Abstract

The witch persists across long spans of time and location. She is an unruly archetype, existing to trouble boundaries and power. However, the witch also emerges as a character with whom people identify, emphasizing her incredible flexibility as a signifier. I establish my intervention in the study of the witch as a cultural figure from the standpoint of sound and music studies. Based on my study of more than 140 films between 1927-2024, I argue that the witch is a profoundly musical and sonic creature, particularly as markers of her presence and power. I build on Carol Clover's work on the possession film to argue that the witch's voice particularly manifests her power, often in song. Fortified by the work of voice scholars such as Nina Sun Eidsheim, Mladen Dolar, Freya Jarman-Ivens, and Steven Connor, I offer two case studies that demonstrate two different deployments of witch vocality. Jennifer's spell song in I Married A Witch (René Clair, 1942) exemplifies the relationship between the witch's voice and the manifestation of her power. I also theorize the witch's voice as an extreme example of the way that the voice is always already detached from the speaker's body. The role of the non-diegetic diabolical chorus in Robert Eggers' The Witch (2015) serves as a mediation on the unstable but powerful relationship between voice and body. An extended case study on The Autopsy of Jane Doe (André Øvredal, 2016) joins the two foci of my dissertation—the voice and pre-existing music. Here, pre-existing music stands in as the witch's voice. Because the film's central witch appears to be dead, her "voice"—Stuart Hamblen's "Open Up Your Heart (And Let the Sun Shine In)" played through an onscreen radio—acts as the first and most direct indication that she is conscious and able to manipulate her surroundings without ever speaking or rising from her slab. The choice of this Christian children's song invokes a host of vexed American histories, especially because "Open Up Your Heart" appears in structural opposition to a handful of masculine Southern rock songs. I argue for the utility of reading Autopsy in light of Christine (John Carpenter, 1983) because both Jane and Christine communicate with the men around them by playing popular music through their radios. I then demonstrate how pre-existing music continues to function in a magical register beyond the specific overlap of voice and popular music in The Autopsy of Jane Doe. Pre-existing music offers a variety of interpretive challenges because of the song's accumulated meanings outside of the film. In Practical Magic (Griffin Dunne, 1998), the soundtrack's pop songs operate as sung spells, especially in the two prominent montage complexes on which I focus my attention. In We Have Always Lived in the Castle (Stacie Passon, 2018), popular music marks the American mid-century time and place that threatens the Blackwood sisters' queer domesticity, which is symbolized by an originally composed cue. I conclude by suggesting that witch aesthetics continue to spread outside of the witch film, a claim I demonstrate via brief case studies in television and popular music.

Committee Chair

Todd Decker

Committee Members

Colin Burnett; Lauren Eldridge Stewart; Patrick Burke; Robynn Stilwell

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Author's Department

Music

Author's School

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

5-2-2025

Language

English (en)

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