Ally McBeal's Postmodern Soundtrack

Abstract

Television's Ally McBeal revels in soundtrack games, playing as it does with the conventions of several types of musical multimedia while elevating music, especially a particular type of pop music, to the role of central plot and series metaphor–above all in relation to Ally's character. As musically saturated television, Ally McBeal not only provides a window onto music's role in television (and hence a central expression of postmodern culture), it also engages some of pop music's broader social functions dramatically. Drawing on both film and media theory, I examine Ally McBeal's soundtrack from formal and dramatic perspectives. I then go on to situate the features discussed within wider postmodernist discourses and draw out music's contribution to the show's controversial representations of contemporary gender politics.