Muzing New Hoods Summary

“Muzing New Hoods” is an article by Guthrie P. Ramsey, Jr. that discusses how music affects the way an audience experiences the characters, locations, and the plots of movies, specifically movies about African Americans (Ramsey 309). The films that are analyzed in this article are Do the Right Thing which is directed by Spike Lee and Love Jones which is directed by Theodore Witcher. I believe the most significant aspect of “Muzing New Hoods” is the analysis of how musical scores affect an audience’s reaction to movies, most importantly African American movies. According to Guthrie Ramsey’s article; “…music works to enhance the storyworld of the film; it deepens the audience’s experience of the narrative and adds continuity to the film’s scene by scene progression…” (Ramsey 312). Music in films is mostly divided into two categories.

The first type is music composed for one specific film, also known as diegetic music (Ramsey 314).

The second type is music or songs that already exist before the film was made, this is also known as nondiegetic music (Ramset 312, 314). These two types of music are used very specifically and carefully within films in order to create emotions or experiences in the audience. The use of music to inflict emotion and experience is made possible “…because of their unconscious familiarity to filmgoers. They have become naturalized through constant repetition.” This technique has been used since the 1930s (Ramsey 313). This affects my understanding of cinema because I now know the different types of music used in these films and why they are used. The different types of music are used in order to create different reactions in the audiences. I now understand that the reason using music to influence the audience works because it has been done for almost 100 years (Ramsey

313).
I believe the film Do the Right Thing is strongly related to the article “Muzing New Hoods”. I believe this film is the most closely related to the article “Muzing New Hoods” because it is used as an example and analyzed in the article. Not only is it used in the article, but it is a clear example of musical scores being used to influence the audience’s emotions and reactions. Like Ramsey stated in his article, I have been so accustomed to music in films that it was difficult to focus on the music in the background and not the scenes in the movie. Though one scene which proves that music influences the audience starts at 1 hour and 27 minutes into the movie. Two of the characters are discussing the owner of the pizza place, Sal, and their frustration that he doesn’t put up pictures of famous black people, only white people. When they enter the pizzeria Public Enemy’s song “Fight the Power” is playing and it plays through the fight that take places in the store, which is the scene that leads to the climax of the movie. Playing this song is making the audience experience the tension that the characters are experiencing and it is influencing the audience to become stressed in preparation of the climax of the movie (Do the Right Thing).