Using Music in Movies: An Example from Yi Yi

When Ting-Ting plays the piano for her grandmother, she plays a George Gershwin composition called "Summertime." This is a well-known song written for a musical called Porgy and Bess. Porgy and Bess is about a group of African-Americans in South Carolina. The musical is infamous because it is written by a white composer in what the composer thinks is black English. Although some find Gershwin's compositions patronizing or ridiculous, many of the pieces--especially "Summertime"--were performed and recorded by African-American musicians.

Here are the lyrics:
Summertime, And the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin' And the cotton is high
Your daddy's rich And your mamma's good lookin'
So hush little baby Don't you cry
One of these mornings You're going to rise up singing
Then you'll spread your wings
And you'll take to the sky
But till that morning There's a'nothing can harm you
With daddy and mamma standing by
Summertime, And the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin' And the cotton is high
Your daddy's rich And your mamma's good lookin'
So hush little baby
Don't you cry

Given the lyrics, you might find the use of this song in the movie to be ironic. First, it's not the Summertime. Second, while the song plays, we see both some regular behavior--Yang-Yang doing his homework, etc.--and some behavior that shows that, beneath the ordinary boring life, there is a lot of conflict (Lili fighting with her boyfriend, Min-Min [the mom] upset about her mother and about Yang-Yang not talking to her, etc.) The lyrics are ironic in the musical in which it appears as well, for the plot is about the difficulties in life: a disabled man tries to rescue a woman from an abusive relationship. The lyrics are a bit odd because, although they say that the person being sung to "can't be harmed," there's also a sense of deferred freedom: the subject still hasn't "spread wings" to "fly" (i.e. "be free"). In a lot of ways Yi Yi is about people who live safe, normal lives but, for many reasons, cannot be free: NJ and his wife have long, unfulfilling jobs, Ting-Ting is overcome by guilt because she thinks she caused her grandmother's stroke, Ah-Di can never overcome his money problems, etc.

Think about some of the other songs you hear in this movie and other movies (for example, the Japanese video game designer playing a popular Japanese song, then playing "Moonlight Sonata," at a piano bar). How does music help make a movie more interesting and complicated?

It's common to use songs to teach language skills. You'll notice that I haven't done this. I have a few concerns (e.g. a lot of popular songs don't make sense; I might choose a song more to "look cool" than to help teach language skills; the lyrics are less important than the music accompaniment). If you'd like to write about some songs for your Final Exam paper, that's fine, as long as the paper is 1.5-2 pages long and sophisticated. You can write about the use of music in movies, analyze some English songs or songs in another language, or you can look at some adaptations of songs into other languages and see how changing the lyrics and the language of the lyrics affects the song, an interesting concept given that it seems melody and rhythm are more important than lyrical content.

(It would be very interesting to look at the use of American music in Taiwanese films. Edward Yang, the director of Yi Yi, once said that American music is very powerful in other countries because it "sounds like rebellion," a feeling that is very new to people, especially young people, in non-American cultures. Yang was thinking especially about the effect of American rock music on 1960s Taiwanese youth.)


Here's a performance of "Summertime" by the jazz singer Ellas Fitzgerald. Notice how, although the lyrics seem to have a carefree message, the song is sung as a lament, an expression of sadness.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j6avX7ebkM