The opening case study of Kathryn Kalinak’s (2010) introductory overview to the functions and history of film music is an intriguing choice of example. The sequence in question is the now infamous moment from Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs (1992, USA) in which the gangster Mr Blonde (Michael Madsen) tortures Marvin Nash (Kirk Baltz), a cop that he has captured. In the brutal sequence Blonde douses Nash in petrol and amputates his ear. However, whilst doing so, Blonde turns up the volume on a nearby radio and sings and dances along to the song that is playing—Stealers Wheel’s upbeat and bouncy ‘Stuck in the Middle with You’. Kalinak’s analysis demonstrates how this music achieves several functional and emotional purposes in the sequence: it helps to shape mood, provides information about the characters, supports and furthers the narrative, and smooths over the transitions between different camera shots. As such, the song plays a key role in providing information that influences how a perceiver might construct and interpret meaning in the sequence, and may impact their emotional response to the filmic events.¹

However, the relationship between this cheery music and the brutal imagery and narrative content is complex. As a result it has received analytical attention from a number of scholars in addition to Kalinak (including Coulthard , 2009; Ireland , 2012; Link , 2004; Powrie , 2005). The violent action, some of which takes place off-screen (arguably adding to its disturbing nature), and the response that this garnered at early screenings (which included audience members walking out of the cinema) have given the sequence a certain notoriety and status in filmic history. Such qualities make it a noteworthy and familiar choice of introductory example for Kalinak , aside from its value in effectively demonstrating a number of pedagogical points about the role of music in film.

Another reason that this sequence provides such an interesting talking point is that it challenges a number of traditional assumptions about narrative film music. Historically a dominant perspective in film aesthetics has been that music should function as an unobtrusive accompaniment for the concurrent images and narrative content.² According to this view, to quote the title of Claudia Gorbman’s (1987) seminal text, film music should remain ‘unheard’ in order to not distract from the events of the story. Focusing on classical orchestral scores produced under the Hollywood studio system of the 1930s and 1940s, Gorbman demonstrates how composers created ‘inaudible’ qualities by using methods that included: dipping the volume of the music under dialogue; avoiding instruments with a similar range and timbre to the human voice in such moments; ensuring that musical length and form was determined by the narrative form of a scene; and by seeking to convey a musical mood that was appropriate to the action that was being depicted. Whilst this reflects the prevailing paradigm of music composition for early sound film, Gorbman’s (2016) more recent writing has explored a change in aesthetics and addresses the idea of ‘heard’ music and the applicability of her earlier work to contemporary post-classical cinema. However, aspects of the earlier perspective continue to influence current practice and discourse about the character and functions of film music. Indeed, the concomitant ‘classical model of the narrative feature film is understood by most to hold sway into the present, despite the many changes over the years in production structures, directorial priorities, exhibition venues, and textual (commodity) form’ (Neumeyer , 2014, p. 3).

A notable moment from an independent film produced over half a century later than the studio era films of classical Hollywood , the Reservoir Dogs ear-torture sequence does not conform to descriptions of inaudible film music . Placed within the film’s diegesis (or temporal and spatial narrative storyworld) the characters hear and interact with the Stealers Wheel song, as reflected by Mr Blonde’s singing and dancing along to it. These actions serve to draw further attention to the music’s presence and its problematic relationship with the violent narrative content. Moreover, the mood of the lively song does not on a surface-level appear to correspond, match, or fit with the seriousness and cruelty of the torture being depicted. This use of music has been described as: ‘inappropriate’ (Cooke , 2008, p. 485); creating ‘an emotional non sequitur’ with the brutal depiction of violence (Link , 2004, p. 10); and reflecting a ‘principle of radical incongruity’ with the images and narrative action (Romney & Wootton , 1995, p. 5). Like Kalinak , for film theorists Steven Willemsen and Miklós Kiss (2015) the sequence also provides a quintessential opening example, this time for a chapter exploring incongruent film music , which they define as ‘a musical track in narrative film, either diegetic or non-diegetic , which expresses qualities that stand in sharp contrast to the emotions evoked by the events seen’ (pp. 103–104). These references to incongruity resonate with everyday uses of the word, which imply a state of ‘disagreement in character or qualities; want of accordance or harmony; discrepancy, [or] inconsistency’ according to the Oxford English Dictionary Online (http://​www.​oed.​com).

The terms ‘congruence ’ and ‘incongruence ’ are also used throughout a body of studies that investigate the psychological impact of music in film and multimedia. In this context, these labels too tend to refer to a relationship of perceived similarity, fit , and/or appropriateness between images and music, echoing the qualities outlined in the OED definition of incongruence . Congruence is a central concept in seminal theoretical models in this field, notably Annabel Cohen’s (2013) Congruence-Association Model . Evolving from early experimental work (Marshall & Cohen , 1988), the model outlines the stages involved in the perception of multimedia stimuli and offers explanations of how music can influence the interpretation of filmic meaning and an audience member’s emotional response.³ Despite the centrality of congruence to this body of research, less sustained focus has been placed on the related idea of incongruence or music that does not seem to share properties with filmic images or narrative content.

However, incongruent film music has the potential to be highly salient and memorable (Boltz , 2004), as the Reservoir Dogs example illustrates. These moments can challenge traditional ideas about how film music functions and often draw attention to themselves due to the complex relationships that the music creates with the concurrent filmic material. Consequently, they are worthy of further study. As the film theorist Kay Dickinson (2008) highlights, such music can ‘deliberately and successfully stretch the paradigms of what can make sense; [being…] purposefully exploited for its transformative potential’ (p. 14). Given such qualities the use of seemingly incongruent film music has become widespread (Ireland , 2017), as is evident by the whole section dedicated to the synonymous concept of ‘soundtrack dissonance ’ on tvtropes.org , a website that documents recurrent tropes across a range of multimedia (http://​tvtropes.​org/​pmwiki/​pmwiki.​php/​Main/​SoundtrackDisson​ance). These webpages illustrate that apparently misfitting or inappropriate music from various genres has been used alongside multiple filmic depictions of crime and violence. However, they also reflect that this is just one example and that other forms of incongruent film music are prevalent and may not rely on such extreme instances of audiovisual contrast. As a result of this common usage, and given the various guises it can take, incongruent film music may not always be as emotive, memorable, or successful as frequently discussed moments like the Reservoir Dogs example. Dickinson’s (2008) work, for example, analyses ‘numerous situations where music and cinema misunderstand or embarrass each other’, resulting in commercial or aesthetic failure (p. 14).

Matters of (mis)fit , (in)appropriateness , and (in)congruence are also relevant to the process of composing or selecting pre-existing music for use in film.⁴ Composer Hans Zimmer (2000) explains how after the initial difficulty of starting to write: ‘something happens … and I don...