I remember being taught as a child by my parents and my church to be open-minded and accepting of others. Apparently that only applies when you don’t actually know or associate with anyone who isn’t Mormon.

@ Scott – absolutely movies are an escape from reality, but I would argue that the music makes it harder to really let your imagination become part of the experience. A relentless soundtrack is constant saying “Hey, you’re watching a movie!” It would be easier to be part of the action if it sounded like you were really there, not a passive viewer watching it from the inside of your car with the radio turned up. I know Hollywood (and movie goers for that matter) would never agree with my nut perspective of just axing music entirely, so I agree that it does need to be scaled way back.

@ Alex – I hadn’t considered the tradition of music in films coming from silent movies, that’s a very interesting theory. Movies with little or no music really stand out when I see them, though there aren’t many. So few I can’t even think of a good example. I remember Stranger Than Fiction being fairly light on music. It’s especially refreshing in comedies when you don’t have the composer treating you like an idiot with excessive musical cues.

This reminds me of a chapter from Harpo Speaks. Harpo was talking about a friend, a composer, who went to meet with a movie director. The director talked about how he wanted to have a scene where a war was going on, planes were dropping bombs, a woman was in the middle of the battlefield giving birth, so on and so forth, and asked what kind of music they could play during this. The composer said, “If you have that much going on, you don’t need music,” and left.

Also, the first films had no sounds at all, but people were amazed because they had never seen anything like that before. Then people added live music during projections, because total silence was unnatural. Now we’re simply so used to having music in films that consider it normal. I mean, if we see a theatre play, we don’t expect a soundtrack, do we?

I would like to watch a film with no soundtrack, I’m curious to know what it would be like.