About
Why should we care about this seemingly quaint, esoteric genre in which characters burst into song here in our supposedly advanced era? Musicals are often regarded as in effect a historical genre. They are seen as speaking a dead language (pre-rock Broadwayese and Tin Pan Alley) as breaking the narrative of the classical Hollywood-style film, and of being excessively and cutely associated with show business, fairy tale realms, and folklorish Americana. Musicals are these things, and much more. We will look at the evolution of the one genre that didn't exist in silent cinema, and how it affected the development of the Hollywood studio system. We'll sample the works of Busby Berkeley, Astaire, and Rogers, Minnelli, Kelly, and Garland as well as a few of the better Broadway adaptations, as well as a bit of the musical revival that our current decade has had to offer (and that seems to have been successful). We also look at evolutions of the genre in the last three decades, beginning with Cabaret (1972) and extending to mediations on the form like Pennies from Heaven (1981), up to the neo musicals (Moulin Rouge!, Chicago, etc.) of recent times. You'll come away with a head-pulsing understanding that there couldn't be cinema and media as we know them without musicals. It's an essential genre. Students will learn how to talk about and recognize genre in its textual, historical, and cultural aspects. You will learn how to analyze film texts, how to research and think about the evolution of the genre and how to discuss that in a specific film. You will learn how musicals fit into the overall framework of entertainment, film art, and popular culture of the past eighty-some years and how to think critically about them and to analyze and communicate your own responses to the genre.