Music Research Seminar: Annette Davison (University of Edinburgh)

The extractive industries have long used of the power of audiovisuality as a means of persuasion. A great many films have been produced or commissioned by oil companies promoting the benefits of a petrosociety. Elsewhere I have drawn attention to the contribution of audiovisuality to rhetorical delivery, communicating and/or enhancing aspects of the company’s image and/or brand values in some of Shell’s prestige films of the 1950s. In this talk I focus on several of the Hollywood films released some years before the oil companies’ prestige productions, and examine the role audiovisuality plays in their narratives of deflection and displacement that would likely be defined as “greenwashing” today.

About Annette Davison

Dr Annette Davison (Senior Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh) is a musicologist specialising in audio-visual media. Recent publications include essays on Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise (1974), title sequences, music "postfaces", industrial and "oil" films. Current research focuses on films produced by or for oil companies such as the Shell Film Unit; the audio-visual branding of oil companies; on the changing representations of the oil industry in mainstream film and television; and investigating intersections between sources of energy and audio-visual media in terms of materiality. Read more.