More 1980s than the 1980s: Functions and Connotations of Synthwave Soundtracks

Synthwave music is inextricably tied with cinema, and in this presentation I am going to investigate the archetypical forms of that connection, focusing on their functions and connotations. My main point is that we can find both first-order and second-order associations between cinema and synthwave music, for a total of at least four of them (association with sci-fi cinema, association with B-movies, age-synecdoche and aesthetic mediator). These associations are partly to be found in contemporary cinema and partly to seek in films from the 1980s, in a dialectical process in which cinema and music are constantly implied one in the other (even when it comes to synthwave music not used for cinematic purposes). After a brief overview of first-order associations – which are important for understanding the whole idea, but are not so directly linked with the contemporary synthwave music genre – I will mainly focus on a selection of contemporary films defined by online communities as ‘synthwave movies’, and thus on second-order associations, showing how these contribute in rendering synthwave a simulacrum representing not only cyberpunk worlds and cheap productions, but an entire era and its (retro-)futuristic dreams and aesthetic idiosyncrasies.