Interplay of Sound and Action

The Host toys with us using sound and action, contrasting them in ways that we don’t see in most movies. Sounds from other activities overlay actions in different scenes: the shouts of Hyon-Seo and Grandpa undercut the moment when the monster enters the water, the classical music the girl is enjoying on a picnic provides the background for the crowds running away from the monster coming up behind her (sort of like something from a wildlife documentary where the herbivores run in a herd away from the predator), or the world is soundless as the monster comes charging at us through the people gathered at the edge of the river.

            The directly contrasting sounds and scenes that are used together, serve to highlight the connection between the 2 aspects, of how the gruesome and monstrous is part of our everyday. The commuters, from the safety of their routine train car, watch the monster running around and the crowds in chaos, and the announcements and general noise of a train car keeps playing the background. Similarly, we see the destruction of monsters created by ourselves with no more reaction than if we were watching the passing scenery. The monster can symbolize the monsters human have created, metaphorically and literally. It can symbolize the environmental crises, the political or social wars or the aftereffects of past wars amongst many other possibilities, and like Lee (2011) said, by not choosing a specific issue, it offers multiple “points of entry” to engage with the movie matter and make connections that we can individually/personally relate to. We barely bat an eyelash at the news of water wars, at the next social revolution taking hold of a country, or the future environmental consequences of decisions today, like the commuters on the train. The monster fits into our picnic sites at rivers, into our passing scenery, and it only matters so much in the movie because it has a direct affect and is no longer simply an event affecting a different country, a different population.

            The movie both brings the event closer to home while also showing how ambivalent and out of reach people can remain and this is not restricted to just one country or the “West or Not-West” (Lee, 2011). Every country fits into this paradigm, contributing to the creation of disasters in their own countries and distant countries, and coming face to face with the consequences sooner or later – the monster was created by humans (American and S. Korean) and came to fruition after several years, affecting both countries too as the US comes under political/public criticism near the end as seen in the news. 

            Another interesting aspect of the interplay between sound and action is when the world is soundless when the monster comes charging at us – it is as if the rest of the world has disappeared and all we can see and hear is the monster (who is pretty quiet amidst the screaming humans other than when it is hindered). I see it as the feeling of futility and inevitability when the disaster starts honing in on you and you don’t know how to react or where to go and you can only watch it get closer. It ties in with the scene of the girl listening to classical music because the music is more fitting with welcoming something desirable, such as progress and technology these days, but then the unseen i.e. the ecological consequences and the fate of the world (or her life in the movie) is destroyed in a flash by the disaster.