In Wednesday's lecture when we watched the clip from American Graffiti, Nabeel was talking about how music had been worked into the film's diegesis and the short clip was talking about the concept of the world of music that was used to try and evoke the era etc. What struck me as interesting about these comments and past commentary I have read that mentioned the use of diegetic and non-diegetic sound and music was how this showed the supremacy of the image in the world of film-based media.
Perhaps this only shows a bias within critical circles, however what I mean by this is that we never (or perhaps I have not come across it yet) refer to an image is being strictly diegetic or non-diegetic, and how it fits into the narrative, but only really for music and sound. It seems the way our visual culture and language in terms of story-telling is based primarily around the image in this sense - what we see is a basepoint from which what we hear can add to or alter this. We very rarely question how an image fits into the structure of a narrative because the image that we see forms the structure of the narrative, the basis of understanding, from which sound is a secondary functionary. The only common occurence that I can think of that strays from this image-based dominance is in the use of a montage (cue Team America music), where the music more consistently carries the story while the image changes.
Can images non-diegetic, or is it a symptom of our current visual language that prevents this from really being the case? At least this is true for mainstream filmmaking, perhaps avantgarde cinema more readily embraces the idea of letting music take a more dominant role than the image. Also this is a bit like the Tarantino idea of wrapping a narrative around a selection of songs or music and basing image upon this, although this occurs prior to the making of the film and does not in a storytelling sense allow the music to strictly dominate the narrative.
I was wondering if there are many ways in which image can be non-diegetic, allowing sound to primarily hold the narrative. Is it possible for an image to be diegetic?
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What an interesting question. I don't believe I have yet seen a film that had any 'non-diegetic' shots. I'm sure there are some out there, but the reason why film scores don't usually drive narratives is, like you mention, image supremacy. For the majority of audiences, the image is still primary. Music creates an ambience or evokes an emotion, but people still expect the images to tell the story. Likewise, even directors for whom music is essential or even motivating (Tarantino, Lynch) will still pay just as much (if not more) attention to the construction and composition of their shots. I think the fact that film began as a purely visual medium (back in the days of kinetoscopes and the like) is largely responsible for this.
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