Commenting on the purpose of Baraka, the producer, Mark Magidson stated that, “we wanted to create an inner kind of experience that was global in scope, that was embracing of all religions and cultures, and left room for each viewer to provide their own inner dialogue through showing the vast diversity of our world without language as a filter.”[1]  In her analysis of Baraka and its wordless state, scholar Amy Staples claims that, “faced with its refusal to engage language as a system of codification and linearity, the viewer struggles to create meaning out of a seemingly ambiguous and free-floating chain of signifiers.”[2] 

In reality, neither of these statements reflects the experience of watching Baraka.  The viewer is neither given the freedom to create her own interpretation nor does she struggle to ascertain the messages behind the film.  Baraka is rife with New Age ideologies.  According to John P. Newport, author of The New Age Movement and the Biblical Worldview, “’New Age’ is a spiritual movement seeking to transform individuals and society through a mystical union with dynamic cosmos.”[3]   Themes such as the cyclical nature of life, being at one with the universe, and the human connection to nature are pervasive throughout the film.   In addition, the composer, Michael Stearns is considered a New Age composer, suggesting the importance of this movement to Baraka, and the work of Joseph Campbell (a renowned mythographer often associated with New Age ideology) is cited as inspiration as well.[4] 

The key to locating these New Age ideologies and how they are communicated lies in an exploration of the audio track and its ability to function as an authoritative voice.  This paper will discuss how an audio track that lacks any verbal text can act as such a voice and provide an analysis of the techniques employed in the audio track to convey New Age ideologies.  Additionally, I will offer a critique of what the creators of the film hoped to communicate in contrast with the actual effect of the film and its cultural implications.

In Mary Ann Doane’s article “The Voice in Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space,” she discusses various ways that voice-off and voice-over are used in film.  She argues that the voice-over so commonly employed in documentary film acts as an authoritative voice, narrating the story and guiding the viewer.  To explain the source of this authority she states that, “it is [the voice’s] radical otherness with respect to the diegesis which endows this voice with a certain authority. […]  It is precisely because the voice is not localizable, because it cannot be yoked to a body, that it is capable of interpreting the image, producing its truth.”[5]  The voice is powerful because it cannot be tied to an image within the frame.  Michele Chion makes similar claims about the use of acousmatic voices in film (not just documentary) in his book, The Voice in Cinema[6].   He claims that the acousmatic, disembodied voice possesses several powers: “the ability to be everywhere, to see all, to know all, and to have complete power.”[7]  It is an omnipotent observer able to speak about the image from an objective point of view. 

Despite the lack of verbal text, Baraka does posses an authoritative voice which is located in the audio track and manifests authority in much the same way as documentary voice-over.  The sound for the film is comprised of both music and ambient, environmental noises.   As mentioned earlier, the music is the work of composer Michael Stearns.  Stearns intended the score to be a “global orchestral soundtrack” that weaves a single sonic tapestry out of musics from around the world.[8]  To achieve this effect, Stearns layers the music of the cultures portrayed in the film with synthesized sounds, other world music recordings, and the music of the band Dead Can Dance.[9]  The result is a soundtrack that resonates with typical timbres and attributes associated with New Age music: droning bass, simple melodies, timbres of non-western instruments, stable and calm moods with gradual and smooth transitions between sections.

It is from this aural concoction of ambient sounds and the New Age score that the authoritative voice in Baraka is generated.   Although it is often evocative of the image track, the soundtrack persistently remains outside of the diegesis.  In addition to the sound qualities (such as echo, reverb, over articulation) that assist in creating this effect, there are several techniques used throughout the film that allow for the commentary freedom of the audio track.  For example, sound may be associated with the images, but not synchronized, or the reverse: the sounds are synchronized, but not related to the images.  There are other, more subtle methods as well.  Upon first watching a series of dance sequences from native South American, African, and Aboriginal societies, the sound track does appear synchronized to the footage of the dancers, yet clearly is not generated from it.    The footage in some of these shots is in slow motion, making it impossible for the sounds we hear to have emanated from the image.   Although the sounds are presumably the native music of the cultures presented in each shot, careful listening reveals bass drones that are not part of these cultures’ musics.  Overall, the effect is that the sound track never becomes tightly bound to the visual track.  It merely is suggestive of it.  Although a different technique is employed, the same effect is created in a scene that features a Japanese monk as he meditates and walks down a busy city street.   The image is bustling with activity, yet the only sound heard is that of the bell the monk rings.   Only a fraction of the sound that should come from the image is actually manifested.  While the sound relates to the image and is synchronized to it, it still is clear that it does not belong to the visual track.  These are just a few examples that highlight an approach which is prolific throughout the film.  The sound never becomes quite diegetic, but frequently references the visual track.  In creating sounds that are associated with the image but not sutured to it, the audio track becomes a voice that, although disembodied from it, provides commentary on the image track.

If the audio track is able to function as an ideological guide for those who view the film, it is important then to explore some of the ideas communicated through this authoritative voice.  I will discuss two different planes of ideology that exist within the narrative.  This relates to a discussion that Slavoj Žižek generates about ideology, where he evokes both Karl Marx and Theodor Adorno.  Žižek describes what he calls the ideological mask and the way in which it “is not simply hiding the real state of things; the ideological distortion is written into its very essence.”[10]  Here, the ideological mask is New Age ideology.  I will explore the communication of these ideas-or the mask- in the film in addition to “ideological distortions:” messages that are conveyed inadvertently because the film cannot be divorced from the people and social situations which created it. 

The term Baraka (according to the blurb on the DVD cover art), is a Sufi word that “translates to ‘the thread that weaves life together’”[11]  When commenting on the continued success of the film, Mark Magidson stated that the film “is about the diversity of humanity and life experiences as well as our interconnection with each other and the world around us,”[12]  and in a clip about the making of the film he also noted that, “The goal of this kind of film making is to reach past language, reach past nationality, religion, politics and really try to speak to the inner view.”[13]   Baraka is meant to be about human connectivity and aspects of humanity that run through us all.  In his article about the film, Martin Roberts refers to this as the “coffee-table globalism of Baraka,” an ideology of “liberal humanism whose dominant metaphor is that of the family.”[14]  While the visual track and carefully mapped juxtaposition of images do much to demonstrate that we are all part of this human family, the audio track for Baraka makes a significant contribution toward communicating this idea of human interconnectivity as well. 

The opening sequence juxtaposes images of the Himalayan mountains, a solar eclipse, Katmandu, a meditating guru, whirling dervishes, priests in Vatican City, Islamic mosques, Jewish prayer in Jerusalem, and Buddhist monks.  Though the images are of disparate cultures and geographies, the music changes little.  Stearns uses a variety of non-western musics such as African drums, bells, gamelan, didgeridoo, and throat singing.  Under these sounds he structures a fabric of new age synthesized hums and reverberations.  Though certain layers may filter in and out, the overarching effect is that of one, continuous musical thought that fits all of the incongruous visual elements.  This serves two functions.  First, it works in the conventional way of providing unity to the disjointed images.  As Michele Chion describes it, “the most widespread function of film sound consists of unifying or binding the flow of images.”[15]  Chion also notes that, “because [nondiegetic music] is independent of the notion of real time and space it can cast the images into a homogenizing bath or current.”[16]  This leads to the second function of the “global orchestral soundtrack”[17] that Stearns employs here. The soundtrack conveys a sense of interconnectivity.  The same music applies to all.  It implies that these various expressions of faith are, in fact, one in the same by setting them to “universal” music. 

This application of music is an expected and conventional use of an audio track to reinforce the mood of a film, however there are more explicit ideas communicated through the audio track in Baraka.  Of particular relevance to the following example is a New Age perspective that “the world is facing a crisis brought on by our reliance on science, our confidence in our own reasoning, and certain practices of Christianity.”[18] This is one of the main ideas behind Baraka and crucial to the film’s narrative.

Despite her claim that viewers are at a loss to create meaning in Baraka, Staples brings the moment of the film that warns of the impending crisis to her readers’ attention as well, describing it as follows:

Scenes of desolation, poverty, prostitution, alienation, war, and death interrupt the state of spiritual nirvana induced through earlier passages. Our descent into the underworld begins with a close-up shot of an electric saw slicing through a tree trunk in the (presumably) Amazonian rain forest. This sequence is followed by the disillusioned gaze of a Kayapo man (as if we are both witnesses to the same tree falling), then cuts to a quick succession of dynamite explosions, mining operations, and aerial shots of the devastated rain forest.[19]

As Staples suggests, the first thirty minutes of the film consist of harmonious images of mostly Third-world societies.  The only images shot in the western parts of the planet—scenes of the Vatican, the Mesa Verde Cliff Palace, and Arches Park in Utah—still connote a foreign identity, just one that happens to share space with western culture.  The audio track for these scenes functions largely as I have already described it—providing a sense of unity and interconnectivity.  The transformation that takes place after the first thirty minutes marks a second stage along Baraka’s narrative.  Staples’ quote points to how the visual track works to evoke a sense that the peace and beauty so far explored are about to be threatened, however it is the audio track, a feature which Staple’s ignores, that makes this idea explicit and communicates a judgment and warning to the western viewers of the film. 

                Preceding the cut to the saw, there is a series of shots of waterfalls, birds, and lakes.  The stunning images are set to a combination of ambient sounds of rushing water and the synthesized timbres.  Then the visual track cuts to a shot of a tree on an African savannah.  Two native men are walking in the distance.  With the transition to this shot, the music cuts out and ambient sounds of wind, birds, and insects move into the foreground.  Slowly, the sound of driving rain enters the audio track.  A storm is coming.  Thunder cracks, and its reverberations are transformed into the humming of the saw as it tears through the tree.  We hear and see the tree fall.  Then silence, as the visual track cuts to the Kayapo man. 

In the section of narrative that follows, the viewer is presented with the only images in the film associated with modern western civilization: images of Auschwitz, sterile assembly lines, baby chicks cruelly processed in a factory, and commuters crammed into subway cars like cattle are but a few.  The implication is that the western emphasis on technology, progress, and expansion are the storm that descends upon the harmonious human existence of these other cultures.    It is the audio track which morphs between the threat of thunder and the threat of industrialization that clearly communicates this idea to the viewer.  The implication here goes beyond a sense of a “descent into Hell”[20]—to use Staples’ description—and says that western societies are responsible for the destruction of a connected existence, wrenching us from a natural state where we are aware of our human family. 

As already discussed, Baraka is meant to convey a sense of the connection of all humanity.  Despite the genuine intentions of the creators, Baraka actually does quite the opposite.  In suggesting that western cultures are the storm which descends upon harmonious societies, it separates the two and reinforces that these cultures are separate from the experience of those who view the film.  Although Stearns refers to his soundtrack as “global orchestral” music, it summons aural references that primarily suggest non-western, Third world cultures which the viewer struggles to identify as anything specific other than sounds that are alien to his or her own culture.  Roberts drives this point of unfamiliarity home by commenting that, “while the film has been distributed in as many countries as it was filmed in, its audience is best characterized as people other than those in the film itself.”[21] 

There are also other, non-audio elements of the film that expose ideological issues.  Roberts contends that Baraka is most closely related to the nature film.  If that is the case, then the treatment of the people and cultures in the film as if they are objects to be studied must be addressed.  Additionally, Baraka is strewn with filmic portraits: moments when a single person or small groups stare back into the camera in a frontal shot.  As Staples discusses, these portraits summon up issues of voyeurism and the western gaze.  These features in Baraka actually create a sense of distinction between western and other cultures and expose some of the “ideological distortions.” 

The mask of New Age ideologies in Baraka cannot help but expose a complex set of underlying social and historical relations.  Roberts notes that the film functions as what Mary Louise Pratt describes as a “contact zone,”  “the space of colonial encounters, the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations […].”[22]  It also reflects what she refers to as an “anti-conquest” approach, “the strategies of representation whereby European bourgeois subjects seek to secure their innocence in the same moment as they assert European hegemony.”[23]  Perhaps Žižek is correct.  The New Age ideology presented in Baraka has “ideological distortion written into its very essence.”   Beyond a presentation of New Age ideology, Baraka is a cultural reflection of western society’s desire to negate the atrocities of the past by praising these previously colonized societies for their knowledge of greater truth and a way of life which is in tune with the universe.  In doing so, they unintentionally reveal a history of colonial abuse and actually recreate those power relations within the film.

The authoritative audio track in Baraka attempts to communicate specific New Age ideologies to its viewers.   The cultures and peoples presented are perceived to be interconnected:  diverse, yet one in the same.  Unfortunately the choice of visual and aural material succeeds only in suggesting that non-western cultures share a common experience and still function as part of the human family.  Even more, the subtext constructed through the narrative and audio track sets modern, western culture apart as something that threatens and dominates these cultures. Though the lack of words in Baraka supposedly frees the viewer to create his own inner dialogue, the authoritative voice is still there.  It simply takes a different, non-verbal form, ensuring the explicit communication of ideologies—mask and distortions alike.

[2]  Amy J. Staples, “Mondo Meditations,” American Anthropologist 96, no. Sep. (1994), 663.

[3]  John P. Newport, The New Age Movement and the Biblical World View: Conflict and Dialogue (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), 1.

[4]  Martin Roberts, “”Baraka:” World Cinema and the Global Culture Industry,” Cinema Journal 37, no. Spring (1998), 62.

[5]  Mary Ann Doane, “The Voice in Cinema: The Articulation of Body and Space,” Yale French Studies 60, no. Cinema/Sound (1980), 42.

[6] “acousmatic” refers to sounds that do not have a visual source

[7] Michele Chion, The Voice in Cinema, ed. Claudia Gorbman, trans. Claudia Gorbman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 24.

[8] Baraka: A Closer Look, DVD, Baraka: A Closer Look, (Magidon Films, Inc, 2008)

[9] Roberts, “Baraka:” World Cinema and the Global Culture Industry, 64. 

[10]  Slavoj Zizek, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London and New York: Verso, 1989), 28.

[11]  Baraka, DVD, directed by Ron Fricke (U.S.A.: Magidson Films, Inc, 1992)

[12]  Barakathefilm

[13]  Baraka: A Closer Look, DVD, Baraka: A Closer Look, (Magidon Films, Inc, 2008)

[14]  Roberts, “Baraka:” World Cinema and the Global Culture Industry, 67. 

[15]  Michele Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, ed. Claudia Gorbman, trans. Claudia Gorbman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 47.

[16]  Ibid. 

[17]  Fricke, Baraka

[18]  Newport, The New Age Movement and the Biblical World View: Conflict and Dialogue, Ix.

[19]  Staples, Mondo Meditations, 665.

[20]  Staples, Mondo Meditations, 665.

[21]  Roberts, “Baraka:” World Cinema and the Global Culture Industry, 72.

[22]  Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), 6.

[23]  Ibid, 7

copyright Claire Maiers 2008