Board Thread:Rant and Rave/@comment-25733960-20170508011247/@comment-1916997-20170512174519

GothicNarcissus wrote: Eskaver wrote: Killian Jones wrote: But the song was introduced in the Pilot... No, it wasn't. The orchestral track was. XD

A cool use of theme, but some would have liked to know that Emma wanted to secretly sing. (Personally, I have no problem with it, so I'm sort of being Hades' advocate. All I want is it not to be a one-off (which it appears to be.)) Exactly. Up to last Sunday, the song was non-diegetic – meaning it was there for the benefit of the audience but not in-universe. The score is generally non-diegetic, which is, it's there to convey the narration in addition to the visuals and the dialogue, but is not part of the world. Characters don't hear it in the background while they do their things, it's simply there for us. Diegetic music on OUAT was, for instance, the song Neal was listened to on his iPod, the tune the Dwarfs whistle, the song that played on Emma and Henry's radio in NYC, the opera Ursula was listening to on the radio, the song Henry played on the iPod to Violet, the song Emma was humming in the Wish Realm, music in taverns when there's someone playing it, possibly the music at Granny's which has the juke box and so on. The actual score is not.

So yeah, they were clever in using Emma's theme because it was familiar and meaningful to the audience, but they never showed it before as an in-universe thing or as meaningful to Emma. You forgot to mention "Fathoms Below" that was sung by Ursula and the insturmental "Cruella De Vil" that Cruella liked to listen to for diegetic music, but otherwise good list.

As far as the debate people are having regarding Emma's Theme, while the people saying it was non-diegetic are correct, I still think we have to acknowlege that it is significant to use a theme the audience is familiar with. At the end of the day, this is a fictional tv show, so having the connection of a piece of music the audience hears actually coming into the plot, does make for an experience for the viewer. The fact that it doesn't impact the characters is okay, as things in fiction don't always need to be realized by the characters. Many times the viewer (or reader for books) has more information than the characters, and that is okay, as the characters aren't real, they are there to serve the viewer or reader.