Exploring the effect of film music in childhood.

Abstract

The field of music has undergone a number of important changes in the last fifty years, mainly as a result of the developments made in technology and the mass media. The paper focuses on the sense and the meaning of film music in childhood. Due to its nature as a massive audiovisual sound medium, it requires tools that consider it as discourse. Thus, musical analysis was used to determine what is listened to, sociological analysis was taken to explain what it is like and how its music is constructed, and semiotics was applied to access its sense and meaning, which is the ultimate aim of the study. The paper ends with an analysis of the film Happy Feet, which sought to explore the music in the story, its relationship with the cultural domains, metaphors and associations, as well as its relation with values and ideological tendencies. This research can help gain new insights into some of the social and educational functions of music in childhood as a way of representing the world. Similarly, it can be useful in explaining the value of musical and artistic expression in school curricula, provide some instruments with which to study it, and also help raise awareness about film production and its repercussions.