Musical Echoes of a Trauma: Listening to Phantasms in the Dark Fantasy Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Abstract

This article examines how the music in the film Pan’s Labyrinth (El laberinto del fauno) conceptually generates opposing phantasms. Reflecting the trauma of early Francoism, specifically the Spanish Civil War, the soundtrack oscillates between the disquieting chronological reality and the fascinating yet terrifying fairytale world. A special space is devoted to the musical redistribution of the sensible, mirroring the strong affective, aesthetic, emancipatory and phantasmatic potential of Foley sounds. Such musical resistance undermines phallic authority, fostering a phantasmatic conflict that blurs the boundaries between imaginable and unimaginable reality.