Catherine Haworth
c.m.haworth@leeds.ac.uk
BA (Hons); MA (Leeds)
After gaining an undergraduate music degree and an MA in Film Music Studies from the University of Leeds, Catherine is now studying part-time for a PhD in the School of Music. Her research investigates the role of music and sound in Hollywood film noir, particularly how the soundtrack might contribute to the construction of agency in the presentation of traditionally marginalised characters.
Catherine teaches various courses on film music and music in audio-visual media at the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and Liverpool and works as a part-time administrator in the University of Leeds School of Education and for the AHRC-funded Music Archival Research Skills (MARS) programme. She is also a clarinettist and singer, and currently sings alto with Leeds Baroque Choir and Leeds University Liturgical Choir.
- Music and sound in audio-visual media
- Intersections between music, film and literature
- Aesthetics and critical approaches to musicology
- Music, gender and sexuality
- Popular music cultures (particularly Motown, Northern Soul and Disco)
Catherine’s PhD research investigates how music and sound might contribute to the construction of agency for traditionally marginalised characters in the cinema. This research focuses specifically on traditional Hollywood films noirs from the 1940s and 50s which can be read as articulating particular anxieties and fears about gender and sexuality in American society around this period. Roy Webb’s early film noir scores for RKO Radio Pictures provide the primary case studies for this project.
Catherine is also interested in music, gender and sexuality, the aesthetics and criticism of popular music (especially Motown, Northern Soul and Disco music and culture), and various other elements of film studies and soundtrack analysis. These include the films of David Lynch; popular Hindi cinema (Bollywood); the film musical; popular music and the cinema soundtrack; the James Bond series of books and films, film music and genre studies, and the intersection of music with the Hollywood star system.
Abstract
PhD Abstract: 'Music, gender, film noir: The RKO scores of Roy Webb'
Supervisors: Prof. David Cooper and Dr Rachel Cowgill
American films noirs provide a distinctive and striking means through which to explore issues including gender representation, the formation and instability of generic categories, the relationship between cinema and society, and the aesthetics and economics of 1940s and 50s Hollywood.
Musical characters and settings are commonplace in the typical film noir urban landscape, and help to create a distinctive style that mixes 'classical' Hollywood scoring, jazz sonorities and urban sound. Film noir soundtracks frequently highlight elements of gender difference and sexual deviance through these oppositions; in later noirs, for example, the status of jazz as musically 'other' parallels the femme fatale's disruptive qualities, fetishising her aurally as well as visually. In films from the forties however, this kind of differentiation is achieved in ways which are a little more subtle, thereby keeping the film within the bounds of the Production Code, whilst still helping to enable alternative readings of the film text. The noir soundtrack can offer characters and spectators a means of resisting or extending the more typical Hollywood narrative, frequently helping to create spaces where marginalised characters have more agency and influence than might otherwise be the case.
The early film noir scores of Roy Webb for RKO Radio Pictures provide a focus for this research. Webb was a prolific yet frequently overlooked composer who specialised in scores for noir and horror films, and RKO is unusual as being both a major studio and a primary producer of B movies, many of which were films noirs.
