Love Jones (1997) Film Analysis: Diegetic and Non-Diegetic Elements

This essay provides an analysis of the film Love Jones (1997), focusing on the diegetic and non-diegetic elements present in its aural-visual production. The essay defines diegetic and non-diegetic elements in cinema and music studies, explaining their roles in narrative construction. It explores the use of dialogue, mise-en-scene, and in-world sound effects as diegetic elements, while highlighting narration, external graphics, and the film score as non-diegetic elements. The essay emphasizes the significance of the film's soundtrack, which reflects the neo-soul generation and enhances the storytelling by linking scenes and extending the narrative. Furthermore, the essay discusses the film's themes of love, relationships, and career, and how the jazz musical score contributes to the film's artistic narration. The analysis includes references to the film's impact on portraying black identity and its establishment of a specific artistic narrative through music and narrative structure.

Love Jones (1997): Diegetic and Non-Diegetic elements in Aural-Visual Production
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

Explain what diegetic and non-diegetic means in cinema studies and music studies
means?
Diegetic and non-diegetic reference in Love Jones (1997)
Diegetic is the adjective terminology for the term diegesis, which is mainly used in the study
of narrative and/or narration to identify the events of narrative structure based on the story as
performed against the structure of the story telling (Tan, Spackman & Wakefield, 2017). The
diegetic or intra-diegetic stages of narrative is that of the relative world which consists of the
story, and several events that exist within it, while non-diegetic stage stands belong out of
these. In narrative cinema, the diegesis is a film’s entire fictional world (Langkjær, 2015).
Diegetic space has a particular channel of meanings and several other potential
complexities in relation to the narration in cinema as opposed to, take the word, novel; and in
a narrative film, the diegetic world can present what anyone cans view on screen, but also off
screen elements that are presumed to exist in the world that the film depicts – as long as these
are the parts of the main story (Kassabian, 2016). The term diegetic sound is in common use
in while analyzing and providing description of the film, referencing any voice sound or
music effects represented as a source or reference taken from the world of fiction or fantasy.
This is in contradistinction from non-diegetic or extra diegetic sound such as background
score, underscore or voiceover that is indicated as the source which comes from outside the
story world.
Soundtrack
Both diegetic and non-diegetic music, for example, will very often be present in a
single film, and in some films there may be a deliberate blurring of, or play between, the two.
Less commonly, non-diegetic images can serve as commentary or metaphor, as in the case of

shots of animal slaughter intercut with a massacre of striking workers in Eisenstein’s Strike
(1924). This is an essential but critical term in film studies as well as in musical studies,
where the word diegetic and tis variants are often misspelled. The diegetic elements in the
film Love Jones (1997) includes several elements like the dialogue, mise-en-scene, in world
music, in world sound effects ("Love Jones (1997)", 2019). This film is also set up with the
non-diegetic elements like the narration, external graphics, and cinematic score including the
background score and the underscore, and the added sound effects. The soundtrack of this
film is too described as the implementing the thoughts of the neo-soul generation. The
soundtrack of Loves Jones also shares its honor with the classic soundtrack of Curtis
Mayfield, Super Fly. Many of the people think that the sound is superior to the narrative of
this film. Soundtracks to black cast films have always been as vital as the film itself. These
kinds of film frequents get attraction by some of the famous acts of the day, more of it like
the Panther, Jason’s Lyric, The Best Man and Waiting to Exhale. Few of the cases in this
film the music has its own performance as the it cater in twining the stories and linking two
scenes and it is used in the extension of the story in this film. Hopeless by Dionne Farris
which was playing right at the beginning shots of black and white photographs which depicts
the life of the black people living in Chicago creates a nostalgic moment for the viewers as
well as the listeners too. The music also acts as a lamenting song for Nina Long’s Nina
Mosley of her engagement, representing the condition of the relationship she had with her ex-
fiancé Marvin, played by Khalil Khan as well as her profession being a photographer.
Film
The reference of power, money, and sex shown in this film is quite essential to develop the
narrative base of the whole story line. This film is not only about the sex, love or romance, it
also portrays about the relationship be it long term or short term or even marriage and also
about the career having the financial support which is the power and the money. The jazz

musical score uses more than what the background music score create in many films. The
musical sore played on jazz is indicated as the sophisticated in a manner that the film is
created for teen adults when many films on Black identity focuses on coming out of age or
the coming of films based on black exploitation.
In the late 90s, Love Jones forms a moment where the advent of talking about the black
exploitation is expressed through the way of films ("Love Jones - The Music (1997) | Full
Soundtrack LP", 2019). It has created the neo-soul establishment where the music expresses
itself the fantasy and whims of the teenage lovers and their love affairs and providing us the
statement that love could appear not only if someone goes into a relationship but it could
appear out of the relationship and they can have sex with whomever they wishes to have it
with. This film has generated itself into a specific artistic narration through the concept of
music and the narrative inside the film, be it diegetic or non-diegetic. This film prevails on
the relationship structure of the narrative with its musical establishment.

Reference List
Kassabian, A. (2016). Music, Sound and the Moving Image: The Present and a Future?.
In The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Musicology (pp. 61-76). Routledge.
Langkjær, B. (2015). Audiovisual Styling and the Film Experience: Prospects for Textual
Analysis and Experimental Approaches to Understand the Perception of Sound and
Music in Movies. Music and the Moving Image, 8(2), 35-47.
Love Jones - The Music (1997) | (2019, March 18) Full Soundtrack LP. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjUgKDEFrHw
Love Jones (1997). (2019, March 2018). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=x0GDqfrTmNw&has_verified=1
Tan, S. L., Spackman, M. P., & Wakefield, E. M. (2017). The effects of diegetic and
nondiegetic music on viewers’ interpretations of a film scene. Music Perception: An
Interdisciplinary Journal, 34(5), 605-623.