外來歌曲、黑色音聲、殖民遺緒 《牯嶺街少年殺人事件》與《重慶森林》的音聲與失語

Abstract

電影音聲研究的突破，由Michel Chion在1990年代提出audio-vision的概念開始，認為觀賞電影時視覺與聽覺密不可分。而楊德昌的《牯嶺街少年殺人事件》(1991) 和王家衛的《重慶森林》(1994) 為兩部相當重要的華語電影作品，從音聲角度的研究卻寥寥無幾。因此本文嘗試以三個層次較全面地解讀兩部電影中的音聲與影像。第一層是比較明顯的互文性 (intertextuality)，因為兩部電影中出現的音樂幾乎都是非原創的西洋流行歌曲，故先重構歌曲本身的脈絡，並聚焦當中「原唱」以及「翻唱」兩種呈現方式的主體性，從而理解其與電影畫面與敘事所產生的新文本的意義。第二是深一層以《牯嶺街少年殺人事件》與《重慶森林》作為黑色電影去理解其音聲特性，發現兩部電影的城市的音景與所謂「致命女性」(femme fatale) 等角色的刻畫，其實都呼應著黑色電影的氛圍與基調。若第一、二層的分析較為鑒賞性 (appreciative)，近乎David Bordwell所謂的理解與解釋，最後一層則是以症候性 (symptomatic) 詮釋電影中的聲音。而這一點也是本文的主旨所在，將兩部電影視為後殖民寓言：其中在地音聲症候性的失語，是殖民權力所強制的「結構性噤聲」。

The study of sound and music in film has made a breakthrough when Michel Chion proposed the notion of “audio-vision” in the 1990s, considering that both seeing and hearing are important in understanding movies. A Brighter Summer Day (1991) by Edward Yang and Chungking Express (1994) by Wong Kar-wai are two significant Mandarin movies, but studies from the perspectives of music and sound are rare. This thesis attempts to understand comprehensively the sonic aspects of the two films in three different levels. The first is intertextuality, trying to apprehend the original contexts of the pre-existing songs and the new meanings constructed especially in the “cover” versions presented in the films. The second deeper level is genre criticism, revealing the city soundscapes and sonic characterization of figures like the femme fatale of the two films to be that of neo-noir. While the first two levels could be seen as “appreciative” comprehension and explication, the last one is a “symptomatic” interpretation (David Bordwell). This is also the thesis of this paper, that the two films could be read as post-colonial allegories: the symptomatic lack of local sound and music in them is the “structured absence” imposed by colonial powers.