MONDAY NIGHT LECTURE SERIES | HYPERBOLE: SENSE, SENSATION, SPECTACLE

The History of Extra, or the Sound of Hyperbole in Three Scenes

FEBRUARY 25 @ 6 P.M.
Daniel Family Commons, Usdan University Center

Does hyperbole have a characteristic sound? Can music be hyperbolic? This paper examines the sounds of musical hyperbole in three scenes drawn from opera, Hollywood, and queercore experimental film. Searching for hyperbole outside of language proper—in a different but equally rich domain of signs—ultimately reveals structural characteristics of hyperbole as an aesthetic mode. Hyperbole exaggerates extravagantly in order to tell the truth, but because it involves a play with levels, degrees, and ranks, it also has the ability to demonstrate how aesthetic objects articulate the hierarchies of social power. Listening for musical hyperbole as parody, melodrama, and camp, the paper illustrates how hyperbolic performance can be used as a strategy to resist social power’s normative force.