Klanglandschaften der new frontier. Auditive Zukunftsvisionen und das Verhältnis zwischen Avantgarde und Kulturindustrie im US-amerikanischen Science-Fiction-Film

Abstract

This paper examines aesthetic strategies deployed in US science fiction films to create auditory visions of the future. Since the frontier myth represents the major topos through which scientific and technological progress is negotiated in the public discourse of the United States, the study focuses particularly on iterations of the frontier narrative in which outer space is staged as the imaginary domain of a new frontier. Drawing mainly on feature films from the 1950s to the 1980s, I show how sonic signatures used to mark imaginary futures were based on appropriations of aesthetic forms and practices developed by the musical avant-garde. I claim that on the level of production the US film industry’s exploitation of new worlds of sound followed the same ideological structure the frontier myth unfolded in the fictitious conquests of space on the level of narrative.