Sound image as a tool of representation of difficult heritage

The article is devoted to the analysis of the sound image as a structural component of cultural memory in the context of the problem of difficult heritage. The explication of the role of sound in the construction of collective memory of traumatic experience is carried out on the example of revealing sound patterns in films representing Stalinist repression. The subject of this study will be the soundscapes captured in film language, through which the experience of collective traumatisation is revealed to us. It is proposed to understand difficult heritage as a form of cultural memory generated by trauma, which is the battleground of two opposing forces: official rhetoric that displaces the memory of traumatic experiences as a threat to collective identity, and preservationist discourse that points to the dangers of forgetting. This paper is an attempt to identify how this contradictory nature of questioning the past is represented through sound. On the basis of comparative analysis, the author identifies key features that unite the soundscape of the films under consideration. Firstly, the stratification of the auditory field into dichotomous facets: musical harmonic organisation, embodying the unifying power rhetoric, and noisy disorganisation, embodying the refusal to obscure and erase the past. Secondly, the difference in the sonic representation of the theme of repression in the cinema of the perestroika era and contemporary films, due to the change of political orientation in relation to the events of the past. The author stresses that the presence of such features relies on the existing mechanisms of labelling power instances and subordinate groups with polar sound characteristics. The author concludes that through the examination of sound recordings of the past it is possible to discover those semantic nuances for which there is no place in visual and written sources that rely on reasoned articulation.

sound, cultural memory, difficult heritage, cultural trauma, repression, representation, sound semantics, memorial culture, sound image, silence