regard to the sound environment and how it advances or inhibits the plotline.

We also see how silence in this episode affects the characters’ relationship to their bodies. When Riley can’t get the vocal identification panel in the elevator to work, it’s as if his entire being is challenged. The characters also demonstrate visceral reactions to external noises (like the shattering of glass) – and Stevens believes these examples are meant to indicate a larger, more meta-concept about television. “The very language of recording the human voice is imbued with the connotations of entrapping a body…This language operates in direct contrast to the essentially ephemeral nature of sound and, of course, the voice itself…the human voice operates as an object to be seized and projected through the apparatus” (84). So even the way this episode is made, not just it’s content, is gothic – it’s a commentary on the gothic, in a way, just like Northanger Abbey is, because it seeks to illuminate something about the nature of sound in the media! The story that Giles relates within the episode itself also has a similar function, I think.

Works Cited:

Stevens, Katy. “Battling the Buzz: Contesting Sonic Codes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Music, Sound, and Silence in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Ed. Attinello, Paul, Janet K. Halfyard, and Vanessa Knights. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2010. 79-89. Print.