The Bridge

Above is the opening theme to Ginger Snaps.  It's one of my favorite movie themes,  for various reasons.

The intro does so many things.  Of course, you get your practical elements. You know the title, who stars, all the other credit bits.  They happen as we slide through the various vignettes the girls create.

But that is just the practical bit.  There is a whole level of art happening as well. For instance, to use the writer cliche, it shows you a story without having to come out and tell you the story.  Through just this intro, you gain so much background on the girls. You know that Ginger and Bridget are creative, morbid, the best of friends, and rather frightening.

More importantly, the theme lures you into the story, altering your mindset to accept what is to follow.  Theme songs are transitions for the mind.  Bridges. They're like little ferry men that transport you from one idea of reality to the next.

One of the things they can do is drug the hell out of you. Or at least it feels that way.  When I was in high school, one show's opening song was as seductive and captivating as they come. David Lynch, who maybe should have never been allowed to expose his special brand of weird to the general public, clearly found some incubus with a talent for music and hired them to set this thing up.  I think just watching the opening to Twin Peaks sucks in a little of your soul. Certainly, however, it's a case of being sucked in a good way.

Another theme that feels very druglike to me is the theme to House.  What I love about this theme is that it isn't right at the beginning.  The show always starts out with the patient in question, moving from that point in their lives where they think they are okay to the sudden BAM! of puzzling illness. Then the theme song starts.

The House theme is sampled from the song "Teardrop" by Massive Attack. Elizabeth Fraser, of aforementioned Cocteau Twins fame, does vocals on it.  Not that you hear those on the House theme, but it's just a nice tidbit to know for trivia at some point. I think what gets to me the most about this song is the stark piano that shines through in the midst of everything else.  It's a beautiful contrast because so much of the rest of the music is fairly heavily electric in sound.  The piano grounds the piece, as in some odd way, despite his general insanity, House's brilliance grounds the show.

I watch a lot of anime and have discovered over the years that intro songs can either break the story or truly enhance it.  There is even more of a bridge happening with anime.  You're going from your world into whatever weird culture the creator has made for you. One that has always stood out to me was the theme for my favorite anime Record of Lodoss War.  This is the opening for the second series. I love it muchly.

There are days when I'll just play this clip over and over again, falling back into the whole feel of the anime.  I love the part when she turns her head and the petals blow. Perfection. 

As I said, anime themes can either be wonderful or just completely awful and of no relevance whatsoever. Naruto runs the gambit when it comes to themes.  Sometimes they are purely awful. However, one of them stands out in my mind as completely setting the tone for what the show is about.

Naruto switches theme songs with every story arc, often with success, sometimes, without.  The one I love the most is the one below. This was the first theme to the second series.  The storyline had been put on hold while the writer was producing more of the manga. For a long, long time, the cartoon had been filler episodes. Everyone was sick of them. We needed the series to restart in a big way. It did.

Oh yes. Very, very successful.

So tell me, what are some of your favorite opening themes for shows? And why?