Date:
Location:
MUSICS ABROAD
SPEAKER: JESSICA GETMAN, CSU SAN BERNARDINO
Science fiction media often relies on binaries—present/future, nature/technology, self/other, and human/alien. For the human and the alien to meet, however, one or both must be displaced (forcefully or voluntarily) from their home. In science fiction, music defines both the human and the alien, becoming a key indicator of diaspora, cultural mobility, and cultural mixture. Music is portable, and that portability connects diasporas in the real world with their homelands and cultures of origin. However, as Kay Kaufman Shelemay tells us, music can also interact with new styles, thereby maintaining the original culture while facilitating derivatives in a new setting. In science fiction, this allows creators to explore how cultures might change through interaction with new environments and alien societies. Music can be a powerful tool in representing diaspora communities in science fiction, as well as in imagining the responses of these communities to their new settings. This presentation teases out the ways that science fiction depicts diaspora communities through diegetic music, specifically comparing the Star Trek franchise (1966–) to the Defiance television series (2013–2015). Star Trek’s representation of displaced communities uses music to connect characters to their homelands and to emphasize their cultural identities. Defiance, on the other hand, is about cultural mixture between diasporic communities, and this series goes further to explore that mixture through the combination of “human” and “alien” musical styles. These two franchises demonstrate two distinct ways in which science fiction media represents the idea of diaspora and the mobility of culture.
Jessica Getman is Assistant Professor of Musicology/Ethnomusicology at California State University, San Bernardino, and a film musicologist focusing on music in television and science fiction media. Her research interests also include popular music, amateur music, critical editing, historically-informed performance practice, and twentieth-century American music, and she was formerly the Managing Editor for The George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition at the University of Michigan. She is currently editing, alongside colleagues, a collection of essays on music in the Star Trek franchise for the publisher Routledge.
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