Inverting the Acousmêtre

This article advances a revised conception of Michel Chion’s archetype of the acousmêtre in light of recent scholarship on narrative film and television. It begins by evaluating Chion’s criteria for the acousmêtre, arguing that its attendant traits are either essential or ancillary, contrary to Chion’s general implied necessity in traits he theorises. The article undertakes a set of inversions of ancillary traits to explore limitations and new applications of the trope as an interpretive lens. Through four primary case studies – Moon Knight (Jeremy Slater, 2022), Love Actually (Richard Curtis, 2003), Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978), and Parasite (Bong Joon Ho, 2019) – this expansion addresses a wider range of film and television genres than is typical for applications of the acousmêtre, including romantic comedy and family animation. These permutations bring out the acousmêtre’s ability to highlight structural power dynamics that might otherwise be overlooked, extending the trope’s relevance beyond characterisation and insular narrative concerns to implications of social commentary, an application of the trope that scholars seldom consider. The culminating analysis centres on the acousmêtre’s affordance of socio-economic critique in Bong’s Parasite.