In his paper Jeff Smith develops the cognitive approach to film music by attributing to it such an essential function
as “a signifier of emotion” (1999: 147). Smith supposes that only a combination of cognitivist and emotivist theories permits a better understanding how spectators make sense of film music’s affective properties. He implements two concepts such as ‘polarization’, which he defines as “an audiovisual interaction in which the affective meaning of the music moves the content of the image toward the specific character of that music” and ‘affective congruence’, which “suggests that the matching of affective meaning in both music and visuals heightens the spectator’s experience of the overall effect” (ibid.:160). Once more the author expresses his discontent with the “suturing” function of film music, underlining that the spectator’s and the character’s emotional experiences often do not correspond, and psychoanalytic accounts unjustly reduce a variety of the functions fulfilled by film music. Like in his 1996 paper “Unheard Melodies? A Critique of Psychoanalytic Theories of Film Music”
Smith refers to Kivy’s research, yet this time he is more concerned with Kivy’s theory of musical expressiveness, which is communicated through particular formal elements and relies on particular musical conventions. Kivy’s distinction between recognizing musical affect and experiencing it applied to film music might explain its main important dramatic functions. However, his theory works for film music only partly, since it is neither capable to explain viewers’ observable response to films nor takes into consideration differences between ‘pure’ music and film music. Moreover, an affective response in a spectator cannot be assigned solely to music, “but rather to the combination of film music and narrative, each of which will have its own individual emotional valence” (ibid.: 156).