television

I watched an episode of House last night. I have never really paid a whole lot of attention to the music in the show because it's mostly instrumental, but the music plays a huge role in the show. It's almost as if the producers are using the music to tell you how you are supposed to be feeling or reacting in every scene. In one of the scenes, a mother and father were with their newborn baby and the just looked like it was sleeping in the mothers arms. The mother spoke to the baby and the baby didn't respond, and then upbeat dramatic music started to play as if to clue in the audience, "something is wrong". At the end of the show, the father was pushing the mother and their new baby out of the hospital and happy soothing music came on in the background. It was almost a relief to the audience that nothing else bad was going to happen and everything turned out just fine.
I have also noticed that scary movies probably utilize background music as much as any genre of movies. They can take a completely normal scene, add scary music in the background and it is utterly terrifying. With scary music it build so much suspense that nothing even has to happen to scare you. The increasingly louder music and dramatic instrumentals just lets you know something bad is going to happen and its going to scare you to death!