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Dec 6, 2018

There is Only One Sound in All-Star Superman:Thoughts on Focalisation and Sound


There is only one sound effect in All-Star Superman.

Bear with me for a moment.

I think that the cold open for season 1, episode 21 of Brooklyn Nine-Nine is, hands down, the best one they do. The set-up is simple, seems to go in a direction we’ve seen before, and then veers off and becomes a beautiful study in character development. Andre Braugher’s expression at the end is one of the best performances I’ve ever seen. Have a look:


If the Netflix series summary is to be believed, we’re meant to experience Brooklyn Nine-Nine through the perspective of Andy Samberg’s character, Jake Peralta. We refer to this character in a narrative as the “focal character.” Simply, it is the character through which we focus our perceptions. ‘Niederhoff (2011) proposes that focalisation “may be defined as a selection or restriction of narrative information in relation to the experience and knowledge of the narrator, the characters or other, more hypothetical entities in the storyworld.”’ In the television series, Peralta sees Holt as a robotic Captain, so that aspect is played up in the comedy. Peralta’s perspective on the world of the show is the one we are expected to adopt.

In a medium like television, there are numerous ways to achieve this focalisation, such as the aforementioned utilisation of Peralta’s perspective to accentuate comedic moments, even when Peralta himself is not present. But another way that it can be achieved is through sound. In this particular case, the non-diegetic sound that signals the shift in Peralta’s understanding of the situation.

Go back and watch the clip. At 57 seconds, we hear a rattling sound. Aside from some background music, another indicator of the shift in tone of course, this is the first non-diegetic sound we’ve heard. It’s not really music. As Holt leans in, and his behaviour goes from robotic to something a bit more fluid, a snake-like rattle belies the fact that Peralta is about to be struck. Even the movement of Holt’s body at the end, as he pulls away, is serpentine. We’re removed from the more jovial atmosphere of the police precinct, created by the familiar diegetic sounds we hear in each episode, by a single sound effect, one that shifts atmosphere through a realigning of the perspective of the focal character.

But what does this have to do with comics, a largely silent medium, and All-Star Superman?

There is only one sound effect in All-Star Superman.


Chapter 3 begins with an invasion from the center of the Earth, led by the Prince of the Subterranosauri, a race of intelligent dinosaurs. You’ll note on that first page, there is smoke billowing, there are dinosaur soldiers rushing about behind, and an entire car is being lifted up into the air. But in that whole panel the only sound that is transmitted is Kull’s voice. The situation is similar for the Daily Planet reporters watching the scene unfold on the following page, until the fifth panel. Jimmy Olsen, Superman’s Pal, has sent his friend a signal, a signal only Superman can hear, the tiny “Zee zee, zee zee” we see superimposed (a word I use purposefully) over his hand. Is it not strange that we cannot hear the crashes of violence and chaos on the first page, nor anywhere on the second? Surely these sounds are wafting up to the watching reporters. Of course they are.

Later in the chapter, in which Superman bestows upon Lois Lane powers identical to his own for one day (LOIS: What is it? – SUPERMAN: My superpowers. In liquid form. Happy Birthday, Lois. – LOIS: You’re serious? I get to be like you? For a whole day?), Superwoman also comments on Jimmy’s watch. As her powers wear off she notes that she’ll “never have to put up the annoying zee zee zee of Jimmy Olsen’s Super-watch” ever again.

Of course, these examples are only from a single chapter of the book. However, in the very next chapter, as Jimmy spends a day on the Moon, this occurs:



Note once again that a chaotic and presumably noisy event is depicted without any sound effects whatsoever. Until, again, that last panel, in which the “Zee zee zee” of Jimmy’s watch is “heard” once more.

Take a moment, if you have the book, and flip through. There are no other sound effects. The only one that we ever hear is one that only Superman can hear.

So what shall we make of this? You can make what you like of it, really, but here’s my reading: When I teach sound in poetry, through alliterative and assonant phrasings, I suggest that the inclusion of this sound is intentional, just as I believe the use of this single sound in the series is intentional. As with the example from Brooklyn Nine-Nine, I argue that this sound effect aids in focalising us into Superman’s perspective. We are meant to understand this story through the lens of the Man of Steel. It is, after all, called All-Star Superman. We all star as the main character.

One of the main concerns of this series is the meeting of the mortal and the divine. Superman bestows upon Lois his powers, but only for a day. Jimmy is injected with the Doomsday formula, a human attempt to replicate the divine, which ends disastrously. The ancient Kryptonian astronauts later in the story fall from the heavens as divinities, but find themselves corrupted by the remnants of their own homeworld, divinity here shown to have to adapt to mortal surroundings or perish. Lex Luthor acquires Superman’s powers as well, and in the end realizes the truth of all divinity – it was never meant to make us harm one another, only love one another. It was created to stop us from being the animals that we so often are. Lex simply cannot handle this.

I’ve written elsewhere of the significance of chapter 10 of this work, in which we witness ostensibly the real world creation of Superman as a fictional character. But if we consider that the work is focalised through this character, that it is this particular perspective on events through which we are meant to understand the narrative, then this chapter takes on further significance. Each of the connections with the divine through the narrative are unsuccessful. Even the Superman-enabled Lois Lane only has her powers for a day, as does Luthor, and is worn and exhausted as they fade. Only one connection to these powers, this character, a metonym for “essential goodness,” the constitution of which Ben Saunders calls “one of the more beautiful challenges that postindustrial popular culture ever produced for itself” (from Saunders’ excellent book Do the Gods Wear Capes?), is successful in the story. And that is the “creation” of Superman at the hands of Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster. Further, we see the success of this connection by the very fact that this event is being chronicled in a comic book the cover date of which is one month shy of the 70th anniversary of Superman’s first appearance.

The argument here appears to be that not only do we create the divinities we come to worship, but that the stories we tell of them really are the only ways we should try to embody, imitate, or access those divinities. We should never try to be them, nor should we ever think we know what a divinity wants. All we have are their stories. And, further, we should always recall their fictional nature. There’s nothing wrong with admitting that the thing you turn to for solace isn’t real. Just because a thing isn’t real doesn’t mean that it’s not true. If truth depended on reality, we would not have literature. In All-Star Superman, Morrison and Quitely provide us with the means to achieve this connection. As the book focalises through Superman, we are given a brief, 12-chapter glimpse into what it is like to live his life, to experience “reality” at divine levels. A question that is often posed to the Man of Steel is how he can possibly stand all of the noise his super-hearing must subject him to. All-Star shows us how he copes. I read this series with a sense of vast white noise behind it, punctuated only now and then by the sound he is listening for, the signal of Jimmy's watch. But still, it is only a taste, not a neverending ride, though chapter 10, itself entitled “Neverending,” suggests that the re-reading of these texts, and the re-conceptualizing of these texts, is the only way to be constantly in touch with the divine.

I’ve recently finished re-reading this book, paying close attention, and there really is only one sound in All-Star Superman, but it is a sound that connects us to an avatar of goodness. It offers clear direction as to how we are to understand the events of the story and the perspective of the narrative, and it allows us to see the answer to the question “What would Superman do?” And, to end on a hopeful note, it lets us hear the hero that lives within.


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