Abstract
A common misunderstanding has characterized media studies that mainly emphasize verbal and visual communication while paying considerably less attention to sound. Nevertheless, audiovisual media confront viewers with messages that are composites, and both emotionally and cognitively engage their entire sensory capacity. Media content requires consistency between voice and character: the unease resulting from a perceived incongruity between voice and body reveals something about these expectations and how deeply they are ingrained in our culture (Simon 2004). Just as sensory perception forms interconnected patterns that are experienced as natural and inevitable, similarly, ideas about race are entrenched in our ways of understanding the world, linking concepts to sensory abilities (and their shortcomings). This chapter investigates the naturalizing effect that sound has on media images as a powerful tool in reproducing racial formations (Omi and Winant).