Disturbing Justice: Subverting Expectations Through Music in Amazon’s “The Boys”
Recently, I finished binging The Boys on Amazon Prime. The gory, graphic, not-safe-for-work, show about the dark side of superheroes is known for being overly realistic and off-putting in every aspect including the acting, CGI, and scenarios. However, one variable that makes certain scenes extra unsettling is the way that they treat their music.
Traditionally in narrative-driven TV shows and movies, the music (both score and soundtrack) creates a flow from scene to scene, emotion to emotion, or character to character. Masterfully mixed fade-ins and outs transition the audience into various states of mind, hinting at things such as a possible love interest or an incoming threat. Take this scene from a segment of The Boys meant to poke fun at a more traditional hero flic, Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
The music in this “movie within a movie” stays underneath the dialogue initially, then builds as the tension between hero and villain rises with it. There is an expected arc of music and narrative that is followed pretty closely. Even as the scene pulls out and reveals Homelander watching the movie, the music fades into a sharp ringing, a transition that relays important information about the emotion of the character. While this alone may be jarring to some listeners, there are ways to surprise the audience even more.
Since we as consumers have been trained to expect smooth musical transitions from radio, streaming, shows, and movies, an absence of this throws off our expectations. Imagine if you were listening to the radio and rather than transitioning from one song to the next smoothly, the DJ simply cut off one song when they got tired of it and immediately switched over to a new song. This would pull you out of your listening experience in an abrupt way, and probably get them fired. This is a technique used by The Boys to amplify certain disturbing scenes in the show and subvert your expectations. Here is a great example of this:
Not only is most of this fight scene music-less in representation of the silent hero Black Noir, but something also really interesting happens once the girl he’s fighting, Kimiko, dies. Shortly after Black Noir leaves the scene, “Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bill Withers begins playing. The lyrics “Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone” seem to accompany Kimiko’s death, as does the camera shot that slowly backs away from her body. This continues for 20 agonizing seconds until a subtle drop off synth is added and the music quickly is shut off, almost as if someone pulled the plug on a record player. What seemed to be the end of the scene instead continues on as another man, Frenchy, approaches Kimiko’s body. As he mourns his friend, we return to musical silence for 30 long seconds. Then out of nowhere the surprise reveal happens: Kimiko is alive! This coincides with “Ain’t No Sunshine” starting back up suddenly right where it left off half a minute ago. This abrupt style of music mixing expertly demonstrates how scores and soundtracks can control what we expect to happen in a show or movie.
The Boys is full of juxtaposed musical and visual elements, whether its playing happy music during a disturbing scene to make it feel even more disturbing
or the downright goofy use of fully diegetic music that comes from hallucinogenic talking gills to portray getting through emotional trauma.
Dave Grusin and his music team play perfectly into the atmosphere of the show and are able to mess with their audience’s emotions in a profound way during some of the show’s most unsettling moments. Without these musical decisions, The Boys wouldn’t be able to pass off disturbing events as okay and seemingly normal events as disturbing.
