Fart for Fart’s Sake? The Fantastical Reality, Sacred-Profane Musical Bodies, and Nostalgic Millennial Masculinities in Swiss Army Man

This article explores the uses of music, voice, and sound in Daniels’ 2016 film Swiss Army Man (SAM)—a story about a friendship between a stranded, suicidal loner (Paul Dano) and a farting, talking corpse (Daniel Radcliffe). We argue that the film’s unique play between nondiegetic and diegetic sound, musical references to popular culture, and privileging of bodily noise (particularly farting) generate a distinctive soundscape that adds new dimensions to SAM’s major themes of loneliness and nostalgia. This study draws upon scholarship in musicology, film studies, social history, and queer studies to better define the sonic techniques that the directors and composers employ. In doing so, it also helps us locate how sound articulates the film’s genre, its construction of masculinity, and the queerness of the two protagonists’ relationship. Our goal is to provide insight into a film in which farting equals music, and meaning is made through colliding dualities: sacredness vs. vulgarity, a hyperbody that is both dead and alive, heterosexual yearning vs. homoromantic bonding, and even comedy vs. tragedy.