Loudspeaker sounds, both announcements for army doctors and radio programs, are frequently inserted in Robert Altman’s film M*A*S*H (1970). Accompanied by close-up shots of a loudspeaker, these sounds are undoubtedly diegetic; that is, they can be heard by the characters. However, none of the characters react to them, and the announcer is never seen. These sounds are located in a domain that cannot be grasped by the binary opposition of the diegetic and the non-diegetic.
This paper considers that while the loudspeaker sounds are backgrounded within diegesis, they are simultaneously foregrounded outside of the diegesis to which the spectator belongs. This activity, the collecting sounds ignored by the characters and manipulating them for emphasis, is due to the “cinematic narrator.”
This cinematic narrator’s activity is mimicked by the protagonists; they eavesdrop on and broadcast a sexual act of Houlihan and Burns. By sharing narrative authority with the cinematic narrator, they create and narrate an episode, which retells Houlihan as “Hot Lips.” This paper demonstrates that Hot Lips’ story, narrated by the protagonists, merges into the whole story of the cinematic narrator. Thus, two different narrative levels coexist without formal boundaries, as in Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of “hybrid utterance.”
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