Definition Essay: The Effects Of Noise

You're sitting at home one evening doing the same thing you do every night, when suddenly a strange uncomfortable feeling comes over you. Your chest tightens, you heart races, you get lightheaded, and an uncontrollable feeling of panic comes over you. You walk around the room, pacing back and forth, wondering what could be wrong with you. Heart attack? No. Stroke? No. What on earth could be making you feel like this? Are you dying? If not, you certainly feel like you might be. So what could cause a person to feel like this for no reason at all, seemingly out of the blue? Anxiety. Everyday in the United States millions of people take their morning anxiety pill. From generalized anxiety, which leaves a person feeling a little "off" all day,

Since sound is "always already" present, everyone and everything produces a sound, it is inevitable that noise also will be ever present. How noise is defined depends on how a person views sound. Noise is generally seen as unpleasant sounds, whereas a multitude of pleasing sounds produces music. Noise is similar to the definition of anxiety in that noise is often too much sound or the lack thereof, for silence can be very noisy. In Lone Wolf and Cub, a film that exemplifies too much sound and the lack thereof, noise comes from the male and female voices, the clipping of the soundtrack and the siren-like glissando that periodically presents itself throughout the film. One possible examination of noise is to look at Lone Wolf and Cub through Kahn's perception of linguistic noise. Kahn looks at linguistic noise in relation to people with hearing difficulties as well as the encounter of one with a foreign language. When one has hearing trouble and can hear very little to no sound, noise will take on a meaning that may or may not be correct (Kahn 40). Without comprehension of a foreign language, the tonal mumbles the speakers produce could be described as noise. In Lone Wolf and Cub, too many sounds that are unidentifiable can produce noise causing the viewer to seek meaning in the language. Kahn says that when listening to a foreign language, "Although at times a person may listen very intently and yet go away with few tangible rewards, it nevertheless demonstrates that the urge against all odds to continuously make meaning from linguistic noise is very strong" (40). While listening to the Japanese language in Lone Wolf and Cub, one could easily see the male voice as similar to the low chiming bells and the female voices similar to the high pitched bells. The males have a low mumbling timbre throughout the film, whereas the females have a high staccato yell. The bells coincide with