Nondiegetic: nondiegetic sound/music
Nondiegetic: see diegetic.
Nondiegetic sound (CHION 2009, 486-487). A sound or a music is said to be nondiegetic when its source is located outside the fictional space and time depicted onscreen. We, the audience, are in this "outside" space, thus we can hear these sounds, or this music. Thus, a nondiegetic sound, or music, is an aural event whose source is neither visible on the screen nor has been implied to be present in the action. An easy way to identify a nondiegetic or a diegetic sound or music is to ask if the characters in the movie can hear these sounds or this music. If the answer is negative, then it is most likely nondiegetic. - Stricto sensu, a voice can be nondiegetic: for instance, in the case of a voice-over narrator, that is to say a voice belonging to a character that is not part of the diegetic world of the film; this is the case of voice-over commentaries in documentary films.
[E. G.]
Nondiegetic music is arguably the most frequent, ubiquitous sound effect used in cinema—since its silent origins to nowadays; the use of nondiegetic music has become a nearly systematic feature in contemporary Hollywood mainstream—to such an extent that we tend to forget its presence (ubiquitous music/listening).
The use of a quasi continuous scoring of nondiegetic music during the first decades following the introduction of synchronized sound in film (from 1927) used to be much less frequent than it is nowadays.
In a sequence from Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times (1936, USA) two aural phenomenons occur at the same time: the nondiegetic music, being constantly present, reinforce an effect of auditory compartmentalization, as the characters are clearly seen speaking to one another, but their speech is silenced, thus we, the audience, cannot hear their conversation. We infer that in the diegetic world of the film the characters can hear each other talking, but not us, who are outside the diegesis: here the conversation is treated as phantom sound.
In Jean Renoir's French Cancan (1955, France), the sudden irruption of a nondiegetic music during a scene accompanies a brief moment of tenderness between a couple, who has just been seen quarreling. As the nondiegetic music ends, the woman abandons as well the tender loving tone. Here, the function of the nondiegetic music is to isolate this brief moment of tenderness, thus rendering it slightly incongruous within the rather tense context of the whole scene (the man must pay his debts and is about to be arrested, the woman is angry at the bailiff). At the end of this scene, the diegetic sound of a hunting horn acts as a final ironic gesture, as if stating that this brief moment of love was as vain and furtive as a dream.
A similar example to Renoir's French Cancan is found in Pierre Étaix's Yoyo (1965, France): alone, Yoyo contemplates the picture of a woman and abandons himself to his thoughts—that we suppose to be amorous (what will be verified later in the film). Music in Yoyo it is only sparsely used; its presence, here preceded by silence, and followed by silence and a new shot, is made even more intrusive to our ears.
Nondiegetic music, however, seems frequently to be struggling against its own status that locates it "outside" the diegesis. While the music heard during the pre-credit sequence of Black Hawk Down (Ridley Scott, 2001, USA) is typically nondiegetic, an attentive listening reveals the presence of three different types of music, as well as some background noise. The latter functions as diegetic sound (wind blowing, footsteps, helicopter blades rotating), although this function is sometimes more implicit than explicit: its aim is to "ground" the nondiegetic music into the diegetic space. We hear first a Somalian folk song, sung by a male singer. The song is clearly nondiegetic, as it accompanies a series of shots depicting the ravages of the Somalian civil war and the ensuing famine. The shots do not seem connected, except by their common theme: Somali people, in different bleak and arid settings, attend their dead and their wounded. There is a continuous yet faint sound of wind, which may appear diegetic notably at 01:27, as we see two men carrying a dead body in the desert while a strong wind blows over the sand—similarly, we grasp, although very faintly, the sounds of footsteps, while the imagine shows Somalis walking.
At 01:34, an orchestral accompaniment of strings plays in a Western tonal style, accompanying a string instrument playing a solo cantilena in a clearly oriental inflected style pursuing the musical track of the song. From 2:25, sounds of helicopter blades can be heard. They are first almost imperceptible, but become progressively louder. While a pull back shot reveals the devastated interior of a house in ruins with a desolated urbane landscape appearing through its window, the noise of helicopter blades increases: no helicopters can be seen in the sky, yet the acousmatic sound of their blades imply their presence—notably as the intertitles inform the audience of the sending of U.S. soldiers to Mogadishu. At 2:55, as the screen briefly fades to black while transitioning between two shots, the title "BLACK HAWK DOWN" in white letters appears, accented musically by a new musical theme, now with a strong rhythmic impulse.
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