A Feminist Approach to Sound in We Need to Talk About Kevin - Brett Ashleigh

Now, a significant body of feminist theory has already explored the role of the woman’s voice in cinema, but the music and sound effects surrounding the on screen female have been largely ignored. The voice primarily functions within patriarchal confines of the dialogue track adhering to linear transmission of information to clearly communicate the narrative. Ramsay’s use of sound complicates this dominant mode via the links between the audio and visual tracks, not only separating the story along the audio-visual line, but also cleaving the audio into its three distinct stems: music/score, sound effects, and dialogue.

The sound design in We Need to Talk About Kevin exists almost separately from the visual narrative, as though the same story were told from divorced perspectives. Ramsay’s film is able to exploit the gendered binary within the audio stems: the calculated masculinity of linear conversation, as opposed to sensuous feminine affects of sonic symbolism. Ramsay’s use of acousmatic (off-screen) sound effects and musical counterpoint create a feminine narrative framework that does not rely on language.

Helen Cixous’s revolutionary treatise The Laugh of the Medusa introduced the theory of l’ecriture féminine, or feminine writing. She defines the practice as the purposeful writing of spiraling compositions in order move the writing outside the sphere of patriarchal linearity to alter the narrative structure. In a similar spirit, I call for écoute féminine, or “feminine listening.” By listening to film sound tracks with a feminine ear we can elevate the non-vocal elements of film into the larger conversation regarding the representation of women in film and television. Feminine cinematic art has the ability to display a narrative that depends on emotional and affective techniques rather than those based in language.