In her new book Women’s Voices in Digital Media: The Sonic Screen from Film to Memes due to be published in April 2022, Dr Jennifer O’Meara, School of Creative Arts, brings together her background in film studies and her research on digital media and sound studies to examine some of the trends that we are now seeing online.
Highlighting the use of memes, ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) videos, GIFs, smart home devices and other ways women’s voices are being embodied or disembodied online, Dr O’Meara says she was “fascinated by how the voice and vocal landscape was changing in the digital era and how this shifted some of the theories and analysis of how the female voice, in particular, has traditionally functioned in relation to the screen.”
Seen and not Heard
In early on-screen cinema, Dr O’Meara argues that the woman’s role was often to be seen and not heard, and that women “have traditionally been seen as something to gaze at.” She notes an interesting shift in digital media where internet users of all kinds are now “sharing materials and reworking existing media so that what once appeared on screen, in terms of a film, can now be remixed and remediated in different formats.” She highlights the use of film podcasts that include audio clips from films and from interviews, or other voice recordings that are framed in new ways through memes and GIFs. “You see a kind of decentralisation, where you have a lot of different fans or audiences reworking existing materials”.
We are seeing these questions of speech and silence and vocal power and authority being reworked through online culture.
Dr Jennifer O’Meara
However, according to Dr O’Meara dated gender politics do persist in these representations and what we witness is some of the “same kinds of tropes appearing”. Among the case studies in her book, is the example of how the hidden histories of voice dubbing actresses in classical Hollywood are now being discussed in fan forums, or their clips distributed on YouTube with proper accreditation, while in other cases well-known dubbing actors or actresses were having their voices removed again. “We are seeing these questions of speech and silence and vocal power and authority being reworked through online culture”, notes Dr O’Meara.
What we now see emerging in film representations, according to Dr O’Meara is a “two-way flow” between speech technologies and humans. The book includes case studies of some of these on-screen interactions, including the film Her (2013) directed by Spike Jonze and Anomalisa (2015), a stop-motion animated film that used 3D-printed puppets to uncanny effect. What we see through these films, Dr O’Meara notes is “an actress embodying what is meant to be a technological voice, raising questions about vocal authority and the associations between the voice and the human soul. If a technological voice can convince someone that the speaker is human, then it becomes tied into our empathy and affections, which can be quite jarring for audiences.”
Dr O’Meara also questions what it means for the actresses in these types of films who are in some cases being “crowded off the screen” by roles that involve only the voice. “They’re no longer appearing as physical performers because their character is disembodied”. In the case of the film Her, the character only exists through the smart devices, or in a film like Anomalisa, someone is embodying a 3D-printed character without being physically present on screen. “The performance is contained purely within the voice”, argues Dr O’Meara who says that “these characters are post-human.” She imagines that this could be developing into a somewhat dystopian situation, where the actress’s voice is now becoming more important than her physical bodies.
Historicising Digital Media
Through this new publication, Dr O’Meara is also interested in “historicising digital media” by examining how some of the trends we are seeing today connect back to earlier technologies in media history. One parallel she has noted is how ASMR videos—sound-based videos which prompt a sensory response in many viewers—are linked back to Thomas Edison’s Talking Dolls. “Talking Dolls go right back to 1890, when you have this presentation of a doll who has had her voice recorded by a woman – something which had an unnerving effect on audiences of the time”, says Dr O’Meara, adding that “we can see precursors to some of these digital voice trends going back to early media and recording technologies.”
The contemporary gendering of a lot of speech technologies and virtual assistants may also have its roots in certain film histories, according to Dr O’Meara. She highlights how, for example, the character of Hal in Stanley’s Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) has been listed as the reason why many technology companies have steered away from male automated voices, due to the negative associations with these sci-fi films, and the male voices being seen as “overly threatening.” “With the likes of Alexa and Siri, people have tied this into the assumption that women were traditionally more likely to be domestic assistants and servants. Researchers have done studies where you see that they will often be subject to abusive language”, says Dr O’Meara referring to the sexism or misogyny that is often directed at these smart home devices.
Another fascinating aspect of how voices are “remediated and redistributed” with the rise in digital media is where people are experimenting more with the final product and creating something new with it, says Dr O’Meara. This is a departure from approaches in classic Hollywood films, whereby a lot of these processes were hidden from audiences and finessed in post-production. Contrasting her case study on the dubbing actress Nikki van der Zyl who featured in many James Bond films--but was never credited--with the rise of interest in lip sync performances, Dr O’Meara looks to how drag queens who feature in the American reality competition series RuPaul’s Drag Race re-embody female voices in a very “overt and theatrical way, where the emphasis is on the body we know we’re hearing and the body that we’re seeing.”
According to Dr O’Meara, this is something that would have been traditionally hidden in terms of seeing one performer and hearing another but she argues that “audiences are entranced by seeing the merging of two different bodies through one voice.” We see a more positive reclaiming of the voice, which “moves away from the kind of very essentialist understandings of the voice as something strictly gendered”, says Dr O’Meara. However, she also highlights some of the fears relating to this juxtaposition of voice and body in relation to deepfake technology. “We’re seeing quite a lot of well-known actresses whose bodies have been used to create deepfake pornography”, says Dr O’Meara of new trends in visual media. The availability of high-quality audio or visual files of actress’ performances create an environment where they are subject to manipulation and circulation online. “The fear with voices is that you can have voices potentially manipulated to make them say things that the person hasn’t said”, Dr O’Meara highlights, adding that the availability of this “vocal fingerprint” leaves us at the mercy of digital manipulation. “Once deepfake recordings out there, they can be hard to disprove.”
Women’s Voices in Digital Media: The Sonic Screen from Film to Memes is published by University of Texas Press.
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