Foregrounding Hiss

Despite its presence as both an embedded element in film optical tracks and as sound in cinema loudspeakers, hiss – present in all films from the earliest talkies to Dolby-encoded titles – has been largely ignored by media scholars. The present study ruptures this silence by acknowledging the sound of hiss as a meaningful component of the cinematic apparatus and experience. To do so, this essay – structured in sonata form – contextualises and juxtaposes Debord’s Howls for Sade, Adorno’s scholarship on radio, and Chantal Akerman’s News for Home, all of which foreground hiss as they engage with or disrupt the notion of ‘spectacle’. An examination of these sources and their historical constellations (elucidated through discussions on CBS, Dolby, and the Vitaphone as well as projection manuals) puts forth three theses: one, that the ‘visibility’ of hiss in cinema undergoes a century-long evolution, first as an engineering concern, later as an artistic device, and finally as a curiosity for digital spectators; two, that historical movements of attenuating or foregrounding hiss, often conceptualised as a visual phenomenon, trace political efforts of concealing and uncovering the cinematic apparatus, specifically the mediations responsible for the illusion of synchronisation; and three, that hiss in cinema ensures a pleasurable spectacular reassurance of formal continuity through sound.