“Hark to the Music”: Problematising Gender Motifs in the Singing of Folk Songs in Cinema

A free public research talk by Claire Rakich examining how folk songs in cinema portray male and female characters differently.

Claire Rakich presents a research talk drawing on folklore, ethnomusicology and film studies to examine sixteen folk songs from fifteen films, from Gone to Earth (1950) to A Castle for Christmas (2021). The study finds that women performing emotive folk songs are often rewarded with male love or approval, while men are depicted as voices of collective feeling in times of crisis. The talk asks whether highlighting this legacy could help contemporary filmmakers use folk song more progressively.