John Williams in Disclosure Day: Territory, Vulnerability and Transformation

Today, we will talk a little about Steven Spielberg’s latest release: Disclosure Day. Yet another collaboration with the beloved John Williams. A collaboration that is quite interesting far beyond the musical text, if you ask me.

So, let me warn you in advance: this will be dense.

A few days ago, I published some brief reflections on the film, but today we will dive deeper into this particular soundtrack, and I truly believe it is inevitable to introduce certain ideas from that reflection.

So, let us begin.

I think we all know Steven Spielberg because of his well-earned reputation. Historically, he is one of the most outstanding directors in the film industry. But look, if you are here, it is because you pay attention to the details of cinema, because you love cinema, and therefore I assume you already know this information. Spielberg is such a box-office phenomenon that even if you did not love cinema, you would probably know this all the same, because he escapes the capsule of the cinematic niche in order to influence the process that is cultural transformation at every level... and his musical counterpart and right-hand man is no exception.

The first collaboration between Spielberg and John Williams dates back to 1974 with The Sugarland Express and continues with the powerful, monstrous Jaws. What is interesting is that its impact on history is not entirely due to the film itself, but to the music.

Let us remember that music is one of the easiest resources to recirculate beyond its original product, but what exactly are we recirculating in this process? Careful, recirculation is not the same thing as recycling. Recirculation implies commitment and sociocultural (re)production.

Today, the two musical notes that make up the main theme of the second Spielberg-Williams collaboration (better known as Jaws) represent suspense embodied. And I am not joking when I say that it took me a very long time to watch the film, but long before that, I already knew the music and the sensations behind it. It is music’s inheritance, one might say, an emotional inheritance that travels through time. I would even argue that it is connected to the most primitive dimension of the human being, and perhaps that is why it can affect all of us regardless of generation, regardless of how much time passes. The substrates of music are time and emotion. Once again, we already knew that, but I wanted to make sure that before continuing with Disclosure Day, we were clear about this historically embedded power.

Now then, for those who know, John Williams turned ninety-four this year. The man is driven by his passion for music, and when his old friend invited him to score a film about aliens, he did not hesitate for a second. This marks their thirtieth collaboration, and it is a work that speaks to us about many things.

But I would say that, above all, it speaks to us about the creators’ positions: resistance and transformation.

And I know, I know, you are going to tell me: “Wait a second. Resistance? But aliens are the hottest topic right now. Hyperconnectivity, novelty, life on other worlds, and so on…”

I believe the music speaks to us about resistance in the sense that these are themes and abstractions that are usually articulated through the stripping away of the human, when what they actually demand is an emotional reading. The question that can help us clarify this terrain is: from whom does John Williams respond? From his traditional Romantic school.

I heard someone say that it was striking that no synthesizers or anything of the sort were used. Looking at it from another angle, our angle, I think it makes perfect sense.

Some time ago, in order to explain how culture functions, Raymond Williams spoke of dominant, residual, and emergent elements. To avoid overwhelming you with theory, I will try to make it easier to digest and connect it with the idea that this soundtrack proposes to us, perhaps unconsciously.

Residual elements are those that represent certain practices and social positions that somehow remain over time and that, despite sociocultural changes and incorporations, continue to hold validity. In this way, they carry perspective and history within them. They are nodes of historical condensation that resist time and struggle for their permanence.

Now, connecting this to the previous episode, if we all have certain “plug-ins” installed through which we read the world (and these are nothing more than a set of residual elements) it could be said that they also form part of our DNA. Thus, given how John Williams’ school has shaped all of his work, it is, so to speak, part of his DNA, and within it collective ways of seeing and inhabiting the world are inscribed.

Today, in a hyperconnected world, Williams makes the conscious decision to preserve his DNA in the presentation of, and dialogue with, change.

Which DNA?

The musical school of Tchaikovsky, Richard Wagner, Gustav Holst, Robert Schumann...

But deeper than that…which is this school?

More than a school, it is a territory.

Romanticism represents a historical moment in which the West began to believe that emotions, imagination, and subjective experience were legitimate sources of knowledge about the world. Based on this, processes of identification and signification were established. In some way, a historical, cultural, political, and symbolic construction was generated that, in turn, configured social relations that remain valid to this day... a kind of residual emotional territory.

In other words, when confronted with difference, what responds is humanity—the territory.

So, when we speak of an irruption into the known, Williams and Spielberg propose maintaining the human factor as resistance. They construct their response through the historical form of emotional expression: territory.

Let us move directly to the soundtrack.

To begin with, one detail I wanted to underline is the way the track titles are written. All of them: in lowercase and ending with three dots. To the eye, it seems as though none of them begins the story; rather, they emerge from previous paragraphs and leave themselves open to the next ones. Pay attention to that alliance between languages.Now, Williams’ response from what we have called “human DNA” can be heard in pieces such as “chase...”, where it is impossible not to hear the orchestration that bears the unmistakable mark of Star Wars. Battles that are somehow beyond this world, yet still maintaining the rules, territories, and sonic traces that remind us of composers such as Richard Wagner and Gustav Mahler.

Then, in believe..., something beautiful happens.

What breaks through is the simplicity of the piano.

Used extensively throughout Williams’ musical tradition, and still remaining one of its great representatives today (we have discussed this on many occasions). And just as we have discussed in previous episodes, what the piano invites the ear into is a condensation of intimacy, an innocence that breaks through.

The fact that the piano represents the irruption within a piece titled “believe...” further reaffirms the response proposed by these creators: human vulnerability is what allows us to redesign our territories.

Now, what follows are my three favourite pieces from the soundtrack: “unseen...”, “kcxe...” and “signs...”, all situated within a low-register and semi-martial spectrum.

Through the force of its orchestration, the music invites us to think about the encounter with difference as something both “astonishing” and “powerful”, perhaps similar to the way the creation of something new and the transformation of territory actually feels. Something that inevitably entails struggle and the strength required to sustain it.

In this way, Disclosure Day speaks to us about Spielberg and Williams’ sociopolitical positioning: the encounter with difference alters stability abruptly, and the way they propose that we confront it, the way these historically recognised creators view the confrontation of these ideas with contemporary social forms, is through an emotional territory: vulnerability and struggle.

The soundtrack concludes by condensing this entire journey and these reflections into the piece reprise....

It begins with the human voice...

A small melody orchestrates the beginning of the piece, which gradually recalls themes and moments throughout the film.

Perhaps this order is arranged in such a way as to encourage us to think that the shape of territory truly depends on human action. Whether we receive it with our emotional roots anchored in those historical perspectives that invite us to embrace emotion, vulnerability, and imagination as lenses for reading and acting in the world, or whether we choose to live within the symbiosis of fear and the “unnatural” systems (or those outside the creators’ historical elements) that have emerged from other forms and technologies of contemporary organisation.

I like to think there is something deeply poetic about this friendship, something that perhaps we should consider part of the imprint left by their work:

“When the unknown breaks through, Williams continues to respond from territory.”