Let’s jump right into things, shall we? I’m just kidding. I never do that — jump into things, that is. I always ramble for the first few hundred words so I can release all my pent-up charm and wit. I just watched “Back to the Future” this weekend for the first time in a while.
Let me tell you, it was a romp. I had so much fun. Two things, though: I usually hate pop-culture references fundamentally, but about half of the movie’s references land really well. It’s cool. Also, rape is a major plot point — it’s part of Marty’s plan to make George a hero in the eyes of Lorraine. And then Biff actually tries to rape Lorraine. It’s a whole thing. You don’t really feel the weight of it beneath the 1950s cult of domesticity, but the rape’s there. It’s a whole thing.
I also watched “The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie” this weekend. I watched a lot of movies this weekend. I forgot how fun a movie it was, and I also forgot about how SpongeBob gets an ice-cream hangover and rides David Hasselhoff’s back.
So, last week I talked about how “SpongeBob SquarePants” has declined in quality, and I focused on the visual design of its characters and the animation. This week, I said I’d talk about the sound design. So, I’ll talk about the sound design. An elephant’s word is 100 percent.
If you’ve seen the show, I’d wager you can hum more than a few of the title-card melodies. Those melodies included sea shanties, Hawaiian music and orchestral tracks. While the orchestral tracks were saved for more intense moments, the Hawaiian music and the sea shanties usually underscored the setting of the scene. If a scene took place in the Krusty Krab, you could guarantee a sea shanty. Out in Jellyfish Fields, expect some Hawaiian tunes. Music usually set the scene and then took a backseat to the antics; if anything, the lower-tempo music kept the scene rooted and focused. Jokes could be sprinkled in without tampering with the momentum of the scene because many of the scenes ran relatively slowly anyway.
Compare this to a post-“The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie” episode, in which the music tries to underscore the comedy instead of the scene. The new season’s soundtrack tends to ditch the grimy pirate songs and the relaxing Hawaiian tunes for a whole bunch of slide guitar. Like, endless amounts of slide guitar. Did someone say “More slide guitar?” I didn’t. Many of the newer episodes get hectic and are incredibly high-energy, so the music’s intensity grows proportionally to the scene’s action; the visuals and the audio are one and the same. Comedy is all about irony, and earlier seasons get bigger laughs because they created some kind of dissonance between how the scene sounds and how the scene looks.
All too often, audio cues are shoehorned into newer episodes; they let the audience know when a joke has been told. If the scene ends on a joke, you might hear the loud “barrum” of a drum or a flurry of popping bubbles as the scene transitions. Just like every action has some exaggeration in its animation, every action is accompanied by a sound effect. The word of the day is subtlety; these audio cues serve basically as a laugh track. Laugh tracks undermine the intelligence of the audience because their presence assumes the audience wouldn’t otherwise laugh. Brief tangent here: The only TV show I permit to have a laugh track is “Seinfeld” because much of the show’s comedy is rooted in stand-up, which needs a larger audience. But last time I checked, “SpongeBob” isn’t “Seinfeld.” “SpongeBob” doesn’t need audio cues.
Also, there are two suicide jokes in one season-eight episode. Let’s talk about that next week.
Michael Smith might be a UF mechanical engineering junior. He should really talk to an adviser sometime. His columns also have a fluorescent glow in the dark or underwater.
