Cookie Consent by FreePrivacyPolicy.com
JAAAS Logo

Articles

Vol. 1 No. 2 (2020): Soundscapes, Sonic Cultures, and American Studies

American Studies, Sound Studies, and Cultural Memory: Woody Van Dyke's San Francisco as Sonic Contact Zone

Submitted
May 2, 2019
Published
2020-06-30

Abstract

Each year on April 18, the city of San Francisco commemorates the devastating 1906 earthquake and fire with a series of elaborate and tightly scripted ceremonies. As one of the key events, the ceremony at Lotta's Fountain features, among others, commemorative speeches, the hanging of a memorial wreath, and the ceremonial wailing of fire sirens, followed by a minute of silence for the victims. The acoustic tension building up between the sirens' piercing warning sounds and the ensuing collective gesture of mournful quietude is subsequently resolved by the communal sing-along of the upbeat theme song "San Francisco" from the eponymous Academy Award-winning 1936 musical film. This performance seems to stand in stark contrast to the other events at the ceremony, which are painstakingly staged to appear historically accurate. Nonetheless, the anachronistic inclusion of the triumphant "San Francisco," written three decades after the earthquake and released in the context of a purely fictional narrative, fits the purpose of memorializing the 1906 earthquake, since it sonically embodies the "new" city's founding myth. San Francisco, especially its theme song, this article argues, memorializes the 1906 disaster as a social equalizer and a patriotic affirmation of American resilience by portraying the pre-earthquake city as a loud, decadent, and disorderly soundscape that only the earthquake could unite, refine, and ultimately Americanize.

References

  1. Allen, Ray. "Folk Musical Traditions." In Encyclopedia of American Studies, edited by Simon J. Bonner. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. http://eas-ref.press.jhu.edu/view?aid=650.
  2. Berglund, Barbara. Making San Francisco American: Cultural Frontiers in the Urban West, 1846-1906. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007.
  3. Bodnar, John. Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
  4. Brooks, Van Wyck. "On Creating a Usable Past." In American Literature, American Culture, edited by Gordon Hutner, 213-16. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
  5. Davies, Andrea Rees. Saving San Francisco: Relief and Recovery after the 1906 Disaster. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012.
  6. Fradkin, Philip. The Great Earthquake and Firestorms of 1906: How San Francisco Nearly Destroyed Itself. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.
  7. Funcheap, Johnny. "San Francisco's Annual 1906 Earthquake Ceremony." FunCheapSF. April 17, 2016. https://sf.funcheap.com/city-guide/san-franciscos-annual-1906-earthquake-ceremony/.
  8. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. Translated by Lewis A. Coser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
  9. Hansen, Gladys C., and Emmet Condon. Denial of Disaster. San Francisco, CA: Cameron, 1989.
  10. Hansen, Gladys C. "San Francisco’s Official Songs." The Museum of the City of San Francisco. Accessed January 5, 2021. http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist1/song.html
  11. Hebel, Udo. "Introduction." In Sites of Memory in American Literatures and Cultures, edited by Udo Hebel, ix-xxxii. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2001.
  12. Huyssen, Andreas. Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.
  13. Keeling, Kara, and Josh Kun. "Introduction: Listening to American Studies." American Quarterly 63, no. 3 (2011): 445-59. https://doi.org/10.1353/aq.2011.0037.
  14. Leikam, Susanne. Framing Spaces in Motion: Tracing Visualizations of Earthquakes into Twentieth-Century San Francisco. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2015.
  15. Meyer, Petra M., ed. Acoustic Turn. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2008.
  16. Mitchell, W.J.T. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994.
  17. Monod, David. "Art Music in the European Tradition." In Encyclopedia of American Studies, edited by Simon J. Bonner. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018. http://eas-ref.press.jhu.edu/view?aid=201.
  18. Nugent, Frank S. "'San Francisco,' at the Capitol, Is a Stirring Film of the Barbary Coast." New York Times. June 27, 1936. https://www.nytimes.com/1936/06/27/archives/san-francisco-at-the-capitol-is-a-stirring-film-of-the-barbary.html.
  19. Oleson, Timothy. "On the Web: Shake, Rattle and Roll: What Does an Earthquake Sound Like?" Earth: The Science behind the Headlines. August 8, 2012. https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/web-shake-rattle-and-roll-what-does-earthquake-sound.
  20. Pratt, Mary Louise. "Arts of the Contact Zone." Profession 91 (1991): 33-40.
  21. Rath, Richard Cullen. How Early America Sounded. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.
  22. "San Francisco (1936): Alternate Versions." Internet Movie Database. Accessed January 5, 2021. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028216/alternateversions.
  23. "San Francisco (1936): Full Credits." Internet Movie Database. Accessed January 5, 2021. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028216/fullcredits.
  24. San Francisco. Directed by Woody Van Dyke. Beverly Hills, CA: MGM, 1936.
  25. Schafer, Murray R. Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World: The Soundscape. Rochester, VT: Destiny, 1994.
  26. Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. "Narrativizing Visual Culture: Towards a Polycentric Aesthetics." In The Visual Culture Reader, edited by Nicholas Mirzoeff, 37-59. New York: Routledge, 2008.
  27. Smilor, Raymond W. "American Noise, 1900-1930." In Hearing History: A Reader, edited by Mark M. Smith, 319-30. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004.
  28. Smith, Mark M. "Introduction: Onward to Audible Pasts." In Hearing History: A Reader, edited by Mark M. Smith, ix-xxii. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004.
  29. Smith, Mark M. Listening to Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
  30. Smith, Mark M., Mitchell Snay, and Bruce R. Smith. "Coda: Talking Sound History." In Hearing History: A Reader, edited by Mark M. Smith, 365-404. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004.
  31. Stauffer, John, and Benjamin Soskis. The Battle Hymn of the Republic: A Biography of the Song That Marches On. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
  32. Sterne, Jonathan. "Sonic Imaginations." In Sound Studies Reader, edited by Jonathan Sterne, 1-18. New York: Routledge, 2016.
  33. Sturken, Marita. Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, The Aids Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. Berkley: University of California Press, 1997.
  34. Szasz, Margaret Connell. Between Indians and White Worlds: The Cultural Broker. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.
  35. Thompson, Emily. The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004.
  36. Turk, Edward. Hollywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.
  37. Wyatt, David. Five Fires: Race, Catastrophe, and the Shaping of California. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing, 1997.
  38. Young, William H., and Nancy K. Young. The Great Depression in America: A Cultural Encyclopedia. Vol. 2. Westport, CT: Greenwood, Press 2007.
  39. Zellers, Parker R. "The Cradle of Variety: The Concert Saloon." Educational Theatre Journal 20, no. 4 (1968): 578-85.

Similar Articles

1-10 of 45

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.