• DOI:10.1080/17411910902778478
• Corpus ID: 54703956

The Abduction of the Signifying Monkey Chant: Schizophonic Transmogrifications of Balinese Kecak in Fellini's Satyricon and the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple

@article{Bakan2009TheAO,
  title={The Abduction of the Signifying Monkey Chant: Schizophonic Transmogrifications of Balinese Kecak in Fellini's Satyricon and the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple},
  author={Michael B. Bakan},
  journal={Ethnomusicology Forum},
  year={2009},
  volume={18},
  pages={106 - 83}
}

• M. Bakan
• Published 28 May 2009
• Art
• Ethnomusicology Forum

This article examines the de- and re-contextualisation of 1960s audio recordings of Balinese kecak performances in two landmark films, Federico Fellini's Satyricon (1969) and Joel and Ethan Coen's Blood Simple (1984). It begins with a historical overview that situates kecak's own history as a Balinese cultural phenomenon within broader frameworks of hybridity, schizophonic and appropriative processes, and international filmmaking, devoting special attention to the contributions of Walter Spies. It then proceeds to close studies of kecak's use in the soundtracks of Satyricon and Blood Simple from a theoretical position of schizophonic transmogrification, which is defined as the rematerialisation and thorough reinvention of people and places whose voices and sounds, as inscribed on sound recordings, have been separated from their original sources of identity and meaning and resituated in entirely alien contexts—real or imaginary or somewhere in between—for purposes that serve especially to evoke the strange, and often the grotesque and sinister as well.