Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical Music, Masculinity and Mayhem

by Kessler, Kelly

• ISBN13: 9780230230491
• ISBN10: 0230230490
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-11-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

A critical survey of Hollywood film musicals from the 1960s to the present. This book examines how, in the post-studio system era, cultural, industrial and stylistic circumstances transformed this once happy-go-lucky genre into one both fluid and cynical enough to embrace the likes ofRocky Horrorand pave the way forCannibal!andMoulin Rouge!.

Author Biography

Kelly Kessler is Assistant Professor of Media and Cinema Studies in the College of Communication at DePaul University, Chicago, USA. Her work on gender, genre, and sexuality has appeared in publication such as Film Quarterly, Televising Queer Women, American Masculinities, and The New Queer Aesthetic on Television.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction: The Musical and Masculinity Take a Turn for the Ambivalent	p. 1
How did this all happen?-Theoretical, formal, and industrial roots	p. 10
How the arcadias disappeared	p. 23
Nothing Is Comin' Up Roses: The Desertion of Narrative Utopia	p. 27
People won't say we're in love-The dissolution of romance	p. 32
The state of community and a Utopian future	p. 49
Case study: The narrative of Zoot Suit	p. 52
Conclusion	p. 58
On a Clear Day You Can See the Cracks in the Scenery: Visual Reflexivity and Realism Trump Nostalgic Idealism	p. 60
Camerawork and editing: I can see right through you	p. 62
Mise-en-scène: It's the real deal right here in River City-Well maybe	p. 69
Case study: Tommy's conjunction of ambivalent narrative and aesthetics	p. 78
Conclusion	p. 85
Wanna Sing and Dance? These New Guys Are Ambivalent About It	p. 87
New stars: They laughed, cried, and tried to punch each other's lights out	p. 91
Wanna sing: Ah, I'm ambivalent about it	p. 102
Ambivalent dance: We didn't dance all night	p. 112
Case study: Twyla Tharp, rock, no-name stars, and Hair	p. 126
Conclusion	p. 132
The New Guard's Musical Masculinity	p. 133
Performance of masculinity in the arcadian musical	p. 135
Masculine ambivalence is nothing to sing about	p. 139
Conclusion	p. 164
Epilogue: I Could Go On Singing	p. 166
Dancing into the millennium	p. 168
The groovin' eighties and nineties: Teens and tots	p. 169
The millennial upturn	p. 180
Conclusion	p. 201
	p. 204
Notes	p. 217
Bibliography	p. 237
Index	p. 245
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