Gabbard (2007), "White Face, Black Noise: Miles Davis and the Soundtrack

1. Soundtrack music has to be ignored to be effective. When Black musicians contribute soundtrack music, their role as a creator is ignored, as the work is in service only to the White film producers and characters.

Gabbard (2007) argues that soundtrack music must be ignored to be effective. Audience awareness of the musical bedding breaks the cinematic illusion. This becomes problematic when one considers the White music industry’s historical cooptation of Black music for its own profit, since using Black cultural forms to enhance all-White film products hides Black musicians from view, exploiting them for the purposes of the White film industry. 

2. Gabbard (2007) uses Miles Davis' contribution to the Pleasantville soundtrack to illustrate his point. Though Davis' music plays an integral role in the characters' transformation, the politics of Whiteness in the film are never interrogated. Davis' songs function only in service of the White characters.

Gabbard's most compelling example involves the snippets of Miles Davis' work that frame characters' emotional and physical awareness in Pleasantville. As the characters learn more about their world, they change from black and white into color, an effect that is enhanced by Davis' music. However, the viewer is not encouraged to acknowledge the jazz bedding: "[films like this] deny personhood to African Americans and keep them off screen at the same time that the films use black music to give depth and romance to their white characters" (275). In short, Davis' cultural work is shelved as a discrete art form, and rechanneled in service of White characters and filmmakers.