Huxley’s Loudspeaker: Dystopian Sounds of Control during the Cold War

In this paper, Hui examines the proliferating and often conflicting attitudes about background music in laboring and public spaces from the 1940s through the 60s. It was alternately described as a tool of fascism, a tool of communism, a solution to petty crime, a form of therapy, a delightful experience. The power of the disembodied voice mattered but even more so, the loudspeaker itself mattered. Anxieties about the power of the state were refracted through the form and function of loudspeakers. Psychologists performed experiments to better understand how people experienced sounds generated by loudspeakers. Sound engineers refined techniques for generating realistic, or at least believable, sound effects. We can interpret some of this as indications that the listening public developed new standards and credulities. This shift was further reinforced by the use of loudspeaker sound in dystopian literature to advance narratives, suggestive of a public that not only recognized the ironies and sonic experiences of these supposedly futuristic soundscapes (so, can create them in their minds’ ears) but also created new ones. That is, the act of reading about futuristic sound as a tool of the state, reflected and reinforced new understandings of the environment.