Let’s put a smile on that face! – мелодијско-акустичка карактеризација Џокера код различитих глумаца

Abstract

The paper examines the different acoustic and prosodic parameters that characterize the Joker character interpreted by four different actors: Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger, Jared Leto and Joaquin Phoenix. Since the research had two planes – the perception and production of the language of evil, we first asked a selected sample of respondents to rank the actors starting with the most evil and determine their attitudes about the expressed and evoked emotions. Based on the results of the survey, we proceeded to further acoustic analysis of the relevant recordings of the actors. According to the results, Jack Nicholson brought the greatest amount of malice to the screen, while Jared Leto did so the least. The ranking of the Joker’s characteristic laughter turned out to be particularly interesting, as it was contrary to the results of the ranking of the movie lines themselves. The examined acoustic and prosodic parameters indicated a wide range of subtle manipulations of the vocal apparatus that actors use to portray the required character in a given situation. A wide range of fundamental frequency was noted, as well as different intensity, speech tempo, articulation rate and inter-word pauses. Each of the actors resorted to different means, which was particularly noticeable in the selection of paralinguistic elements, which we briefly refer to in the paper as well. After the presented results and conclusions, we likewise provide suggestions for potential future research.