twentieth-century music 2/1, 37–51 © 2005 Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S1478572205000186 Printed in the United Kingdom Hidden Places: Hyper-realism in Bjo ¨rk’s Vespertine and Dancer in the Dark DANIEL M. GRIMLEY Abstract Björk’s collaboration with the director Lars von Trier on the film Dancer in the Dark was marked by well-publicized personal and aesthetic differences. Their work nevertheless shares an intense preoccupation with the nature and quality of sound. Björk’s soundtrack systematically explores the boundaries between music and noise, and the title of von Trier’s film itself presupposes a heightened attention to aural detail. This paper proposes a theoretical context for understanding Björk’s music in the light of her work with von Trier. Whereas Björk’s soundtrack responds to the visual and narrative stimuli of von Trier’s film, the use of sound in her album Vespertine thematicizes more familiar Björk subjects: the relationship between music, landscape and the natural world, and Björk’s own (constructed) sense of Nordic musical identity. By placing Vespertine alongside Björk’s music for Dancer in the Dark, the sense of ‘hyperreality’ that defines both also emerges as a primary characteristic of her work. Björk’s stormy collaboration with the Danish film director Lars von Trier on the production of the movie Dancer in the Dark received a good deal of media attention at the time of its general release in August 2000. Björk refused to appear in the awards ceremony at the Cannes Festival, where the film was awarded the Palme d’or, objecting to the way in which her music had been edited for use in the film apparently without her consultation. She later claimed to have felt emotionally and physically traumatized by the experience of working intensively with von Trier on the film set. At the same time, wild rumours circulated about Björk’s behaviour during the filming process, including stories that she had vandalized (partially eaten) costumes, that she had abandoned the set midway through production in Copenhagen, and that she had returned to the filming process only after negotiation with the director. 1 These, and other lurid stories, have reinforced the ‘mad woman’ image commonly associated with Björk in the popular press. Despite such well-publicized personal and aesthetic differences, however, Dancer in the Dark reveals that Björk and von Trier shared an intense preoccupation with the nature and quality of sound and its role in cinema. This paper begins by considering what the implications of their collaboration might be for a critical understanding of Björk’s solo music, before proceeding to a more detailed analysis of one of the tracks from Björk’s album Vespertine. Von Trier described the style of the music in the film as a ‘collision’ between himself and Björk. 2 Björk’s soundtrack, subsequently released in revised form as the solo album 1 For von Trier’s side of the story, see Leigh, ‘The Lars Picture Show’. 2 ‘Interview with Lars von Trier’, FilmFour Screenplay: Dancer in the Dark viii. 37 https:/www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1478572205000186 Downloaded from https:/www.cambridge.org/core. Oxford Union Society, on 03 Apr 2017 at 16:37:29, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at