Nowadays, storytelling comes in many forms: the traditional oral, written in books, magazines, or through more modern written word such as through blogs. Each of these has it’s unique benefits and endearing aspects, but the radio show is an unmatched blend of spoken word mixed with music clips, splicing and dicing of audio clips, and is packaged in such a way that combines many different well-planned elements into creating a singular point. In particular, I am pointing to This American Life’s radio shows and their expert editing. The story itself is clearly the most prominent aspect of these shows, but there is so much that lies under the story working to it’s advantage. One may hear the buffer music, the playing of certain clips on top of one another, or even the inclusion of silence on the shows, but these seemingly unimportant details could change the entire perception of a particular show.
Specifically I recall one instance in which I think the use of certain types of filler music have changed the whole attitude of the show and have steered the listener into getting a certain feeling from the episode. In episode 181 of This American Life, an episode titled “The Friendly Man”, the first anecdote narrated by Scott Carrier narrates his journey traveling around to administer mental health tests and then questions his own sanity while viewing many types of mentally ill patients. My first impression of this story was that of peaked interest, as I found these patients fascinating and the storyteller perhaps even more fascinating. A soft, Southern-sounding guitar plucks under Carrier as he has a special moment with a certain patient, and a feeling of camaraderie and mellowness is felt as I listened to the two together. Around ten minutes into the story, however, the plot does not change, but the music does. It’s an almost eerie music-box piano clamoring, akin to what one might hear in a horror film, and that’s when my interest changed and became aware of the chilling madness living inside these patients, and I became less interested, more frightened. As it plays in the background, I see each patient in a different light and the story becomes more and more painful. Undoubtedly the music nudged me into thinking this way, because I had been thinking a different way not three minutes earlier about the same story. Thirteen minutes in, organs begin to play as a mother who claims to be visited by angels is interviewed, dramatizing her religious hallucinations and giving the section an almost funeral-like motif. Later, while Carrier is profiling himself, heavy guitar riffs bang along behind him in the background, as if trying to explain what is occurring inside his mind. The sounds are jagged, low, loud and rough. Again, it is evident that this music choice was no accident.
Something else poignant about the music choices in This American Life are the selections of songs between stories. Between Carrier’s three anecdotes, two songs play. The first is entitled “I Travel Alone”, and seems almost irrelevant to the story itself aside from it’s title. It’s a warbling vocalist from the 1920’s, sounding more like a lovesick young man than anything akin to Carrier. The second song, entitled “Don’t Forget Me”, is the same in its seeming randomness and perhaps it’s melancholy tone. Nonetheless, I believe this is on purpose as well. This episode in particular deals with extremely heavy subject matter, and by cleansing the listener with pleasant music in between stories perhaps keeps the mood from being too overwhelmingly depressing. These songs reinforce main ideas of the stories with their titles but cleanse the palate, in a way, for the next story by providing a few moments of brain down-time.
Editing in these clips is another powerful tool that often goes unnoticed. Simple splicing, moving and overlapping of certain audio clips can change the entire attitude of a certain piece. For example, in This American Life 116, Julia Pimsleur, an open lesbian raised with a Jewish background, struggles to understand the new lifestyle choice of her brother Marc, a born-again Christian living in an isolated village in Alaska. Julia clearly does not understand her brother’s change of heart and finds the whole matter to be rather ridiculous, made very clear at minute 5:51, when Marc is describing in incredible detail a religious revelation but is drowned out as Julia’s voice narrating the odd changes in her brother since her childhood. In the background, Marc carefully describes the experience so dear to him, but the audience is told what is most important: Julia. By blocking Marc out, it is clear whose side the listener is supposed to be on. This happens various other times in various episodes, such as in episode 117 act one, in which the narrator plays her voice over that of her brother’s. This kind of editing gives an annoying, nagging feeling to the person who is played underneath and gives more dominance and power, and almost a certain amount of respect to the person played over. This sets up a hierarchy for the listener and definitely gears them into thinking certain thoughts and making assumptions they may not otherwise have made.
Something else to be noted in these radio shows is the inclusion of clips that may not sound like they’re meant to be there. For example, if a radio show has moments of silence, or moment of random candidness (for example, the bickering we hear in the Pimsleur piece filled with plenty of awkward silences and almost too-personal arguments between the brother and sister). These give a more realistic effect to the piece and instill a deeper sense of trust in the material. In other words, the humanness of the audio pauses and yelling allows the listener to more certainly believe that the piece holds truth. Also, inclusion of seemingly random pieces in the stories, going back again to 117, which for it’s entirety follows the narrator and her struggle with anorexia, but at the end includes a small piece about an aged cancer survivor eager to start her new life. This surprising and irrelevant piece may confuse the listener, but offsets greatly the anorexia patients profiled, who are more than willing to mutilate their bodies. This last character is a foil for the others, and is used to highlight certain aspects in the more prominent characters that one may not have seen before.
Radio is a unique type of storytelling. Not only do we get the spoken word aspect, with vocal inflection, volume, and emotion tied into each story, but there is also an underlying network of editing at work drawing in certain feelings for the reader and keeping others at bay. These edits tell their own story. They tell us what to hear, what to ignore, how to view things. They tell us when to pay attention and when to relax. They highlight and underline, moving our attention, and help the reader along in places where one may not be able to fill in the blanks. They might even stimulate our attentions when a story gets dry and boring. While listening to these stories, I have often stopped to ask myself, “What would this story be like without music? What was the raw footage like?” Editors undoubtedly emphasize the effect of the stories by using their discreet tools to form more powerful narratives. Oral storytelling is a slowly dying art form, and by using editing techniques to sharpen the point made from a story, radio workers are keeping their craft alive, interesting, and easy to digest for the average listener.
----
Check Sunday's post about the arts and culture happenings on campus!
Nicole Colantonio '14