Abstract
The undercurrents of generic change manifest in the movie musicals’ emergent visual and narrative trends of the late sixties to early eighties were both reflected in and compounded by the genre’s shifting relationship with the roles of performers and performance. Whether due to modifications in the acting pool or changes in narrative focus, a decided shift in performer and performance style occurs during this period that further challenges the more idealistic phase of the genre. Where once the genre had been inextricably linked to energetic song and dance, community-bonding production numbers, and powerful professional and studio groomed musical talent, this new group of films displayed a tendency to eschew the finesse, naturalism, and idealism once inherent in musical performance. Performers and performances constructed a darker view of musical society, an overall conflicted view of the genre, and an embracing of the social struggles circulating in American society during the films’ releases. They ideologically assault early norms and compound diegetic shifts by moving away from the projection of spontaneous performance as indicative of an inner truth, joy, and communal harmony. A combination of intertextual star meaning and shifting norms regarding vocal quality, means of presenting the sung word, dance style and ability, and the context of such performances systematically highlight the connotative significance of song and dance in the musical motion picture.
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Notes
Marsha Siefert discusses the practice of masking vocal dubbing to peacefully blend vocal and visual tracks. As Broadway cast recordings were often big business and those renditions popularly known, the practice of vocal dubbing for film also aided in making the film version aurally closer to the staged version. Marsha Siefert, “Image/Music/Voice: Song Dubbing in Hollywood Musicals,” Journal of Communication 45:2 (1995), 57.
Rick Altman, American Film Musical (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987) 16–24.
Jane Feuer, The Hollywood Musical (London: BFI, 1982) 3–7.
Christine Gledhill, “Signs of Melodrama,” Stardom: Industry of Desire, ed. Christine Gledhill (London: Routledge, 1991) 207–27;
Andrew Britton, “Stars and Genre,” Stardom: Industry of Desire, ed. Christine Gledhill (London: Routledge, 1991) 198–206;
Richard Dyer, Stars (London: BFI Publishing, 1998) 126–32.
Joel Whitburn, Top Pop Albums: 1955–199 (Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research, Inc., 1996) 943–4.
For more on the psychedelic rock scene, see Eight Miles High: Folk Rock’s from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock by Richie Unterberger. Richie Unterberger, Eight Miles High: Folk Rock’s Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock (Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2003).
Feuer, The Hollywood Musical, 10–11; Altman, American Film Musical, 63–7; Steven Cohan, “‘Feminizing’ the Song-and-Dance Man: Fred Astaire and the Spectacle of Masculinity in the Hollywood Musical,” Screening the Male, ed. Steven Cohan and Ena Rae Hark (London and New York: Routledge, 1993) 88–94.
Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres (New York: Random House, 1981) 37–41; Feuer, The Hollywood Musical, 15–16; Patricia Mellencamp, “Spectacle and Spectator: Looking Through the American Musical Comedy,” Cine-Tracts (Summer 1977) 34.
Feuer, The Hollywood Musical, 15–16; Richard Dyer, “Entertainment and Utopia,” Hollywood Musicals: The Film Reader, ed. Steven Cohan (London and New York: Routledge, 2002) 20.
Richard Dyer and John Mueller, “Two Analyses of ‘Dancing in the Dark’ (The Band Wagon, 1953),” The Routledge Dance Studies Reader, ed. Alexandra Carter (New York and London: Routledge, 1998) 289.
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© 2010 Kelly Kessler
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Kessler, K. (2010). Wanna Sing and Dance? These New Guys Are Ambivalent About It. In: Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230290556_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230290556_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-31149-1
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