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Outperforming Sherlock: Musical imagination and representation of genius in “House M. D.”
Kristi Brown-Montesano
; Chair of Music History The Colburn Conservatory of Music, Los Angeles
Sažetak
David Shore, the co-creator of House M.D., openly acknowledged the show’s debt to the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle, from the anchoring concept of a case-solving genius who lives for his work to the homonymic pun of the main character’s name. Shore and his collaborators also followed Doyle’s lead in leveraging musicality as a humanizing element, a mode through which these famously rational characters wind down and “feel”. In the case of Sherlock Holmes, his love of music (and the violin in particular) adds Romantic-hero appeal; music evokes the private, dreamy side of Holmes, a man usually so devoted to the rational that his best friend Watson once angrily described him as “an automaton—a calculating-machine!”. A similar dialectic exists in the case of Dr. House, whose cynicism, arrogance, and obsession with puzzles makes him difficult to like, even after he pulls a miracle diagnosis out of his brain. In fact, music facilitates many of the rare glimpses into House’s tortured, Gordian psyche. Curiously, much of the published literature on House M.D., while admittedly still slim to date, overlooks the central place of music in the doctor’s world. My purpose in this study will be to conduct a deeper investigation—a diagnostic differential, so to speak—into the musical Dr. House, identifying intertextual connections to the Sherlock Holmes stories, but also exploring how the audio-visual medium and the considerable musical talents of the show’s star, Hugh Laurie, tremendously enhance the dramatic force of the character. The show’s creators consistently featured musical references—musicians, instruments, trivia—in scripts, and smoothly incorporated Laurie’s musicianship into the storytelling. As a result, House’s musicality is not just more believable, but Laurie’s onscreen performances offer a compelling mode for understanding the character more deeply. I will explore the revelatory aspects of House’s musicking with reference to a variety of scenes throughout the series, but most fully in the final section of this essay with a detailed analysis of the music-themed episode, “Half-Wit”.
Ključne riječi
Film music, “House M.D.”, music semiotics, Sherlock Holmes, abductive reasoning
Hrčak ID:
279552
URI
Datum izdavanja:
15.6.2021.
Posjeta: 538 *