Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical: Music, Masculinity and Mayhem

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

This page intentionally left blank

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical Music, Masculinity, and Mayhem Kelly Kessler

© Kelly Kessler 2010 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–0–230–23049–1 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kessler, Kelly, 1972– Destabilizing the Hollywood musical : music, masculinity and mayhem / Kelly Kessler. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978–0–230–23049–1 1. Musical films—United States—History and criticism. 2. Masculinity in motion pictures. I. Title. PN1995.9.M86K48 2010 2010027524 791.43 6—dc22 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

To My Dad – The perfect synthesis of Gene Kelly and Clint Eastwood My Mom – His Doris Day And Elizabeth – The tune behind my production number

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

List of Figures

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction: The Musical and Masculinity Take a Turn for the Ambivalent How did this all happen?—Theoretical, formal, and industrial roots How the arcadias disappeared 1 Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses: The Desertion of Narrative Utopia People won’t say we’re in love—The dissolution of romance The state of community and a utopian future Case study: The narrative of Zoot Suit Conclusion 2 On a Clear Day You Can See the Cracks in the Scenery: Visual Reflexivity and Realism Trump Nostalgic Idealism Camerawork and editing: I can see right through you Mise-en-scène: It’s the real deal right here in River City—Well maybe Case study: Tommy’s conjunction of ambivalent narrative and aesthetics Conclusion 3 Wanna Sing and Dance? These New Guys Are Ambivalent About It New stars: They laughed, cried, and tried to punch each other’s lights out Wanna sing: Ah, I’m ambivalent about it Ambivalent dance: We didn’t dance all night Case study: Twyla Tharp, rock, no-name stars, and Hair Conclusion vii

1 10 23

27 32 49 52 58

60 62 69 78 85

87 91 102 112 126 132

viii Contents

4 The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity Performance of masculinity in the arcadian musical Masculine ambivalence is nothing to sing about Conclusion

133 135 139 164

Epilogue: I Could Go On Singing Dancing into the millennium The groovin’ eighties and nineties: Teens and tots The millennial upturn Conclusion

166 168 169 180 201

Appendix A

204

Notes

217

Bibliography

237

Index

245

List of Figures

Cover photo: The Village People’s leather man sports a glamorous version of his traditional duds to do the “Milkshake” with a sexy blonde in Can’t Stop the Music (1980). Directed by Nancy Walker (Associated Film Distribution/Photofest) 1 The Zoot Suit ensemble poses on stage in the final moments of the film as they highlight the overt theatricality of the narrative. (Universal Pictures/Photofest) 2 With its pseudo-set of scaffolding and priests in vaguely Middle Eastern garb and S&M-reminiscent leather gear, Jesus Christ Superstar’s mise-en-scène underscores the constructed nature of narrative and masculinity. Everything is a temporary construction to be torn down by the film’s end. (Universal/Photofest) 3 Evoking the extreme stylization of the film, Tommy emerges from his bizarre “Acid Queen” sadistic steel cocoon with faux stigmata and stylized crown of thorns. (Columbia Pictures/Photofest) 4 Steve Martin’s Dr Maxwell in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band subverts the grace or charisma of Astaire and Kelly and fully embraces the chaotic performance style of the comedian’s own stand-up persona. (Universal Pictures/Photofest) 5 Sweet Charity’s “Rich Man’s Frug” embodies the generic break between arcadian coupled dance and the stilted body positions and estranged relationships projected through the choreography of Bob Fosse. (Universal/Photofest) 6 As Hair opens, Twyla Tharp’s choreography for “Aquarius” creates an amorphous mass of counterculture humanity. (United Artists/Photofest) 7 The Bugsy Malone boys project genre and gender critique as they embody their grownup counterparts in costume and stance while wielding childlike whipped cream weapons. (Paramount/Photofest) ix

54

77

84

98

123

129

154

x

List of Figures

8 The Rocky Horror Picture Show ensemble enjoys an aqua-orgy as Frank-N-Furter convinces Brad, Janet, Columbia, and Rocky that sexual fluidity beats heterosexual monogamy any day. (20th Century-Fox/The Kobal Collection) 9 Like many films of the mid-eighties, Beat Street targets the MTV generation with urban aesthetics, contemporary dance styles, and a story of hard knocks and redemption. (Orion Pictures/Photofest) 10 Julie Taymor uses her trademark hyper-stylization to create a visual/aural estrangement between character, action, music, and voice in the draft board scene from Across the Universe. (Sony Pictures/Photofest)

163

175

189

Acknowledgments

I have always been a slave to the musicals of the stage and screen. I waited with great anticipation for the annual airings of Mary Poppins and The Wizard of Oz on broadcast television in the seventies and eighties. I waited with bated breath for my summer trips to the St Louis MUNY to see the Hudson Brothers in The Wizard of Oz, Joe Namath in Li’l Abner, or Lynn Redgrave in The King and I. I thought my life had been changed forever when I saw the 1989 touring company of Les Misérables. Little did I know that these formative childhood and adolescent moments would structure the basis of my early graduate and professional academic careers. First and foremost, I would like to thank my parents for instilling a love of the musical, a passion for motion pictures, and an obsession with television, and for allowing me the space to enjoy, mock, and critique them all as both guilty pleasures and worthy objects of consideration. Aside from a lifelong love of the musical, this book grew out of questions raised in a feminist film theory independent study with Janet Staiger and ultimately out of my dissertation at the University of Texas at Austin. I would like to give my undying thanks to both Janet Staiger and Thomas Schatz. Janet not only watched far more musicals than she would have likely preferred for a half decade, but she has given me endless guidance, support, and friendship. I could not have completed this project without her. Tom has also given me indispensible help through both his work on genre and his continued advice and support. My further gratitude goes to Mary Kearney and Stacy Wolf for their help and guidance on early incarnations of this project. A passel of others have been of great help in both the formation of my musical passions and the more practical materialization of the book. Gordon and Gail Mueller helped form my early stages of musical appreciation and love of Hollywood history and memorabilia. The King and I commemorative plate they kindly gifted me when I was 18 has watched over this entire writing process. As always, my extended family has given me constant mocking support. My brother Greg culled his library contacts, the yellow pages, the internet, and all other possible sources to aid in uncovering films and citations that eluded me. His xi

xii Acknowledgments

obsessive-compulsive behavior was simultaneously helpful and entertaining. Thank you to Cissy Hubbard for her occasional flair for the synonym and Joseph Flauto for his early role of mentor and his at times indignant support. A number of unexpected folks also helped with the final stages of this project. Professional baseball combined with Sue Medelsohn and Ellen Crowell equaled heartwarming and encouraging musical conversations. As I pushed through a couple decades of (often painful) musicals for the epilogue, my Facebook posse was of great help. Tchad Elliot, Patrick Goss, Dominic Vecchiollo, and the rest of you, your diatribes on bad musicals and the ups and downs of Evita helped a girl survive a long summer of Earth Girls are Easy and Beat Street. Tremendous thanks to Palgrave for their support of this project and specifically my editors Christabel Scaife and Catherine Mitchell. I appreciate their commitment to this project and their encouragement and support through the process. Thanks are also due to various anonymous readers who provided incredibly helpful advice and encouraged me to raise questions that had until then gone under-interrogated. Much appreciation also goes out to the folks at Photofest, Kobal, The Margaret Herrick Library, and the University of Southern California’s Warner Bros. Archive for their graciousness and help in finding or helping me find photos, publicity materials, and production documentation. I would also like to give a warm thanks to my colleagues at DePaul University for their support and encouragement and the University for generously granting me funds to cover my image fees. I would be highly remiss if I were not to give much deserved shoutouts to my girls who helped me survive the overall process. Sharon Ross, thanks for the support, the margaritas, and the compassionate ear. Amanda Lotz, I am exceedingly grateful for your emotional support and incredibly helpful advice on a subject you did not even want to know about. Caroline Frick, thank you for being one of the only people who actually cared that musicals existed and knew why they were funny (and for rambling endlessly with me about them). Susan McLeland, I feel strongly that I cannot repay you enough for your support as a friend and reader. I cannot express how much your fresh eye and enthusiasm for the project helped me make it through the final revisions. I will always owe you margaritas. Last but certainly not least, I need to thank Elizabeth Flauto. She has supported me through this project for nearly a decade. She has edited umpteen versions (and was graciously granted jewelry for many of them). One cannot overestimate the love and devotion it takes for one to sit through endless screenings of Lost Horizon—a film that makes

Acknowledgments

xiii

her “want to throw up”—and Xanadu. I cannot imagine another person who would have survived the singing, the dancing, the editing, and the kvetching. I am fully aware that I do not sound like Shirley Jones or dance like Gene Kelly. She has truly seen this project from beginning to end and it and I are better for her presence. She is my Doris Day, Jane Powell, Shirley MacLaine, Gwen Verdon, and Ginger Rogers rolled into one.

This page intentionally left blank

Introduction: The Musical and Masculinity Take a Turn for the Ambivalent

“This is a happy, hand-clapping, foot stomping, country type of musical with all the slickness of a Broadway show. It offers songs, dances and romancing in such a delightful package that word-of-mouth could talk it into solid business at the box-office.”1 In its review of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), Variety goes straight to the heart of a popular form of the Hollywood musical genre in the era of the studio system. From the coming of sound well into the 1950s, the Hollywood movie musical often served a dual role: profiting for the studios and reaffirming traditional American values. While often one of the pricier genres to produce—with yards upon yards of bespangled costumes, grand sets, and herds of hoofers—the musical also established itself as a financial winner and public favorite. Contract stars such as Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, and Deanna Durbin crooned, belted, and danced their ways into the hearts of America as they saved their towns and clanged their trolleys. All was well in St Louis, Paris, and O-K-L-A-HO-M-A as guys found their gals and warring groups of singing farmers and cowmen, Americans and Russians, and soldiers and civilians found a cause around which to gather. As social and industrial climates changed, however, so would the face, place, and style of the musical genre. With the changing shape of the studio system in the 1950s, star contracts disappeared, budgets dropped, and the musical waned as the go-to-gal for the studios. In 1965, the film version of The Sound of Music burst onto the scene as Maria united nuns, surly captains, problematic children, and antiNazi Germany. With a similar idealistic flair as many earlier musicals, the film became a national phenomenon and financial windfall for 20th Century-Fox. With fingers crossed, fans and studio heads hoped that this would be the resurrection of the musical everyone knew, loved, 1

2

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

and paid top dollar to see. Much to the dismay of 20th Century-Fox— who followed The Sound of Music’s success with big-budget musical bombs Doctor Dolittle (1967) and Hello, Dolly! (1969)—Julie Andrews’s descent from the Austrian Alps could not repair the damage caused by the restructuring of the film studios, an emergent influence of the French New Wave and American avant-gardes, and a mélange of racial, sexual, and political unrests. Although a number of musicals would follow the success of The Sound of Music, many would ultimately deviate from the genre’s earlier dominant form that touted social stability through a haze of idealistic Americana and hetero courting. Instead, a form more reflective of contemporary conflict, sexual and gendered tastes, cinematic norms, and musical styles reigned, temporarily replacing the solid Howard Keel with performers more in line with The Who’s trippy Keith Moon (Tommy [1975]), the suave Fred Astaire with crooning tough guys like Clint Eastwood (Paint Your Wagon [1969]) and Burt Reynolds (At Long Last Love [1975], The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas [1982]), and the athletically graceful Gene Kelly with a frenzied Steve Martin (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band [1978], Pennies from Heaven [1981]). Surely the early days of the musical had seen their share of dark and troubling narratives, although such stories often either appeared in non-integrated backstagers (The Country Girl [1954], A Star is Born [1954], Applause [1929]) or solved their community problems by the story’s end (Hallelujah [1929], Carousel [1956], Cabin in the Sky [1943]). Regardless of such exceptions, happy-go-lucky, love-centric stories dominated and came to define the integrated version of the genre helmed by artists such as Garland, Kelly, Astaire, and Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. As times changed, however, so did the form once destined to reinforce social norms and present a musical utopia for all. Through stars, styles, and stories, men and their problematic narratives of infidelity, psychological struggle, and career pressure became the prevailing face of integrated musical fare from the mid-sixties to the early eighties. This conflicted masculinized version often replaced or at least problematized the woman-centered world of familial stability, romance, and monogamy common to the pre-sixties version of the movie musical. While Hollywood still churned out the occasional Half a Sixpence (1967), Song of Norway (1970), and Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) reflecting the generic norms of an earlier filmic, theatrical, and ideological age, films such as Tommy, At Long Last Love, All That Jazz (1979), and Pennies from Heaven—in whole or part—cemented an edgier version of the integrated musical form, rife with irresolvable social conflict, visual and aural innovation, and a challenge to the overall stability

The Musical and Masculinity Take a Turn 3

of gender and sexual expectations. At times these films provide an overall generic overhaul rife with sex, drugs, and social unrest; and at others they simply inflect largely old-school narratives with stylistic or ideological flairs that complicate a perhaps assumed “happily ever after” (like happy endings complicated by Popeye’s [1980] stylistic frenzy, The Pirate Movie’s [1982] knowing intertextuality, or Bugsy Malone’s [1976] critique of the gangster genre). At least one reviewer felt the shift occurring as The New Yorker framed Tommy as something very un-Seven Brides and “deeply unmusical.” Highlighting far less “happy, hand-clapping” and “foot stomping,” the reviewer described the entire viewing experience as assaultive as he suggested tactics for surviving the screening. “The only way to stick it is to sit up—right in the non-pot-smoking section— not leaning back, because the quintaphonic speaker system would burst your eardrums from behind as the sound comes out of the back exits, and not sitting forward, because the picture bangs images at your nose like a four-year-old jumping out at you from behind a curtain. Tommy is a peekaboo for thugs.”2 The idealism commonly evoked by the musicals of the studio system era had left the building. Beginning with musicals produced in 1966 and following through to 1983—the years between the genre’s cinematic “rebirth” with The Sound of Music and the final year to see more than one integrated musical before an extended drought—this book investigates the generic form and content common to the genre in this oft-overlooked period of the Hollywood musical and examines the films’ relationships to each other, their predecessors, and a greater projection of social and gendered reality.3 Although early examples of the film musical include occasional instances of romantic, racial, or cultural instability (Melody Cruise [1933], Way Down South [1939], and so on), folks such as Astaire, Kelly, and Russ Tamblyn repeatedly hoofed and flipped their ways into a more stable view of America and marital bliss as narratives washed over such problems with their happy-go-lucky endings. A close look at the 1966– 1983 integrated musicals illustrates a wide scale shift in generic form, a recurrent reflection of social unrest, and an overall expression of a conflicted sense of community, personal and professional expectations, and construction of gender. Although musical vehicles did not wholly abandon the more idyllic form of the thirties, forties, and fifties, these later films more often articulated the troubled ideology common to motion pictures of other genres by the late 1960s. As Vietnam, Watergate, and the Women’s, Civil, and Gay Rights Movements marched forward, the idealism once strongly linked to a surging postwar America and the musical genre waned. Many musicals of the late 1960s to early 1980s

4

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

bear the battle scars of the social and artistic struggles alongside which they emerged. They provide an excellent lens though which to examine the ultimate instability of genre and study how social change both drives and finds itself represented in the shifting product. Despite similar changes occurring on the Broadway and off-Broadway stages at the same time—as shows such as Hair (1968), Oh, Calcutta (1969), Godspell (1971), and Jesus Christ Superstar (1971) rocked the theatrical boat with their sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll—this book will focus solely on the shifts occurring on the big screen. Since the reciprocal relationship between stage and screen musicals has always been paramount, the book will credit the contributions of the theatrical world. Just over half of the integrated musicals produced during the 1966–1983 period were first produced on or off-Broadway; however, the bulk of the study’s focus will remain on the films themselves. Despite the sharing of narratives and generic tropes with their stage-bound cousins, the filmic musicals remain unique. The generic norms expressed through the cinematic medium transcend the stories and songs provided by Broadway counterparts. Camelot (1960) on stage and Camelot (1967) on screen—with its later release, non-singing stars, mod costuming, and minimalization of actual singing and dancing—are simply two different animals. Films such as Paint Your Wagon and The Boy Friend (1971) experienced major changes between stage and screen, not only in style but also in narrative; similarly, Hal Prince’s highly successful Broadway production of Cabaret (1966) was stripped of all integrated numbers for its Bob Fosse-helmed film version (1972). Despite their theatrical origins, films such as these ultimately became uniquely cinematic products. I therefore will not differentiate between musicals made specifically for the screen (such as All That Jazz, At Long Last Love, One From the Heart [1982]) and those first performed on stage (like Hair [1979], The Wiz [1978], and Godspell [1973]). Cinematic visuals, unique integration of sound/song and image, and the specific position of the motion picture industry as star factory weigh equally on both original film musicals and Broadway transfers, and both types speak equally to the genre revision occurring between the mid-sixties and early-eighties. In the end, these cinematic specificities drive this study. Alongside changes occurring in visual, narrative, and musical form within this cinematic version of the genre, a resultant shift in gendered norms emerges. Garland, Durbin, Jane Powell, and Esther Williams, as well as stage divas such as Mary Martin and Ethel Merman had stood at the center of many musicals.4 As the musical genre often spotlighted the primacy of successful hetero romance, women and their domestic

The Musical and Masculinity Take a Turn 5

realm commonly took center stage. Her ability to snare her prospective beau repeatedly led to the successful (and over-determined) resolution of the narrative. Seven brides found their seven brothers. Fred and Ginger negotiated their differences through dance. On leave soldiers found their sweeties in On the Town (1949). As the genre recurrently reinforced the necessity of coupling, the films themselves commonly produced strong marriage-driven women and men who would ultimately buckle under the need for companionship. Both Thomas Schatz and Rick Altman focus on such romantic unions, identifying them as the bedrock of the musical structure.5 They argue that whether the story’s frame engages with gangsters, cowboys, socialites, or businessmen, chances are the romantic hero will find his heroine and the two will live happily ever after. Narrative conflicts seldom reach a degree of complexity which cannot be overcome by the love of a good woman and a dazzling final number. Wholesome entertainment and entertainers can save family and country, aid in finding true love, and make performers out of diegetic—and by proxy nondiegetic—audience members. Similar to Schatz and Altman, Richard Dyer’s “Entertainment as Utopia” positions the film musical as projecting a utopian sensibility powerful enough to overcome any internal incoherence though a combination of idyllic narrative tropes, visuals, sounds, and singers.6 Their concepts regarding the musical and romance underscore the more idyllic view of the musical and its resultant projection of gendered norms that this study argues began to wane by the mid-1960s. As the dominant form of the genre changed in the 1966–1983 period—as a result of social, artistic, and industrial shifts—narrative, aesthetic, and performative changes within the genre led to transformations in the overall gender dynamic within the Hollywood musical. The new troubled musical masculinity takes to the screen and complicates established generic norms of companionate marriage and a blended community. Although Steven Cohan argues that musical masculinity was always complicated through his examination of queerness and camp performance within the MGM musical, I would argue that these later films take what Cohan saw as performative underpinnings or gender incongruities (such as the performed masculinity of Kelly in The Pirate [1948] or Anchors Aweigh [1945] or the connotative queerness of chorus boys in Ziegfeld Girl [1941]) and place them on the surface text for overt consideration. Despite Kelly’s perceived camp nature or moments of queerness, his characters—as Cohan notes—were always on the prowl for a dame.7 At the end of the day such performances still diegetically reinforced the heterosexual and romantic dictates that drove the genre. That strong association with the celebration

6

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

of heterosexual (monogamous) romance and successful male providers wanes in this later period as many of the films illustrate an overt and contrary pattern of unsatisfactory resolutions including unrequited love (Sweet Charity [1969], At Long Last Love, Funny Girl [1968]), failed male professional ventures (Camelot, Pennies from Heaven), and death of central male characters (Godspell, Hair, The Rocky Horror Picture Show [1975], All That Jazz).8 Using Judith Butler’s concept of performativity—in which gender can only truly articulate itself through repeated performances of a set of norms that become read as “masculine” or “feminine”—this book ultimately considers the destabilization of both the musical genre and a stable notion of masculinity in the musicals of the 1966–1983 period through an examination of emerging generic dictates.9 In negotiation of the recurrent problem of defining a generic corpus, my study of the 1966–1983 period focuses solely on integrated musicals. As with the definition of the musical genre itself, scholars have discussed the concept of integration by focusing on various textual, extratextual, and otherwise stylistic elements. John Mueller and Jerome Delamater discuss integration in a broad sense. Mueller considers the mere inclusion of musical numbers—ranging from show numbers and love duets to dream ballets and dramatically sung soliloquies—as integration, and Delamater considers integration as the pinnacle of the musical’s evolution though a discussion of the joint impact of narrativeforwarding song and nondiegetic stylistic elements such as dance style and cinematography.10 He states: The nature of the film musical lies not simply with the idea that the musical numbers and dances, in particular, should advance the plot but also suggests an integration of the entire cinematic process. The way in which dances in a particular film are photographed, for example, suggests a kind of integration of the filmmaking process and that together they contribute to the integrity of the film.11 Less sweeping in its definition, this book will examine integration in a more specific sense than Mueller, but a less qualitative or hierarchical sense than Delamater. I will be examining the subset of the musical genre that encompasses only films that include characters spontaneously bursting into song. These major and minor characters sing to celebrate, lament, and express inner desires or communal bonding.12 Popularized by the works of Jerome Kern, Rodgers and Hammerstein, and ultimately MGM’s Freed Unit, the more fully integrated musicals artistically, stylistically, and

The Musical and Masculinity Take a Turn 7

textually tie together the musical’s storytelling and its inclusion and incorporation of music. More than merely slotting in a popular Cole Porter tune or new numbers from Tin Pan Alley to show off the vocal or choreographic prowess of the musicals’ performers, Altman cites the integrated musical as being a “product of numerous attempts to develop closer ties between narrative and musical numbers.”13 Music becomes inextricably linked to the narratives, functioning as a mode of character and plot development. Rodgers and Hammerstein, for example, not only use their musical numbers to express the feelings and frustrations of their heroes and heroines, but also to illustrate stylistic specificity that identifies and explores those characters (for example, the traditional Chinese sounds in Mei Li’s numbers in Flower Drum Song [1961] versus the jazzier riffs performed by the more Americanized night club performers/owners, or Nellie’s bubbly numbers in South Pacific [1958] versus Emile’s more somber stylings). Altman identifies this trend in his work on the dual-focus narratives of musicals, citing integrated character-specific performance—rather than traditional causal relations—as driving or defining the film’s direction. His example of Gigi (1958) examines the juxtaposed solos, scenes, and styles of Gaston and Gigi and the ultimate musical and relational integration that emerges though their romantic union.14 In addition to illuminating story and character, the process of integration pulls the musical further away from the artifice of “performance.” As the Music Man’s (1962) library spontaneously becomes the locale for a romantic musical conflict between Marian the librarian and Professor Harold Hill, the world of River City, Iowa becomes a musical one. Characters naturalize performances by using their surroundings— ladders, books, shelves—as part of their performances. Jane Feuer points to the use of bricolage, non-choreography (dance based on more natural movement), and folk dance as minimizing the artifice of musical performances and drawing the viewing audience into the recognizable world of the film rather than the mythic world of professional performers.15 More than other forms of the genre, the integrated variety uses musical performance to help create an altered reality in which musical self-expression supersedes everyday means of communication. Duets, solos, communal dances, and individual hoofing convey the thoughts, feelings, and conflicts of those who live within the integrated musical. Focusing solely on this style of the genre prevents confusion caused by a messier discussion of which films fall into the category of “musical.” Surely, by omitting films that fall outside the scope of integration I also eliminate various musical films commonly identified with the

8

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

performers, styles, and directors of the time (most notably Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York [1977] and Liza Minnelli in Cabaret). However, by focusing solely on integration and not the personally fraught biopic (The Buddy Holly Story [1978], The Coal Miner’s Daughter [1980]), at times culturally or interpersonally disquieting entertainer narrative (Cabaret, A Star is Born [1976], New York, New York, Nashville [1975]), dance movie (Saturday Night Fever [1977], The Turning Point [1977]), concert documentary (Woodstock [1970], Gimme Shelter [1970]), or songfilled cartoon (Jungle Book [1967], Fox and the Hound [1981]), I am able to focus in on what makes these quintessential musicals specific to this period of American culture, Hollywood, cinematic expression, and my critical goals at hand. With this, the sole focus on integrated musicals also complicates notions of personal performance as men specifically must negotiate projections of gender in competition with social conceptions connecting performance of song and dance with a suspect masculinity.16 (Do real men sing and dance? Does the term chorus boy conjure up images of rugged strength and virility?) In the biopic or entertainer musical, men perform to make a living. In The Buddy Holly Story and Cabaret, Holly and the Master of Ceremonies must perform for their livelihoods. The spontaneous appearance of song and dance in integrated musicals denies such a constant realistic motivation for allying male performance with acceptable cultural norms (active, gainful employment).17 Instead, Camelot’s King Arthur and Lost Horizon’s (1973) male ensemble must sing and dance to express complex emotions to themselves and others—a trait more inherently associated with sentiment-driven femininity rather than traditional rationality-driven masculinity. My approach to genre study is surely rooted in the more classical studies of Schatz, Dyer, Altman, and Feuer; however, my take on the genre resists conceptualizing the musical as either (a) a staid form or (b) one saddled by a predetermined evolutionary path. The musical— in this case the integrated musical—did not spring forth fully formed with a predictive style of generic evolution. While this study does not focus on either audience response or the industrial positioning of the musical genre, it does examine the ways in which elements external to the texts themselves—texts which have always been somewhat variant but I argue shifted in terms of dominant form from period to period— left their marks on the products produced during specific time periods. Whether reflective of cultural movements, artistic trends, or industrial shifts, the dominant form musicals took in the period 1966–1983 surely illustrates a change from those commonly associated with

The Musical and Masculinity Take a Turn 9

an earlier stage of the genre. As Altman has argued in response to much genre theory—admittedly much of the musical scholarship that I use here, including his own—genre is never wholly coherent, universally received, or industrially stable.18 Rather, genres and genre films will be interpreted divergently based on context (time, audience, studio need). Rather than entrenching the musical in an ahistorical cocoon, this study brings historical context to the genre as it uncovers or activates a significant faction of the Hollywood musical that has historically been erased or marginalized through a veil of classical musical and Hollywood scholarship. As I highlight the historical shifts that have taken place within the musical, I will use the adjectives arcadian and ambivalent to identify the broad characteristics associated with the two divergent styles—the former more prevalent in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s and the latter becoming dominant in the mid to late 1960s. These labels came out of a struggle to avoid strict periodization—for example classical versus post-classical, studio system versus post-studio system, or early versus late. Characteristics attributed to the arcadian musical do not wholly disappear in 1966; rather another popular version of the genre emerges alongside the traditional as social, industrial, as stylistic shifts usher in a broadening contemplation of the genre and its traditionally conservative mores. Similarly, the dark and socially contentious qualities this book will identify in the ambivalent version of the musical popular in the 1966–1983 period did not emerge as if from nowhere. Many backstagers, as well as early integrated films had presented extremely dark storylines of family estrangement, murder, and manipulation (although often only to resolve such problems by the film’s end). Aside from discouraging categorization based strictly on chronology, I also hoped to circumvent the use of a confusing jargon such as “new wave” musical, which simultaneously conjures up images of Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960) and eighties bands such as Flock of Seagulls and Duran Duran. Instead, I chose terms that evoke the spirit of the overriding themes, styles, and aesthetics related to the two musical forms. Arcadian refers to the version of the musical genre most commonly implied by critics and outlined by scholars such as Feuer, Schatz, Dyer, and Altman. They identify this form of the genre—most common in the earlier years of the movie musical—as one whose films strive toward ideological stasis and communal unification—whether through clear-cut resolutions, heterosexual unions, unifying song and dance, or idealistic mise-en-scène. It projects an idealistic view of a pre- and postwar culture scrambling to maintain a homogenous, traditional, and perfectly gendered society.

10

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

Ambivalent, however, evokes the complexity and uncertainty of both the genre and times. This form holds dominance in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s as the visual and social utopia of the arcadian wanes in light of a more complicated and contentious view of society. A sense of uncertainty arises in the musical, projected through a combination of narratives, visuals, performances, and performers and reflecting its contextualization amid various forms of industrial and social unrest. Rising divorce rates, Vietnam, gay rights, the new Motion Picture Association of America’s (MPAA) rating system, splintering studios, changes in marketing, the French New Wave, and New American Cinema render the splashy arcadian musical both socially anachronistic and industrially outdated and ill-advised. Idealistic musicals give way to inconclusive narratives, ideologically complex and inconclusively driven characters, unclear notions of morality and social norms, and variations of realistic mise-en-scène. Films reflect both a disdain for earlier generic idealism— now appearing socially incompatible—and a formal and ideological freedom associated with growing trends within the industry. Throughout, the examination of this more recent contentious form of the genre will highlight the tension between established generic norms, industrial freedom, and a historical context rife with social upheaval and uncertainty.

How did this all happen?—Theoretical, formal, and industrial roots My approach to genre grows out of the concept that generic forms serve as more than simple molds into which filmmakers can place their stories in hopes of replicating earlier successes. Rather, genre serves as a mutual contract between the filmmakers, spectators, and the society at large. Schatz argues that these forms must continue to speak to the social mores and conflicts that they seek to represent and diegetically solve. Through repeated (and to some extent popularly successful) articulations of themes, visuals, characters, and communities, genre forms emerge. Characters, stories, and places become imbued with the meanings and ideologies associated with previous films of that genre. Once the form fails to speak to a contemporary society, it becomes useless.19 Whether wholly reflective of actual audience reception, the forms the musical takes surely reflect—through its darkening plots, dance styles, and singing techniques—a shift, and one that does directly speak to cultural, industrial, and artistic changes at large. Focusing largely on the earlier films of the studio system age and

The Musical and Masculinity Take a Turn 11

later-produced replicas, scholarship and popular press coverage alike have often eschewed the moral and formal complexity recurrent in the musical. Instead, the mere mention of the Hollywood musical often invokes the memory of Maria and Captain Von Trapp ascending the Alps to an all-nun voiceover choir of the uplifting “Climb Every Mountain” or a rousing performance of that pro-entertainer tune “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” This notion of a rather stable generic sense of musical idealism drives much musical scholarship. Altman, Schatz, and Dyer identify a utopian sensibility and/or the romantic couple as the device which drives the genre’s storytelling and leads to this rather simple and consistent narrative resolution. Before the film starts, the audience knows this romantic duo will unite successfully. Schatz places the musical under the category of “social integration,” identifying it as a genre in which narratives repeatedly raise issues regarding conflicting moral beliefs and end with some kind of celebration or communal display of social values. With a grand wedding or celebration, narrative conclusions leave the viewer perceiving Dyer’s utopian sensibility or experiencing a temporary feeling that overwhelming social quandaries can be solved acceptably.20 Dyer argues that through a language of music and dance, the arcadian musical presents “complex or unpleasant feelings (e.g., involvement in personal or political events; jealousy, loss of love, defeat) in a way that makes them seem uncomplicated, direct and vivid, not ‘qualified’ or ‘ambiguous’ as day to day life makes them.”21 In bestowing an artificial feeling of satisfaction through unrealistically simple solutions to daily life, the films present a false sense of security in the created utopia. By constructing two conflicting ideals as unquestionably congruous, this logic suggests a utopian sensibility can be established and all problems will appear surmountable. A genre built on this type of ideological duplicity and internal incoherence must negotiate its narrative contradictions or tensions, often through its opposing lovers.22 Feuer and Altman highlight the overall generic importance of binaries such as work/entertainment, communal/individual, and amateur/entertainer to legitimize the larger projects of social integration and show biz glorification. A conflation of these binaries often leads to the idealization of performer and performance. The music and the people function as saviors within the genre. Altman states, “From film to film the specific incarnation of the work/entertainment duality may change, but in one way or another every musical somehow manages to build its thematic complex around its very status as a form of entertainment.”23 Similarly, Feuer

12

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

highlights the interpellation of the audience through the resolved tensions between community and individual and amateur and professional. As the romance is secured, community and amateurishness come to the forefront and are deemed ideal. The audience can be successfully integrated into the world of the narrative, as its subject position therein is deemed necessary. To resolve the tension between the romantic couple, the characters must be fully integrated into a community compatible with its divergent needs.24 Dyer finds such negotiations a product of the film’s representational (plot, characters, stars) and nonrepresentational (such as color, texture, movement, rhythm, and camerawork) signs.25 This combination of elements allows a film to remain “entertaining” even when possessing plot points not wholly leading to or rationalizing happy-go-lucky closure. In such cases, the utopian nonrepresentational elements compensate for the problematic representational signs and project a tenuous sense of utopia. (For example, the forced and quickly resolved final marriages in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes [1953] may not make sense, based on narrative action or character traits, but they sure look swell.) As the later more ambivalent-leaning films present an increasing number of plots that fail to resolve themselves and incorporate more realistic settings and harsher rock-driven musical beats, this argument that the musical can generally negotiate its representational and non-representational contradictions comes into question. This critically and academically dominant form of musical idealism has deep historical roots formed and strengthened by social, theatrical, industrial, and cinematic events. A combination of theatrical formats— such as comic and ballad operas, operettas, and musical plays—and regulations placed on American cinema by the Production Code Administration (PCA) set the scene for what critics and scholars would ultimately define as the musical genre or those integrated musicals with strong arcadian tendencies. Establishing norms for musical performance, romance, and community, these theatrical and cinematic forms combined and negotiated social and industrial shifts to culminate in an image of nostalgic musical integration and standardized notions of setting, plot and characters, music, and community. The arcadian use of popular music and smooth transition into and psychological motivation for song evolved from early musical forms. The ballad opera and operetta set the standard for the integrated musical’s combination of spoken dialogue and popular music, just as the subsequent rise of the Broadway narrative-focused musical— specifically the early works of Kern (Show Boat [1927]) and Rodgers

The Musical and Masculinity Take a Turn 13

and Hammerstein (Oklahoma! [1943], Carousel [1945], Flower Drum Song [1958])—popularized a financially lucrative musical play in which music and dialogue could be easily integrated. Kern and Rodgers and Hammerstein would standardize the inclusion of musical arrangements tailored to characters’ specific psychological states. Julie painfully recalls her undying love for a charlatan in Show Boat’s “Bill” while The King and I’s (1951) King of Siam soliloquizes his frustrations over a general state of uncertainty in the world in “A Puzzlement.” These shows would also normalize techniques used to ease the transition from spoken voice into song, such as the sound of a horse’s hooves in Oklahoma! (1955) or the use of a transitional stage device (recitative) where spoken dialogue is performed with a melodic variation as to ease into full singing voice (as with Maria’s ruminations on raindrops and kittens prior to her full-blown singing of “My Favorite Things” in The Sound of Music). Early musical ventures in European and American operettas set the scene for film musicals by popularizing settings based on nostalgia and artifice. Composers such as Rudolf Friml, Kern, and George and Ira Gershwin often relied on “exotic lands” or nostalgic versions of the frontier or urban America to create an air of the unusual or ideal. Rather than striving for a sense of the local real, these vehicles relied on broad strokes that connoted a sense of unusual place. Similarly, American composers like George M. Cohan constructed an idealized notion of America, evoking a sense of nationalism with songs such as “Yankee Doodle Boy” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” This practice of idealizing space in the musical translated into the popular Rodgers and Hammerstein vehicles that found prominence both on stage and screen. The team—who retained tight controls over their projects as they transferred from live to filmed performance—strengthened the visual association to this type of artificiality or idealization of setting. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s films avoided fully integrating location shooting until The Sound of Music, and consequently reinforced the notion of an arcadian land separate from the problems of actual society.26 Both regulation and cultural change would nudge the film musical further toward an arcadian view of society and heterosexual romance. As with its sense of place, the genre’s foundation of romance as the basis for conflict originates in the first operettas whose major premises involved the romantic entanglements of their heroes, heroines, and villains.27 In the early years, Warner Bros. specialized in bawdy broads on the lookout for sex, dough, and fame. Just as 42nd Street (1933) depicts men sneaking out of woman-only rooms and implies the perks of the casting couch, Gold Diggers includes straight-talking dames and

14

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

moments of sexual titillation through performance. Busby Berkeley’s Gold Diggers of 1933’s (1933) “Pettin’ in the Park” aptly illustrates early displays of sexuality that would later be verboten. The song’s chorus decries the joys and perils of public displays of affection as a stage full of men try to get the best of their sweeties. More forward than almost any respectable Rodgers and Hammerstein heroine, these ladies are plagued by a recurring randy baby (actor Billy Barty dressed in infant garb) and ultimately cast in silhouettes that imply the entire bevy of chorines are in their scanties or stark naked. The bawdiness associated with these early nonintegrated backstagers would ultimately dissipate under pressure from the PCA, and film musicals shifted away from lascivious plotlines to narratives that reinforced coupling through musical integration and the normalcy and necessity of companionate love. 42nd Street’s Anytime Annie—who only said no once and then she didn’t hear the question—finds herself replaced by Oklahoma!’s Ado Annie who, although she “Can’t Say No,” is allowed to marry her true love, rather than suffer public mocking as a loose woman. Along with a secure heterosexual union and proper sexual behavior, a sense of shared values emerged as standard throughout the genre. Schatz, Feuer, Dyer, and Altman all identify the musical as approaching utopian possibilities or reinforcing communal middle-class values. Nonintegrated or negligibly integrated backstage musicals often emphasized the importance of the group (42nd Street, Gold Diggers cycle), as did the “let’s put on a show” films (Babes on Broadway [1941], One Hundred Men and a Girl [1937]). In both styles, music and performance exist as the means to successfully bring together a community in strife. During both the Depression and World War II, musicals often played the role of unifier, reinforcing or imagining a cultural desire to bring the American people together for some sort of healing. George F. Custen discusses Darryl Zanuck and the 20th Century-Fox musicals between the wars—films often set in nostalgic versions of the Midwest or Northeast— as the great unifiers, while simultaneously highlighting their ability to erase or evade cultural conflict. He states, “Most Fox musical entertainment was a struggle to reconcile what Shirley’s [Temple] narratives almost always united: the values associated with urban, ethnic vaudeville and modernity and those extolled in a pre-Tin Pan Alley, allwhite Protestant musical universe found most often in the rural small town.” Temple could unite a country split by ideology and economic depression by creating unity through narratives that avoided topics of irresolvable controversy.28 Similarly, Garland, Mickey Rooney, and Durbin brought the community and their families together. Backstage

The Musical and Masculinity Take a Turn 15

the hoofers joined forces to save the show. Star-studded reviews such as Columbia’s Stars on Parade (1944) or Warner Bros.’s This is the Army (1943) sought to raise morale for the troops and reinforce the stickto-itiveness of the country. As the war ended and the genre further solidified its style with the more fully integrated works of MGM’s Freed Unit and the spate of successful Broadway musical transfers, the postwar culture at large sought to reinforce community values, proper gender norms for men and women, and the strength of the American middle-class. While adhering to theatrical norms and the film industry’s somewhat puritanical ideological project, the musical genre eschewed various narrative and aesthetic standards of the cinematic medium. Classical Hollywood cinema as described by David Bordwell, Kristin Thompson, and Janet Staiger typically possesses logical cause and effect-driven linear narratives pushed forward by individuals with personal agency; this compositional dominance is supported by self-effacing camerawork, overt motivation for actions, and a clear-cut conclusion. In short, the form plays itself out making evident the events and individuals who cause diegetic change and ultimately lead to a resolution of the narrative conflict, while encased in a standardized—though continually evolving—set of narrational norms that hide, rather than announce, the means by which they were created. Continuity editing— shot-reverse-shots, eye line matches, maintaining axis orientation—as well as effective presentation of onscreen and implication of off-screen space work to present a diegetic world as a seemingly real one. Cinematographic choices, visual and aural editing, framing, and choices in mise-en-scène function together to mask the mechanics of the filmmaking process.29 The integrated arcadian Hollywood musical deviates from the norms commonly associated with classical Hollywood form and style. The genre’s over-determined narratives and the style of musical inclusion as popularized by its archetypal forms make adherence to traditional cinematic norms difficult and ultimately unnecessary. Music and budding romance take precedence over the actual development of the film’s story—the details of which appear nearly irrelevant due to the foregone generic narrative conclusion. (Grease’s [1978] thuggish Danny will make amends with his virginal Sandy; Silk Stockings’ [1957] cold Russian comrade will fall for the charmingly American Astaire; and Gigi’s title character will find love with the seemingly antagonistic Gaston.)30 Music cures all ills, whether through a Powell ballad or an Astaire and Rogers waltz. Couples, individuals, and communities use song and dance as their means to enact and solve conflict and project a

16

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

united front. Damn Yankees’ (1958) “Whatever Lola Wants” and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ “Spring, Spring, Spring” work through and project sexual tension and conflict musically, rather than in a seamless narrative fashion. Group numbers and the celebratory/curative function of music unite communities in The Music Man’s “Wells Fargo Wagon” or The Unsinkable Molly Brown’s (1964) “He’s My Friend.” In addition to its narrative role, the very means by which music functions in the integrated musical works against the dictates of classical Hollywood cinema. Characters randomly burst into song, breaking any semblance of linkage with the “real” and believable world. Kelly and Garland turn full front, breaking the fourth wall, to speak directly to the audience member—reversing the masking of artifice accomplished by any self-effacing visual style. The narrative ultimately performs the union of the romantic couple, by means of a burst of visual excess—the production number—rather than as a result of a satisfactory alleviation of narrative conflict. The climax often occurs as song, dance, and grandiose visual displays coalesce to create an extravagant sensual exhibition. With a final burst of energy, panache, and singin’ and dancin’ such production numbers celebrate communal values and heterosexual romance and belie the traditional closed narrative system common in Hollywood filmmaking. Questions are—perhaps superficially—answered, although not fully explained. (The wedding may have occurred, but the audience will not hang around to see if the marriage falls apart.)31 Within Hollywood’s environment of innovation and repetition, the aforementioned conventions and standardized formats emerged to associate the musical with such arcadian tendencies. Transferring some productions largely lock, stock, and barrel from Broadway successes, responding to social change and threats of regulation, and adjusting to the abilities and limitations of contemporary cinematic technology, a lucrative and popular form of the film musical surfaced. By the 1960s, however, the film musical had all but played itself out. Scholars have hypothesized about several possible reasons as to why the film industry could no longer support the genre. Firstly, by the end of the 1950s the motion picture industry had exhausted Broadway’s smash hits.32 At this point, Broadway transfers garnered the most confidence from film producers seeking financial success. Although New York was still churning out musical successes, the number of new shows had declined as the revenues for the stage suffered a postwar decline. Secondly, scholars such as Gerald Mast point to the aging of the Broadway musical in the 1950s. No longer focusing on contemporary music or dances as the Gershwins,

The Musical and Masculinity Take a Turn 17

Cole Porter, and Irving Berlin had previously, new musicals such as The King and I, Kismet (1953), Candide (1957), and The Music Man (1958) kept their distances from the emerging sounds of rock-n-roll and popular country and the non-partnered dances that accompanied those musical styles and may have enticed young audiences. Rock-n-roll did appear on the Broadway stage as early as 1960 with the harmless Elvis spoof Bye, Bye, Birdie (that would be remade into a film with teen idol Bobby Rydell in 1963), but not until the late sixties did musical plays such as Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar use rock-n-roll to evoke rebellion and contemporary social mores. (Rock was used in film musicals prior to the late 1960s, but often a more sanitized version thereof: Elvis films that softened his lascivious image, the fluffy Beach Party cycle, and the like.) As the genre aged and avoided these emerging musical forms, the success of the Broadway pop single also waned. Consequently, the sound and audience aged with the genre.33 Thirdly, by 1948 the government had declared the five major studios—Paramount, MGM, 20th Century-Fox, Warner Bros., and RKO—participants in an oligopoly and forced them to divest of their exhibition wings within the next five years and immediately cease practices such as block booking and blind buying.34 This industrial shift—as well as wartime income tax hikes that had encouraged stars to go freelance or incorporate—affected both the availability and grooming of stars for the musical genre. Following the transformation of the studio system, the genre suffered in terms of number and consistent aesthetic. Also, post-disintegration, studios began to farm out production of films and/or their resources. No longer did films bear a definitive studio stamp, as the uniformity of production bodies such as MGM’s Freed Unit gave way to a system bereft of any single organizing force.35 The director’s voice often held more sway than that of the producer’s as the studios’ role became more of an economic one. Finally, critics such as Marc Miller have claimed that by the late 1950s and mid 1960s audiences were sufficiently jaded by social issues (Vietnam, Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, and so on) such that the conciliatory ending associated with the dominant form of the musical appeared old-fashioned and obsolete.36 As the 1960s began, the occasional movie musical would achieve financial success: West Side Story (1961), Gypsy (1962), My Fair Lady (1964), and The Sound of Music. Each film illustrates visual, ideological, and casting shifts that would deviate from the genre’s established cinematic roots. All four films demonstrate the effects of the demise of contracted star stables, as well as a manifestation of the blockbuster mentality. Studios sold the films on the celebrity of stars known

18

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

for attributes other than their abilities to sing. Dubbing replaced the substandard voices of Natalie Wood—who appears in two of the four— Rosalind Russell, Christopher Plummer, Audrey Hepburn, and Richard Beymer.37 Although earlier musicals had used stars not known primarily for their musical abilities—James Cagney, Marlon Brando, and Victor Mature—the star system had also cultivated musical standbys such as Kelly, Nelson Eddy, Dick Powell, Garland, and Martin who provided the performative energy and pizzazz that had become associated with the genre. As film musicals declined in number and studio-groomed musical stars failed to emerge films appeared to rely more heavily on selling dubbed celebrity over actual vocal talent. Although earlier musicals did use dubbing—whether of the actual performer’s voice for simple clarity’s sake or otherwise—high profile non-singers in film musicals often abstained from singing (William Holden in the non-integrated The Country Girl, James Mason in A Star is Born) or sang in a comical vein (Red Skelton in Neptune’s Daughter [1949], Tom Ewell in State Fair [1962]) as the films focused on these actors’ other known talents rather than their musical abilities. Concurrent to musicals of the early 1960s struggling to find surefire box-office draws to replace the waning musical star, new musicals on stage and screen sought to rev up the relevancy of settings and themes. Straying from the comfortable nostalgia indicative of the genre, West Side Story integrated a music and dance style more contemporary than most and centered its narrative on a grittier, more pessimistic topic.38 Similarly, Gypsy ends with its heroine Rose delusional and cracking under the pressure of abandonment and unrealized dreams. West Side Story and The Sound of Music—both directed by Robert Wise—strayed from the brightly colored, denotative, studio-created sets popularized by Rodgers and Hammerstein films and others such as Guys and Dolls (1955) and The Court Jester (1956). Instead, both use a grittier location shooting to capture a heightened sense of detail, realism, and space and begin with helicopter shots descending upon New York and the Alps respectively.39 Shot on location, the cinematography and miseen-scène were far from the manmade cornfields and nostalgic tunes of Oklahoma!’s simpler West side. From celebrity to narrative and aesthetics, the musicals of the 1960s began to show the generic cracks that would come to define the genre in the following decades. Concurrently, non-musical films pushed the boundaries of the Production Code. Films such as Kiss Me Stupid (1964) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966) pressed on with risqué dialogue and sexual situations. In 1966 an early version of the contemporary motion picture

The Musical and Masculinity Take a Turn 19

rating system replaced the Code, paving the way for darker and more adult subject matter. By the mid 1960s, the film industry at large experienced a major shift in production that would take advantage of this revision in censorship protocol. Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde [1967]), Robert Altman (M∗ A∗ S∗ H [1970]), and Mike Nichols (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Graduate [1967]) embodied what would be termed the New American Cinema, a movement that simultaneously questioned American culture and Hollywood’s narrative and aesthetic norms. This followed on the heels not only of new weakened regulation, but also a long history of avant-garde film in Europe and the United States. From Sergei Eisenstein’s forays into dialectic montage in the 1920s to the American boom of avant-garde in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s with the films of artists such as Kenneth Anger (Fireworks [1947] and Scorpio Rising [1964]), Maya Deren (Meshes in the Afternoon [1943] and The Very Eye of Night [1954]), and Stanley Brakhage (Dog Star Man: Part I-IV [1962–1964]), these types of films forego traditional linear narrative (if not eschewing narrative altogether for more abstract or associational structures).40 The cinematic movement of the 1960s and 1970s further reflects the seeds planted by the French New Wave. Critics-cum-filmmakers François Truffaut (The 400 Blows [1959] and Jules and Jim [1962]) and Jean-Luc Godard (Masculine Feminine [1966] and Two or Three Things I Know About Her [1967]) spearheaded this film movement marked by quick and cheap production of films that bucked the traditions of classical Hollywood cinema. Foregrounding production techniques, often focusing on the shot or mise-en-scène rather than the cut, and creating inconclusive narratives, these directors forewent the singular, causal, linear conflict and resolution of Hollywood style, instead presenting narratives and visuals that articulate the injustice, confusion, despair, and absurdity of contemporary life. Troubling the viewing position by the use of the jump cut and an absence of the establishing shot, these films create holes once effaced by visual technique and linear, closed narratives of much popular Hollywood film.41 Whether by using visual non-sequiturs, porous narratives, or merely intense studies of a visual object, both the avant-garde and the French New Wave serve as definitive precursors to the types of innovation seen in the New American Cinema—and ultimately the more ambivalent musicals—of the 1960s and 1970s. These new films simultaneously defied classical Hollywood form and popular notions of morality. Steve Neale describes the narrative,

20

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

aesthetic, and ideological shifts associated with New American Cinema as posing such a challenge to established norms: The use of devices such as the zoom, telephoto lenses, slow motion and split-screen have destroyed the dramatic and spatio-temporal unity that founded classical mise-en-scène with its economy, density and “subtlety” of signification; plot-linearity and its corollary, the goal-oriented hero, have been replaced by narrative fragmentation and troubled, introspective protagonists; genre conventions have to a large extent been broken down, to be replaced by “realism” compromised by traditional dramatic values and the exigencies of narrative conventions or use of older generic conventions invested with an empty nostalgia or a knowing cynicism, or both.42 Foregrounding the self-awareness of this type of cinema, Thomas Elsaesser describes a move toward styles such as parody, pastiche, and adaptation, and narrative journeys that “foreground themselves and assume the blander status of a narrative device, sometimes a picaresque support for individual scenes, situations, and set pieces, another time ironically admitted pretext to keep the film moving.”43 Allowing a high level of reflexivity, ambivalent morality, internal contradiction in human action, and ideologically problematic social norms, these films embraced aesthetic experimentation, social realism, and an articulation of the palpable discontent occurring in a nation struggling though multiple assassinations, Civil and Women’s Rights Movements, and emerging sexual revolutions. Seemingly contrary to the arcadian tenets of the musical genre, these characteristics would nonetheless find their way into many musical films of the late 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.44 Simultaneous to these developments in style and regulation in the 1960s, the musical finally embraced the socially contentious form of rock-n-roll. The industry had been courting the flush teenage market with quasi-musicals or pop musicals for decades. Rock-heavy nonmusicals such as Blackboard Jungle (1955) and films that included musical performance (Rock Around the Clock [1954], Don’t Knock the Rock [1956]) ushered in a new form of music-driven youthful danger. Although not integrated musicals, these films—both through content and audience response—brought the threatening image of the teenager to the fore.45 In a generic form traditionally associated with community and nostalgia, these rock films highlighted a violent or raucous path adults feared as looming for the budding teen demographic. With the success of the Elvis Presley films in the 1950s, pop stars flooded the

The Musical and Masculinity Take a Turn 21

quasi-musical. Young men such as Frankie Avalon (Beach Party [1963], I’ll Take Sweden [1965]), Pat Boone (April Love [1957], State Fair), Bobby Rydell (Bye, Bye Birdie), Fabian (Hound Dog Man [1959], High Time [1960]), and Bobby Darin (State Fair) popularized clean-cut film heroes with a beat. Despite this influx of pop and rock stars, the musical seemed to keep generically iconoclastic rock performances, sex, and teenage frenzy to a respectable minimum.46 (Even the hypersexual Elvis usually appeared less racy as his cinematic self.) However, concurrent with social critiques becoming more prevalent within film musicals, the pop star gave way to the rock star whose persona and musical style were more difficult to merge with the genre’s clean and idealistic narrative closures. By the mid 1960s, rock-n-roll musicals had taken on a sharper edge, both in terms of visual style and subject matter. The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night (1964) strayed from traditional musical fare to a narrative based on the frenzy of adoring fans and swinging lifestyles, as well as “arty,” shaky cameras and short shot lengths that replicated the harried lives of the band. Not a traditional celebration of wholesome musical and communal harmony, the film peppered the frenzied narrative with nondiegetic music from the Beatles, occasional performances of the band, and numbers that walked the line between integration and diegetic musical performance, pushing the boundaries of traditional musical norms by creating a story of unclear causality. The Monkees and Arlo Guthrie continued the trend with Head (1968) and Alice’s Restaurant (1969), presenting varying images of drug use and 1960s counterculture revolution. Rock music ushered out the nostalgic reification of hegemonic social norms and welcomed contemporary youth rebellion associated with sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Films such as these and Phantom of the Paradise (1973) dismiss the arcadian notion that music serves as a form of social glue. (With Paul Williams as devil/evil record producer who buys and enslaves the soul of a rock composer whose face has been horridly disfigured in a freak record press accident, one truly has to see it to believe it.) Instead, a darkened view of entertainment and entertainers frame the industry and performers as jaded, corrupt, lascivious, and anti-establishment—denying the narrative idealization of the entertainer Feuer and Altman identify as common in earlier films. A similar pessimism and hedonism would take hold of many of the integrated musicals of the period, now free to dabble in the darker side of society without the constraints of the Production Code. Through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the musical morphed and morphed again, negotiating musical forms, the role of music, and the role of the visual in both theatrical and cinematic musical

22

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

performance. The musical play a la Rodgers and Hammerstein would find popular and financial success on stage and screen and help to define this lucrative genre. On film, vehicles that fell outside of the integrated musical—star-studded revues, biopics, and some backstagers—helped in the continued transformation of the genre and its popular meaning. By the mid to late 1960s, reflecting a restructuring of the motion picture industry and the associated changes in economic, hiring, production, and distribution patterns, the once high-priced, big box-office musical genre declined in popularity as it struggled to survive in its new context. An alternate version of the integrated musical, contrary to the community-preserving, marriage-glorifying films of the 1940s and 1950s became dominant. Whether through the genre hybridization of Lost Horizon (disaster pic-cum-musical) or the cynical rock-n-roll stylings of The Who’s Tommy, the space for nuns to chortle over solving a problem like Maria or all of New York’s problems to be worked out by Judy Holliday parked at her Bells are Ringing (1960) Susanswerphone desk quickly decreased. The following chapters will begin to interrogate how such changes manifest themselves in the overall structure and connotation of these emerging genre films. Despite an overall decline in the economic viability of the musical during this period—with only a handful finding critical and economic success—an alternate view of the genre emerges through the time’s highs (Sweet Charity, Fiddler on the Roof [1971]) and lows (Lost Horizon). This shift in generic dictates or emergence of a new dominant form is by no means black and white. Films of this period negotiate their relationships with arcadian and ambivalent tendencies. While films such as Thoroughly Modern Millie and Grease more fully embrace norms of an earlier age, Tommy and All That Jazz almost wholly reject the formal and ideological norms of the musical’s more idealistic era and others such as Xanadu (1980), Popeye, Bugsy Malone, and Can’t Stop the Music (1980) exist in a state of tension between the two. Although an argument can surely be made that earlier musicals too vacillated between the dark and the idealistic, I argue that this later period shows a much more drastic turn. This body of films’ disdain for previously established norms and engagement with the contemporary state of social unrest and uncertainty consequently merge with developing visual and musical styles to present a newer and less affirming vision of the movie musical. While not all musicals illustrate drastic changes in style and content, nonetheless a shift in the dominant generic form from arcadian to ambivalent can be seen within the stories, visuals, performances, and performers of many of the integrated musicals of the 1966–1983 period.

The Musical and Masculinity Take a Turn 23

How the arcadias disappeared This book explores the splintering form and related gendered ramifications of the Hollywood musical by focusing on various building blocks of the genre through a lens of social and industrial change. By examining discrete elements related to the musical’s generic form—aesthetics, narrative, song and dance, and celebrity—the later popularized ambivalent form and its overall deviation from the earlier dominant arcadian become clear. The optimism of Hit the Deck (1955) gives way to the social and emotional complexity of Hair and All That Jazz. The visual nostalgia of Guys and Dolls transforms into the ahistorical realism/theatricality of Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) and Pennies from Heaven. Song, dance, and stardom lose their iconic meanings as Kelly’s and Astaire’s generically predetermined performances give way to generically iconoclastic performances by Aerosmith and The Who, while many films discard the traditional production number or communal performance altogether, leaving the community disintegrated. Examining narrative thrust and resolution, Chapter 1 focuses on the ambivalent narratives common to the 1966–1983 musicals and their engagement with a struggling America and changing Hollywood. During this period, many films feature a pattern of unsatisfactory resolutions. Love loses its hallowed place as relationships fail (Sweet Charity), take on non-monogamous/non-heterosexual overtones (The Rocky Horror Picture Show), or simply disappear (The Little Prince [1974]). Death and failure (Camelot, Hair, All That Jazz) also take center as these narratives eschew the over-determined reconciliations more reflective of an earlier musical era. Such new vehicles repeatedly foreground social unrest through racial difference, ultimately questioning the standard conciliatory and celebratory endings common to the musicals of a previous age. An examination of the period also highlights old and new forms of diegetic disruptions common to the genre, as the celebratory production number wanes in favor of framed narratives or performances within a performance (Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, Man of la Mancha [1972], Zoot Suit [1981]) that highlight the constructed nature of the diegetic world. Chapter 2 builds on Chapter 1 and illustrates how visual conventions associated with this newly powerful form of the genre reject the traditional projection of nostalgia in the musical. Complementing the more contentious narratives and following trends in New American Cinema, many musicals employ in vogue cinematic techniques (such as subjective shooting, montage sequences, disjointed shots, and shorter shot

24

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

length) that result in centering, decentering, or making the once idealistic subject appear strange or introspective. These retooled aesthetics that evoke introspection (All that Jazz, Fiddler on the Roof ), generic parody (Pennies from Heaven [the musical], Bugsy Malone [gangster]), visual, historical, and emotional “realism” (1776 [1972], Hair), extreme stylization (Tommy, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), or overt theatricality (Zoot Suit, Jesus Christ Superstar) compound the darker view of society promulgated by the repetition of new narrative tropes. These edgier forms of visual representations reject the simplistic nostalgia associated with the more arcadian musical while, along with changes in narrative structure, they project an inspection of human relationships, individual thought, and social stereotypes. While the Hollywood musical has relied heavily on the performance of human bodies and voices to carry out its utopic narratives, the 1966– 1983 period illustrates the significance of musical style, performance, and celebrity in the projection of a cinematic world view. Chapter 3 focuses on the performance of song and dance and the ways in which the musical’s new leading men challenge the defining characteristics of the genre. Not only does the level of narrative celebration wane, but also the overall level of joy associated with music and entertainment rapidly declines in these musicals reflective of ambiguous social norms and a darkening view of the entertainment industry. This diminution of music/dance as a spontaneous and public display of joy manifests itself through various characteristics: the prominence of non-singers/dancers who negligibly demonstrate emotion in their performances (Richard Harris, Rex Harrison, Peter Finch), voiceover singing (On a Clear Day You Can See Forever [1970], Goodbye, Mr. Chips [1969], Lost Horizon), overt cross-age and cross-sex vocal dubbing (Pennies from Heaven, Bugsy Malone), the integration of the hard edge of rock-n-roll (Tommy, Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar), and new robotic, overtly sexualized, and amorphous choreography (largely due to the contributions of Bob Fosse and Twyla Tharp).47 Along with changes in form and performance styles, the ambivalent musical saw a major influx of new leading players. Focusing specifically on musical men—who often took the narrative reins as stories repeatedly switched from female to male driven—Chapter 3 also examines the extra- and intertextual baggage that accompanies the new stars into the ambivalent form of the musical. New male stars often create a rift between celebrity personae and arcadian idealism (and more so than new female counterparts such as Linda Ronstadt, Bernadette Peters, and Kristy McNichol). As the studio system ceased the cultivation of new

The Musical and Masculinity Take a Turn 25

musical stars and those in existence outgrew their statuses as leading men, new stars identified primarily with the musical failed to emerge; rather, various alternate types of entertainers assumed the role of musical male. How do these personae like Keith Moon, Clint Eastwood, and Steve Martin merge with their musical characters and provoke different types of physical performances? How—via extratextual meaning based on their preexisting careers—are these men able to affect the types of stories told in these musical films? Chapter 4 examines the ways in which the characteristics of this newly dominant form of the musical ultimately impact upon the oftoverlooked presence of the male body and the overall presence of men and masculinity within the genre. Narratives shift to foreground male problems, performances foreground a construction of gender that deviates from the stable husband, and new male stars bring chaos, anarchy, and hypermasculinity to a genre once based on orderly communities and domestic providers. Looking at how issues of actor choice, performance, and narrative and aesthetic conventions converge to create an overall image of genre-specific masculinity, I use Butler’s notion of performativity to examine the construction of gender in the arcadian articulation of the musical. Subsequently, the information gleaned from the previous three chapters illustrates the musical’s widening range of acceptable or articulated masculinities. The building blocks—mise-en-scène, narrative, performance, and stars—of this darker and more ambivalent form of the genre combine to create an overall presentation of masculinity that deviates from the one repeated throughout the arcadian. No longer saddled to the domestic sphere and now presented through various versions of musical performance (integrated, performance within a performance, gender-switching) and gendered/sexual identity (breadwinner, playboy, bisexual), men and their emerging associated masculinities materialize as something less restrained than the one most popular in the earlier incarnation of the genre and more overtly complex than the queered and camped version identified by Cohan. Taking an unclear stand on hegemonic norms and foregrounding the actual construction—rather than “nature” or essence—of masculinity, these musicals manufacture masculinity as something ambivalent, fluid, variant and more reflective of its time. Finally, I conclude with an extended epilogue that takes a look into the present, examining the movements occurring within the genre from the mid-eighties through the first decade of the new millennium. Dividing the period into pre- and post-Evita (1996), it examines the integrated drought of the mid-eighties to mid-nineties and the new mini-musical

26

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

boom at the turn of the new millennium. Like the previous decades of film musicals, the styles that dominated these two phases of the genre reflect both the industrial and social conditions of their time. Abandoning the edginess of the New American Cinema for a high concept, high energy, high synergy musical, the pre-Evita period relied most heavily on animated Disney blockbusters (The Little Mermaid [1989], Beauty and the Beast [1991], The Lion King [1994]) and the dance-heavy non-integrated films like Footloose (1984) and Dirty Dancing (1987). Dependent on the teen audience and MTV-style visuals, these films would visually and thereby ideologically impact the mini-boom of the post-Evita period as they established a visual presentation of song and dance that obscured physical performance in favor of a music video-influenced aesthetic that featured quick paced cutting, back-to-back montage sequences, and striking images more likely to sell a look than tell a story. Through an examination of these new narratives and visuals, as well as the genre’s growing affinity for self-referentiality, generic parody, and pastiche, the epilogue examines the sense of social apathy reflected by the films and reflective of the target-marketed, hyper-mediated Generation X culture. With its projection of an idealized America and good old fashioned values, the musical once stood as one of the formative genres of Hollywood. Through the years, the genre surely waned—although the turn of the century has shown signs of a new invigorated interest in the genre. The book provides a deeper look into a period of this bedrock genre that for reasons economic, qualitative, or otherwise has been marginalized. Although films such as The Boy Friend, Lost Horizon, The Little Prince, and 1776 may not have created the cultural splash associated with Singin’ in the Rain (1952), South Pacific, or Mary Poppins (1964), they speak volumes about the state of Hollywood, changing norms within the film industry and the greater society of the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and the ideological ramifications of a genre often considered consistently conservative or mere fluff.

1 Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses: The Desertion of Narrative Utopia

Throughout the 1966–1983 period of the Hollywood musical, the genre experienced a major shift in tone—musical and otherwise. Appearing to respond to major changes in the industry, filmmaking style, motion picture regulation, and the tumultuous American culture, a musical more reflective of social and cultural mores began to overtake the more idealistic version that had been popular through the previous decades. Despite a sprinkling of Hello, Dolly!s and Annies (1982), stories, visuals, and sounds deviated from previous norms, projecting an ambivalence toward entrenched generic dictates and the ideals they projected. These films popularized a new set of musical tropes that would—through repetition—begin to solidify a new dominant version of the genre more reflective of contemporary mores. Although not as monetarily successful as in the earlier days of the musical, the genre revision did more aptly reflect the kind of social contract film genres supposedly represent between those in the industry and the viewers who (hopefully) fill theatres. The ambivalence directed toward traditional generic themes in the Hollywood musical takes a firm hold of film narratives during this later period. In their seminal works on genre and the musical, both Thomas Schatz and Rick Altman identify romance and the unification of differing social groups as the bedrock of the classical musical structure.1 Whether the story’s frame engaged with gangsters, cowboys, socialites, or businessmen, romantic heroes most often found their heroines. The two then overcame their social differences and lived happily ever after. In such films, narrative conflicts seldom reached a degree of complexity that could not be overcome by the love of a good woman and a dazzling final dance number. The simplicity of conflict resolution highlighted by Altman and Schatz and theorized in Richard Dyer’s 27

28

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

conceptualization of the utopic sensibility of the musical genre shone through a significant faction of the musicals of the thirties, forties, fifties, and early sixties. Richard Adler’s and Jerry Ross’s The Pajama Game (1957) exemplifies the narrative style highlighted as forming the basis of the early generic structure. Based on the Broadway hit, and starring Doris Day and John Raitt, the film centers on an impending workers’ strike in a pajama factory. Divided solidly between the workers and the management, the community needs to heal wounds inflicted by the conflicting desires of the two groups. The narrative seeks to mend this division through a romance plotline involving Day’s Babe Williams, the head of the grievance committee/union rabble-rouser and Raitt’s Sid Sorkin, the new Superintendent of Sleeptite Pajamas who is hired to block the strike and negotiate a contract amenable to the needs of both groups—although his alliance lies with management. As Babe and Sid negotiate their budding romance, their relationship becomes inextricable from the union negotiation over the proposed seven-anda-half-cent raise. Bob Fosse choreographs a stylized, syncopated work stoppage that heightens the work-oriented conflict while challenging the budding romance. Ultimately, the prospect of a love lost for a lousy seven-and-a-half cents pushes Sid to act. The strike ends, love continues, and happiness ensues. A love strong enough to resolve company conflict allows the bridging of management–labor difference and leads to an inexplicable production number in which happily united couples model pajamas for no apparent reason. Joy, commerce, and romance reign triumphant. Similar conflicts and resolutions exist across the genre. Silk Stockings confronts the opposing needs of a frigid Russian comrade (Cyd Charisse) and a dancing producer (Fred Astaire); female backwoods ingenuity, frontier entertainment, and the male ego clash in Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun (1950). Such clear-cut conflicts and resolutions resound through earlier decades of the genre. Such films adhere to what this book refers to as arcadian norms of the form, embodying romance and utopian sensibilities and centering on two characters who must succeed in their romance to overcome external conflicts (business, class, politics) that otherwise keep them in different worlds (or at least on different sides of the town, mountain, or horse). Only their union and the consequential renunciation of external conflict can resolve this musical narrative and lead the characters into a world where they can coexist peacefully. Although romances, bonded communities, enchanting entertainers, and promises of a future utopia stand solidly at the center of the more arcadian sixties and seventies films such as Half a Sixpence, Grease,

Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses

29

Finian’s Rainbow (1968), and Hello, Dolly!, more important to this study is the large group of films that emerge eschewing such relational idealism for more conflicted views of the once traditional themes of love, community, and entertainment. The ambivalence that these films project toward the once safely recurrent themes of the genre strongly reflects the triumvirate of external forces weighing down on emergent Hollywood product: social, industrial, and stylistic shifts. Movie musicals coming from both the stage and created specifically for the screen challenged the curative social function of arcadian or classical musical narratives as they embraced the artistic/ideological styles of the French New Wave and New American Cinema and reflected a hopeless or irresolvable social pressure related to rising divorce rates, an unpopular war, and concurrent battles for civil, women’s, and gay rights. No longer reflective of the homogenous containment culture, these films often retain narratives that engage with the themes popular in earlier musicals—community, romance, and entertainment—but present no such comfortable resolutions. Contentious subjects were not wholly foreign to earlier musicals, even those that ultimately embraced arcadian values. In The American Film Musical Altman discusses the folk musical as including distress and rupture within its narrative communities, much like this later ambivalent group. Citing examples such as gang warfare (West Side Story), a corrupt gambling partner (Hallelujah), the devil (Cabin in the Sky), the Immigration Department (Flower Drum Song), a hurricane (Porgy and Bess [1959]), and sickness or death (Riding High [1950] and Little Nellie Kelly [1940]), Altman states, “The genius of the folk musical is that it manages both to mythify the American past and yet, by making the process of mythification visible, to retain before our eyes the very dangers which necessitated that process to begin with.” Although presenting a somewhat darker view of humanity common in the later musicals, the diegetic threat is cleanly (or at least temporarily through the climactic production number) alleviated by the folk musical’s end. West Side Story’s gangs see the error of their ways through the death of Tony. The new and old worlds join together in Flower Drum Song. The son returns to his family in Hallelujah, and Petunia and Little Joe ascend to Heaven in Cabin in the Sky.2 Despite momentary rupture in the darker folk musicals, commonly wholesome entertainment and entertainers do save family and country, aid in finding true love, and make winners out of the diegetic—and by proxy the viewing—audience. To the contrary, musicals of this 1966–1983 period frequently stray from the comfortable world of idealism and nostalgia to embrace a

30

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

sense of ambivalence toward its characters and their worlds, ones more indicative of the prevailing real-world social and artistic realities. These realities stand contradictory to the more peace-affirming themes of earlier films. By this point in American history, the likelihood of the happy union had come into question in the social consciousness. Between the late fifties and seventies, the stability of social forces that spoke to the bedrock of the genre came more forcefully into question. The mediated rise of the playboy lifestyle—touted by Hugh Hefner and Playboy magazine—and scientific research that highlighted the medical dangers of the career/family-driven white collar male questioned the husband/worker ideal—the role commonly embodied by the musical male hero.3 The American divorce rate, which had held relatively firm through the 1950s, saw steady increase from the mid-1960s through the early 1980s. Between 1965 and 1975, the rate of divorce nearly doubled.4 The simultaneous shift in generic tone or narrative focus to one less keen on the primacy of monogamous heterosexual coupling speaks to both Schatz’s argument regarding the need for social relevance in the maintenance of generic codes and Marc Miller’s suggestion that America’s political, racial, and sexual upheaval led to the decline of the genre.5 Simultaneous to the cracks emerging in the image of the nuclear family, during these later decades of the musical, the United States suffered significant upheaval on both national and international fronts. With the escalation of the war in Vietnam, a growing sense of “us” and “them” emerged, whether that dichotomy represented the people/government, young/old, protestors/patriots, or American soldiers/Jane Fonda. Far from the “honorable wars” in Europe and Asia that occurred during the musical’s heyday or the communal sense of unity as the nation rallied around the flag—while ignoring dirty little secrets of Italian, German, and Japanese internment camps—an overwhelming sense of social unrest and irresolvable conflict permeated the later part of the sixties and early part of the seventies. To compound the conflict surrounding Vietnam, a flurry of social movements destroyed any sense of national harmony. Surely racial, sexual, and gendered divisions pre-dated the unrest associated with the respective social movements, but not until the sixties and seventies did they impress themselves as strongly on the social psyche. In contrast to the post-World War II glorification of Levittowns (subtext “white flight”) or the solidification of the postwar family (read the repression of working women and proliferation of popular images of the suburban housewife), these decades brought the rise of second wave feminism, the Stonewall riots, nationally televised

Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses

31

race riots in Watts and Detroit, and the assassinations of both Martin Luther King, Jr and Malcolm X. While simmering below the surface in the previous decades, the unmitigated inequality within American society came rushing to the fore and in direct conflict with all that the Hollywood musical had traditionally evoked—whiteness, harmony between divergent groups, and economic and domestic success. The same media once used to reinforce stringent social norms increasingly projected the undermining thereof. While the pre- and post-World War II drive toward containment culture and homogeneity had played well in much of the mainstream media and within the historically conservative musical genre, print and television news more frequently brought social unrest into America’s living rooms—and in living color. Reflecting an adherence to trends popularized by the French New Wave and emerging into Hollywood through the New American Cinema, by 1966 more movie musicals projected the social ambivalence common in such films, as well as narrative stylings of incoherence and inconclusiveness that produced a lasting sense of confusion or unrest. As in non-musical French and American films such as The 400 Blows, Masculin-Feminin, Nashville, and The Graduate, trends emerged that when incorporated into the musical genre led to more complex narratives that surpassed two-dimensional notions of human nature and conflict resolution. Inconclusive endings of both The 400 Blows and Nashville rebuke the narrative closure and, as critics have argued, hegemonic reinforcement of classical Hollywood film. The youthful drug dealers, robbers, and murderers of Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider (1969) simultaneously popularized the antihero, a new narrative staple who transcended the ideological reaffirmation of the traditional Hollywood hero while still retaining the position of narrative focus or power. These new narrative trends in films simultaneously fractured norms regarding narrative structure and questioned the maintenance of a filmic status quo. Reflective of the social unrest occurring outside the diegesis, these films questioned the righteousness of those in power (adults, law abiding citizens, the police, the military) while also problematizing those who stood in opposition to the power structure (often youth or youth countercultures). As these non-musical films challenged the norms of narrative resolution and moral clarity, the musical followed in lockstep as emergent narratives embraced ideological ambivalence, thereby complicating one of the most traditionally socially reaffirming Hollywood genres and reproducing the lack of ideological and narrative clarity popularized by their European and American predecessors.

32

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

The social unrest and artistic shifts occurring at this time ultimately manifest themselves in the themes already popularized by the genre. Those films described here as ambivalent musicals reflect the contemporary moment through their more troubled relationship with romance, community, and entertainment. Rather than presenting these elements as a pyramid of social stability and communal gaiety, the films engage with them through new artistic mores that easily articulate the ambivalence in America’s social landscape. The ever-present romance would ultimately turn unstable, aberrant, or irrelevant, while the community— once the site of the musical’s celebratory finale—appeared as splintered or absent as the real-world communities on the pages of the New York Times, and entertainment and entertainers as dystopic and scandal-ridden as corrupt disc jockeys and the hedonistic mavens of Studio 54.

People won’t say we’re in love—The dissolution of romance Sex and love far from disappear from musicals during the 1966– 1983 period. As a real life sexual revolution and post-“pill”/pre-AIDS frenzy waged on for both men and women, musicals both retained old familiar notions of romance and infused the genre with more contentious notions of love, sex, and relationships. At times abandoning the romance formula altogether for one more akin to the melodrama, the double protagonist identified by Altman and Schatz often disappears in the later musicals as the male’s personal and public journeys—and overall moral (or immoral) fiber—take center in the narrative and highlight the legitimacy of singlehood or personal struggles outside of the codified heterosexual couple. Shattered romance As the divorce rate and cries for free love rose and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and The Graduate provided scathing critiques of the dirty underbelly of suburban American marriage and the American dream, many new musicals forewent even the gesture of the status quo-affirming (and once imperative) wedding festivity or celebratory conclusion. Instead they left a lasting impression of the protagonist’s physical or moral downfall, the couple’s incompatibility, or an overall sense of hopelessness or ambivalence toward love and romantic union. Instead of happily joining their couples in a rousing production number of communal gaiety—as does Oklahoma! with the reprise of

Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses

33

“Oh What a Beautiful Morning”—many films of this period embrace an overall cynicism regarding love and marriage. Still engaging with the subject of romance, these films often illustrate the impossibility of the arcadian ideal and/or critique the hero’s/heroine’s attempt to continue down a road to marital bliss. Indicative of this trend, Sweet Charity, At Long Last Love, Camelot, and Funny Girl underscore the emergent reluctance of musicals to conform to the old mold. Instead, they overtly dispute the “love can conquer all” tenant that drove so many earlier musicals.6 At Long Last Love and Sweet Charity both exemplify the pessimistic views of romance reflective of this diegetic and historical period. Gone is the expected final kiss. Instead of building a narrative on the assumption of ultimate conciliatory resolution—as discussed by Altman in his discussion of narrative construction within the genre film—they send a shock to the generic system, concluding the films with no resolution. They not only reject the primacy of the romantic union, but also the necessity of any kind of final decision or closure. Shirley MacLaine’s trusting dime-a-dance Charity can only aspire to be the heroine of the arcadian musical. Established as an honorable, idealistic girl who just happens to work in a sleazy business, she moves from man to man, being robbed by her fiancé Charlie and stashed in a closet by movie star Vittorio Vitalle, until she meets the supposed man of her dreams, Oscar Lindquist, while trapped in an elevator. Sensitive, timid, and violently claustrophobic, Oscar appears ideal for Charity. Altman has after all described the perfect musical pair as embodying opposite characteristics.7 If the man represents freedom, the woman must represent restraint. If the man is a professional entertainer, the woman must be an amateur. By reinforcing the notions that opposites attract, the characters are able to synthesize seemingly incongruous character types, walks of life, or factions of society—as long as they both possess an underlying desire for romance, couplehood, and communal harmony. The personal victories thereby ultimately create one vision of peaceful coexistence, suggesting the possibility for social utopia. In the arcadian musical Charity and Oscar would overcome different backgrounds, and the love that develops as he makes her feel like a lady and she helps him overcome his claustrophobia would conquer all. Instead, through their repetition, darker narratives like Sweet Charity reinforce the incongruous nature of opposites and the overwhelming cynicism of society and the musical genre. Abandoned at the altar because Oscar is haunted by thoughts of Charity’s bevy of ex-lovers and Charlie’s name tattooed on her shoulder, Charity must continue to hope for change and love in a world that gives her no reason to expect her dreams will come true.

34

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

Oscar does not change his mind and sweep her off her feet in the end. Her female friends do not comfort her and create an alternate utopia of female friendship (for she is too embarrassed to admit to them that she has failed in her escape from the dime-a-dance life). She must simply walk alone, watching the other couples spoon in the park, hoping that someday she too can find happiness in a society contemptuous of her past and continuously creating road blocks for a changed future.8 Similarly, Peter Bogdanovich’s homage/satire of the 1930s musical At Long Last Love works against arcadian conventions. Whereas Sweet Charity highlights the impossibility of merging romance between two different worlds, At Long Last Love presents a world full of irreconcilable sameness and improbable love. The narrative centers on four characters and their varying sets of romances: privileged playboy tycoon Michael Oliver Prichard III or MOP (Burt Reynolds), poor little rich girl Brooke Carter (Cybill Shepherd) who is forever waiting for her next check from mother, singer and dancer Kitty O’Kelly (Madeline Kahn), and Little Orphan Annie obsessed exotic gambler Johnny Spanish (Duilio Del Prete). Although Kitty and Johnny lack the economic capital of Brooke and Michael, the four appear immediately compatible and romance blooms as MOP and Kitty and Johnny and Brooke strike up relationships. The action minimizes the social conflict or division as the four dance, sing Cole Porter numbers such as “Friendship,” drink as only the social elite can, and party. The number “Well Did You Evah?” highlights the similarity within the group and difference between them and the society in which they circulate. As the foursome radiates life, passion, joy, and music, the greater society—depicted by the nameless social elite—emanates conformity and ambivalence toward life itself. At a high-toned society party, the four mock the stiff propriety of the guests as they report fictitious and horrific accidents—avalanche, cosmic collision, cannibalism—to guests who each retain their decorum and identically note what a swell party it is. However, the interchangeable nature of the characters leads to partner swapping, and ultimately, the film ends with unhappiness for all and an unclear resolution regarding the relationships. It ends as it begins, with a close-up of a music box of two pairs of dancing partners. As the music plays, the two couples swap partners and continue dancing, mirroring the ending of the film. As the men and women desire different mates, they dance at a society event, suffering a similar form of apathy earlier mocked by the foursome. Rather than synthesizing energy and calm, the group relocates from one to the other, failing in romance and losing the energy and

Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses

35

passion associated with it. Romance cannot conquer all. It may just be one more route to ennui.

Lusty musicals Another way in which musicals of the later period reflect a cynicism toward hetero-monogamy and embrace alternative sexual options is by abandoning the communal bond of companionate love and romance for acts of carnal lust. Early musicals surely implied sex. After all, those theatre folk in the early backstagers always seemed to be up to something. Theatre folk aside, as early as Love Me Tonight (1932), extreme randiness entered musical narratives, with the oversexed Maurice pursuing and ultimately wooing the frigid Princess Jeanette. One year later the ambivalent-leaning pre-Code Melody Cruise centered on adulterous affairs and a fear of commitment. Seven Brides for Seven Brothers surely implies some mattress squeaking—for only the birth of the married couple’s child and the claim that the baby was actually the illegitimate product of one of the unwed brothers and his captive beloved can urge the girls’ fathers to allow the climactic sextuple marriage. Oklahoma!’s Ado Annie proudly proclaims that she “can’t say no,” only to say yes to her intended, Will Parker. In each film, however, sex (implied or otherwise) ultimately creates a path to marriage. Amid the sexual revolution and the 1969 release of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) and prior to the 1980s AIDS panic, the genre challenged its earlier dictum by engaging with more overtly debauched notions of male–female (or male–male) relations. Films such as Paint Your Wagon, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Pennies from Heaven, and All That Jazz infuse contemporary topicality and contentious morality into musical narratives with premarital, extramarital, and/or non-monogamous, non-heterosexual sex as the locus of communal disharmony and personal dissatisfaction. Similarly, films use infidelity as a major narrative catalyst to maudlin conclusions (Camelot and A Little Night Music [1977]) or simply foreground the sex act in ways seldom seen in the Code era musical genre (The Boy Friend—orgy, Man of la Mancha—rape, 1776—sex as a relief for writers block, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band—sex as corporate corruption). The temptation to deviate from traditional rules regarding sex, love, and marriage pushes many such narratives toward conclusions that do not and ultimately cannot mirror the traditional conciliatory romantic resolution once so common to the genre.

36

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

Paint Your Wagon, focuses on the polyandrous relationship of Pardner (Clint Eastwood), his mining partner Ben (Lee Marvin), and a recently purchased Mormon woman, Elizabeth, whose husband sells her off while traveling through the all-male mining town. Prior to the arrival of Elizabeth, the men live seemingly happy lives eating, drinking, fighting, and dancing with one another. Not until the female arrival does anyone stop to interrogate his own lifestyle. Though officially married to Ben, Elizabeth takes a liking to Pardner, resulting in a happy and socially sanctioned threesome.9 With the intrusion of an upstanding Christian family on No Name City—at this point harboring the threesome and making quite a name for itself as a bastion of prostitution and liquor—the perversity of the Ben–Pardner–Elizabeth arrangement becomes evident to its participants. Illicit or unconventional sex acts and an invasion of rigid morality lead to an eventual dissolution of community. The film concludes with Ben moving on to prospect elsewhere and Pardner, a farmer by trade, remaining to live properly with Elizabeth. Both All That Jazz and Pennies from Heaven project these similar ambivalences toward the form and the legitimate place of sex/romance. All That Jazz’s director/choreographer Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider)—based on the film’s director Bob Fosse—vacillates between his ex-wife Audrey, current girlfriend Kate, daughter Michelle, various lovers, and the confrontation of his limited mortality in the dream world of Angelique the virgin/therapist/angel figure. Rife with sex, drugs, cigarettes, and more sex, Joe’s life is on a crash course with disaster. In the same way, Pennies from Heaven places unnatural sex as the cause of all narrative calamities. From Arthur’s (Steve Martin) unwanted advances toward his wife, a fetish for lipstick on her nipples, and implications of anal sex, to his extramarital affair with Eileen/Lulu (Bernadette Peters) that results in a pregnancy, abortion, and ultimate prostitution, the film places the cause of Arthur’s downfall solidly on his carnal lust. The Rocky Horror Picture Show takes a similar tack toward the notion of heteronormativity and monogamy, while simultaneously embracing the more self-reflective qualities of New American Cinema in its overt awareness of its generic critique. In a knowing wink to arcadian norms, the film begins with the number “Dammit Janet” in which its upstanding leading man Brad Majors (Barry Bostwick) professes his love to his girlfriend (Susan Sarandon) after a friend’s wedding. As he flits through the churchyard, cemetery, and church itself, he decries his undying love for her as he presents her with a ring. Like more traditional arcadian films, the number establishes the wholesome version of romance promulgated

Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses

37

by earlier articulations of the genre. Directly following the serenade, however, the newlywed’s shaving cream graffitied wedding car cruises across the screen—and foregrounding the suspect positioning of sex— reads, “She got hers, now he’ll get his.” Ultimately, Janet and Brad enter a world of transvestitism, bisexuality, and group sex. Sex between Janet, Brad, bisexual/transvestite Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry), and the monster Rocky may momentarily bring the two worlds closer together in arcadian fashion—culminating in an Esther Williams-esque swimming pool orgy—but ultimately this newly formed community is destroyed at the hands of incestuous alien siblings Riff Raff and Magenta. After the murders of Frank-N-Furter and Rocky, Janet and Brad crawl through the castle’s rubble dressed in fishnets and corsets and bereft of the innocence they once possessed. As with Ben and Pardner—both rejecting arcadian norms and failing to establish new acceptable social alternatives—the peace found in alternate modes of sexual expression cannot bear the burden of society, even one far removed from reality. Like the social struggle waging between the free love generation and the traditional mores of their parents, instability and social unrest remain at the center. Further, such narrative deviance reflects a new freedom in cinematic expression found in the wake of the dissolution of the Production Code. Like the controversially touted X-rated Midnight Cowboy (1969), these recurrent conflicts reflect the medium’s drive to integrate more overtly sexual subject matter and test regulatory and social boundaries of the medium. Such narratively ambiguous and sexually explicit films push boundaries seldom challenged by early Code-era musical narratives. Although often casting moral aspersions through their disastrous— or inconclusive—conclusions, the sexual and communal possibilities expressed in these narratives short-circuit the over-determined process of meaning-making often associated with genre films. As argued in Pierre Bourdieu’s discussion of discursive critique within the doxic society—one in which the established order “goes without saying and is therefore unquestioned”—the mere uncovering of the arbitrariness of the assumed unquestionable norm brings that norm into question.10 While such ambivalent musicals often reinforce the naturalness or at least safety of monogamous heterosexual relationships, alternate sexual behavior articulates additional possibilities and not only questions the normalcy of relationships portrayed in arcadian musicals, but ultimately changes their status as the solitary option. Such musicals construct a much messier society, one that cannot always provide a proper solution. Reinforcing the notion of generic social relevance, these

38

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

more ambivalent films show the cracks in the façade of the stability of the society in which they were produced. As in contemporary America, these musicals’ inhabitants will not always make safe decisions in life and love. Rather, unchained sexual desire or a complicated society— two characteristics often lacking from earlier musicals—may cloud the protagonists’ decisions and lead toward a murky outcome.

Who needs romance, let’s talk about me Musicals of this period not only challenge the old notions of musical utopia by questioning romance as pure or foolproof, but further reject the very basis of arcadian style by decentering the characters and conflicts that stood at the center: couples and coupling. In the wake of shifts in motion picture regulation, the once nearly-mandatory romantic core of the genre gave way to complex and individual-focused narratives. Underscoring this emergent ambivalence toward earlier norms and limitations and incorporating contemporary critique of gender norms, more films placed their focuses elsewhere, highlighting personal quests or internal struggles rather than romantic coupling. Contemporary challenges to established gender norms for both men and women came to the fore during this period—both socially and filmically—challenging normalcy of tradition/traditional roles, the righteousness of political leaders, and the definition of male courage. In American culture, Betty Friedan was questioning the destined role of women and their “problem that has no name” and a new and invigorated feminist movement took hold and raged-on. Despite this cultural focus on the social construction of femininity, the musical was turning from its female-focused romance narratives to ones that focused more heavily on men.11 Like non-musical films that challenged generic tropes of masculinity—such as revisionists Westerns like McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), Little Big Man (1970), Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and Billy Jack (1971)— many new musicals turned a similar critical eye to male rather than female struggle for identity. As the couple became decentered in this once traditionally-termed feminine genre, men and their non-romantic woes came into focus. The musical male repeatedly shifted his focus from romance to career, internal conflict, or larger philosophical concerns. He turned from a man driven by a seemingly biological destiny to mate and procreate to one mired in his own sense of personal struggle, ambition, and place within the greater society. In essence, this type of shift both rejected and questioned the primacy of the heterosexual union and, at times, the very stability of generic closure.

Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses

39

Even a film such as Fiddler on the Roof, commonly discussed with regard to its attention to marriage, relationships, and romance, merely uses such relational conflicts as a means to complicate overarching themes regarding tradition and social change. Ultimately, whether Tevye’s daughters marry the tailor, the revolutionary, and the gentile and live happily ever after is secondary. These relationships activate moral struggles for the women’s father. They force decisions and compromises regarding a larger view of life; the romances themselves are not central to the overall conclusion of the narrative. While adding to the family drama, they do not impact upon the overall ousting of the Jews from their community. Similarly, 1776’s women—Abigail Adams and Martha Jefferson—solely function as outlets for their husbands’ emotions/libidos. Several scenes use the convention of John and Abigail speaking through letters (although they appear to be having complex two-way conversations). These interactions allow John to express complex emotions regarding his work in Congress to an appropriate confidant in ways unseemly in the company of his fellow politicians.12 This relationship mainly acts as a legitimated locus for soliloquy. Hair’s Sheila serves as a similar catalyst or icon. Ultimately coupling with neither Berger nor Claude—perhaps the true dual protagonists in the film—her socialite status simply works to complicate the class wars occurring between the middle-class hippies, working-class drafted farm boy, and the New York elite. Her role as domestic or even sexual partner is ultimately irrelevant. The decentering of romance in films such as these creates space for more isolated public or personal journeys and complex social critique. Many films of this later period eschew the pretense of romantic focus by wholly or largely omitting such relationships on the part of their protagonists and constructing narratives that solely revolve around personal quests, religious journeys, and cultural struggles. Without the conciliatory coupled ending and expected successful romance, the social critique and individual journeys become more biting and complicated. Inconclusive endings and stories unfettered by cheerful romance mirror their non-musical Hollywood counterparts, reflect the grittiness of post-Code Hollywood, and rebuke the safety of much of the period’s more traditional and often sanitized television offerings. Bonnie and Clyde’s glamorous, freewheeling escape from boredom and poverty violently erupts in a hailstorm of bullets. Easy Rider’s psychedelic journey toward personal enlightenment results in ideological bankruptcy and Billy and Wyatt’s ultimate demise. As with these antiheroes who simultaneously challenge the status quo and fail in attempts to subvert it,

40

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

this emergent musical style produced a conflicted yet critical vision of society and humankind not common in the earlier Hollywood musicals’ traditional—or at least recuperated—gender roles and wedding banquets.13 Along these lines, journeys of personal enlightenment—rather than romance—drive The Wiz, The Little Prince, and Tommy. Casting aside any suggestion of romantic involvement for leading men or women, they examine the emotional growth of Dorothy, The Pilot, and Tommy respectively. With no identifiable love interest for the protagonists, these films focus on the internalization of the personal conundrums felt by their lead characters, playing out self-exploration without the burden of a guaranteed recuperation in their conclusions. The Little Prince focuses almost solely on the pitfalls of contemporary society via the perspectives of The Pilot and the Little Prince. An upper-class boy shunned by his elders, The Pilot discovers the need for kinship as the Little Prince articulates the inanity, depravity, and tenderness of the world through his solitary interactions with various planets/rulers (a landhogging king, a warmongering general, and a reality-constructing historian), the cunning snake, and the fox. Ultimately, the narrative quite simply follows the emotional journeys of the two, illuminating the need for joy and kinship on the part of the once solitary and somber Pilot. Further denying the possibility of meaningful relationships, however, the Little Prince dies, only providing a lasting shadow of companionship. Reinforcing the ambivalent musical’s push toward personal introspection and discovery in a world hostile to personal needs, Tommy focuses on the title character’s journey into manhood. The morally bankrupt and lascivious natures of his mother and stepfather greatly affect Tommy’s development, but the story of the boy remains solitary— highlighted by his initial deafness, blindness, and muteness. Like The Little Prince, Tommy’s narrative relies not on the interactions of a couple, but the personal discoveries of an individual. Others act on Tommy until his bizarrely liberating discovery of pinball and the eventual regaining of his senses. Once cured of his physical ailments, he is free to act upon others, creating Tommy’s Holiday Camp/Pinball religious cult. In the end, a camper riot destroys the boy’s utopic settlement and the film’s final image depicts Tommy standing alone atop a mountain: no true love, no visible success, but an indeterminate image of conquest and possibility. As in real life and typified by other contemporary cinema, the film depicts no true conclusion, simply a pseudo-resolution to a series of misadventures and an implication of more to come.

Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses

41

Films like How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), 1776, and Camelot (though more invested in the romance than most) instead center their narratives on the career-driven exploits of their main characters. Whether corporate or political, the stakes in these films’ conflicts intensify around issues regarding the protagonists’ professional rather than personal lives. Like the narratives of personal exploration, these films enter into investigations of individual actions in the complicated world of work.14 This shift regarding narrative placement of the career further underscores a social prioritization of the self over the family and community. Whereas arcadian musicals too build stories around careers, often such films merely use those vocations as backdrops for a budding romance or otherwise joyous occasion (for example, actors in The Band Wagon [1953], the military in South Pacific, and modeling in Funny Face [1957]). 1776 restructures the musical narrative to focus more heavily on the political process and conflicts. While female characters remain in the periphery, the bulk of the narrative hashes out conflicts occurring between battling factions of the Continental Congress. Unfettered by the conciliatory ending, the film speaks to its post-Watergate audience as it critiques backroom dealings and highlights infighting occurring within and between varying states and the concessions and conflicts often glossed over in the idealistic history lesson made of the signing of The Declaration of Independence. Instead of serving as a mere backdrop, the political process is the primary plot of the narrative. Negotiations over slavery, apathy regarding the state of the militia and dying soldiers, class disputes, and battling personalities become the center of the story. The personal journey and business venture merge as films at times sideline love for the spiritual quest for some sort of superior being or consciousness. Whether through an actual Christ tale, the Christ-like Tommy, or Shangri-La’s Lama, films capitalize on the absence of conciliatory ending/romance to steer narrative focus toward an interrogation of the internal moral, philosophical, and ethical conflicts associated with the acceptance of a higher being in a living society. These musicals reject the notion that trust and faith serve as clear barometers for successful familial or romantic relationships and are often antithetical to uncomplicated resolutions. In the more arcadian Cabin in the Sky, Petunia and Little Joe struggle with worldly desires and issues of faith but ultimately earn entrance to an ideal Heaven. In later films, however, protagonists struggle with desires for spiritual devotion within the context of complicated, changing societies in which such faith poses contradictions to the status quo or danger to the faithful. Jesus Christ Superstar, for example, puts a contemporary spin on Judas’s religious

42

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

quandary and forces an investigation of contemporary politics, community pressure, and individual crises of faith. With no clear conclusion, the focus remains on the inconclusiveness of religion in a world based on politics and wary of faith. Individual stories and choices outweigh a clean resolution.15 Lost Horizon engages in a similar quandary, although the answer appears less elusive than Jesus Christ Superstar’s when a planeload of hijacked Americans and Englishmen seek aid from a band of natives (led by an Asian Sir John Gielgud) who lead them to Shangri-La. They must ultimately search themselves for the true meaning of happiness as they discover they have been kidnapped to a social utopia. But paradise comes with a catch; anyone who stays must never return to his or her home in the United States or England.16 He or she must decide whether a utopian vision serves as a paradise or prison. Much like the quests portrayed in the Christ musicals and Tommy, Lost Horizon questions a greater system of beliefs, concept of society, and the ultimate meaning of life. Romance is not the meaning of life but only a piece of a greater picture. Further, unlike Bing Crosby’s Going My Way (1944) and Say One for Me (1959), religion and spiritual exploration do not function simply as means to bring joy, cloak evil, or service shenanigans. These ambivalent films reach to pessimistic or troubled visions of religion as a central locale at which large unanswerable questions may be posed and struggled over—a characteristic itself incongruous with the clean and mandatory closure of many earlier films, yet almost expected in non-musical films of this period and reflective of America’s troubled decades.

Social disarray or disenfranchisement Although earlier musicals had commonly dealt with some sort of cultural struggle, many musicals of this period present sharper, less recuperable critiques of the dominant system.17 These films complement contemporary social unrest with more nuanced diegetic pictures of cultural struggle. This is partly due to more complicated representations of race relations than are common to most musicals. Films such as South Pacific and Show Boat (1951) serve as anomalies as they engage with race and ethnicity through their main and subplots. Ultimately, however, both films minimize the racial threat within their narratives. South Pacific separates its interracial couple through an honorable soldier’s death, and the makers of Show Boat chose an obviously white star (Ava Gardner) to portray its mulatta character.18 Rejecting topics that

Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses

43

thwart easy resolution, arcadian-styled narratives seldom engaged with racial diversity or inequity.19 Flower Drum Song, Porgy and Bess, and early African-American musicals such as Moon Over Harlem (1939) and Stormy Weather (1943) place non-white characters in mono-racial/mono-ethnic worlds where otherness need not compete with or negotiate the dominant group’s place in the social hierarchy because that group remains visibly absent throughout the film. Films such as Road to Hong Kong (1962) and Hit the Deck, to the contrary, present racial difference within the white world, but do so in a manner that relegates otherness to a secondary position. Bob Hope, Crosby, and Joan Collins don yellowface in Road to Hong Kong, trivializing racial difference, while 1955’s Hit the Deck relegates non-white characters to secondary roles that can easily be separated from the main narrative and its ideological stakes. (A group of African-American servants arbitrarily appears to hoof it up and accompany the white sailors in a rousing version of “Hallelujah.”) Although films such as Tommy, Godspell, and Sweet Charity flirt with racial critique while more fully embracing a liberal pluralist view of society that embraces difference without fully interrogating it, others tackle such problematic issues head-on and embrace the troubled social implications of presenting more integrated ensembles. Zoot Suit’s engagement with the Zoot Suit riots and related murders, systemic racism in the justice system, and discord within the Latino community, much more fully acknowledges social inequity and irresolvable social conflict than a film like Flower Drum Song, which engages with in-group conflict while white-washing a recent troubled history of Asian relations in the United States. Although Hair fails to interrogate deeply the politics or backgrounds of its hippies, socialites, farmers, or soldiers—a pitfall of much film and the musical specifically—the film’s music and overall narrative probe farther and more overtly into American racial, generational, and political dissent than most film musicals before or since. Hair uses its romance plotline to provide access to class conflicts as Berger and the others crash a party given by socialite Sheila’s parents and horrify the upper-class with their carnal verve for living in “I’ve Got Life.” Both Hair’s musical numbers—often tongue-in-cheek examinations of racial, political, or generational conflict—and its overall narrative avoid idealizing the accomplishments or personal value systems of the hippies.20 The African American member of the group, Hud, possesses a groovy quality as he rebukes racism by reappropriating terms such as “jigaboo,” “pickaninny,” “Little Black Sambo,” and “swamp guinea” in “Colored Spade.” However, unlike Sammy Davis, Jr’s

44

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

psychedelic finger snapping Daddy in Sweet Charity, Hud avoids being either totally exoticized by his race or idealized for his political voice. Rather, his fiancée and young son unexpectedly appear on the scene. To the horror of his hippie comrades, Hud attempts to use his counterculture clout and associated heightened state of being to rationalize the abandonment of his family. Ultimately, the fiancée forces her way into and becomes part of the group. Whereas this shows signs of the conciliatory happy resolution, it remains a complication of racial integration in the genre. Neither ignored, idealized, nor villainized, Hud’s shortcomings add to both the roundness of his character and the overall complication of the social issues this revised form of the genre seeks to interrogate. The film ends—following Berger’s death, killed after being shipped to Vietnam when mistaken for Claude during a prank—with the ensemble standing over Berger’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery. Neither altogether optimistic nor cynical, neither idealizing accomplishments of that specific cultural movement nor denigrating them, Hair concludes with both an ambivalent stance toward the cultural moment and its players and ambiguously with questions, rather than answers. Following social trends of the times, many of these later musical narratives use the tropes of the more classical incarnation of the genre to challenge their very legitimacy in a mid to late twentieth century context. While denaturalizing heterosexual coupling and domestic monogamy these films attack assumptions that had formed the base of arcadian musical norms, and allow the genre to reestablish a sense of social and artistic relevance by further complicating the very idea of a stable and knowable society.

We won’t just entertain you In addition to reflecting an overall sense of social discontent and latching on to popular trends in non-musical cinema of the time, movie musicals from this period also projected ambivalence to established norms by embracing the overall growing cynicism that had emerged over the past decades toward the entertainment industry and entertainers. From the earliest days of the musical, musical films had used entertainment settings as a means to legitimize the performance of song and dance. Although occasional non-integrated backstagers such as Ziegfeld Girl, Applause, and Glorifying the American Girl (1929) present the pitfalls or seedy side of the industry, musical narratives had often served as articulations of a “the show must go on” or “let’s do it for the team” mentality (The Band Wagon, Babes on Broadway, Footlight

Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses

45

Parade [1933]). Pulling together against all odds, such performers tout the glories of music and live performance as Broadway, summer stock, and community theatre casts often prove more resilient than the postal system when it comes to seeing a project through to the end. Later musicals would eliminate this narrative means of communal bonding by more commonly placing entertainment and entertainers under the microscope and situating them as sources of corruption and overall luridness.21 The through-line of darkness that emerged with regard to the entertainment industries not only underscored the overall emergent ambivalence toward the possibility of reaching a diegetic utopian sensibility—as promised in earlier versions of the genre and highlighted by Dyer—but also reflected varying strains of discontent brewing within the television, film, and music industries. In the buildup to World War II skyrocketing income taxes for highly paid professionals had made it beneficial for major stars to forgo long-term contracts, incorporate themselves, and hire themselves out to studios on a picture-by-picture basis. In the decade following the war a string of events further weakened studios’ control over stars’ finely-tuned personae: Olivia DeHavilland’s successful legal case against Warner Bros. ruled that studios could not control actors for longer than the designated length of their contracts; the House Un-American Activities Committee’s communist accusations (1947/1951) helped to taint the glow of Hollywood stars; and structural changes associated with the Paramount Decision further damaged the studio-star relationship. By the late forties and early fifties, fewer and fewer stars were signing the kind of long-term contracts that had strongly controlled their public images and appearances and had included strict morality clauses. Compounding the legal, financial, and structural studio shakeups of the forties, Hollywood scandal rags such as Confidential, On the QT, and Whisper actively capitalized on the new unrestrained celebrity activity and what Mary Desjardins refers to as the “changing climate around obscenity, as well as the complexities of current libel and privacy laws.”22 Desjardins argues in her examination of the rise of and conflict over celebrity tabloids that, “Knowledge of the stars was regulated by Hollywood to create desire and maintain certain boundaries of sexuality—monogamous heterosexuality practiced by people of the same race.”23 This same notion of morality had rested at the base of the musical genre. No surprise that in the wake of the erosion of the original “dream factory” and its stable of stars that this darker faction of the musical genre would reflect the emergent less-than-wholesome or trustworthy image of the showman.

46

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

Simultaneous to Hollywood’s loosening grasp on the public images of its stars, both the television and music industries found themselves in the midst of major public relations crises. In 1959 the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight was holding highly publicized hearings about the television quiz show scandals. The honesty of the living room medium had come into question when investigations brought to light backstage dealings that had provided answers to and coached quiz show contestants in hopes of bulking up ratings. Just one year later, the radio industry came under similar scrutiny as the Payola investigations brought to light the fact that disc jockeys and music hosts such as Alan Freed and Dick Clark had been cultivating suspect relationships and economic arrangements with record companies for the promise to spin their artists’ records. By the seventies, decades of scandal and the lasciviousness and corruption associated with Studio 54’s drugged-up, sexed-up, and wholly selfabsorbed celebrities (Donna Summer, Liza Minnelli, and Andy Warhol, among others) ultimately appeared to taint show business in these later musicals. No longer do entertainers and the entertainment industry evoke the hopefulness, joy, and wholesomeness that pushed arcadian musicals to their celebratory conclusions. The healing once implicit in these popular narratives gave way to cynicism and tongue-in-cheek mockery. Eric Clapton’s over-the-top healing cult of Marilyn Monroe creates a rock-as-religion sideshow in Tommy. All That Jazz and The Boy Friend use infidelities, dream-orgies, drugs, and heartless businessmen to create a show business much too perverse and sinister for an understudy magically to become a star as in 42nd Street.24 In All That Jazz, the financial backers of Joe’s new Broadway show reveal themselves as slimy businessmen through their responses to his heart attack. While showing support to his face, they secretly joke that being able to cash in the show’s insurance policy in the event of Joe’s death would make his new musical the first Broadway show to make a profit without ever opening. This type of cold backstabbing deviates from the warmth and community often associated with the entertainment business in the more arcadian musicals and underscores the overall cynicism of the emergent form. Compounding the images of personal and corporate corruption forming within the various media industries, a spate of record label buyouts and mergers and the corporate excess of drug-driven labels like disco king Casablanca sullied any notion of innocence or authenticity associated with the music industries. Reflecting the cynicism of the time, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band presents an irresolvable rift between

Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses

47

big business and homespun music. Not only does the potential destructive nature of music come to the fore, but also the inherent evil of corporate entertainment rears its ugly head. In the style of 1970s rock and disco, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (The Bee Gees and Peter Frampton) sign with a major label and immediately suffer the moral and physical consequences. Under the influence of label bigwigs and their whores, the boys become drug addicts and sex fiends. Their hometown (Hometown U.S.A.) subsequently transforms into a den of iniquity while an evil doctor (Steve Martin), musicians (Aerosmith), and a mind-controller (Alice Cooper) attempt to use magical instruments to take over the world. Although all is ultimately recuperated through the magic of deus ex machina Billy Preston, his magic coronet, and an extra-diegetic star-studded rendition of the theme song, the narrative maintains the corruption of big business and its influence on wholesome rock-n-roll music.25 Accompanying the narrative trend toward questioning the intentions of entertainers and the entertainment industry, an associated trend emerges of framing narratives within performances that both reinforces this cynicism toward entertainers and reflects the self-reflective forms of New American Cinema and The French New Wave. This disruption of narrative flow draws attention to the filmic mechanism, demystifying any sense of enclosed diegetic space. The musical had always embraced such practices in the breaking of the fourth wall by singers or the integration of mini-musical narratives within the diegesis (Berkeley’s stage-bound extravaganzas, In the Navy’s [1941] military revue), but the films of this period push the breaking of narrative fluidity further by playing with the presence (or invisibility) of the diegetic audience. Altman and Feuer both point to such audiences as representing, previewing, and forming the opinions and responses of the real movie-going audience. By making that audience one with the diegetic audience, the arcadian forms of the musical foreground their intention to coerce the non-diegetic audience into accepting the utopian sensibility projected by the films’ narratives.26 To the contrary many films of this later period instead use the foregrounding of diegetic performance to underscore the spatial or ideological gulf that exists between the viewer, any possibility of social harmony, and those at the center of the films’ narratives. Beyond simply putting on a show for the diegetic (and non-diegetic) audience as many backstage musicals do, Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar overtly sever the connection between the performers and movie-watching audience by placing the storytelling process within

48

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

some form of audience-less performance. The former includes skits of parables performed by the ensemble for the ensemble and the latter a full-blown theatrical performance—framed by the cast members constructing the stage and donning costumes—staged in the desert for no one. As Godspell begins, John the Baptist magically appears into the hectic lives of each member of the ensemble. Leaving his or her current life—student, waitress, parking lot attendant, cab driver, garment worker, dancer, model—each runs to Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain and musically washes away his or her sins. From that point on, the performers and audience members are one and the same, as no additional New Yorkers appear until the crucifixion of Christ brings uniformed police officers to drag him away. Not until the ensemble members joyously carry Christ over the Brooklyn Bridge do New Yorkers—at the beginning of the film an integral part of the ensemble members’ unfulfilling lives—reappear to repopulate the city. This type of audience-less performance destabilizes the role of the diegetic audience; their removal further distances the narrative from an overt reestablishment of the status quo by removing those who may preview the desired response of the theatrical audience. The very place of performance for performance’s sake comes into question as the communal power of song and dance falls on no ears in these already ideologically conflicted narratives.27 A Little Night Music and The Boy Friend similarly toy with the connotation of audience relationships as the reality of the diegetic performance gives way to varying degrees of narrative integration. Both films begin with the players putting on shows in the presence of theatrical audiences. Shy of using this technique to form a connection between the theatrical and movie-going audience, both films quickly dispose of their theatrical audiences, with A Little Night Music’s audience fading away as a narrative revolving around a series of infidelities takes the shape of a fully realized and no longer stage-bound film narrative. The Boy Friend uses a convention resembling a perverse exoticized version of the traditional dream ballet to erase the diegetic audience from the theatrebound narrative as the diegetic show’s numbers transform the actors into toga-wearing members of an orgy, dancing gnomes, and giant sexualized Rolls Royce hood ornaments. As the audience disappears during the dream sequences, they need not identify with nor support the sordid world depicted by the bizarre hallucinations. The constructed reality of stage performance and the role of the audience continually slip to the background as these films, indicative of entertainment-focused musicals of this time, foreground the depravity of entertainment and its residual effect on a character’s craft.

Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses

49

The state of community and a utopian future The ambivalence discussed in this chapter directed toward previously activated generic norms and manifest in these later musical narratives, commonly results in the unsettling of the bedrock qualities of the Hollywood musical—a united community and a conclusion that implies the possibility of some form of utopia.28 Problematizing or sidestepping the concept of romance, the narrative outcomes of these later films commonly progress with more cynical or ambivalent notions regarding the possibility of a unified community and utopian society. With more complicated narratives that cast aspersions at the possibility of knowledgeable, sensitive, inclusive, and honest societies, simplistic conclusions become improbable. This lack of narrative assuredness instead produces shattered, dishonest, divisive, delusional, and invisible societies at large. I would never dare to claim that no musicals of this period maintain the same sense of communal harmony and utopian sensibility so often discussed and quite popular in earlier decades of the genre. Musicals of this period such as Half a Sixpence, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Doctor Dolittle, Hello, Dolly!, Grease 1 and 2 (1982), and The Pirate Movie present communities that ultimately overcome their differences—class or clique-based—to conclude with fully bonded groups that see the possibility of a utopic future. More important in the examination of the specificities of this period, however, is the large group of musicals produced that retain elements of social dissent at their narratives’ ends. Some films produce communities more decimated than others as their stories end, and such films maintain a contemptuous view toward earlier established notions of the genre and the worlds it commonly sought to replicate. The complexity and skepticism of these narratives at times provides a glimpse of or hope for some kind of utopian future, although a splintered society stands in the way of such a reality. Films such as Sweet Charity, Camelot, Paint Your Wagon, and Lost Horizon find narrative resolution in forever divided worlds. Although Charity’s and King Arthur’s stories end with a twinkle of hope, neither character exists in a society truly capable of making his or her dreams come true. Charity crumbles after being left at the altar by Oscar who is unable to accept her sordid past, and she finds herself unable to confront her friends with the reality of yet another failed love. Though depressed, she dons a smile while passing happy couples in the park. She remains glued to social conditioning regarding love and marriage in a society that shows no evidence of providing her with such an end. Similarly, the twinkle

50

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

in King Arthur’s eye seems hopeless as he hangs his resolve on the knowledge that his kingdom, now crushed under the weight of his wife’s and best friend’s infidelity and an impending war, will be remembered for what it once was. Such a conclusion presents no utopian end, only a delusional hope for others to idealize his failure. Cultural mores regarding proper sexual behavior for women and the impending revolution make these narrative options incongruous with the protagonists’ dreams. The hope for a utopian future exists, but in these worlds this optimism is fruitless, as a reality reflective of contemporary cultural rifts and an irresolvable narrative crush the dream. Mirroring Charity’s and Arthur’s seemingly fruitless dreams of contentedness, films like The Little Prince, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, and Goodbye, Mr. Chips present half-hearted resolutions as their characters find some degree of happiness and contentedness through the loss of love or death of a loved one; the knowledge of past joys allows them to retain some form of solitary joy existing apart from communities that once threatened them. Some narratives embrace the emergent cynicism of the genre by projecting pessimism toward the future as they reject the possibility of a unified community or end inconclusively. Mirroring the hopelessness of Mike Nichols’ sadomasochistic couple in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf or the less dramatic despondency of William Friedkin’s Boys in the Band (1970) or The French Connection (1971), many of these darker musicals create narrative societies unable to secure any form of future assuredness and end as they began, in media res. Both At Long Last Love and Xanadu embrace unclear romantic conclusions, still unsure whether or not the lovers will find happiness, while both 1776 and Man of la Mancha present supposed moments of hope that implicate layers of impending dissent and uncertainty. Just as the signing of The Declaration of Independence occurs with lingering conflicts regarding slavery and regional interests hanging in the balance, Man of la Mancha fades as Cervantes marches out of the prison—in which he has won over his fellow inmates with his stories of Don Quixote—to an uncertain fate at the hands of the Inquisition. These narratives project the larger sense of social unrest indicative of the 1960s and 1970s and reject full victories to present small successes that are quickly subsumed by the ever-looming worries of imperfect worlds. Bereft of the conciliatory romance and resistant to the cleanly blended communities that result in new, more giving and accepting societies, the hope for a utopian future often fades before the credits roll. A final group of films transcends any sense of ambivalence toward earlier dictates of the musical genre and ends conclusively with

Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses

51

unsalvageable and devastated communities. The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s final—although often omitted—number “Super Heroes” leaves the remaining living characters crawling through the rubble of the decimated castle, while Hair’s surviving hippies, Sheila, and Claude sing “Let the Sunshine In” at Berger’s grave as the camera pans out to a presentday peace rally in Washington, D.C. Even within Hair’s glimmer of hope projected through the peace rally, the film makes it obvious that society has not overcome its propensity toward violence; the counterculture has not won. The decline of the concluding production number during this period only reinforces this narrative reticence toward communal harmony. Often associated with the concluding celebration, a large production number with excessive displays of performance and merrymaking traditionally brought communities together—both those within the diegesis and by proxy those sitting in the theatre—in one big final shebang.29 A reprise such as The Music Man’s “Seventy-Six Trombones” or Mary Poppins’ “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” united the ensembles in celebrations of their new unified communities. This tradition fades—whether because of creative design or shifts in performance style or performer type as discussed in Chapter 3—reinforcing the lingering skepticism of the ambivalent musical, as many narratives end with splintered nonmusical groups, rather than bonded performing ones.30 Even though Jesus Christ Superstar’s final number “Superstar” bears the signs of an all out production number with glitzy costumes, a big dance number, and the entire ensemble, the actual film ends as the youths pack up the trappings of their play and ride off in their bus. This type of relegation of the production number to the position of second to last refocuses the narrative on its ambivalent or unsettled positions taken toward religion, the story, and cultural divisions that remained outside the diegesis. Many of the more ambivalently fashioned films avoid this grand gesture of communal unity altogether, to foreground the destabilization of community with concluding moments implicating the isolation indicative of their protagonists’ solo or introspective journeys. Without connections outside of the school, Goodbye, Mr. Chips’ protagonist retires only to live on the campus, blending generations upon generations of boys, confusing grandson for grandfather. In the end he takes a solitary walk down the town road to an underscoring of “Fill the World with Love.” Lost Horizon’s Richard treks through the Himalayas without regard for his own safety, only focusing on his return to Shangri-La. As he discovers the signpost marking the entrance to Shangri-La, the maudlin Burt Bacharach theme song “Lost Horizon” plays in voiceover. Only Arthur sings the final reprise of “Camelot,” the rest of his followers musically

52

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

absent as they prepare for war as he hangs on to his dream of his once successful kingdom. The inability of these narratives to unite the entire group comes through in the final moments of a protagonist’s narrative, musical, and performative isolation.

Case study: The narrative of Zoot Suit The decided shift in favored narrative tone, focus, and style during this period and its relationship to—or deviation from—the kinder and gentler musical can be seen throughout a film such as the R-rated Zoot Suit. Even the very rating of the film points to its edgier nature. (What would have to occur for Rodgers and Hammerstein to garner an R rating?) Luis Valdez’s violent Chicano-themed film pulls no punches and foregoes the mono-racial infighting of Cabin in the Sky or Flower Drum Song (and their corresponding conciliatory endings) to construct a narrative of personal struggle, social inequity, and ambivalent conclusions. Based on Valdez’s play of the same name, the film chronicles a fictionalized version of the Los Angeles Zoot Suit Riots and Sleepy Lagoon murders and the ensuing imprisonment and trial of Henry Leyvas (here Henry Reyna) and his “gang.” The incident on which the film was based occurred in Los Angeles in 1942. As World War II raged, a separate war was raging on the barrio streets of L.A. Police officers and military men were cracking down on so-called zoot suiters, mostly young Mexican men who identified as Chicano, used pachuco slang, and—during a time of rationing—wore “drapes” or cuffed pants and long jackets.31 Often engaging more with their own culture and African American music, these young men and women eschewed the dictates of the white culture that failed to allow them to thrive for one more favorable to their situation. In 1942, amid a conflict between different groups of Mexican youths, a misunderstanding occurred when Leyvas’s friends headed into a party to retaliate for a beating Leyvas and his girlfriend had taken at the hands of the local Downy gang. By the evening’s end, one man was dead. Within a week, the Los Angeles police had rounded up over 600—mostly Mexican and African American—youths on suspicion of murder. In the end Leyvas and 22 of his friends would stand trial for the murder of José Díaz. Leyvas’s true story includes acts of police abuse, a corrupt and biased judicial system, and a popular press that thrived on sensationalizing the story to the detriment of a fair trial. On January 12, 1943, 17 of the men would be found guilty of various charges and Leyvas and two others guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison at San Quentin. While

Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses

53

Leyvas was in prison, violence between servicemen and zoot suiters escalated. On October 2, 1944 the Leyvas case was dismissed on appeal and the men were set free. Leyvas would soon find himself in other sorts of legal trouble, spending an additional decade in prison before he settled down to operate a restaurant and counsel members of the local Chicano youth moment. Neither an encouraging nor wholly cautionary tale, the very premise of Zoot Suit and its connection to a real conflicted moment in American history runs contrary to the generic formula identified by scholars such as Schatz and Altman.32 From beginning to end, Zoot Suit defies the status quo affirming narratives of arcadian musicals and foregrounds the characters’ otherness, their resistance to being consumed into Anglo culture, and the injustice present in the filmic—and real historical—communities. Combining sung and spoken English with pachuco slang from the first musical number, the film sets Reyna and his community apart from dominant white culture. The continued use of unsubtitled Spanish and pachuco slang foregrounds the gulf between the film’s protagonists and the Hollywood machine through which it was released (distributed by Universal Pictures). Both through the language the film uses and the narrative it presents, a world emerges that defies the utopia of many early musicals for a world of conflict, resistance, and questions (rather than answers). The story’s form, focus, and content ally it with the emerging popular style defined here as the ambivalent musical. Replete with contradictions, ambiguities, and social and personal revolt, the film’s narrative emphasizes the impossibility of clean resolutions and bonded communities. This fluid sense of reality emerges immediately both through the film’s pretense of presenting the story as a performance within a performance—as the story of Henry Reyna takes place on an actual stage in front of an actual audience—and the immediate introduction the mythical narrator/Henry’s alter ego, “El Pachuco” (Edward James Olmos) (Figure 1). He emerges posturing across the stage in his jet black zoot suit and blood red shirt and ultimately halts the opening swing dance number through a snap of his fingers and a flick of his switchblade. Addressing the audience he states: Ladies and Gentlemen, the mono you’re about to see is a construct of fact and fantasy. But relax, weigh the facts and enjoy the pretense. Our pachuco realities will only make sense if you grasp their stylization. It was a secret fantasy of every vato living in or out of the pachucada to put on the zoot suit and play with the myth. Más chucote que la chingada. ¡Pues, órale!.

54

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

Figure 1 The Zoot Suit ensemble poses on stage in the final moments of the film as they highlight the overt theatricality of the narrative. (Universal Pictures/Photofest)

With this aside, the film opens by addressing the audience, alerting them to the pretense and fantasy of the performance, and asking that they play along. Unlike Feuer’s discussion of the diegetic audience, El Pachuco’s audience is not asked to become one with the viewed community, but to recognize its subjectivity and “weigh the facts.” Rather than encouraging an acceptance of the world of the performance, the diegetic audience—as well as the viewing audience—is visually and aurally encouraged to take a Brechtian viewing position of distanciation.33 They must distance themselves from the action, consider what they see, and (possibly even) take action—as the film will conclude with possibilities and questions that encourage further contemplation. Characteristics other than those guiding aural presentation of the film tie Zoot Suit more closely to the ambivalent dictates of the musical than the arcadian. Like musicals such as Jesus Christ Superstar, The Little Prince, and 1776, the film centers not on the romantic quest of its dual protagonists or the unification of battling factions of a community. Instead, the personal and social struggles of the male protagonist Reyna—and by proxy Leyvas—take center stage. Although the Sleepy Lagoon murder occurs in response to the attack on Henry and his sweet girlfriend Della, the relationship with Della does not guide Henry’s choices or the

Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses

55

story itself. Romance takes a decided back seat to the social, judicial, and personal conflicts Henry encounters. Even though the story injects a character reminiscent of the lover’s rival—in this case Jewish advocate Alice Bloomfield for whom Henry falls—this love triangle goes nowhere, as Della never gains knowledge of the burgeoning relationship and Alice places her advocacy for Henry and others above an idealistic notion of romance. His relationship with the Chicana Della—who goes to a delinquent school for girls for defending him—does not triumph over all and bring Henry over to the clean-cut American way of life; neither does a burgeoning romance with Alice prove that there is no black, brown, and white or Chicano, Anglo, or Jewish. In the end, Henry’s romantic fate remains unclear, not even important enough to garner a solid conclusion. With the romance firmly sidelined, the narrative of Zoot Suit instead mirrors one more akin to the male melodrama. Although not focusing on the religious quests of Tommy, Godspell, or Jesus Christ Superstar or the career ventures of Camelot, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, or 1776, Zoot Suit centers soundly on the struggles of Henry Reyna to maintain his sense of self-respect and culture in a society that seeks to rob him of both. This personal journey takes hold of the narrative from beginning to end. Instead of attempting to unite a community or cool the fire inside a hot-blooded lover, the film focuses mainly on the struggle of Reyna and the mythic presence of El Pachuco. Otherworldly characters are not uncommon to musicals (Carousel’s Billy Bigelow, Damn Yankees’ Mr Applegate, and Cabin in the Sky’s General and Lucifer Jr), but El Pachuco possesses more substance than these characters. He directs the audience, controls all musical numbers, and forces Henry to consider the ramifications of the actions of whites upon his social and personal standing. El Pachuco’s participation more fully develops the male melodrama, aiding in articulating the rationale for choices made by the film’s protagonist and exploring the emotional world that guides those choices. Through the interactions between El Pachuco and Henry, the narrative focus results in a much more well developed protagonist than common to most musicals—as the predetermined conciliatory narrative closure associated with the arcadian requires little actual character development from anyone. Such protagonists’ emotional lives seldom go beyond basic characteristics such as “loyal,” “macho,” or “regretful.” Fred Astaire’s characters in Top Hat (1935) and Swing Time appear to want little more than to dance and win the girl. His social position, long-term goals, family allegiance, and cultural status matter very little. In Zoot

56

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

Suit, however, Henry struggles though each of these issues throughout. He struggles to do right by his family. He negotiates the position of Latin lover and respectful boyfriend as he resists Della’s advances the night of the murder. He struggles to assimilate into a society that rejects his culture, as the film begins with his final hurrah before he leaves for the Navy. He defends this decision to serve as El Pachuco mocks “muy Popeye the sailor man, huh?” and states “Muy patriotic, huh? The Japs have sewed up the Pacific. Rommel’s kicking ass in Egypt, but the Mayor of L.A. has declared an all-out war on Chicanos. On You. ¿Te curas?” Shortly after this, the film shifts back to the roundup of young Chicanos and Henry’s assault by the police during interrogation. Throughout, the film shifts between Henry’s interrogation of his own situation and the oppression of Henry and his friends by a corrupt system. Ultimately, Henry’s goal is not to achieve any kind of personal or professional relationship, but to maintain his sense of self and dignity at the hands of a system and society who disdain him. The types of personal battles that Henry must fight further highlight the narrative and ideological shift occurring in the musical during this period. Unlike many non-white or somewhat racially integrated musicals of earlier years (Way Down South, Hallelujah, Cabin in the Sky, Flower Drum Song), Zoot Suit does not either center on a resolvable conflict within one cultural community (church going vs. gambler or old world vs. assimilated American) or result in the ultimate assimilation into or acceptance of a white status quo (for example, good slave owners are fine folk in Way Down South). Rather, the film depicts Reyna as a victim of a corrupt and racist white system. When at the mercy of the correctional and judicial systems, Henry withstands physical abuse and coercion, a sensationalist press that works to rig the trial, and a judge and prosecutor whose ethnic biases sit on the surface of their decisions (to force the defendants to wear the same clothes they had been wearing for two months, to forgo haircuts, to rise in the courtroom each time their names are called by a witness). Despite Henry’s release upon appeal, social prejudice does not melt away as a product of a few aberrant officials. In addition to preventing assimilation back into dominant society through the exposure of a corrupt system, the story further foregrounds itself as separate from white society by emanating from within the Chicano community and engaging with its language, customs, and concern for cultural appearance both inside and outside of the community. Throughout, the use of pachuco slang prevents a complete immersion into the narrative by those who cannot understand the language and

Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses

57

dialect. Although anyone can understand the surface story, viewers unfamiliar with pachuco slang cannot fully grasp the complexity of Henry’s thoughts and desires. Almost all of the music, including the matching opening and concluding production numbers performed to the song “Pachuco Suave,” are almost wholly in Spanish. El Pachuco constantly speaks with Henry (who is the only character capable of seeing or hearing him), shifting between Spanish and English and continually challenging the decisions—both helpful and hurtful—made by white lawyers, legal aides, and judges. He recurrently situates Chicanos as Other, not to marginalize or exoticize them but to stress their specificity and history. The inclusion of the white Tommy Roberts as one of the four young men imprisoned for the murder creates almost a reversal of the idealism once seemingly so inherent to the musical genre. Rather than allowing a non-white to enjoy the success and perks of white society, the treatment of Tommy highlights the system’s blatant rejection of anything associated with the Chicano culture. While talking to Alice Tommy says, “Listen Alice, I know what you’re trying to do for us, and that’s reet, see? Shit. Most Paddies would probably like to see us locked up for good. Now I’m in here because I hung around with Mexicans, but I grew up with these vatos. And I’m pachuco too, see. Simón, esa.” In an arcadian narrative, this moment of candor with a sympathetic secondary character would likely lead to a grand reconciliation or epiphany. The inequality of the situation would possibly come to light or at least be recognized by the greater group. In the case of Zoot Suit, Tommy and the boys win their appeal, but no social change appears on the horizon. Finally, to contradict the very core of the traditional conciliatory ending of many musicals, Zoot Suit rejects the possibility of a clean resolution. In its presentation of a society and life rife with conflict and ambiguities, the film foregoes the clear-cut ending for one open to individual interpretation. The audience must “weigh the facts.” As the men gain their release from prison and Henry reappropriates his zoot suit, he says to El Pachuco “we won, didn’t we?” His alter ego says, “And that’s a perfect way to end this play. Happy ending y todo. Ah, but life ain’t like that, Hank.” As he snaps his fingers, the newspaper man who has ill-represented Henry throughout the film says, “Henry Reyna went back to prison in 1947 for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. While incarcerated he killed another inmate and wasn’t released until 1955, when he got into hard drugs. He died of the trauma of his life in 1972.” El Pachuco sneers at the reporter and says, “That’s the way you see it, ese, but there’s other ways to end this story.” He snaps his fingers again—as

58

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

continuous controller of the film’s reality—and the company dances to “Pachuco Suave” as characters present alternate possibilities for Henry’s future. As they dance and Henry puts a ring on Della’s finger, an aged version of Henry’s brother states, “Henry Reyna went to Korea in 1950. He was shipped there on a destroyer and defended the 38th parallel, but he was killed at Inchon in 1952, being posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.” Immediately Alice says, “Henry Reyna married Della Barrios in 1948. They still live in Los Angeles. They have five kids, three of whom are attending university, speaking pachuco slang, and calling themselves Chicanos.” El Pachuco continues singing and the company continues dancing as characters extol final thoughts on Henry: Attorney: Henry Reyna, the born leader. Judge: Henry Reyna, the zoot-suiter. Tommy: Henry Reyna, my friend. Sister: Henry Reyna, my brother Parents: Henry Reyna, our son. Della: Henry Reyna, my love. El Pachuco: Henry Reyna, El Pachuco. The man, the myth still lives. This inconclusive ending challenges dominant stereotypes of the Latino convict, yet simultaneously resists a full recuperation into dominant Anglo society. Despite the dark reality of Leyvas’s post-appeal life, the film creates both positive and negative possibilities and challenges the assuredness of a musical conclusion and the pessimism of a social problem film.

Conclusion Films that, like Zoot Suit, confound the narrative traditions common to the more idyllic form of the musical, abound in the 1966–1983 period. Through their narrative foci, ideological complexity, and character development, many musicals of the sixties, seventies, and eighties deviate from the early arcadian form. By embracing the trends emergent in more cutting-edge American and European films of the time, they subvert the very stability of the romance plotline and recuperable society. The conflicted or contradictory stance these film musicals take toward once entrenched norms regarding romance and community challenges the genre’s ability to produce a sense of inevitability with regard to finding suitable solutions to the conflicts that hamper society.

Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses

59

By challenging the naturalness of monogamous romance, subverting romance as a customary and supreme path, and additionally questioning the stability and overall goodness of music and show business, the complications resting on the surface of contemporary society become foregrounded as the possibility for some form of vicarious musical social utopia fades to the background. Concurrent with the narrative refocus on questions and a lack of answers, these films—through this ambivalence and pessimism toward the genre and societal norms—allow the musical to reassume its place of social relevance (even if failing to find the economic viability of its earlier years). Embracing the darker artistic and social norms of the time, the genre produces a voice indicative of contemporary mores and no longer so anachronistic in its projection of a lost idealism. As these films broaden the acceptable and expected narratives for the musical genre, social and personal problems emerge in more complex ways. In allowing for unanswered questions, wider expressions of individuality, and social conflict, the films’ narratives may not neatly resolve the social issues they interrogate, but they certainly provide for the possibility of more complex answers—or lack thereof—than many musical storylines of the past.

2 On a Clear Day You Can See the Cracks in the Scenery: Visual Reflexivity and Realism Trump Nostalgic Idealism

Narrative elements of the musical, once so fully linked to the harmonious union of heterosexual couples, took a darker turn ideologically reflective of social conflict of the sixties and seventies and artistically reminiscent of shifts occurring both within the entertainment industries and motion picture style itself. The mixture of narrative darkness, egocentrism, and ambiguity prevalent in these integrated movie musical products of the late sixties to early eighties projects a generic ambivalence toward earlier established norms, and rather embraces the uncertainty prevalent in both the political and artistic moment. Compounding this narrative ambivalence that projects the genre as neither idealistic nor wholly nihilistic, a new sense of visual complexity emerged that embraced psychological subjectivity, community separation, and generic self-reflectivity. As with narrative shifts that destroyed the hazy idealism once so indicative of the musical, technical stylization closely reflects the innovations of the French New Wave and New American Cinema, as well as American and European avant-garde movements and these movements’ seeming opposite, Italian neo-realism. Techniques such as short shot length, jump cuts, freeze frame, and image superimposition help to replicate character subjectivity as these narratives turn in on themselves and often focus on the conflicted emotions and personal journeys of their protagonists. Along with such editing and cinematographic techniques, realistic, stylized, and theatrical styles of mise-en-scène emerge to project worlds that confront the intricacies of human experience. Rejecting the broad strokes Rick Altman cites as denoting less complicated times or more ambiguously exotic places, these new musicals commonly lack the idealistic images of 1950s soda 60

On a Clear Day You Can See the Cracks in the Scenery 61

shops, turn of the century Paris, or “ye olde timey” England. Instead of a golly, gosh, aw shucks conception of reality that legitimizes even the most absurd narrative turns, many of these new musicals instead turn to dark stylization, overt theatricality, or stark realism to reject the visual safety of a watercolor nostalgia. The musical had often supported its overarching arcadian project by creating a perfect and simplified visual world, one that would account for the idealism of the characters and Richard Dyer would argue projected a utopian sensibility.1 To underscore their more complex and nuanced narratives, many musicals of this later period present more realistic visual representations of their topics than once common. Rick Altman argues the arcadian practice of using exoticized or nostalgized locales establishes a distance between reality and narrative by creating a mysterious other world or world known but rearranged to a point of nostalgia and safety.2 For example, the contrived color schemes of Guys and Dolls and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers aid in rendering less threatening supposedly seedy or rough surroundings. The gangsters of New York take on a goofy and hapless feel as they cavort in their vibrantly colored urban wonderland. Similarly, the rough backwoodsmen of Seven Brides don ice cream-colored outfits as they capture the hearts of their abducted sweeties. Dyer discusses this magical synthesis as a byproduct of the utopian sensibility created through the mixture of representational (plot, characters, stars, mise-en-scène) and nonrepresentational (color, texture, movement, rhythm, camerawork) signs. Within any given cinematic text, the two may encounter some form of dissonance, rendering the film simultaneously utopic and ideologically unsatisfactory.3 Whereas Seven Brides includes narrative violence and overt manipulation on the parts of the characters, the mise-enscène evokes a dreamlike version of the American frontier, costumes reject rough-hewn colors and textures for more colorfully pleasing ones, and even moments of narrative violence, sadness, or manipulation occur as rhythms, camerawork, and choreography evoke life, energy, and unity. Such a contradiction allows for the film to remain “entertaining” while possessing a less than problem-free plot as the utopic nonrepresentational and representational elements compensate for the problematic ones. However, as more plots fail to resolve themselves utopically, simultaneously non-representational and representational elements associated with visuals—as well as the harsher rock-driven musical beats of many new musicals—fail to evoke the utopian sensibility necessary to overcome the pessimism and ambiguity established narratively and an ultimate lack of “entertainment” takes over.

62

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

Camerawork and editing: I can see right through you The visual style most commonly associated with classical Hollywood cinema, one that seamlessly unfolds the intended version of the story, commonly emerges through highly communicative yet selfeffacing visual technique. David Bordwell describes this as, “the invisible observer,” stating “The invisible observer narration is itself fairly effaced . . . we can already see that classical narration quickly cues us to construct story logic (causality, parallelism), time, and space in ways that make the events before the camera our principal source of information.”4 He goes on further to note that “momentary disorientation is permissible only if motivated realistically.”5 Such narrative and visual techniques, as Bordwell discusses, work to present a hermeneutically sealed and clear-cut objective story that works toward ultimate narrative closure. The musical has historically worked against such goals. Since the visual innovation of Busby Berkeley in the 1930s and 1940s, musicals have eschewed classical style and taken on varying levels of visual theatricality or excess, particularly in their musical numbers. Berkeley’s techniques often focus on individual body parts or the overall screen picture created by the movements of the group, as in the crotch and leg shots in 42nd Street’s “Young and Healthy.” Such camerawork disassociates the image with burgeoning unions or physical performance of dance, and instead transforms bodies into visually pleasing or shocking shapes. In addition to these visual spectacles, the arcadian musical often engages in the use of visual techniques that eschew traditional invisible narrative and editing style either through the breaking of the fourth wall or in the ubiquitous dream ballet. These practices draw attention away from the narrative’s nostalgic reality to the more overt fantasy of the dream. Within these later and more generically ambivalent musicals, however, overt visual choices that defy realistic motivation often exist outside flights of dreamlike fancy, drawing more attention to those choices as they transcend generic norms and expectations. In addition to foregrounding deliberate techniques, these choices complement narrative practices popularized in this phase of the genre. Visual disassociation amplifies emergent generic destabilization and underscores the musical’s associations with the art cinema as directors, editors, and cinematographers take advantage of techniques such as the zoom, jump cut, extreme close-up (ECU), and the insertion of still photographic images to aid in connecting the visual representations of characters to the often dark emotional experiences that accompany them. Bordwell and Janet Staiger describe this subjective construction

On a Clear Day You Can See the Cracks in the Scenery 63

of the visual as associated with the popularization of directionless protagonists—much like those peopling this new phase of the musical genre. A conception of realism also affects the film’s spatial and temporal construction, but the art cinema’s realism here encompasses a spectrum of possibilities. The options range from a documentary factuality (e.g. Il posto) to intense psychological subjectivity (Hiroshima mon amour) . . . . Violations of classical conceptions of time and space are justified as the intrusion of an unpredictable and contingent daily reality or as the subjective reality of complex characters.6 As Mike Nichols, Robert Altman, and Martin Scorsese were using creative cinematography and editing in The Graduate, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and Mean Streets (1973) to compound their critiques of genre, complacency, and deviance and visually depict their protagonists’ states of obsession, boredom, and chaos, the musical integrated such visual stylings to underscore its increased psychological depth. In both musical and non-musical vehicles, elements such as quick cutting and point of view shooting assist in capturing the immediacy of a moment, visually depicting the heightening of the character’s stakes, or pulling away from the fluid narrative and interrogating internal conflict. Reflecting the musicals’ increased rejection of previous generic norms and its emergent questioning of the primacy of heterosexual union, such heavy-handed cinematographic choices highlight the individual and his or her inner turmoil. Films such as Man of la Mancha and All That Jazz, both sidelining the romance for a focus on the internal struggles of less-than-perfect men, exemplify this shift as they integrate cinematography indicative of non-musical cinematic movements to highlight the characters’ estrangement from community and overwhelmingly solipsistic existences. Like many heroes—or antiheroes—in these newer musicals, they reject social norms and become enslaved by their own skewed personal visions. Man of la Mancha’s Alonso Quijana (alter ego to Don Quixote and hero of the jailed Cervantes’ tale) emerges as a mere shell of a man. Weakened by age and delusions of grandeur, he attempts to maintain his façade of a knight errant. Director Arthur Hiller implements highly subjective filming techniques like POV shooting when Quijana is trapped on the giant/windmill or short shots and quick movements to portray the doddering man’s disorientation when faced by the Knight of Mirrors and his own dilapidated visage. Rather than focusing on the generically traditional folly of the hero, such visuals

64

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

underscore the hero’s weakness and detachment from social norms in a uniquely cinematic way. In a similar fashion, All that Jazz uses visual and aural gimmicks to pull the focus to Joe’s physical and emotional weaknesses, such as Fosse’s technique of dropping diegetic sound from the track when Joe suffers his heart attack during a rehearsal. As the camera cuts from cast member to cast member as he or she laughs hysterically—unaware of Joe’s condition—the sound and visuals undermine the traditional norms of the genre and highlight the fragility of human life, the hero’s isolation from others, and the impotence of the show business community.7 Such generic innovation in visual technique simultaneously highlights the new sense of pessimism and isolationism within the genre and at times places a contemporary stamp on a once-considered throwback form by embracing not only the emotional subjectivity of contemporary filmmaking, but also the psychological projection of contemporary drug culture. Whether through low-budget films like The Trip (1967), New American Cinema hallmark Easy Rider’s psychologically sadomasochistic New Orleans scenes, Woodstock’s purple haze, or Laugh-In’s (1967) psychedelic televised groove, the burgeoning drug culture of the late 1960s was leaving its stamp across genres and media. The same drive to escape or subvert traditional norms repeatedly appears throughout the musicals of this period by both visual/psychological and narrative means (Hair, A Funny Thing Happened on Way to the Forum [1966], Sweet Charity, All That Jazz, The Boy Friend, Zoot Suit).8 Forum fun-lovingly replicates the sexualized psychodelia of Laugh-In during a visit to the neighboring Grecian whorehouse. The camera zooms in and out and shakes about, visually recreating the men’s unrestrained sexual stimulation as exoticized, half-naked whores dance.9 All That Jazz uses the psychological projection of drug addiction to underscore the hedonistic and self-involved tendencies of these new musical antiheroes by projecting a related visual and aural frenzy and personal isolation. Far from the frivolity of Forum, Joe Gideon’s out-of-control lifestyle and declining health connect directly to his drug use and his inability to cope or connect in the real world. He repeatedly returns to his bathroom where a series of ECUs show him imbibing his morning cocktail of classical music, eye drops, Dexedrine, antacid, a shower, and a cigarette. The close proximity of the shot to the drugs, his hands, and his bloodshot eyes creates a heightened sense of chaos (only momentarily stifled by his routine stimulant ingestion). The focus on the ceremony emphasizes the chaos of his out-of-control life and the self-destructive means used to maintain it. Whether used fun lovingly or to denote the self-destructive

On a Clear Day You Can See the Cracks in the Scenery 65

or escapist natures of problematic self-absorbed protagonists, this infusion of drug culture into the genre, both allows for further focus on individual needs, desires, and sensations, and inextricably links the films to the contemporary moment, one incompatible with the once-unified musical community and instead rife with irresolvable cultural conflict and generational rift. Camerawork and musical performance In addition to integrating in vogue camera and sound techniques to highlight the genre’s new focus on individualism and communal estrangement, the ambivalence of the genre toward more arcadian technique emerges during this period through filming styles accompanying the performance of song and dance. The physical performance of song and dance once stood as the cornerstone of the genre and its clearest projection of communal and romantic harmony. At times creating an almost theatrical feel to the dance, camerawork in the more arcadian musicals often captured the couple or community as a whole singing and dancing their ways into a peaceful resolution. The camera follows Fred and Ginger around the dance floor to capture their bodies moving as one toward a suitable narrative conclusion. Jane Feuer points to the use of bricolage, non-choreography—dance based on more natural movement—and folk dance as minimizing the artifice of musical performances and drawing the viewing audience into the recognizable world of the film rather than the mythic world of professional performers.10 Similarly, Gene Kelly’s acrobatic dances, whether he is joined by Jerry the mouse (Anchors Aweigh) or Vera-Ellen (On the Town), command the screen as the camera follows him across the dance floor, the docks, or the Museum of Natural History. Leo Braudy refers to Kelly’s everyman dances as the great unifier, [Dance] tries to subvert reality through its new energy, an energy available to everyone in the audience through Kelly’s insistence on the nonprofessional character, the musical self that wells from inside instead of being imposed from without, whether by training, tradition, or society.11 By placing the dance front and center, this energy and the physical closeness of the hero or heroine and his or her community take narrative focus. This same attention to spontaneous integrated performance— projecting a lack of realism and a happy-go-lucky air—was also at the heart of a common critique of the illogical and hopelessly out-of-touch

66

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

nature of the genre as it entered the tumultuous sixties. Whether a product of this stage of the genre’s more critical take on old generic expectations, a response to popular technique, or a result of the decline in viable singing and dancing stars (in the wake of the studio system’s dissolution), many of the more ambivalent musicals of this period use self-conscious narration—through cinematography, editing, and special effects—to sever their musical numbers from the actual performing bodies and voices of their performers. Musical numbers of this period often create a sense of estrangement between performer and performance and instead focus on the subjective emotions of the characters. This allows for the films to develop more complexity of character while not wholly abandoning the music of the musical and simultaneously diminishing the connotative fluff associated with bodily performance. A common technique used during this period to integrate music while detracting from nostalgized musical performance is the integration of Hollywood montage (Tommy, Godspell, Forum, Camelot, and The Pirate Movie).12 Although not absent from earlier musicals, as dance—and capable star dancers—became less prominent in these later vehicles, such montage sequences commonly masked musical performance, created a space to project cynicism about the ideological project of musical integration, and/or shifted focus back to plot development or personal emotion. In all cases, the unification of community discussed by Feuer and the transfer of energy discussed by Braudy give way to the more critical or contemplative functions of music. Forum and The Pirate Movie, for example, use the montage sequence to draw attention to the conventions of Hollywood films and arcadian musical norms specifically. Their primary love songs, “You’re Lovely” and “How Can I Live Without Her” respectively, use the montage sequence in lieu of actual dance. In both cases, the lovers can be heard in voiceover as the films abandon any adherence to natural time and instead snippets of their romances appear on the screen. In both cases the lovers enact trite rituals of courtship—running hand in hand, kissing, and attempting to impress a lover with feats of physical strength. Although the style deviates from arcadian technique, the visuals mirror the focus on romance; however, in both cases the romantic gestures are undermined. Forum provides a reprise where two men parodically sing the same number and enact the same rituals. The Pirate Movie invokes a similar cynicism as the montage sequence encompassing its main love duet shows the central couple— Freddie and Mabel—performing similar courtship rituals as those in Forum, but through a different lens of absurdity (for example, singing part of the duet as Freddie responds to Mabel’s disembodied singing

On a Clear Day You Can See the Cracks in the Scenery 67

face in a basin of water or dining on the shore as a waiter in tux and tails emerges from the sea to serve them and immediately re-submerges himself after doing so). Both sequences and their series of self-conscious scenes highlight the insincerity of the moment and the musical’s emergent less-than-reverent views toward romance. In such evocations of romance, narration stands at a distance from the actions portrayed, and the visual device of the montage provides a space—outside of traditional integration of song and dance—to cynically comment on preexisting generic codes and the overall fantasy—rather than utopia—of the diegetic moment. The same montage technique is also used to a less humorous effect during this stage of the genre as it embraces the form more like films of the New American Cinema. As Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence” and “April She Will” underscore the action in The Graduate’s summertime montage, Nichols uses an extended montage sequence to quickly and somberly develop his hero’s psychological decline and the rise and fall of his cross-generational adulterous affair. The musical had traditionally relied on the united performance of the romantic couple or what Altman identifies as a process of dual matching performances to illustrate a couple’s burgeoning relationship. Camelot—including even less dance than its dance-light stage version—uses the montage sequence in “If Ever I Would Leave You” to show the development of Lancelot and Guenevere’s affair.13 Although the film shows little of their actual affair, this montage sequence deepens the narrative development of their relationship while simultaneously visually de-emphasizing Lancelot’s performance of the song or the couple’s united performance of romance. Here the energy of performance fails to emerge to accompany the ultimate betrayal of the genre’s core: monogamous romance or marriage. Aside from the montage, other techniques replace the visual focus on bodily performance of song and dance and turn toward a focus on internal struggle. Static camerawork still centers the body, as was the case in dance-heavy musicals, but many films of this later period omit dance in favor of minimalist editing and still camerawork that refocuses attention on the face and emotion. Camelot repeatedly uses a shift between static close-up and medium shot. In both Arthur’s and Guenevere’s opening numbers the camera remains almost, if not entirely, on the character singing. It does not pan to an ensemble surrounding him or her. It does not track out to capture the movement of the character or his or her bodily performance of the number; rather, the focus remains largely on the face of the singer. Instead of the welcoming kingdom present in

68

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

all of their dancing communal glory, visual focus remains on the static king and queen-to-be and their concerns for their impending marriages sight unseen. By focusing on a still and solitary performer, the number visually draws attention to internal struggles: excitement, panic, nervousness. Although the breaking of the fourth wall also occurs in arcadian musicals as with Maurice Chevalier’s performance of “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” in Gigi (1958), films such as Camelot eschew the humorous wink attached to such numbers. Instead, these moments draw attention to emotional stakes of isolated, complex characters. This task of drawing the viewer into the psyche of the performer and away from the physical performance of song and dance further emerges through the use of voiceover—to be discussed in more detail in the next chapter—and through heavy-handed visuals. Like the foregrounding of psychological subjectivity outside moments of song and dance, films use these techniques to highlight the complexity of character development and the incompatibility of the narratives with the clean choices and conclusions common to the arcadian norms popularized in earlier films. Rather than a celebratory number announcing the marriage of young lovers, Fiddler on the Roof uses superimposition, deep space, and subjective sound to visually replicate internal monologue. To imply a stoppage of the narrative action and an engagement with the protagonist Tevye’s personal struggle, Norman Jewison pulls him away from the ongoing action. Although actually narratively quite close to those with whom he talks, the camera shows the others far in the distance as Tevye looks directly into the camera. He drifts into soliloquy and ultimately Perchik and Hodel appear in long shot and in focus as Tevye remains in medium close-up to create a deep space/deep focus configuration. The camera visually distances the real world as Tevye goes inside himself to consider the quandary placed before him. In addition, this scene uses the technique of superimposition to draw further attention to Tevye’s thoughts. As he thinks about his daughter and considers the look in her eyes as she stands with the man she loves, in ECU Hodel’s eyes dissolve onto the screen and over the ongoing scene. The cinematographic choices frequently employed in these films ultimately help in not only focusing on the emotions of the characters— again attempting to connect to a more nuanced version of humankind rather than a utopic one—but also to foreground the construction of the film. By more strongly augmenting traditional self-effacing Hollywood camerawork used in the arcadian with more obvious in vogue tricks of the trade, these films further emphasize the disjointedness or constructedness of the image/narratives. This shooting style further underscores

On a Clear Day You Can See the Cracks in the Scenery 69

the new generic tendency of examining communal division as it works to dismantle the heart of arcadian musical form: the air of normalcy and tranquility commonly associated with the integration of song and dance.

Mise-en-scène: It’s the real deal right here in River City—Well maybe Dyer’s notion of a utopian sensibility projected through the musical genre not only applied to shooting styles, but paralleled Altman’s attention to the nostalgic and fantasy elements commonly found in musical mise-en-scène. As with other narrative and technical elements of the genre, however, shifts occurred after the mid-sixties that encouraged a rejection of such a utopia. The arcadian use of nostalgic periods or simpler times had helped to reinforce or underscore the genre’s already conciliatory narratives. Musicals such as Oklahoma!, The Music Man, The Wizard of Oz (1939), The Court Jester, and Gigi created safe spaces to work through foregone conclusions that genre norms had dictated would ultimately reinforce the contemporary status quo—unity, heterosexual monogamy, communal harmony.14 Narratively and aesthetically, such films had created simplistic paintings of their periods or times gone by, rather than detailed, realistic re-creations. Versions of the South, New York, St Louis, or Paris viewed through a haze of idealized memory remained distanced from life’s unsolvable problems. Later trends in the genre, however, rebuke such idealized historical shorthand and strengthen the musical’s ability to depict more ideologically ambiguous stories and contemporary images.15 Such trends in mise-en-scène complement the musical’s overall turn toward psychological realism or complexity by integrating a combination of realism, a contemporized nod toward historical fashion, ironic or parodic stylization, and/or self-aware theatricality. The harsh light of reality No claim could ever be made that earlier musicals are wholly without nods to realism. To certain degrees many—if not most—of these musicals included various levels of realistic mise-en-scène, whether choices in lighting, the ways in which clothing reflected real garments of a given time, or how settings clearly evoked the overall feel or aesthetic of a specific period. Even fanciful and idealistic integrated musicals such as Guys and Dolls, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962),

70

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

and South Pacific use period-inspired costumes; however, they simultaneously retain idealized or slightly cartoonish natures that play toward Dyer’s notion of utopia with bright colors and paper doll-like cutouts of authentic clothing. At the end of the day, such costumes—although retaining the overall shape or cut of their authentic motivators—possess a simplicity in color and cut that help to evoke the possibility of a utopia beyond reality. Whether through the presence of pristine blues that mirror the freedom of the ocean in South Pacific or the bright blocks of color that compliment the idealized version of New York City signs and city colors in Guys and Dolls, such costumes take artistic license to imply the period but evoke a specific visual ideal. The play on reality that emerges through many of these later films of the sixties and seventies tilts the scales toward the darker realism of the day, rather than the simplicity of the fairytale version. Like the aforementioned musicals, Camelot and Lost Horizon embrace partial truths in their design schemes; however, they play on historical/regional accuracy and current-day fashion trends. Whereas Guys and Dolls infuses 1930s style with a color scheme evocative of cartoon gangsters, both Lost Horizon and Camelot infuse their Arthurian and Asian dress with a contemporary flair. Rather than drawing on a more peaceful time or aesthetic, they draw on contemporary generational division. Camelot’s costuming takes on an air of youthful rebellion with its mod and hippie-inspired leather patchwork, Beatles haircuts, fitted menswear, peasant-inspired clothing, and flowered accessories. These choices in design aid in connecting an already problematic narrative to contemporary youth subcultures and their attendant associations of dissent, drug use, and rebellion. Lost Horizon makes a similar choice in its creation of a visual binary that evokes the dissent existent in contemporary America. Prior to the groups’ landing in Shangri-La, they don clothing indicative of conservative tradition and their personal hang-ups—suits, ties, fedoras, overcoats—and then switch to an everyday Shangri-La dress that reflects the seventies but has been infused with Asian traditions—Pacific Islander tribal dress, Middle Eastern caftans, Cantonese collars and fasteners, and Tibetan religious wear to name a few. Like Camelot, this design concept highlights existent conflicts occurring outside of the narrative and visually takes sides, placing an Eastern cool indicative of youth culture in the land of a supposed utopia. Reflective of this stage of the genre, however, neither land and neither style truly projects such a utopia, as the narrative ends somewhat ambiguously and neither view comes out wholly satisfying.16 Unlike the more idealistic gangsters, cowboys, and maidens of musicals gone by, these hybrid visuals compound the narrative

On a Clear Day You Can See the Cracks in the Scenery 71

projection of irresolvable conflict and social distress rather than mute it. Like an “Italian neorealism light” and reflective of elements of the French New Wave and New American Cinema, the musicals of this period often drew largely on a less obviously cinematic view of reality to help project a less theatricalized version of society, and rather to embrace a simpler realism that reflected the everyday problems encountered by the protagonists. Such visual aesthetics mirror either contemporary society or a historical period and thereby discard the nostalgic or utopic safety of arcadian visuals and instead situate narratives in spaces that appear to have the potential to house real actions and resolutions (or lack thereof, as a major characteristic of these narratives is their inability to resolve life’s problems). Hair and Fiddler on the Roof exemplify this trend as they stick to more location shooting and realistic costuming and settings outside of their dream sequences. As both films’ narratives involve struggle over the changing state of generational rifts and political developments, their mise-en-scènes reflect a similar complicated reality. Both films avoid the highly colorful palettes or fantastical visuals often associated with arcadian communal celebrations. Fiddler on the Roof ’s settings are largely comprised of actual underdeveloped Yugoslavian towns and costumes consist mainly of earth tones, simultaneously suggesting a sense of historical realism and a solemn or restrained atmosphere. With the exception of “Tevye’s Dream,” this realism remains throughout the film.17 Similarly, aside from its druginduced “Hari Krishna,” Hair uses real military bases and uniforms and contemporary clothing to aid in the creation of an overall sense of realism. Using the diversity of New York City to provide an active youth culture, major draft board, and upper-class society, the film uses real locales such as Central Park and Washington Square Park to bring these groups together and to construct their individual enclaves. Through the film’s choices in setting and costume, it transcends the exaggerated and overly groovy version of hippiedom present in Sweet Charity’s “Rhythm of Life.” Instead, mise-en-scène embraces the imperfection, mess, dirt, and eclecticism that would be connected with a large group of people implied to be living outside of mainstream society and, in the words of Hair, “ain’t got no money.”18 Attention to realistic detail invites an association with the real, rather than stylized nostalgia. Musicals of this period also use realism in conjunction with stylization to project the musical’s ambivalence toward earlier generic norms. By creating multiple worlds divided cleanly by their visual style— one fanciful and one grounded in the historical real—they project

72

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

the genre’s resistance to embrace the creation of utopian societies and instead show those utopias as existing outside the bounds of a harsher reality. Films such as Godspell, All That Jazz, Xanadu, and Man of la Mancha move between aesthetic styles, one oppressive and one more freeing. The films create these disparate worlds to project the opposite of Altman’s nostalgic worlds of possibility and Dyer’s clean utopias. Instead, they serve as a dividing line between an oppressive reality and the possibility of an out-of-reach fantasy. Godspell, for example, begins filled with the bustle of a contemporary New York City. Shot on location, the opening shows the characters surrounded by overwhelming crowds and noise of the city. Horns honk. Music blares. In the midst of this commotion, each member sees a vision of John the Baptist, abandons his or her mundane life, and rushes to Bethesda Fountain to wash his or her cares/sins away. The initial crowds and hassle of New York contrast to the remainder of the film. Once the narrative shifts to the world of John the Baptist and Jesus, the realism of the city—and the presence of any other people—disappears until the end of the film. New York City becomes a playland more akin to the location shooting that created the sailors’ adventureland in On the Town. Childlike stylization—clown makeup, Superman shirts, wigs, hats, and costumes—becomes Godspell’s dominant aesthetic. Resembling hippies/clowns/children in a world of found objects that magically transform into playthings and props, the characters become completely separated from their previous selves. Wearing face paint and layered found articles of clothing, they travel around a New York City absent of any other people. They inhabit a New York City bereft of its corruption and crowds. In contrast to On the Town, where the sailors cavort in a similar Big Apple, the film has already projected the harsh reality (and will return to it at the film’s end). Godspell’s idyllic world of the parables does not take over. The utopian sensibility perhaps created through the sights, sounds, and textures of the film’s middle, disappears at the film’s end, as the real New York City, rife with its crowds and daily grind, reappears after Jesus’s crucifixion. The utopia disappears. Whereas the more arcadian musicals tend to use idealized spaces to legitimize unrealistic solutions to real problems, films that embrace this doubled visual style propose ideals that can possibly help one to function in a world that the film presents and accepts as flawed.19 Similar doublings occur throughout this stage of the genre. In Xanadu, Club Xanadu, much like Godspell’s abandoned New York City, appears limitless in its possibility for building cultural and generational bridges in a Los Angeles already presented as artless and loveless. Both costumes

On a Clear Day You Can See the Cracks in the Scenery 73

and settings shift to the fantastical with the appearance of the muse, Kira. She punctuates the humdrum world and club with brightly colored special effects and stylized fashions denoting stereotypical notions of late 1970s’ rock-n-roll and 1940s’ big band. Fantastical costumes infuse fantasy and color and illustrate possibilities that exist in an otherwise dull world. Stylization illustrates the hope for a more perfect society, a hope that—as with the death of Jesus—dwindles with Kira’s eventual departure and the film’s return to an emptier reality.

Stylization and generic parody As often as using the evocation of contemporary trials through the use of visual realism, these films use forms of overt stylization to drive a wedge between established generic norms and the genre’s emerging jaundiced eye toward such standards. Rather than using such stylization in the same vein as the more arcadian musicals—to create a sense of visual idealism that parallels narrative simplicity—these films more commonly develop stylized visual schemes to produce either overt critiques of established genres through satiric winks toward their visual norms (The Pirate Movie, Bugsy Malone, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Pennies from Heaven, or At Long Last Love) or to create visually assaultive worlds that project a clear and irresolvable evil (Tommy, The Wiz, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band). Films such as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Tommy, and The Wiz use artistic flights of fancy to create cartoonish worlds that visually emphasize the possibility for extreme evil and in some cases extreme good. Although on the surface utilizing a technique that had traditionally set the scene for idealistic resolutions, such later films take this nostalgia and merge it with an extreme visual projection of contemporary corruption or conflict. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band begins with images that connote the peaceful times gone by of Meet Me in St Louis or State Fair. The brightly-colored town square of Heartland U.S.A., comprised of such idyllic haunts as its timeless city hall and community gazebo, however, quickly morphs into an equally stylized inner-city jungle at the hands of film’s villain, the Evil Mr Mustard. This turn is what differentiates the stylization common in these films from that identified by Altman and Dyer as producing a utopic sense of nostalgia, and instead it highlights the cynicism with which such films approach the ideological underpinnings of the more traditional form of the genre. After acquiring the magic drum, Mr Mustard buys all of the local real estate and converts

74

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

the town into a haven for big business, hookers, and seedy hangouts. Gone are the idyllic town square, Sgt. Pepper Museum, and farmer’s markets; instead, exaggerated images of contemporary life clutter Heartland: video games, gyrating punks, and a giant cartoonish hamburger advertisement atop of the town square gazebo. Such imagery continues throughout the film critiquing big music and big corruption: the record executive B.D.’s convertible limousine/bar on wheels (that contrasts to the boys’ Wizard of Oz-reminiscent hot air balloon), lamé-clad hookers trolling adult theatres, oversized dollar bills for bad guys to flaunt, and gigantic brandy snifters (into which B.D. sneaks drugs to manipulate the innocent lead singer Billy). Complementing these giant symbols of urban corruption, the film takes continual shots at contemporary computerization. From Mr Mustard’s “Computerettes”—his talking/singing robotic harlots—to Father Sun’s (Alice Cooper’s) manipulation of America’s scout uniform-clad youth via mechanized brain washing (as psychedelic images of Sun accompany the repeated phrase, “we hate love, we hate joy, we love money”), stylized contemporary technology leads to abject evil. The exaggerated visual depictions of destructive contemporary technology and the disturbing urban/rural and folk/commercial binaries allow for the creation of a clear and exaggerated sense of good and evil. Unlike the musical binaries discussed by Altman, Schatz, and Feuer, these cannot be transcended by synthesis of opposites. Many of these darker musicals also take advantage of mise-en-scène reminiscent of arcadian stylization to communicate a satiric take on Hollywood genre, the musical and otherwise. By using narrative conventions and visual expectations of established genres, the aforementioned films, as well as Bugsy Malone (gangster films), The Pirate Movie (pirate films), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (B-sci-fi and musicals), and Pennies from Heaven (musicals) add an additional layer of critique to their stories. Each recognizing and toying with the traditional norms of their respective genres, such films use codified visual codes and generic icons to underscore predetermined narrative and ideological expectations to either critique them or use them as a means to foreground the disingenuousness of the genre in which they are being applied. This sweeping critique of genre as a narrative form cuts to the heart of the musical’s new cynicism toward tidy narratives and clean conclusions. The Pirate Movie, for example, uses recognizable costume pieces (Indiana Jones’s hat, whip, and leather jacket, Christopher Atkins’s—who play’s Freddie—loincloth from Blue Lagoon [1980], Inspector Clouseau’s hat and trench coat) and sight gags (pie fights, visual poses of movie

On a Clear Day You Can See the Cracks in the Scenery 75

romance, and hip modern versions of pirate dress) from Hollywood products or established genres to highlight the film’s disassociation with reality and immersion in fabricated popular culture. Instead of hearkening back to a time of nostalgic safety, this technique foregrounds the lack of a true original. These films cannot so easily translate a sense of safety and stability into a real world through the articulation of repeated generic codes or a water-colored version of the comfortable past. Instead, this dislocation or displacement of generic norms foregrounds the false worlds created in Hollywood films as the only possible locales for such ideal living. The acknowledged falsity forces a wedge between the cinematic and real worlds, much like the missing diegetic audiences of Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar rob the theatrical audiences of their intermediary or diegetic stand-in. Specifically critical of the musical genre itself, both The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Pennies from Heaven use visual and ideological arcadian norms to produce a sense of self-awareness and critique of the very genre they embody. Such self-awareness seems largely lacking in the earlier days of the film musical. Singin’ in the Rain, for example, does poke fun at the early days of the genre, but it simultaneously reinforces its arcadian roots through the romance narrative (the boy gets the right girl and the right girl gets the career) and visual pleasantries (such as bright colors, energetic movement). The visual conventions of the musical used by these later films aid in the execution of an ambivalent take on the genre that confronts its traditionally rosy outlook.20 As Pennies from Heavens’ characters suffer negative life experiences, glamorous visuals associated with musicals of the 1930s immediately transform the dismal realities of their surroundings to create worlds that should supply idealistic outcomes improbable in the characters’ real lives. As the film’s hero Arthur fails to secure a loan for his record business, the film shifts to a reality reminiscent of a 42nd Street or Gold Diggers production number. Now wearing matching stylized costumes, dancing on giant coins, and shot in grand Berkeley-esque fashion, people and the world around them abandon a life where dreams do not come true for one that guarantees they will. In the end, however, the fantasy visual fades back to the reality of Arthur’s failed attempt to secure a loan. Throughout the film, as lives become more lurid and hopeless, optimistic musical numbers spring forth at unexpected moments: an adulterous affair, a wife’s contemplation of murder, a murderous drifter’s dinner, and a pimp’s propositioning of an innocent woman hitting the skids. The fantasy of arcadian conventions cuts through the gloom of these unlikely musical activities to present an impossible ideal that once only the musical could

76

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

supply. These stylized visual utopias continue throughout the film, even including a diegetic screening of Astaire and Rogers’s Follow the Fleet (1936) as a backdrop for a final grasp at impossible happiness. In contrast to the films they mimic, however, the use of such arcadian musical conventions only highlights the hopeless desperation that takes hold of the narrative after the production number fades and reality returns. Theatricality In addition to stylization and realism, these later films also illustrate a Brechtian trend toward the use of overt theatricality as a means to foreground the construction of the film. Bertholt Brecht’s modernist approach to what he deemed epic theatre partially relied on the distancing of the actor from the character and the audience from the performance through embracing the practices of alienation and distanciation. Brecht claimed: The spectator was no longer in any way allowed to submit to an experience uncritically (and without practical consequences) by means of simple empathy with the characters in a play. The production took the subject-matter and the incidents shown and put them through a process of alienation: the alienation that is necessary to all understanding. When something seems “the most obvious thing in the world” it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up.21 Much like the techniques discussed earlier in this chapter that evade the subtlety and self-effacement of continuity editing, the use of overt theatricality within these movie musicals further foregrounds the artifice of the narratives by announcing their constructedness. As these performances within performances emerge upon diegetic stages, they break any probability of a seamless narrative/passive reception and further damage the utopian sensibility or social cure-all discussed by Altman, Schatz, and Dyer. Instead, they present the problems of the narratives through a lens of Brechtian distanciation for audience consideration. Jesus Christ Superstar and Zoot Suit commit most fully to this self-referential framework, the former developing a mise-en-scène that mixes onscreen set building and costume changing with various periods and aesthetics and therefore draws constant attention to its own artifice. Beginning with the actors constructing the set and unloading their costumes, the film makes no pretense regarding the authenticity of its version of the Christ story (Figure 2). Instead, Jewison infuses

On a Clear Day You Can See the Cracks in the Scenery 77

Figure 2 With its pseudo-set of scaffolding and priests in vaguely Middle Eastern garb and S&M-reminiscent leather gear, Jesus Christ Superstar’s mise-en-scène underscores the constructed nature of narrative and masculinity. Everything is a temporary construction to be torn down by the film’s end. (Universal/Photofest)

the ancient locales of Israel with contemporary 1970s fashion and sensibilities. The colors and cuts of costumes—hippie-like flowing robes, swinging medallions, and leather accessories—evoke a sense of the present and the social mores that go along with them: sexual, gendered, and generational. Settings that combine real Biblical locales with modern props and scaffolding constantly reference the film as a production. For example, depicting Jesus’s destruction of the corrupt temple markets in a scene that includes modern gun trading, whores, and other “hot” goods ties the corruption of the narrative to the present. This theatrical combination of period, a practice that occurs throughout the film, prevents a seamless presentation of narrative action as representative of a realistic—or singular idealized—period. Zoot Suit uses a similar technique as it takes place within an actual theatre, beginning outside of the building, following audience members in, and then proceeding in such a manner that never implies the story is taking place in a fully realized world. Sparse, non-realistic scenery and

78

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

limited space force a restrained form of stage action. This presentational style foregrounds the calculated choices made within the film, as a fully-developed or realistic mise-en-scène gives way to minimal stage pieces: a jail, a witness stand, a car. The theatricality allows for more rational inclusion of random musical numbers. In the case of Zoot Suit, musical numbers either stem from dance numbers, the carnival atmosphere of the courthouse or white society, or asides from the mystical El Pachuco. This visual style helps underscore the biases of the social system by presenting that system not as a realistic whole, but as a caricaturized body, as the scarcity of setting pieces places importance on those few present. The characters’ courtroom positions take on more symbolic or iconic statuses when detached from a real world. Using highly stylized set pieces such as giant newspaper flats, the overt theatricality directs attention to the overarching social meanings of the film, rather than allowing it to function on a solely character-driven narrative level. Implicated as part of the mise-en-scène and ensuing social drama, the diegetic theatrical audience (and therefore according to Feuer the viewing audience) appears alongside the diegetic courtroom audience members who sit in the first few rows of the theatre watching the injustice unfold. Instead of welcoming all with the passed-along-song, the film implicates everyone in the reigning social injustice by invading spaces generally reserved for the invisible moviegoer. Through a heavyhanded visual style and the blending of actor and audience space in such an ideologically loaded narrative, the story becomes secondary as the larger social issues visually take the fore.

Case study: Tommy’s conjunction of ambivalent narrative and aesthetics Illustrating an overall rejection of arcadian dictates, Ken Russell’s Tommy shows how ambivalent choices in both narrative and visuals coalesce to create this divergent image of the musical genre. Abandoning the idealistic notions of visual and ideological utopia, Tommy—as strongly as any film of the period—integrates violence, betrayal, and capitalist manipulation to an effect of creating a world in which an arcadian end cannot emerge as triumphant. Through the combination of a somewhat realistic historical time and extraordinarily stylistic visuals, the film injects abject evil into a genre that often sought to uncover the good within all situations. Russell’s films commonly assault the senses with such stylized vulgarity. A similar effect exists within the extreme sexualization of characters through dream sequences in The Boy Friend,

On a Clear Day You Can See the Cracks in the Scenery 79

as well as non-musicals like The Devils (1971). When earlier musicals such as Mary Poppins and The Wizard of Oz combine somewhat realistic times and places with special effects and fantastical elements, they create worlds of clear-cut good and evil, in which ultimately good-hearted protagonists triumph. The evil of the wicked green witch and the dark winged monkeys stand firmly apart from the pastel and brightly colored munchkins, good witch, and scarecrow who represent all that is good and worthy in the land of Oz. In contrast, the exaggerated visuals of Tommy work to establish the warped world of Russell’s film. To further augment the darkness created through stark depictions of lust and violence, Tommy combines realism and stylization to help articulate the boy’s skewed perception of life. After the sight of his mother’s lover, Frank, murdering his father renders Tommy blind, deaf, and mute, the use of highly stylized imagery visually heightens his sensory deprivation. Punctuating the boy’s blindness and overall helplessness, the world of the film materializes as larger than life. Contrary to the arcadian musical’s use of stylization to represent an idealistic or nostalgic world, Tommy uses these techniques to comment on significant social or personal conflicts. Similar to those in Sgt. Pepper and The Wiz, Tommy’s stylized depictions of life, surroundings, and characters allow a satiric articulation of family, money, and religion at a time when all were coming under attack and within a genre that had revered the traditions of religion and family. Instead of wrapping universal problems in small everyday stories, it depicts epic conflicts that visually attack the senses. Whether highly colorful and idealized images of Christmas, the giant boots of the pinball wizard, Cousin Kevin’s torture devices (like spikes on the toilet), or the bizarre hypodermic needles, snakes, and bodily twitches of the Acid Queen, the world seems impossible to control. From beginning to end, Tommy creates a story where evil controls the narrative. In a musical world bereft of unity, condemnatory of wholesome romance and family, and filled with personal isolation, the film never manages to overcome the extreme evil presented to its protagonist. Even by the film’s end, any clear sense of triumph over evil evades the narrative. As the film begins, Tommy’s mother (Ann-Margret) and her pilot husband cavort in the woodlands, make love in a waterfall, and conceive Tommy. Only momentarily does this outpouring of love and family devotion survive. By the conclusion of the rock opera’s first full musical number, the pilot leaves his wife to go off to war and appears to die in a fiery wreck. From this point on, the narrative takes a dark turn as the mother sets out to find a new father for the angelic-looking Tommy. Instead of a kind Daddy Warbucks (Annie) or Uncle Henry (Wizard of Oz),

80

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

she finds herself in the arms of the greasy-holiday-camp-green coat Uncle Frank (Oliver Reed). The film foregoes wholesome family-building for an immediate turn toward sex and violence. The scarred father returns to his family and catches his wife in bed with Frank, who murders him in front of the spying Tommy. Crouching into the boys face, the murderous couple sing that he didn’t see or hear it and won’t say “nothin’ to nobody never in his life.” The trauma renders the boy blind, deaf, and dumb. The majority of the film then chronicles the manipulation and maltreatment of the boy at the hands of his family. Neglected, poked and prodded, tortured, and molested, the helpless Tommy can only seek solace in his own reflection—through which he sees his dead father—and ultimately pinball. Even with the regaining of his senses, Tommy languishes at the hands of his greedy family as they build an evil moneymaking pinball empire, which finally crumbles at the violent hands of his enraged followers. The film ends in an ambiguous fashion, as Tommy flees the compound after the campers revolt and murder his parents. He runs through the water and emerges in silhouette at the top of a mountain—much as his father had stood at the beginning of the film. Like many of these later musicals, the film lacks a conclusive ending. Will Tommy recover? Has he found some kind of awakening? Aesthetic choices made throughout the film—montage, crosscutting, costumes, setting, special effects—punctuate the real pain that exists in this world and establish the darkness of the tale. After the father leaves the idyllic love nest, the film shows his tragic flight crosscut with his frightened wife’s panicked premonition regarding his fate. Like the realistic expulsion of the Jews from Anatevka in Fiddler on the Roof or a graphic war film, the visuals clearly present the impending doom of this broken family. Following the couple’s return from their lovemaking, they part ways after finding a dead child in the rubble of a bombed-out building. As the wife runs back to her house and closes herself in her encaged, bomb-protected bed, she fretfully looks at a picture of her husband. The film cuts to her husband’s bloody hand as it tries to keep power over the plane’s controls. With the sounds of bombs bursting in the background, stylistic choices heighten the sense of panic and horror as the film cuts repeatedly between the pilot’s blown-out, flame-engulfed window and the mother’s terror-stricken face. This is no fleeting look of hysteria soon to be quenched by the comfort of a safely returning husband or supportive family. Rather, the filmmakers choose to instill early the possibly of actual death and destruction, as the next scene shows her receive word of her husband’s death. As the pilot returns home, having

On a Clear Day You Can See the Cracks in the Scenery 81

survived the crash and only burned, the film uses multiple close-ups to capture the disturbing nature of the murder and its participants. With no diegetic sound—only underscoring—during the murder, close-ups of the father, Frank, and the mother show the violent reaction to the discovery of the affair and its aftermath. A quick close-up of the father screaming upon finding his wife in bed with Frank leads to a medium close-up of the mother’s sweaty naked body covered by a sheet, and then one of Frank grabbing a lamp and smashing it against the father’s face. Throughout, the scene cuts to multiple quick shots of a shocked and angelic Tommy watching the entire transaction. With the first diegetic sound of the scene, the mother screams/sings in panic about what the boy saw as the camera cuts between her sweaty naked body and messy hair and Frank’s leering face as he stands over the father’s dead body. This scene blatantly equates lust with violence and deception without a haze of the musical’s cure-all idealism. The visual choices made here accentuate the darkness of the scene and the desires and luridness of the characters. Earlier musicals like Hallelujah, Carousel, and Oklahoma! disrupt communal harmony with murder but eschew the close graphic detail of the act (and the murdered folk in such films usually have it coming). Visual choices—for narrative or regulatory reasons—often decentered stark portrayals of murders and corpses. To the contrary, later films such as Tommy, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Godspell, and Jesus Christ Superstar focus visually on violent acts of murder, the suffering of the sympathetic characters murdered, and often the deviant intentions of the murderers. On a most basic level, Tommy’s narrative rejects the bedrock of many Hollywood musicals. Beginning with the murder of the heroic soldierfather, the film equates sex with murder and financial gain and decenters familial love. Throughout, the film presents problematic notions of motherhood and family as visual choices work to highlight the problematic positioning of the mother as nurturer and/or caregiver. Through costume, acting choices, and camerawork, both the mother and Frank appear grotesque and unable and unwilling to show love. Their concerns lie firmly with personal pleasure and monetary gain. As the film progresses, Tommy’s mother shows less and less concern with the fate of her son. Although she initially seems distraught by what they have done to the boy, any lingering sense of virtuous motherhood disappears as she and Frank embrace the lives they have built with each other. One main way in which the film visually reinforces this notion is through repeated imagery that leads to the parents abandoning their helpless

82

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

son with problematic caretakers and objects. As they leave Tommy with sadistic Cousin Kevin, with drunk and lurid Uncle Ernie, and standing staring at himself in front of the mirror, the two repeat a short song where the mother asks Frank to legitimize the decision. Her concern appears dismissive as she asks in distorted speech as she exaggeratedly applies her lipstick and eyeliner, fixes her bizarre chic tri-tiered leopard print hat, yawns, and drinks a cocktail as she stands or sits in excessive displays of furs and jewels. All the while, Frank answers mindlessly as he laughs at the newspaper, fixes his greasy hair, and shoves food into his mouth. During the number “Champagne” the perversity of her social positioning and role of mother come together in an outlandish display of materialistic simulated sex as she humps the wet furniture after the television explodes flooding the room in a lake of chocolate, beans, and suds. Later, in the same room, she seductively rubs against Tommy and throws him through the mirror, the only object aside from a pinball machine that has ever interested him. His expulsion from the room and immersion in the water below miraculously allow him to recover his senses. Although the overall meaning of much of this can be disputed, the over-the-top visuals telegraph societal conflicts, making it difficult for the story to overcome its assaultive imagery and successfully negotiate the conflicts that drive the tale. As stylized ambivalent films forego over-determined conciliatory endings, they often include more character development or examination of the internal workings or feelings of the characters. When the narratives surpass the boy meets girl, boy struggles for girl, and boy gets girl (and everyone worthwhile lives happily ever after) scenario, additional consideration must be paid to the developments of characters and the overall story. Much like in All That Jazz and Fiddler on the Roof —but in a much more stylized fashion—Tommy incorporates visual elements to highlight the mental processes of the blind, deaf, and dumb boy. For example shortly after the murder, the film shifts to a location that would generally evoke a sense of joy and family bonding. With Frank, the mother, and Tommy dressed in matching outfits, they journey to an amusement park. As the adults react joyously to the rides, Tommy remains stone-faced. The scene then shifts to a highly stylized representation of Tommy’s thoughts. A starry night appears with disco balls flying through it. As the trio rides an airplane ride, an image of a smiling Tommy sitting on the lap of his pilot father in the cockpit of a plane appears. Tommy’s superimposed head then appears through the lights of the Ferris wheel. The camera zooms into his eye and the image of

On a Clear Day You Can See the Cracks in the Scenery 83

father and son reappears. Shortly thereafter, Tommy wanders away from the family, arms outstretched, feeling his way through an arcade as the film cuts to an image of the boy with a large black box covering his sensory deprived head. He stumbles around the seaside shore and then back into the real arcade as he stares at himself in a funhouse mirror— the first of many times Tommy stares into a mirror. As the camera then zooms forward into his eye, it reveals his father standing at the water holding a giant glowing orb. (The orb returns throughout the film in scenes where the sensory deprived boy sees stylized images of himself in the mirror.) That image then cuts to a sky filled with stars, planes, and crosses with pinballs bouncing between them and ultimately zooms to his Christlike father standing prostrate on one of the planes. His head then turns into a ball that cracks open to show mirror images of a smiling Tommy that splinters into a ball with countless images of the boy playing, jumping, and running. He then frolics similarly in front of the funhouse mirror until his family reappears, whereupon he again stands motionless. Throughout, the film compliments the complex storyline by visually recreating the trauma felt by its main protagonist—a trauma never fully overcome. The film also uses stylized visuals to project the evil that exists outside Tommy’s isolated world of imagination. This exaggerated sense of reality—combined with moments of relative realism—helps to underscore the impossibility of reconciliation within the narrative. Not only does the story not call for the kind of recuperation common to the musical, but those who exist within the world of the film display levels of evil, sadism, and perversion that would be difficult to overcome in a diegetic world so bereft of a bonded community or a truly heroic or effective protagonist. Many of Tommy’s adversaries—Cousin Kevin, Uncle Ernie, The Acid Queen, and The Pinball Wizard—appear highly exaggerated. Design elements like the giant spikes on Cousin Kevin’s booby trapped toilet increase his already sadistic presence. The mélange of creepy items—rubber gloves, tubes, unappealing liquor concoctions, corsets, women’s panties—with which Uncle Ernie surrounds himself, coupled with his bizarre heavy breathing, make him appear even more problematic and vile. The film’s stylization hits its height in perhaps one of the most disturbing moments of the film, “The Acid Queen” number. Tina Turner, who plays the drug-addled seductress hired by Frank for Tommy, traditionally exhibits exaggerated performative elements. Throwing her head and arms around when she sings, she appears larger than life even outside of the film. With the Acid Queen’s sparkly red dress, long cigarette holder, and red patent leather platform heels

84

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

she presents an imposing figure to be thrust upon the innocent and unaware Tommy. The camera shakes as it follows her around. She walks straight into close-up as she approaches the camera. The scene is composed of bizarre images, from her near-naked assistants wearing little but the structure of a hoop undergarment to her full-body armor loaded with hypodermic needles. As the Acid Queen shrieks her lyrics and encases Tommy in the armor, she appears superimposed and in double over the suit and she zooms toward and away from the screen as the armor spins. Ultimately, the spinning suit shrinks as she becomes larger and Tommy disappears into her mouth. As the armored drug dungeon opens, it reveals a Christlike Tommy with faux stigmata, loin cloth, and hands full of pinballs/artillery, his damaged father, and a skeleton with snakes crawling through it (Figure 3). Typical of this period, Tommy uses these types of visuals to highlight the already problematic narrative elements. The story not only lacks sympathetic characters or support for a helpless child, but also Tommy’s adversaries—and supposed supporters—are so far beyond the evil of a musical menace like

Figure 3 Evoking the extreme stylization of the film, Tommy emerges from his bizarre “Acid Queen” sadistic steel cocoon with faux stigmata and stylized crown of thorns. (Columbia Pictures/Photofest)

On a Clear Day You Can See the Cracks in the Scenery 85

Jud Frye (Oklahoma!) or Lucifer Jr (Cabin in the Sky), that the ability to narratively overcome such obstacles seems less probable. Ultimately, Tommy escapes the clutches of his parents—who die at the hands of revolting campers—but the conclusion remains ambiguous. He flees the destroyed camp, jumps off a pier, and swims to the mountains. In the end, he lacks any human connection with another living being. Visually and narratively he exists in a vague location of triumph and isolation. As it does with narrative, the ambivalence of many later musicals pushes past simplistic approaches to mise-en-scène common in the arcadian version of the genre. Instead, through choices in setting, costumes, and cinematography many of these Hollywood musicals of the 1966–1983 period toy with levels of realism and parody common in the edgier non-musical films of the day to heighten either their association with real (rather than nostalgized) worlds and conflicts or underscore the predetermined ideological bent of Hollywood generic conventions. By increasing levels of stylization in parts of the cinematic whole, these films usher in larger-than-life aesthetics complementing their exaggerated emotional or moral stakes. Further, they separate idealized worlds from more realistic ones and use overt theatricality that both highlights artifice and creates a space for self-conscious social critique. These aesthetics compound the impact of narrative shifts occurring and visually foreground the ambiguity and ambivalence implicit in this new dominant incarnation of the genre.

Conclusion The reigning musical form of this period deviates from the once prevailing generic style, following cinematic trends of the time, embracing social conflict, and presenting more complex representations of human experience through the manipulation of the visual sphere. Unfettered by the once common (and seemingly imperative) nostalgic sense of space, these films follow visual trends of New American Cinema, art cinema, neo-realism, and modernist theatre to buck the idealistic traditions of the musical. By presenting ambivalence or cynicism as the status quo, these films popularize a different incarnation of the genre ideally suited to interrogating social crises and the everyday struggles of life. Emergent styles of cinematography and mise-en-scène disengage the musical from its prior association with the idealized or nostalgized; rather, new generic norms stylistically draw out the inanity of life, present nuanced problems within the real, or foreground the complex

86

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

mental processes involved in the decision making process. Through highly communicative camerawork, use of still photography, unrealistic diegetic sound, voiceover, parodic use of the montage sequence, and variations of reality and theatricality, these films coalesce to create a new generic variant capable of combining music with stories that break through the ideological limitations previously set for the genre.

3 Wanna Sing and Dance? These New Guys Are Ambivalent About It

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. Simultaneously, they paint a picture of the genre more reflective of contemporary social unrest and shifting cultural norms. The maintenance of the arcadian vision of the musical had relied heavily on the connotative stability provided by performance-related elements. Broadway stars such as Fred Astaire, Eddie Cantor, Mary Martin, and Ethel Merman had brought the legitimacy of the live theatre 87

88

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

to motion pictures. Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Doris Day lent the cachet of popular music to the genre in films such as Birth of the Blues (1941), Pal Joey (1957), and Love Me or Leave Me (1955) respectively, while hoofers drawn from other avenues of performance or schooled by the studio system stables brought mastery of various styles of dance to the screen via the help of Broadway choreographers such as Michael Kidd (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Guys and Dolls), Agnes de Mille (Carousel, Oklahoma!), Jerome Robbins (On the Town, West Side Story), and Robert Alton (Barkleys of Broadway [1949], Call Me Madam [1953]). These artists, their professional legitimacy, and their uncompromised skill blended flawlessly with the norms of the musical genre emerging through repeated stories, visuals, and performances. These earlier integrated musicals inextricably linked life to song and dance as stars’ performances seamlessly blended into everyday activities and characters found musical performance the best or only way to express life, love, or communal bonding. As integral components of both the more utopic and the darker, more generically conflicted musicals—whether through their presence or structuring absence—song and dance help to set the ideological tone of these genre films. Many films of the earlier period use these performance practices to underscore the over-determined ideological project of the genre itself. They abound with the energy of the trained singing voice. Whether through Martin, Sinatra, Merman, or Howard Keel, the voices—like the stars themselves—became synonymous with the genre as a whole. These real singers brought an energy and emotional authenticity connected to the trained voice. The songs spoke through their melodic and passionate articulations of the characters’ experiences. Even dubbed musical stars such as Audrey Hepburn (Funny Face, My Fair Lady), Rossano Brazzi (South Pacific), Christopher Plummer (Sound of Music), and Rosalind Russell (Gypsy) present a front of professionalism and competence.1 Although Brazzi and Plummer may not be singing “Some Enchanted Evening” or “Edelweiss,” it appears as if their characters could be. Voice and body merge easily, one flawlessly implying the other. This congruity avoids detracting from the performances at hand. Scholars repeatedly connect the inclusion of song to the furthering of the narrative romance and an overall expression of joy, truth, and naturalness. Rick Altman’s very concept for the musical relies on the existence and simultaneous performance of the romantic couple. Through similar solos and ultimate duets, the inevitability of the couple’s union came to the fore.2 He argues that as the two articulate their feelings

Wanna Sing and Dance?

89

about life and love through song, their differences and eventual similarities become obvious. In such films, song and the use of recitative—or the seamless transition from spoken word to song—simultaneously disrupt and forward the narrative, allowing the character to drift into more detailed monologues that elaborate on personal motivation in ways unlikely in “realistic” dialogue or contrived asides. Constructed as something connected to ultimate truths, joys, and emotions, song blends into the narrative not only through recitative, but also through the natural blending of the sung melody with the “rhythm of life.” The sounds of the city—racetracks in Guys and Dolls or crowded trains in The Music Man—or country—the clip clop of horses hooves in Oklahoma! or whips in Calamity Jane (1953)—provide sounds of life that then merge into the sung tune. Rendering life and song synonymous, such onomatopoeia and rhythmic articulation situate the musical performance within the reality of the diegetic world. Such choices further highlight the continuity and calm of the narrative. Through vocal transition/quality and narrative intention, sung portions of the more arcadian musicals help to support the overall utopian notion of easily solved conflicts and united communities. Similarly, such musicals commonly use dance as a complement to song in the quest to unite the community. Films render natural these seemingly disruptive performative acts that demonstrate the internal joy of those who inhabit the fictional communities. Both through style and narrative positioning of dance, these musicals—whether in a 1940s On the Town or 1960s Half a Sixpence—support the notion that the narrative community rests on the attainable brink of utopia and peaceful cohabitation. As with song, dance can emerge from the mundane: horse riding, house cleaning, or wood chopping. Life evokes the physical performance of dance as daily activities easily merge into syncopated bodily movement. Expressions of joy, sorrow, or confusion become heightened as dance—like song—more fully expresses emotion or character intention than day-to-day movement can. Both Jane Feuer and Altman explore the smooth transition from everyday activities to dance through discussions of tinkering or bricolage and the response to the innate rhythm of everyday activities. Altman describes dance as a logical extension of life.3 Just as The Music Man’s trains become song, Annie’s floor scrubbing becomes a dancing revolt and Damn Yankees’ baseball players turn sport into a choreographed celebration to articulate the heightened dramatic moments of the characters’ lives. Feuer similarly evokes the power of naturalizing dance through the integration of everyday objects into

90

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

performance.4 In The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Molly suddenly dances with the accoutrements of royalty in “I Ain’t Down Yet” as she and her brothers gather a blanket, bucket, and broom to create a costume. Gene Kelly is particularly apt at converting everyday items into tools for dance numbers, as, for example, garbage can lids become overblown tap shoes in It’s Always Fair Weather (1955) or a mop becomes a dance partner in Thousands Cheer (1943). These devices simultaneously imply the normalcy or naturalness of dance and its unpremeditated nature. Such dances appear neither planned nor choreographed by professionals; rather they spring from the activities and the lives of normal members of the community. Within these narratives, dance carries with it a curative power to be used in the dancer’s everyday life. Along with naturalizing dance through integration, earlier musicals often simultaneously prioritize the dancing event as one that highlights its communal significance. While the passed-along-song brings the community together in voice, various types of dance unite that same group through their physical expression of joy and togetherness. Whether a giant Charleston/traditional Asian folk/square dance in Flower Drum Song that celebrates the Chinese-Americans’ assimilation into American society or a rousing folk-dance inspired romp of a picnic in Carousel or The Pajama Game, large dance numbers can visually create an exuberant sense of communal unity more concisely than the spoken word. Conversely, such displays—exemplified by West Side Story’s balletic rumbles and cat fights—provide heightened moments of physical action to play out overt conflicts existent between rivaling factions of the society that must ultimately be overcome through the magical resolution of conflicting ideologies.5 Along with diegetically-driven numbers, the arcadian musical often relies on the narrative work accomplished through the dream ballet, a vehicle used widely by Kelly (On the Town, An American in Paris [1951], Singin’ in the Rain) and others (The Girl Most Likely’s [1957] “The Happiest Girl Alive,” Oklahoma!’s “Out of My Dreams,” Flower Drum Song’s “Look Away”). The dream ballet provides magical insight unavailable to the waking mortal as it allows the dreamer to recognize conflict and seek out resolution in ways she or he is unable to while awake. Additionally, the final production number, often in the shape of a wedding or some other form of celebration, halts the narrative and floods the screen with performative excess at the moment of conflict resolution. Films like Billy Rose’s Jumbo (1962) use the final production number to remove magically the film’s lingering conflict altogether. Although Jumbo concludes with the loss of the circus to the big business circus

Wanna Sing and Dance?

91

owner, upon regaining possession of the prize elephant Jumbo, the two sets of lovers join together in a rousing production number celebrating “What is a Circus.” The performance and celebration of romantic union and the glory of circus life overshadow the ultimate failure of the hero and heroine to attain what they physically (beyond romantically) desire: their successful and family-run business. The arcadian incarnation of the genre commonly uses folk dance to connote traditional social mores the narratives seek to preserve, as well as amalgamations of jazz, tap, ballet, ballroom, and soft-shoe that evoke feelings of romance, unity, and energy. These filmic moments provide visual reinforcement of the ultimate narrative goal: the magical resolution of the utopic conclusion and an uncomplicated synthesis of conflicting value systems and social practices. As these later musicals’ narratives more frequently reflect cultural rifts and overall shifts or ambiguity with regard to real-world gender dynamics, performances of song and dance underscore these divisions and relational tensions. Cultural revolutions surrounding Vietnam, counterculture rebellion, and the sexual revolution manifest themselves in more sexualized, individualized, or mechanical dance, as the fluidity and narrative unity of paired song and dance give way to alternative performance styles. An erotic Bob Fosse replaces a jubilant Michael Kidd and hearkens back to the pre-Code days of unabashedly sexualized dance. Gene Kelly goes the way of the waltz or swing as Clint Eastwood and rock-n-rollers inflect the genre with generic and social rebellion. Such performances reflect, compound, and are compounded by darkening stories, actors’ disparate abilities, and in vogue musical and cinematic styles. The expectation in many of these later films that a Kelly or Keel would ultimately belt out a hopeful number while artfully sweeping his dance partner/lover off of her feet could only lead to disappointment. Although the musicals of the mid-sixties to early eighties retain some visual, aural, and ideological elements reflective of an earlier time and more idealistic notion of the genre, many illustrate a significant displacement of dance, change in the presentation of song, and an overall shift in narrative function of both.

New stars: They laughed, cried, and tried to punch each other’s lights out As musical stars like Nelson Eddy, Mickey Rooney, Dick Powell, Kelly, and Astaire appear and reappear in the formative days of the movie musical, their star personae become extratextually linked with the

92

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

characters they play and the narratives they articulate. Although continually accompanied by temporary visitors to the genre (James Mason, Red Skelton, George Burns), the early stable of musical men created a consistent and recurring image of musically-inclined, domesticated, and honorable masculinity that reflected and helped to entrench the overriding sense of ideological conservatism commonly associated with the genre. In essence, the actors became the genre and vice versa. Scholars such as Christine Gledhill, Andrew Britton, and Richard Dyer examine the interplay between star and genre, highlighting the unspoken reciprocal agreement that exists between performer and film.6 This textual contract states that stars can neither escape their own generic connotations, nor can genres remain untouched by the meanings stars bring to them. Britton states: The personae of John Wayne, Gary Cooper, James Stewart, Henry Fonda and Clint Eastwood are all quite distinct, but none of them can be discussed significantly without reference to the concept of the Western hero which they have at various times embodied, or to the tensions within the myth of the White American history, refracted through a specific contemporary moment, which the genre articulates.7 Similarly, Gledhill establishes the inevitable link of star, genre, and character in the melodrama and cites Colin McArthur’s contention in Underworld U.S.A that: Men such as Cagney, Robinson, and Bogart seem to gather within themselves the qualities of the genres they appear in so that the violence, suffering, and angst of the films is restated in their faces, physical presence, movement, and speech . . . each successive appearance in the genre further solidifies the actor’s screen persona until he no longer plays a role but assimilates it to the collective entity made up of his own body and personality and his past screen roles.8 In the Hollywood musical, this particular type of linkage between star and genre occurs effectively within early musicals. In the early years of the Hollywood musical, an array of stars developed personae or “meanings” based on their reappearances within the genre and the overall recurrence of musical stories, themes, and characters. Many of these stars brought preexisting extratextual connections to show business that ultimately helped construct a generic formula reliant on a reverence for

Wanna Sing and Dance?

93

the entertainment industry, musical performance, and performing folk. Ultimately even non-singers who appeared in multiple early musicals— such as Guy Kibbee (42nd Street, Dames [1934], Babes in Arms [1939]), and Charles Ruggles (Love Me Tonight, Melody in Spring [1934], Anything Goes [1936])—would become associated, through repetition, with the lighthearted dictates of the genre they frequented. Musical interlopers such as James Cagney (Footlight Parade, Yankee Doodle Dandy [1942]), William Holden (The Country Girl), and Mason (A Star is Born) may have brought a sense of connotative graveness to their characters, but in the greater context of the musical, this meant little to the overall emergent image of the musical male. Despite the long cast list associated with early musical masculinity, a handful of names like Maurice Chevalier, Rooney, Powell, Kelly, Astaire, Keel, and Gordon MacRae came to personify the leading men of the arcadian musical and establish a benchmark against which these later and more varied musicals push as they lose the stability present in the earlier incarnation of the genre. These performers embody the reciprocal nature of star/genre meaning-making. Their pre-Hollywood accomplishments mingle with emerging standards of the musical genre, reinforcing the celebration of music and performance. Kelly’s, Astaire’s, Rooney’s, and Chevalier’s extensive performance backgrounds translate to their characters’ execution of song and dance, creating both textual and extratextual contexts that lend legitimacy to the dictates of musical celebration. As Kelly and Astaire dance, Chevalier croons, and Rooney saves the day, their histories on the stage and screen lend credence to their characters’ actions. Actors such as Powell, Keel, and MacRae, though not bringing as well known past careers to the screen, function similarly through their repeated presence in the genre. From film to film, Keel’s characters— Adam (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers), Frank (Annie Get Your Gun), Bill (Calamity Jane), and Petrucchio (Kiss Me Kate [1953])—struggle to find and ultimately win the love of a woman and thereby reinforce the romantic and gendered norms of the genre. As his characters’ adversarial personalities work themselves out through song and dance, the films’ respective communities unite and romance reigns supreme. Keel himself consequentially begins to connote the same linkage between heterosexual romance, naturalized song and dance, and community unification. Each new Keel vehicle carries with it the meaning of the prior, and Keel himself becomes the musical. These men of the arcadian musical aided in solidifying the structure of the burgeoning genre, appearing and reappearing in vehicles that carry similar narrative structures and ideological projects.

94

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

The genre waned in the 1950s and 1960s. When economic woes, tax laws, and changes in the industrial makeup of the studios led to a drop in long-term star contracts, studios were able to tailor fewer actors and actresses to specific genre vehicles. The image of the musical male consequently lost its stability. Although both male and female stars change during this period, the new breed of men reflects the greater changes occurring within the genre more fully than the women. As discussed in Chapter 1, the musical at this time experiences an overall masculinization as romance plotlines shift into those more sexualized, driven by careers, or tailored toward male quests. Casting choices made down gender lines reflect the changing direction of the genre as male performers more antithetical to the genre emerge as leading men and the new female faces reflect more traditional notions of performance and genre. While Clint Eastwood, Steve Martin, Aerosmith, and George Kennedy defy the musicality and ideological safety of Kelly, Astaire, and Rooney, the differences between Mary Martin, Jeanette McDonald, and Jane Powell and newcomers Kristy McNichol (The Pirate Movie) and Teri Garr (One From the Heart) seem minor in comparison. Many musical women of this period either previously had been associated with the genre (Barbra Streisand, Ann Reinking, Bernadette Peters, Liza Minnelli, and Julie Andrews) or had performed in genres or possessed celebrity personae more evocative of traditional notions of the movie musical (such as pop or soft rock artists Linda Ronstadt, Petula Clark, and Diana Ross or romance/comedy stars Cybill Shepherd, Mary Tyler Moore, or Shirley MacLaine). Although Astaire (Finian’s Rainbow) and Kelly (Xanadu) hobble through a couple of these later films, the male comics, rock-n-rollers, and stars slumming from more “serious” genres bring extratextual baggage more overtly contradictory to the rosy outlook of the arcadian musical, and these personae only aid in reinforcing the stories of male-driven failure, dissent, and corruption common to musicals of this period. Although enigmatic male stars cropped up in earlier musicals, standbys like Rooney and Astaire were always close by to reinforce the already established norms. As they returned to similar narratives time after time, they strengthened generic norms, making an occasional Cagney or Skelton insignificant to the overall scheme of the genre. In lieu of such recurring stars, the disparate musical performers of this later period of the genre create their own conflicted image of musical masculinity. Comedians, rock stars, or tough guys, many of these new actors lack the idealized connotation of music men Kelly, Keel, or Dick Powell; rather, they carry narrative, gendered, and cultural

Wanna Sing and Dance?

95

associations that lead to more complex characterizations and challenge the stability of the genre. Cinematic trends of the time provide an apparent logic to the types of casting choices prevalent in the period. The era in question spans those of the edgy New American Cinema of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the major blockbuster era of the 1970s and early 1980s. Indicative of the former, new and relative no-name stars took the fore, bringing an everyman image to roles once more closely related to the clean-cut American male. Following trends in casting established by directors such as Mike Nichols (Dustin Hoffman, Alan Arkin), Martin Scorsese (Harvey Keitel, Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci) and Robert Altman (Elliot Gould, Rene Auberjonois, Keith Carradine), many of the musicals most indicative of the counterculture movements of the 1960s built casts around individuals who neither reflected the spit and polish of the traditional musical star nor brought with them large bodies of work anchoring them into one extratextual meaning or another. Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Hair, for example, were largely comprised of then no-name actors and actresses. Bringing little public image to the roles they embodied, they served as almost blank slates on which to write the cultural critique of the narratives. Hair’s John Savage and Donnie Dacus saw careers blooming concurrent with the release of the film, the former breaking through as the physically and emotionally wounded Vietnam vet in The Deer Hunter (1978) and the latter joining the rock band Chicago in 1978. Emerging into their own after the film’s production, their forming star personae—unformed at the time of casting—ultimately add flavors of youth rebellion and Vietnam street credibility that reflect directly on their characters. The ensembles of both Godspell and Jesus Christ Superstar remain largely unknown. Their “every-youth” statuses only enhance their positions as proponents of social change and critique. Like the aforementioned non-musical stars of New American Cinema, many of these actors add a sense of ethnicity and lack the handsome all-American looks of a MacRae or Powell (or Robert Redford or Rock Hudson). Simultaneously, their largely non-existent star personae provide little or no contradictory commercial baggage, and their anonymity allows for a neutral engagement with the films’ narratives. No residual musical idealism stands between them and their dark narratives. Reflecting the reverse tendency more akin to that of the blockbuster era, musicals of this period also pull from a wealth of big-name stars from different genres. As was evident in earlier casting of actors and actresses such as Natalie Wood (West Side Story, Gypsy), Audrey Hepburn

96

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

(My Fair Lady), and Christopher Plummer (Sound of Music), musical talent was not a necessary trait as long as the name guaranteed a box-office draw. Big name stars from television and film found temporary homes within the musicals of this time. Robin Williams and Steve Martin took their star turns in musical vehicles when their stardoms hit their initial zeniths. Williams appeared in Popeye during the run of the popular television show that shot him to stardom, Mork and Mindy (1978). Martin appeared in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band at the height of his stand-up career and Pennies from Heaven just one year after his popular coup as writer and star of The Jerk (1979) (which, like Pennies from Heaven, co-starred his real life girlfriend and rising Broadway diva Bernadette Peters). Tough guys like Clint Eastwood and Burt Reynolds made their musical debuts fresh off of career-making films: Eastwood with Paint Your Wagon in the wake of the Sergio Leone spaghetti Westerns and Coogan’s Bluff (1968); and Reynolds with Peter Bogdanovich’s At Long Last Love just following his infamous Cosmopolitan centerfold (1972) and starring roles in Deliverance (1972) and The Longest Yard (1974). Such casting reflects a growing trend to problemsolve the lack of musical men by turning to recognizable faces. Notably, all of the aforementioned films were either critical or economic disasters (or both). More significant than any monetary or critical success gained or missing from these films—at least for this project—are the ways in which the hodgepodge of leading musical men ultimately works to further articulate the goals or emerging formula of the musical or its ambivalence toward those related to the earlier variety. Coming into a stage of the musical genre that lacked a stable sense of generic identity, the new breed of male stars only exacerbate these emergent trends by failing to build any cohesive extratextual identity for the musical male that would lead to or aid in the construction of a cohesive generic or gendered identity. Even when stars made the transfer from the stage, their cultural meaning lacked the sense of idealism or professionalism attached to figures such as Kelly, Astaire, and Chevalier. As the social significance of the Broadway musical waned in the late 1950s and early 1960s, along went the recognizable viability of its actors. Films such as 1776, The Pirates of Penzance (1983), and Zoot Suit brought the bulk of their theatrical casts to the big screen, The Pirates of Penzance almost wholly converting the production lock, stock, and barrel. Although its cast consisted of fleeting teen idols (Rex Smith), pop superstars (Linda Ronstadt, who seems not to know she is actually in the movie), and staples of the big screen

Wanna Sing and Dance?

97

such as George Rose as the Major General, few brought with them the Broadway stripes associated with earlier Broadway defectors. Broadway had simply ceased to carry the cultural cachet it once had. In contrast to the ubiquity of a Rodgers and Hammerstein original cast recording, neither 1776 nor The Pirates of Penzance cracked the top 40, peaking on the Billboard charts at 174 and 178 respectively.9 This decline in cultural clout associated with the stage and the failure of Broadway performers to build a body of work in the later film musicals prevented the development of the strong connotative bond between actor and genre that existed with men like Kelly and Astaire. Perhaps even more significant than the understated impacts of Broadway transfers were those stars who overtly challenged the more traditional dictates of the genre. Filled with actors whose personae overtly rebuked the norms of the good boy–good girl and bonded community, these films projected ambivalence toward upholding generic tradition and an awareness of the contested state of social norms. This diversity of actor-type underscores Britton’s argument regarding the reciprocal relationship between actor and genre. With no stable image of masculinity coming into the genre, the genre itself fails to gain a stable sense of self. To the contrary, these actors project a sense of instability, chaos, and inconclusivity with regard to society and the genre. Stars such as Williams and Martin defy narrative logic. Martin’s public and professional personae operate in direct contradiction to the dictates of the more traditional musical male. The qualities that most often define his shtick—films, stand-up, and television appearances on Saturday Night Live (1975)—run counter to the musical’s once established quest to maintain a society in which dueling sides can reach a somewhat logical and amenable comprise so that the community and couple can live happily ever after. His penchant for non sequiturs and apolitical yet illogical humor is antithetical to the forward thrust of the more recuperative narrative formula. Despite garnering a top twenty hit with the novelty song “King Tut” and famously displaying his skill on the banjo, the means by which he executes musical performance gives a sarcastic wink at the idea of entertainment. Rather than taking the shape of a culture-blending, love-making, community-bonding art form, his maestro banjo playing seems out of place next to simplistic sarcastic songs. His onstage dancing outbursts on Saturday Night Live defy the style of organized dance via which Kelly would bring a community of everymen together or Astaire might unite a couple through the graceful union of bodies. Even when dancing alone, Kelly and Astaire evoke joy or other kinds of pure emotion. Rather, Martin’s musical incongruities

98

Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

combine to form a perception of musical performance as out of control, unpredictable, unstructured, and nontraditional. In Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Martin appears in one number, playing Dr Maxwell, the criminal quack who obtains the magic coronet for use in the creation of handsome yet corrupt clones (Figure 4). He

Figure 4 Steve Martin’s Dr Maxwell in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band subverts the grace or charisma of Astaire and Kelly and fully embraces the chaotic performance style of the comedian’s own stand-up persona. (Universal Pictures/Photofest)

Wanna Sing and Dance?

99

performs a bizarre soft-shoe in a hospital-green tiled room with walls covered in signs reminiscent of a butcher’s shop listing of the day’s specials: “Excess Fat Removed,” “Broader Shoulders, Price on Request,” and “Brain Transplant: $795 and up.” In this number, Martin merely adapts his stage style and routines to the scene, using a comic singing voice reminiscent of his comic alter ego’s “King Tut,” rather than one more akin to the trained voices of Keel or MacRae or even the talk-sing of Rex Harrison. In addition, as the doctor’s assistants and the newly formed clones dance in somewhat Fosse-esque stiff-backed unison, Martin’s frenzied dance style makes an appearance as his performance contrasts the rest of the production number. Mouth agape, knees bent, arms out and flailing, Martin moves around the set appearing the crazy man in a room full of zombies. In terms of both his performance style and his place within this peculiar film, Martin’s star image complements the overall project of the film. As wacko and illogical, his extratextual connotation effectively translates into a mad scientist within a wacky world threatened by rampant licentiousness and perversity. Similarly, Martin’s star image translates well into the plot of Pennies from Heaven. His character, Arthur, a sheet music salesman whose heart and world are filled with the idealism of music, lives just outside of such a romantic existence. Trapped in a passionless marriage he attempts to force sex on his wife, encouraging her to use lipstick on her nipples—an idea she finds morally repellent. He falls in love with a virginal schoolteacher, lying to her about his marital status and ultimately impregnating her. Ultimately, Arthur and the woman turn to lives of vandalism, prostitution, and utter desolation, still attempting to find joy in the music that almost brought light to their hopelessness. When they perform the music, it only seems sadly ironic as it so fully contrasts with their lived situations. Pennies from Heaven openly critiques the once dominant musical form as it places images of arcadian simplicity within an irrevocably corrupt world. The purity, optimism, and happiness of the music work against the pessimistic plot. As voices from recordings of old standards—the music in Arthur’s head/heart and sheet music— burst forth from the characters and the settings miraculously shift from a stylistic realism of 1930s urban America to that more reminiscent of a 1930s or 1940s musical spectacular, the nature of Martin’s background works with the incongruity of the narrative, music, and mise-en-scène. The lack of logic or realism is status quo for a Martin routine. Words contradict actions. Voices contradict bodies. The ideal of entertainment falls flat in the face of harsh realism. Amidst this all, Martin stands as

100 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

the captain of incongruity and ushers in a sense of lighthearted humor as the narrative moves closer and closer to imminent destruction, to be saved at the last minute by a musical respite. As the gallows fall and Arthur is executed, he and his schoolteacher-now-lady-of-the-evening girlfriend dance into the clouds, their real singing voices heard for the first time to the tune of “Glory of Love.” With no established sense of generic normalcy, the musical absorbs the disparate backgrounds of its new stars. The inanity associated with popular comedians helps to compound the overall sense of instability or chaos in the diegetic worlds being created in these new musicals. Martin’s characters contribute to the overall sense of nonsense promulgated by the narratives themselves. They fit into worlds bereft of logic where their odd behavior suits the norm. As the inanity of wacko stars underscores the possibility of chaos in these new musicals, the ambivalence of the emergent norms toward a once solid sense of genre entrenches further as tough guys entering the genre bring with them varying levels of violence, unpredictability, and dangerous or non-monogamous sexuality. The star personae of men like Reynolds, Eastwood, Kennedy (Lost Horizon, The Priest Killer [1971], Airport [1970]), Lee Marvin (Paint Your Wagon, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance [1962], The Dirty Dozen [1967]), and Roy Scheider (All That Jazz, The French Connection, Jaws [1975]) reflect variations on a form of contemporary masculinity that rejects the fifties ideals of marriage, white collar work, and family. Reynolds’s football playing, centerfold posing, tough guy image works ironically as he plays unfulfilled playboy Michael Oliver Prichard III in At Long Last Love—a character unable to catch a football and in need of a nose-plug at the swimming pool. At this point in his career, a Reynolds character would be more likely to steal a car, arrange a threesome, or shoot somebody than end up married blissfully in the end—which he does not in this ambiguously concluding musical. Eastwood’s emerging image as Leone’s “man with no name”—cool and volatile—comes into direct conflict with the established image of the tamable romantic hero. Rather than uniting conflicting factions of a community, the Westerner conversely seeks to restore order, existing as a loner caught in flux between a frontier and civilization, neither of which serve as his home. Without home or wedded partner, the hero is often destined to remain alone and separated from society as a consequence of the violence he perpetrates on behalf of others. The maintenance of the status quo common to many musicals falters in the action and Western films of Eastwood, as an amoral or vigilante sense of justice supersedes the law of the land.

Wanna Sing and Dance?

101

These elements of generic logic come tied to the star image of the actor as he embodies the role of Paint Your Wagon’s farmer-cum-prospector Pardner. Along with Ben Rumson, played by fellow Hollywood tough guy Lee Marvin, Pardner negotiates the conflicts between the civilized world of the more traditional musical and the dictates of the West: romance versus action and community versus self. Featured in three singing numbers—solo ballads “I Still See Elisa” and “I Talk to the Trees” and jazzy group number “Gold Fever”—Eastwood croons to his heart’s content, compared to “an early Frankie Avalon” by The New York Times’ Vincent Canby.10 While his character may croon like Avalon, his edgy-cum-violent star persona adds a layer of social introspection and unpredictability that contradicts his character’s actions. The narrative pushes the boundaries acceptable in earlier musicals— with a story centering on the establishment and eventual dissolution of a ménage-a-trois—as Eastwood’s star image infuses the narrative conflicts with extratextual information more in line with the asocial qualities of the diegesis than the ultimate resolution: a companionate, monogamous romance. (In the end, Marvin’s Rumson leaves for the next homosocial mining town, leaving Pardner and the missus to live happily ever after.) This kind of conflicting generic information constructs a combination of diegetic and non-diegetic calm, possibility of violence, romance, and solitude, working alongside emerging narrative, performance, and aesthetic norms to codify further the new generic formula that denies the utopia for an unsettled and unpredictable new tomorrow. A wealth of musicians accompanies this influx of tough guys and funny men. Although providing an association with professional musicianship as was common with men of the earlier musicals, these new men brought with them new musical associations. Kelly and Astaire were the musical. Moving from stage to screen, they had built careers around energetic and idealistic performances in the tradition-affirming musical. From James Brown (The Blues Brothers [1980]), Ritchie Havens (Catch My Soul [1974]), and The Bee Gees (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band) to harder-edged rockers such as Eric Clapton (Tommy), Aerosmith, and Alice Cooper (both in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), these new musicians-cum-musical males provide connotative critiques of or threats to the social establishment and/or produce music that challenges the curative powers entertainers often possessed in the earlier stages of the genre. These new defectors from the popular music scene lacked the bubblegum, boy-next-door quality attached to many pre to late 1960s pop stars who forayed into the musical (Frankie Avalon, Bobby

102 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

Rydell, and Pat Boone).11 Ritchie Havens—scorned by Judith Crist for his rock-n-roll remake of Shakespeare’s Othello with, “I refuse to go into details on dialogue that joins bastardized Shakespeare with ‘man’ and ‘dig it’ jargon”12 —was inextricably linked to his opening performance at Woodstock, a moment in music history forming an apotheosis of popular music as a site to challenge rather than reify the hegemonic norm. Similarly, acts like The Who and Alice Cooper bring a druginduced/drunken sense of violence and rebellion not associated with Rydell or Boone. Cooper’s dark, violently disturbing, and devilish stage show was far from amenable to a Seven Brides for Seven Brothers-esque musical; rather, it fits well within the cynical Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, as his character sets out to brainwash the youth of America. All in all, these new men of the musical compound the contested definition of the genre and complicate both quasi-arcadian and overtly dystopic narratives, whether by importing traits once antithetical to the musical, bringing a hint of gravity or violence to characters, or simply providing personae untested or uncomplicated by complex histories in the entertainment business. This interaction between star and genre aids in the further solidification of the ambivalent form and formula. Not able to escape wholly the history of musical performance, stars such as Martin, Reynolds, and the Who’s Roger Daltrey contend with and/or reconfigure the expected generic behaviors once solidified by MacRae and Astaire. The inclusion of these complex personae works to complicate the old stability of the musical and ultimately leads to further generic modification through resultant shifts in performance of song and dance.

Wanna sing: Ah, I’m ambivalent about it While both the diegetic worlds of the musical and those who peopled them shifted, it only stands to reason that the ways in which song would manifest itself within these new musical vehicles too would change. While the Nazi-free hills had once been alive with the “Sound of Music” and songs such as Silk Stockings’ “Red Blues” had been able to turn any musical Commie into a red-blooded blues fan and devotee of the U.S. of A., more late musicals often abandon the association of song with the unity of both body and community. A range of techniques separate the performance of song from the actual narratives, actors, and characters. To varying results, these types of performance—voiceover, non-singers, and foregrounded dubbing—make the attainment of the social utopia once encouraged by the inclusion of integrated song seem even more

Wanna Sing and Dance?

103

unlikely. Rather than blending into the everyday lived performances of the characters, these methods of performance stand outside of those lives. With communal bonds no longer appearing inevitable, song itself begins to point to the very improbability of social rest or the unlikelihood of happily ever after. Simultaneous to the popularization of these distancing techniques, the influx of rock-n-rollers and rock as a dominant musical form infuses the once conciliatory generic ending with a musical style rife with ideological ambivalence and/or social upheaval. As once soothing tones are replaced by screeching voices in problematic situations, the voice itself discourages the safety and resolution once associated with the genre.

Non-singers Partially due to shifts in casting and/or a changing fashion in motion pictures, non-singers play a more significant role in integrated musicals produced during this later period. Unless ultimately dubbed by the vocals of a trained singer, this practice often results in an abandonment of singing for “talk-singing.” A practice exhibited earlier by stars such as seasoned performer Chevalier, the talk-sing can diminish the synthesis of the fantastical world of magical resolution and the real world of complicated problems. While not every song performed less heartily than those by a MacRae, Keel, or Eddy automatically equates to the loss of a narrative utopia, when combined with more complex and irresolvable storylines, such choices in singing style pull the performance further away from a utopian fantasy. Additionally, the inclusion of the non-singer increases the presence of lead characters who seldom sing and thereby remain somewhat attached to the real—and potentially fraught—world. As actors forgo singing for everyday speech, that glimpse of utopian possibility implied in the arcadian musical when the actor sings his emotions and deepest desires wanes. Relying on everyday speech, he remains associated with the real world, a world where troubles cannot be so easily solved by a heartfelt solo. Within narratives that project the same sense of impossibility and pessimism, the spoken voice doubly anchors the singer to the likelihood of such a gloomy outcome. Actors such as Harrison (Doctor Dolittle), Peter O’Toole (Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Man of la Mancha), Richard Harris (Camelot), Marvin (Paint Your Wagon), and Walter Matthau (Hello, Dolly!) forego traditional singing styles, almost wholly speaking their lyrics. In Camelot, nonsingers embody the dual protagonists Guenevere (Vanessa Redgrave)

104 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

and Arthur (Harris). Dependent on marital infidelities, political failures, and uncertain futures, the narrative confounds the social unity and personal satisfaction of the genre’s once popular conciliatory endings. Neither Redgrave nor Harris possesses the musical prowess to belt his or her musical numbers with joy and conviction. Instead, both entertain varying levels of talk-singing in performances that ultimately fail to build to happiness. Rather, as Guenevere shifts between weak singing and talking as she plans to prove Lancelot’s weakness in “Then You May Take Me to the Fair,” the song drives the narrative forward with the early stages of deception that ultimately lead to her infidelity. Similarly, as Arthur talks his way through (umpteen versions of) “Camelot,” “How to Handle a Woman,” and “Guenevere,” his restraint or ambivalent commitment to actual song forces him to remain connotatively distant from the accomplishments the arcadian musical proves possible through song: love and social harmony. As he sings of his political dreams and romantic desires, his songs serve as mere shadows of the joy he wishes he could achieve in a utopian world of fidelity, military strength, and familial and political harmony. Their talky performances grounded in the real do not warrant a rescue via song’s deus ex machina. In films such as Lost Horizon, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Xanadu, All That Jazz, and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas the non-singer protagonist— at least one member of the romantic duo if one exists—almost evades singing altogether.13 All That Jazz just squeezes into the category of integrated musical with the extended death/dream sequence at the end of the film. Not until this sequence does Joe Gideon (Scheider) sing or dance. Musical performance is otherwise reserved for the women in his life: ex-wife, mistress, and daughter. During his final death extravaganza these women—and other scantily clad lovelies—perform numbers reminding Joe of his betrayals and warning him of his impending fate. Rather than using song to work through the social problem, it emerges only at the conclusion to bring to a close all of his untidy relationships: familial, sexual, and business. Song otherwise remains tied to stage-bound performance and the underscoring of montage sequences. By either eliminating integrated song altogether or presenting music in a voice that more closely replicates everyday speech, these films deny the musical narrative device that consistently served to activate the utopic qualities of many early musicals. Without the magical cure, these characters—already living in worlds more complex than the nostalgic world of the arcadian musical—often lack the spectacle and almost excessive emotional drive to escape their seemingly insurmountable problems. Ultimately, problems must remain irresolvable. Arthur and

Wanna Sing and Dance?

105

Guenevere flounder and self-destruct as Joe merely dies. Without the music as communal glue and personal catalyst, the problems of the real world evade magical curative synthesis with song and remain problems. Rock music Although common during this later period, earlier musicals had used rock and pop; however, they had largely steered clear of integrating its rebellious edge. Bye, Bye Birdie parodies the military draft of Elvis and the ensuing teen hysteria, but ultimately uses the ridiculousness of the rocker’s sexual excess to reinforce the importance of family and marriage. Beach Party films occasionally use the sexiness of teen idols Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello to create the possibility of rebellion, but continually recuperate the good boy-virginal girl dynamic by the end of the films. Even the integrated Elvis films tended toward the tame. The hip shaking sex symbol often appears less sexually threatening as his integrated alter-ego. Often, the rebellion of teen music found its way into non-integrated musicals such as Don’t Knock the Rock or music heavy non-musicals like Blackboard Jungle. The integrated musicals of the fifties and early sixties more often distanced themselves from the actual rebellion and social critique implicit in these popular teen-oriented musical forms. The full ideological integration of such rebellion comes to bear on the films of the 1966–1983 period, many of which met such rebellion head-on. This embracing of rock-n-roll’s edge follows trends occurring on and off-Broadway (Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Wiz) and coincides with an added influx of the aforementioned rock/pop stars into the musical. No longer just a plot device or representation of a musical style specifically addressed as youth-oriented, rock-n-roll becomes a style of music used to communicate the dissent building within the narrative. Films such as Tommy, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and The Wiz use rock music tied to popular pop and rock musicians, and films like Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar use the hard edge of rock as a means to communicate dissent without the presence of (already) popular rock stars. This hard edge of rock-style vocals and the cultural association of rock music with youth rebellion, social unrest, and anti-establishment imbue the rock musical with connotations in direct opposition to the social utopia once popularized in the genre. Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Tommy use a definitive rock tone and occasional shrieking vocals to present a sound that disrupts the safety and calm once implicit in the musical narrative. These voices surely transcend a normal spoken tone and elevate the narrative moment into another realm beyond that of

106 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

the real world, but they do so in such a way that pushes them toward social transgression rather than unification.14 Whether through Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Great Balls of Fire,” The Who’s “My Generation,” or Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out,” the strident tones and rebellious lyrics had carried the implication of contemporary youth rebellion and the rejection of tradition for decades. The music and related vocal stylings in the selfproclaimed rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar add an additional aural and cultural edge to its no-name, youth-outsiders performing in the socially contentious Biblical story of betrayal. The film reserves the hardest rock vocals for Judas and Jesus, the two who experience the highest level of conflict and inner struggle. Judas’s “Heaven on Their Minds” shifts between almost spoken monologue, passionate shouting, and lingering high-pitched shrieks, as his performance conveys the immediacy, pain, and contentiousness of the moment. Similarly, Jesus’s disruption of the moneychangers at the temple takes the form of a curt visually and vocally violent outburst, as do multiple direct confrontations between Judas and Jesus throughout the film. The use of softer orchestrations and singing styles during less overtly rebellious moments—the more balletic “You Don’t Know How to Love Him” or the glam cabaret of “Herod’s Song”—reinforces the narrative and cultural power of rock by contrast. Musicals also capitalized on the connections between youth culture and drug culture as discussed in Chapter 2, in this case by complementing their trippy visuals with equally trippy music. Bands such as Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and The Grateful Dead embodied the late 1960s’ folk-rock hybrids of psychedelic rock and acid rock, evocative of the youth drug culture of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury scene. Songs like Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit” with their elongated notes, drug-related lyrics, and technically altered riffs epitomize the anti-establishment, free-love youth countercultures of the late sixties.15 New musical numbers such as Alice Cooper’s visually and aurally hallucinogenic, brainwashing ditty “Because” in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Hair’s “LBJ/LSD” and “Hashish” embrace these aural qualities of psychedelic rock and evoke the associated counter-cultural moment and altered state of being. Hair and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band integrate dreamlike characters and lyrics, respectively attempting to escape a repressive society and manipulate a passively impressionable mass. Tommy capitalizes on the associations between drugs and rock in more overtly aggressive ways with Tina Turner’s “Acid Queen.” As illustrated in Chapter 2’s discussion of Tommy’s acid-nightmare visuals, Turner’s face twitches and her powerful shrieked vocals mingle with Tommy’s

Wanna Sing and Dance?

107

hallucinated images of snakes, skeletons, war, and stigmata to create an anarchic space where a unified and helpful community seems impossible. These films’ narratives stress social division and moral bankruptcy, and the musical styles of songs both aurally and historically compound the sense of anti-establishment and libidinous tendencies. The aural aggression or tripped-out passivity complement the communal disharmony projected through these stories of rebellion and deviance. In these contexts, the assertive, crisp passed-along-song seems both socially and stylistically incompatible. Rock maintains the social division. Voiceover In addition to the aforementioned favored singing styles—rock/pop edge and talk-sing—many musicals of this period follow trends of the time that both highlight a depth and complexity of character often lacking in earlier musicals and foreground a subjective psychological reality. Non-musical films of the time such as Easy Rider, The Graduate, and McCabe and Mrs. Miller began relying more heavily on the use of popular music as a non-diegetic tone-setter, with Simon and Garfunkel producing their introspective soundtrack to The Graduate and Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild” aurally establishing Wyatt’s and Billy’s anti-establishment credentials at Easy Rider’s outset. Musical films followed the trend as they began privileging voiceover singing as a similar kind of underscoring commentary. Whether expressing characters’ personal or social isolation, this technique of using voiceover and banishing the physical body from the musical equation presents a direct affront to the popular generic project of song-as-communal bonding. Such an erasure of diegetic song further results in the unlikelihood of diegetic dance, eradicating all opportunity for performative union. By disconnecting the performance from the community or members within, the song fails to serve as a catalyst for social harmony and unification. Surpassing the introspectiveness of songs used as personal asides or private proclamations (South Pacific’s “Cockeyed Optimist,” The Sound of Music’s “I Have Confidence,” or Gypsy’s “Rose’s Turn”), these musical numbers presented in voiceover fail to drive the character forward into engagement with the real diegetic world, instead allowing him or her to remain on the sidelines of his or her society, neither fully engaging with it nor seeking to align him or herself with an alternative society. Again, likely due in part to the inability of actors to do their own singing—or at least believably or artfully—voiceover developed a major presence during the period, at times almost rendering films wholly nonintegrated. In these films, the song plays under the onscreen action, and

108 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

a resultant barrier erupts between the emotive power often associated with the performance of song and the member of the diegetic society who ultimately must resolve or remain bound to social conflict. The Jazz Singer (1980), Alice’s Restaurant, and Phantom of the Paradise fall just outside the bounds of the integrated musical by virtue of their inclination toward the voiceover.16 Numbers which in the arcadian musical would likely either serve to further the narrative or glean additional insight into the thoughts and desires of the characters transform into numbers ultimately disconnected from the bodies of those responsible for their performances. As Phantom of the Paradise tells the story of the disfigured composer’s deadly record dealings and unrequited love, his songs of passion and anguish play in voiceover, separated from the singer.17 Not only is the Phantom’s song never heard by the community to which he dreams of belonging, but also his feelings are not truly expressed in the world of the film; rather, they circulate outside the cinematic drama as a lingering yearning that cannot and will not find satiation. Marginally integrated films such as Lost Horizon, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and The Little Prince almost wholly rely on voiceover, using this aural barrier to reflect the protagonists’ isolation or psychological subjectivities. Like Scorsese’s and Stanley Kubrick’s use of voiceover to project the private or unstable psychological ramblings of Taxi Driver’s (1976) Travis Bickle and A Clockwork Orange’s (1971) sadistic Alex, these musicals project a—perhaps less deviant—sense of personal isolation or introspection though their voiceover presentations of song. No diegetic communities hear characters’ impassioned pleas or provide them ultimate comfort as these musicals reject the foundational tenet of communal support. The musicalization of The Little Prince uses voiceover repeatedly for both sung and spoken word. The Pilot narrates his own alienated life. Not integrated into society or simultaneously present in voice and body, his words of desperation (in “I Need Air,” “I’m on Your Side,” and “Little Prince From Who Knows Where”) and even ultimate joy and camaraderie (in “Why is the Desert”) remain trapped within his own psyche. The Pilot’s emotions never fully manifest in the world of the real, not truly even expressed to the boy who brings him out of his isolation. This kind of musical estrangement narratively compounds an already isolated protagonist from the world around him. Similarly, Goodbye, Mr. Chips projects a life bookended by isolation. Comprised of a combination of show numbers sung by Chips’s love interest and eventual wife, integrated numbers sung by hopeful boys at the school, and voiceover numbers sung by Chips, the film uses the bodiless performance of song to demonstrate varying stages of the teacher’s isolation. As in The Little

Wanna Sing and Dance?

109

Prince, the protagonist’s tertiary positioning within society—rejected by his colleagues, widowed, and aging in isolation—and an overall introspective tack toward life and personal interactions project through the repeated choice of presenting song through voiceover. These performances, in conjunction with their narratives, situate their performers within a space not wholly integrated into the norm or comfortably integrated into a complete alternative society. This ambivalence toward the world prevents an ultimate utopian conclusion where the protagonist melds with the society around him or her. Instead, like Chips’s and The Pilot’s performances, they remain on the outside of meaningful relationships, society, and ultimate happiness.

Overt vocal dubbing Like the disconnect produced with voiceover, dubbing establishes a similar distance between song and singer. Unlike dubbing common in early musicals—hiding Audrey Hepburn’s shortcomings with Marni Nixon’s voice or post-production vocal matching used to tweak the actual singer’s performance—these films render its falsity overt. The notion of song projecting a higher truth or uncontainable emotion rings false as song is projected through voices obviously disconnected from the characters and the diegesis. Contrary to the introspective or estranged quality projected by voiceover, the overt vocal dubbing used in Bugsy Malone and Pennies from Heaven foregrounds the artifice of the narrative and even mocks the once curative powers of song. Unlike earlier films, Bugsy Malone and Pennies from Heaven do not attempt to compensate for substandard vocals of a star, more closely match the actor’s or actress’s vocal quality to the one already popularized through a Broadway cast recording, or more solidly anchor vocal quality to established gender norms. Instead, these films use dubbing to the opposite effect: an unmistakable projection of the mismatched voice.18 As with the voiceover and talk-sing, this contrivance creates a gulf between the magical musical cure and the diegetic production and personal agency that creates it (and therefore reaps its rewards), but more so than the two aforementioned techniques, this form of dubbing adds a level of cynicism or critique to the narratives as it highlights its own insincerity. Instead of producing a vocal quality that replicates the expected, Bugsy Malone uses voices that in no way match the bodies of those diegetically producing them. Rather, the voices articulate gendered stereotypes to activate the film’s satirical narrative. Cast completely with children— starring a teenage Scott Baio in the title role and a young Jodie Foster as

110 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

the gangster moll/vampish lounge singer Tallulah—the kiddie gangster musical uses the voices of adults to simulate the musical performances (but not spoken dialogue) of the child actors. The film revolves around two rival gangs trying to corner the market on the latest weaponry, the cream-shooting splurge gun. The plights of the characters emerge through the bodily performances of children inherently imbued with a sense of innocence and adult vocal performances more easily linked to harsher realities. By presenting singing voices as inauthentic to the visual, they break the contract that naturalizes performance and blends music into the diegetic world. Instead, these types of contrivances implicate the position of the “real” sung vocals in their investment in the narrative. The social problems presented in the film lose the softening touch of being associated with fresh-faced children when the film beckons attention to—rather than acceptance of—the performance. For example, the night janitor and hopeful someday tap dancer performs the forlorn “Tomorrow” after he finds himself once again denied an audition for the club. As the child dances, a soulful adult voice painfully sings of a lifetime of disappointment. The desperation of adult loss commingles with the physical presence of a young boy’s endless reserve of potential, creating a paradox that begs an interrogation of the devastating social reality connected to the adult vocal performance. Pennies from Heaven uses the technique of vocal dubbing to a similar end as Bugsy Malone through its use of original recordings of 1930s songs such as “Yes, Yes,” “Did You Ever See a Dream Walking,” and “Let’s Misbehave.” The severity of the characters’ sins and the narrative’s unwillingness to find simple resolutions for them lead to situations too transgressive to be recuperated through the inclusion of music and the magical production number. The rift between performer and heard vocals here emphasizes the inability of traditional generic techniques to carry out a utopic resolution. By hailing the ghost of the Hollywood musical’s arcadian past through both visual and aural presentation of musical performance, Pennies from Heaven not only highlights the impossibility of music to solve the diegetic conflicts within the film, but also the illogical nature of traditional notions of the genre itself. As characters burst into song the actors lip sync to original recordings of the numbers that have now been integrated into the plot. Recordings were often originally sung by individuals of the opposite sex of those singing in the diegesis. For example, as the bank turns Arthur down for a loan, the setting magically transforms into a Berkeley-esque production number. Arthur and the male bank manager lip sync the number “Yes, Yes” (originally recorded by Sam Browne and The Carlysle

Wanna Sing and Dance?

111

Cousins), as Arthur takes the lines of the male singer and the portly, mustached bank manager those of the female. The foregrounding of artifice underscores the separation between the characters’ real life situations and their dream lives, here Arthur’s dream of receiving the loan (one ultimately unfulfilled by the narrative). Similar sex reversal occurs when Arthur sings “I’ll Never Have to Dream Again” (originally recorded by Connie Boswell) and “It’s the Girl” (originally performed by The Boswell Sisters with The Dorsey Brothers Orchestra) and Tom— Lulu’s pimp—and his boys sing “Let’s Misbehave” (originally performed by Irving Aaronson and His Commanders—as well as a bevy of female backup singers). In each of these cases, the music interrupts moments of conflict or distress. The songs hearken to a simpler time, but the narrative pushes forward, denying the simple resolutions or innocent dalliances implied by the lyrics. The evident lack of congruency in voice and body, as with Bugsy Malone, forces this irony to the fore. Characters continually strive to better their situations by believing in their musical dreams. Unlike backstage musicals of the 1930s and 1940s where the Depression or other financial doldrums could be overcome by personal wherewithal (Gold Diggers of 1933, One Hundred Men and a Girl), these musical performances highlight the genre’s disdain toward old norms and resist merging dreams and real life through music. Drawing attention to the unauthentic production of music and disturbance of sex norms—norms that had continually reinforced themselves through the conciliatory romance—Pennies from Heaven uses musical performance in conjunction with complex and irresolvable diegetic tensions to deny the goals once foremost in the musical genre: the magical synthesis of opposites, contentedness, and monogamy. While as in Bugsy Malone, the actual actors in Pennies from Heaven perform the final number, “Glory of Love,” this does not occur until Arthur and Lulu fail in achieving their dreams and he swings from the gallows for a murder he did not commit. Not only can the music not save the community from its ills, but it cannot save its inhabitants from crimes they did not commit. Pennies from Heaven and Bugsy Malone best typify this type of foregrounded dubbing, but other films employ techniques of vocal distanciation less severe but similar in style and result. Camelot’s adulterous Lancelot (Franco Nero) histrionically lip syncs to dubbed vocals. Films such as The Wiz, Tommy, and Popeye use the vocals of the actual performers but present the music in such ways that the vocal tracks sound disconnected from the singers. The lack of realism in the cartoonish Popeye repeatedly emerges as Popeye’s mumbled singing only

112 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

occasionally matches the character’s moving mouth. Tommy’s perverse Uncle Ernie appears completely disconnected from his own vocal track, and throughout The Wiz, vocals seem spatially disconnected from the characters. Although Michael Jackson, Nipsey Russell, and Diana Ross are, in fact, singing, their voices appear to be emanating from somewhere outside their actual bodies. While not presenting music as artifice quite as solidly as the first two films, these examples still accomplish disruptions in the presentation of vocal music and thereby call into question the natural place of music within the diegesis and its overall transformative powers. Musical styles and modes of performance influenced by casting choice, cinematic style, and/or contemporary musical tastes complicate largely idealistic narratives such as Popeye and Bugsy Malone, while they underscore the more ambivalent narratives that already create roadblocks to the goals scholars have discussed as fundamental to the project of musical integration. The musical joy, communal bonding, and resolution of inner-struggle associated with the arcadian musical become minimized in narratives whose cores depend on the maintenance of social unrest and the ultimate uncertainty of existence. By employing methods of musical performance that disintegrate the music from the community at hand (voiceover), de-emphasize the magical otherness of song (talk-sing), underscore its overall artifice (overt-dubbing), or connote aggression rather than joy or harmonious unity, dissent and disconnect musically punctuate already problematic musical narratives.

Ambivalent dance: We didn’t dance all night Dance, once as integral as song to uniting musical communities, experiences both a decline in narrative presence and changes in style that reinforce the genre’s reconfiguration and its denial of unity based on performance. In their discussions of earlier musicals, Feuer, Altman, and Cohan have pointed to dance—in conjunction with song—as a means to bring individuals and communities together as duets and large group numbers articulate conflicts and mutual desires present in diegetic relationships.19 Dance and narrative blend fluidly, as everyday activities or movement become choreography, celebrations transform into large dance numbers, and dream ballets allow for a conventionalized means to unravel ensuing narrative conflicts—for both the character and viewer. Dance and bodily movement help to drive arcadian musicals toward clean resolutions of seemingly irresolvable narrative and social conflicts.

Wanna Sing and Dance?

113

Stage and screen choreographers from the heyday of the genre such as Kidd (Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The Band Wagon, Li’l Abner [1959]), de Mille (Oklahoma!, Carousel), and Robbins (On the Town, West Side Story, King and I [1956]) not only helped change the face of Broadway dance, but translated their dances to the movie screen and influenced the very language of filmic dance. Eschewing early practices of halting narratives for a dance number or inserting specialty numbers into plays and films, Robbins and de Mille helped to forward the project of attaching dance directly to narrative, character, and place. Character and narrative-tied dances aided in creating the possibility for the complete idyllic world of the musical. Robbins’s sailors in On the Town and gang members in West Side Story dance alone and in groups to the forwarding of the narrative and the establishment of character identity and goals. In West Side Story’s “Cool” The Sharks and Jets immediately establish turf dominance and gang rivalry through a combination of ballet, jazz, Broadway-esque rhythmic strolling, and choreographed fighting. Robbins seamlessly blends the worlds of narrative, music, and movement, underscoring the realistic coexistence of the three. Similarly, Kidd’s frenetic leaps, stomps, and turns help to create the unique cartoon community of Dogpatch U.S.A. in Li’l Abner and create the burgeoning lovefest between mountain men and city girls in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Illustrating the integration of dance into daily life, this combination of dance styles and the unification of romantic couples epitomizes the communal possibilities once associated with early film musical choreography. These choreographers—as well as others such as Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, and Hermes Pan—brought their innovation to the screen to create celebratory community events, concluding celebrations, romantic dance duos, and sectarian brawls that would serve the idyllic, curative, and status quo-affirming musicals often associated with the first three decades of the genre. In the later period, films such as Half and Sixpence and Hello, Dolly! would feature the bonding group number and passedalong-song as reflections of the norms of an earlier day. Tommy Steele’s performance in Half a Sixpence repeatedly features his dancing abilities alongside his vocals. Rife with large production numbers—“Money to Burn,” “If the Rain’s Got to Fall,” and “Flash Bang Wallop”—the movie uses dance as a means to bring together various factions of the community and illustrate Artie’s passion for love and life. Bodies commingle, the conflicting groups in question come together in unified motion, and individuals project their heightened emotion though the bodily excess of dance. As with earlier films more commonly associated with arcadian

114 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

style, such later films employ dance to articulate emotion, romance, and unification. Many musicals of the 1966–1983 period, however, shun the choreographed reconciliations of an earlier time. Often few and far between, dance numbers appear less frequently and often without the same connotative power once held. As non-dancers take major musical roles in films that already eschew the idyllic nature of the arcadian musical, dance often appears as something physically awkward, stilted, and disconnected from displays of romantic love and communal harmony. The naturalness associated with integrated dance and skilled and graceful dancers wanes. This shift illustrates the films’ rejection of or ambivalence toward established norms as they highlight cultural and relational division through choreographed movement or simply de-emphasize the possibility of union through their erasure of dance. Rather than serving as a communal or romantic unifier or short-circuiting logical narrative closure (such as through the production number), dance in many of these later films often aids in a compounding of communal estrangement or representation of an ultimate inability of different social factions to integrate successfully. Through a divisive use of arcadian folk numbers, production numbers that highlight the improbability of clean narrative closure, and didactic performance within a performance, dance in many later musicals subverts its once idyllic and curative function. Further, in contrast to the ultimate social unity projected through the work of artists such as Donen and Kidd, the choreography of Fosse and Twyla Tharp assumes both a mechanical stylization that reinforces the estrangement of a strained social structure and a fluidity that isolates one faction of society from the staid lives and performances of the other. In different ways, dance works against the dictates of community and naturalization of performance to foreground the constructedness of the narrative, reinforce social division and incompatibility, and explore the narcissism of the main characters. Films such as A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Paint Your Wagon, Camelot, On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, Man of la Mancha, and A Little Night Music include no more—and several fewer— than two integrated (or non-show) dance numbers. These narratives simultaneously deny the concrete reconciliation of conflicts, bonding of battling groups, or narrative unification of lovers as they decenter this once major element of the Hollywood genre. As with voiceover and talk-sing, such a redirection in musical content denies the reparative qualities of musical interactions that transcend the everyday.

Wanna Sing and Dance?

115

Musicals of this period not only include fewer dance numbers, but also exhibit a decline in two major devices integral to the ideological recuperation of narrative communities: folk dance and the final production number. Whether through The Sound of Music’s Landler, The Unsinkable Molly Brown’s “He’s My Friend” polka, or Take Me Out to the Ball Game’s Irish, English, and Russian dancing trio in “O’Brien to Ryan to Goldberg,” folk dances had allowed diegetic communities to express a cultural unity, specificity, and hope for reconciliation among current battling factions. The more idyllic vehicles of the time period—Grease, Song of Norway, and Scrooge (1970)—employ traditional moments of folk, while the more narratively complex and historically contentious Fiddler on the Roof and 1776 use folk dance to exhibit the separateness of the dancers, rather than an overall sense of unity among the greater community. Folk dancing in Fiddler on the Roof both sets the Jews apart from the Russians and establishes them as outsiders within their own communities. (Only after their large display of otherness through dance and religious ceremony does the military disrupt and destroy the wedding.) 1776 uses folk dance to separate rather than unify Congress through the film’s largest dance number. Conservative and wealthy congressmen dance a minuet to “Cool, Cool, Considerate Men” as they celebrate the comfortable status quo and the momentary absence of the liberal John Adams. Their visual display of haughty otherness compounds their narrative divisiveness and sung words of personal-absorption and self-aggrandizement.20 Along with the repositioning of folk dance, the overblown excessive dancing production number—the arcadian magical cure-all—also declines. Schatz, Feuer, and Patricia Mellencamp respectively refer to this formulaic element as that which aids in the false sense of closure to culturally irresolvable problems, the ultimate celebration of social unity and utopia, and a locus of audience identification with the abilities of the performers. The loss of this narrative feature—or narrative detractor—deprives the genre of a unique device integral in the completion of the traditional task of solidifying a sense of community, normalcy, and tradition.21 Aside from the small group of arcadianleaning musicals produced between 1966 and 1983, few musical films of this period end with integrated production numbers that incorporate dance, and even fewer use the device as a means to project the conquering of narrative derision. Godspell, Zoot Suit, and All That Jazz, while retaining final large production numbers, use this device to solidify the instability and inadequacy of their respective worlds. Whether through the death of a Messiah in an abandoned Manhattan, the multi-tiered

116 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

narrative fates of Henry Reyna, or the ultimate death of Joe Gideon, these numbers fall short of providing the narrative closure and community unification provided by Li’l Abner’s “Jubilation T. Cornpone” or even The Pajama Game’s “Pajama Parade.” Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Bugsy Malone, and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying bring the greater ensemble together in their closing moments in ways that foreground the narratives’ ultimate unwillingness to reconcile the irresolvable. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band concludes with a nondiegetic star-studded rendition of the title song. Bugsy Malone abandons vocal-dubbing devices maintained throughout the narrative, disrupting the reality created within the film, and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying concludes with the ensemble together outside the narrative setting, on a soundstage, and in front of the film’s logo.22 Coupled with the films’ narratives, the alteration of this standard musical device underscores or compounds the overall distanciation from the goal of social equity, harmony, and fraternity.23 These films ultimately present their moments of unification outside of the worlds of their narratives. Various dance styles replace the norms of choreographed courtship and community within this period. Denaturalized stylized movement, self-referential techniques, and new styles of modern and street dance distance integrated dance from the reality of the diegesis. These choreographic choices highlight the contrivance of the moment, minimize dance’s ability to visually reinforce an integrated society, and detract from the natural, fluid movement of the human body.

Distanced in context Many later musicals retain dance but like voiceover lessen its curative powers by contextually removing it from the “real” diegetic world. Further removed from reality than the trance-like state of conflictresolution in the dream ballet—which Feuer describes as “a kind of exorcism, leading to the actual fulfillment of desires”—dance in these musicals often eschews narrative integration by being positioned as performance within a performance or as a hallucinated aside.24 Zoot Suit, Jesus Christ Superstar, A Little Night Music, and Godspell foreground the films’ narratives within a second performance for disappearing or wholly nonexistent diegetic audiences. In presenting these narratives as contrived performances—whether the camera shows the audience or not—they place dance outside of the characters’ everyday behaviors. People never truly transcend their positions as actors and therefore the

Wanna Sing and Dance?

117

dance performances continually stand as theatrical rather than natural expressions of characters’ emotions or dreams. The performance of dance in Zoot Suit, for example, takes two forms. One, the members of the ensemble repeatedly attend a club at which they swing dance. Two, the story as told by El Pachuco—who appears only in Reyna’s imaginings—often emerges through song as the diegetic ensemble or El Pachuco’s mythic chippies dance. These dances and dancers aid in conveying a narrative wary of the possibility of social integration. The integrated numbers appear at moments such as Henry’s initial beating by the police. Pairs of dancers whirl around him as he lies battered on the stage. Henry’s boys dance across the stage as the mobile set spins to reveal the new locale, the jail. El Pachuco’s three backup singers dance around Reyna in “Zoot Suit Boogie” and “Handball.” Moments like these use dance as a means to augment El Pachuco’s asides or negotiate the stage space.25 Complementing the multiple possible endings presented and thereby the inconclusive place of Chicanos in American society, the positioning of dance in this narrative fails to merge with a natural space where it could serve as a stabilizing or unifying force. Rather, unlike the traditional passed-along-song, it remains outside reality, further announcing the artifice of performance and lack of narrative resolution. Similarly, Godspell’s and Jesus Christ Superstar’s narratives emerge as overt performances within performances. Although both are packed with dance numbers, the structures of the films’ narratives force dance to the outside of the real. The performed narratives never wholly express themselves as real events, but enacted ones. Never smoothly integrated into the narrative, the immersion of dance into society and its ability to bring divisive factions together—whether the romantic couple or entire community—becomes problematized. As with voiceover, such narrative structures provide a disconnect or barrier between dance and any kind of diegetic community, as the ensemble is always “play acting” and the greater problematic community remains unrepresented and unchallenged. Although internal conflicts of Godspell’s parables can be resolved and Jesus rises in Jesus Christ Superstar, dance does not solve or address “real” problems when the community itself has been revealed as simply putting on a show. What about the real world they must return to? Zoot Suit and Godspell both use performance within a performance as an educational device, each clarifying an ideological point or points rather than focusing on detailed and linear storytelling. Here, the performative excess of dance serves as a didactic tool—rather than integrating fully into the story. Whether the stylized “whack-a-mole” performance

118 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

of the accused in Zoot Suit’s courtroom or Job-like soft-shoe in Godspell’s “All for the Best,” the spectacle of these numbers helps to underscore or draw attention to the lessons being taught through the films’ narratives but does not serve the traditional narrative functions of the arcadian musical’s dance.

Reflexive use of arcadian technique Not all musicals of the 1966–1983 period wholly reject joyful and community-building dance, but some that retain this style do so to undermine its established generic function. Using ballroom, tap, softshoe, and chorus lines of hoofers, some films use the cinematic history of dances and dance styles to highlight changes occurring within the genre. Although dance solos, duets, and group numbers may visually resemble those of Astaire and Rogers, Kelly, or Berkeley, the result could not differ more. The presence of these dances within contexts antithetical to the arcadian norms of the musical simply highlights the genre’s rejection of those norms. Once symbols of joy and unity, they seem silly in their new darker contexts. Films such as At Long Last Love, Pennies from Heaven, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show employ dance numbers that reflexively use this throwback choreographic style. Ending with decidedly unsettled conclusions—unrequited love and death— they present the false hope of musical resolution and social utopia through dance styles reminiscent of the kinder and gentler musical. Whereas dance as discussed by scholars such as Feuer and Dyer once functioned to urge such a utopic conclusion, these films contextualize arcadian-styled dances in ways that highlight dance’s inability to do just that. It does not and cannot resolve the conflicts present in the films’ narratives.26 At Long Last Love and Pennies from Heaven—through musical style and vocal devices—intertextually hearken to the more arcadian musical. Pennies from Heaven uses 1930s-inspired production numbers alongside extraordinarily dark plotlines to highlight false promises held out by the early musical. Dance numbers such as “Yes, Yes” recall the visual and economic excess of Berkeley and utilize the common style of tap to imply resolution through its association with the more conciliatory version of the genre. Later, Arthur and Lulu perform an Astaire–Rogers duet—in front of a movie screen showing Follow the Fleet’s “Let’s Face the Music and Dance”—as their depressing fates become clearer. Throughout, excessive and upbeat styles of vaudeville, Astaire, and Berkeley invade the dream sequences of characters destined to lives of despair,

Wanna Sing and Dance?

119

thereby revealing dance as a wolf in sheep’s clothing or yet another false hope held out to people who are truly victims of their own unwavering destinies. These numbers falsely promise the joy and happy endings implied through glamorous/reality-defying production numbers, only to lead to ultimate disappointment. The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a narrative based on communal annihilation and death, drives this failed convention home by presenting numbers reminiscent of early Hollywood musicals just prior to the ensemble’s ultimate destruction and disillusionment. Following the capture, sexual conquest, and petrifaction (literally) of Brad, Janet, Columbia, and Rocky, Frank-N-Furter costumes them in sequined corsets and gloves, boas, and fishnet stockings and places them on a heretofore unseen stage for what he dubs “the floorshow.” The characters reveal musically and via dance their heartfelt feelings about their recent experiences in true arcadian fashion. All forever changed by their sexual escapades and varying levels of escape from “civilized” society, they awkwardly sing and dance looking like decrepit, horny members of a chorus line. This number leads into the film’s most unveiled reference to film musicals of yore. As the curtain rises, a backdrop with a radio tower and letters reading “An RKO Radio Picture” appears. As Frank dives off into the fog covering a hidden pool and appears in an inner tube singing his hopeful tune, “Don’t Dream It, Be It,” the rest of the costumed foursome joins him in the water to perform a lascivious Esther Williams underwater number. Once in the water, the group performs their own special version of the breaststroke—once again breaking the goals of heterosexual union and monogamy. The music suddenly changes to an upbeat tempo and Frank-N-Furter pops out of the water (on the unseen shoulders of Rocky) and sings “Wild Untamed Thing,” joined by the others kicking in the pool. This number and the following perky chorus line, in conjunction with the visual codes employed, create an opening for reconciliation. This contradiction in narrative overtone and dance style produces a conflicted expectation of things to come. Will they live happily ever after? Well, they are dancing like they will. Ultimately, the music and dance fail to maintain the brief spark of communal unity produced between the once adversaries/contentious lovers. The number almost directly precedes the deaths of Frank-N-Furter and Rocky, the destruction of the castle, and expulsion of Brad and Janet. As with At Long Last Love and Pennies from Heaven, styles once used as a surefire cure for the musical blues ultimately only highlight the inability of such musicals to allow successful recuperation of the narrative in diegetic societies that move away from unity rather than toward

120 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

it. The failure of dance further emphasizes that loss through broken expectations.

Fosse Individual choreographers and dance styles of this period also underscore the larger ideological and formal changes occurring within the genre. One of the significant choreographers crossing over from stage to screen, Fosse bridges the arcadian and ambivalent versions of the Hollywood musical genre and illustrates the stylistic differences between them. He received his first major break when Robbins tapped him to choreograph the Broadway production of The Pajama Game (1954), and Fosse’s work became iconic and recognizable for its use of small, tight groups and crisp, in-depth manipulation of the body through dance, slow movement, and meticulous attention to detail. Although Fosse’s style of choreography does not encompass the entire body of musicals produced from the late sixties to the early eighties, his work reappears in high profile films indicative of the ambivalent form. Prior to 1966, however, Fosse choreographed more visually conservative vehicles such as My Sister Eileen (1955), The Pajama Game, and Damn Yankees. While these films displayed the crisp, stylized movement later associated with their choreographer, they more heavily favored dance reminiscent of traditional musicals. The Pajama Game includes both the syncopated, halting ensemble movement of “Racing With the Clock” and the frolicking, skipping, and jumping acrobatic group number “Once-a-Year-Day” which, bringing the lovers and company together, could easily have merged with choreography of an Oklahoma! or State Fair. Similarly, Damn Yankees includes the raucous baseball number “Heart,” wherein the baseball players lean together to harmonize about their beloved profession and then convert their ball playing into a naturalistic dance routine reminiscent of earlier conversions of everyday activities into choreographed movement. Also in attendance, however, are numbers more reminiscent of the eroticized and mechanized latter day Fosse, “What Lola Wants” and “Who’s Got the Pain?” In these films, more stylized and sexualized moments fleetingly occur at times of narrative conflict, when social unity appears least likely. These standout numbers foreshadow what would become Fosse’s dominant style in later years: impersonal and mechanized. The latter day Fosse films of social estrangement (the non-integrated Cabaret, Sweet Charity, The Little Prince, and All That Jazz) contain more concentrated moments of stylized performance as their protagonists

Wanna Sing and Dance?

121

fruitlessly search for meaning in cold, unforgiving societies. Using more decidedly erotic and mechanized dance moves, these films present performing bodies aesthetically contrary to the harmonious dictates of arcadian movement. More reflective of the genre’s ambivalence toward social unity and tendency toward social estrangement and personal introspection, Fosse’s style separates bodies from meaningful human contact and mobilizes them in patterns illustrative of social division and superficial human bonding. Foregoing bodies that comfortably merge in a vision of romantic love or move together in a fluid revelation of harmony, Sweet Charity and All That Jazz sidestep romance for anonymous eroticism. Typified by “Big Spender” and “Air-Otica,” these films present the body as a vessel for lurid and faceless sex and deny the unified, graceful movements common in the choreographed coupling of Astaire and Rogers or the dancing couples of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers as movements contort and obscure dancers’ bodies. “Big Spender” presents a line of taxi dancers bent in unnatural positions, with arms, legs, and hands poised in ways that force viewers to rationalize such movement. As Chita Rivera’s seemingly disembodied right hand mysteriously taps her left hip from behind, a sense of perversion or aberrance emerges. The women move simultaneously, but not in unison, as they beckon the lecherous clients laying in wait. Ultimately, the individuals move in slithering motions until they break their line to entice their clients. Far from using ballroom or folk dance to glide into the arms of their carefully leading partner, far from gracefully gliding across the floor as a fatefully joined couple, the women’s performances foreground their severity, lack of authentic emotion, and overall social deviance.27 All That Jazz’s “Air-Otica” creates a similar eroticization of the visual and underscores the shift in the musical’s narrative goal from marriage to legitimized promiscuous sexual activity. The first half of the number depicts an upbeat, while somewhat slithery and wispy, introduction to the airline motif of the number. Minor sexual visual puns introduce lasciviousness into the number as, for example, a male flight attendant slides through the legs of a female attendant while thrusting a tray in front of her crotch as he offers the passengers snacks. Dancers create male–female couples via quintessential Fosse slow-moving syncopated movement, snaps, and jazz hands. The second phase of the number transforms the plane into a locale for sexual exploits. As they undress, the dancers announce their names as they reach out to their new partners. Ballet joins with movement akin to that of a go-go dancer as the number displays heterosexual, gay, lesbian, same race, and interracial couples, as well as groups engaging in simulated sex. Wearing

122 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

dance belts, thongs, and see-through tank tops—if not bare-breasted— the dancers wrap their nearly naked bodies around one another until the number takes a another turn and the members begin announcing their names as an actor states “don’t forget about our group fun, fun, fun plan” and the dancers converge upon each other, wrapping their bodies around one another, slowly opening and closing each other’s appendages to expose sensually different body parts. The number climaxes in a group assault on a piece of upstage scaffolding that holds a topless female dancer thrashing against it as would a stripper against her pole. As the dancers mutter their names and sheepishly turn away from their sexual conquests, a voice reads, “Not once during any of our flights did we have the crash of any real humankind or the bumpiness of any real human communication. Our motto is: We take you everywhere, but get you nowhere.” The dancers again collect at center stage. Underlit by flashlights, their near-nude bodies side by side in two rows appear almost ghoulish as they glisten in the dark, dry-ice filled space. Not an integrated number, but a show number for the Broadway musical being rehearsed in the film, “Air-Otica” nonetheless represents the move in the genre from physically reinforcing romantic and communal unity to an increased presence of sexual options transgressive of and contrary to the ultimate narrative goals of the musical. These fleeting sexual encounters never stem from or lead to romantic involvement, but underscore the alienation of humankind.28 Bodies move gracefully in unison, but the dancers continually establish transgressive groupings and multiple partnerships and conclude nameless—as “Big Spender” began—with inhuman forms existing as separate and unsettling figures. Fosse’s less sexually explicit numbers draw on his stiff, mechanized choreography to visually reflect the divided nature of humankind. As with “Big Spender,” multiple numbers not directly associated with the romantic entanglements of narratives present dancing communities poised in unnatural and mechanical positions. Groups of dancers, often moving as one, portray societies that function by rote rather than emotion. Unlike a mélange of Astaire’s and Rogers’s characters, for whom dance is a means to illustrate the couple’s ultimate compatibility, Fosse’s dancers resist the physical and social draw of others. Dyer describes a typical Astaire–Rogers number as culminating in their ultimate merging of bodies and styles. As the number develops, there is an increase in mutual holding and her-on-him dependency positions . . . “Dancing in the Dark” accomplishes the movement from courtship (getting to know one

Wanna Sing and Dance?

123

another) to consummation (reaching a peak of passion) within one number.29 If the arcadian musical uses dance as such a means to express uncontainable joy and emotion and illustrate romantic possibility, the later choreography of Fosse further reinforces a lack of emotion and social estrangement. Meaningful social interactions and feelings of love and companionship pale to those predetermined or prioritized by superficial subcultures. Similarly, Sweet Charity’s “Richman’s Frug” and “Rhythm of Life”—in satirical performances of modern popular dance—enlist dancers who move while never engaging with each other.30 Whether part of an almost identically dressed pretentious mob at a swanky nightclub or a member of a bogus religion based on marijuana and muscatel, their personal obsessions with their individual countercultures outweigh the need for any personal engagement with others (Figure 5). Social elite club-goers perform exaggerated movements—men walking with

Figure 5 Sweet Charity’s “Rich Man’s Frug” embodies the generic break between arcadian coupled dance and the stilted body positions and estranged relationships projected through the choreography of Bob Fosse. (Universal/Photofest)

124 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

cigarettes and women slinking about—as they dance to the apt-named “The Aloof.” Depicting individuals more interested in being seen than seeing, Fosse’s inspired portrayal of the characters’ self-absorption leads to characters enacting meticulous simultaneous movement in which the perfection of the dancers overrides any investment in human contact. The focus remains on the constructed image rather than emotion. Their dance does not unite the clubgoers as with Bye, Bye Birdie’s group dance number “Gotta Lotta Livin’ to Do,” nor does it represent the personal jubilation displayed through solo numbers such as Gene Kelly’s “Singin’ in the Rain” or Fred Astaire’s “No Strings” (Top Hat). They pose for the other nightclub goers as they dance eyes cast forward or downward, avoiding interaction and emitting ultimate cool. Later in the film, members of the Rhythm of Life church worship satirically decked-out hippie, Daddy (Sammy Davis Jr), as he sings of his hackneyed religion. As at the nightclub, the members—apparently overtaken by hallucinogens—move as zombies (arms outstretched and eyes wideopen), use each other as rowboats, and stand still suffering convulsions. Like the partygoers, they fully invest themselves in the “happening” or their performance of counterculture, but they never truly connect with one another. In such diegetic societies rife with self-absorption, these dance numbers aptly reinforce the mechanical and posturing nature of those involved. Not developing meaningful romantic relationships, displaying communal bonds that strengthen their overall union, or even serving to activate the conflicts within such communities, Fosse’s dance numbers most often further emphasize social estrangement, libidinal desire, and disregard for any true union of groups. Simulated sex, a lack of bodily and ocular engagement between dancers, and contrived jerky, non-human movements compliment the narratives’ implications of flawed societies. Rather than bonding, (often) nameless individuals touch fleetingly or wholly avoid contact as they dance through narratives bereft of networks of communal support and rife with ulterior motive and self-indulgence.

Modern and contemporary street dance Aesthetically separate from the robotic movement of Fosse, new types of modern and street dance appear in the musicals of this time period to similar ends. Both the modern dance of Twyla Tharp and contemporary street dance styles associated with rock-n-roll create additional images of social anarchy and aggressive social and sexual activity. Films such

Wanna Sing and Dance?

125

as Xanadu, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Wiz, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Hair abandon classical dance even further than innovators such as Robbins and de Mille had. Often leaving ballet and coupled social dancing further to the wayside—unless for ironic purposes—such films favor more modern or popular styles. As rock-n-roll entered into the Hollywood musical in the 1950s, elements of sexualized and partnerless street dance came along with them. Rather than focusing on learned steps that a duo would perform together, dances present in films like Jailhouse Rock (1957), Bye, Bye, Birdie, and Beach Party highlight the sexual impact one could have on the hysterical masses. Candy Johnson’s performance in Beach Party, Bikini Beach Party (1967), and Muscle Beach Party (1964) exemplifies this kind of individualized assault via dance. Whereas Astaire often uses dance to entice a resistant partner, Johnson’s style of dance is used to fight off any threatening elements. Always clad in a fringe go-go dress or bikini, she shakes and shimmies until the time comes to thrust her hip or pelvis in the direction of unsuspecting men who then fall down, fly off of surfboards, or run into each other. Similarly, in Bye, Bye Birdie’s faux rocker’s “Sincere,” a mere thrust in the direction of an unsuspecting woman or girl leads to a loss of consciousness. Gone were the days of swing, the jitterbug, and the Charleston, as the unification associated with group dances waned and new street dances created varying levels of hostile or serene anarchy or eroticism. Sixties and seventies dance styles—such as the pony, the Watusi, solo disco, and break dancing—again focused less on couples moving in union and more on the individual. Ultimately, their integration into the musical would impact upon the social and narrative dynamics of the films and the genre. Richard Dyer discusses the connotative possibilities of dance, arguing that both the historical context and aesthetics of dance impact its ultimate meaning within a film’s narrative. Instead of reinforcing the utopian sensibility of the musical, however, these newer dance styles suggest the social divisions of the time and the hostility and individual isolation projected though their aggressive and solo stylings.31 Style alone, nevertheless, cannot dictate the overall contextual meaning of dance. Contemporary dance can, however, underscore already functioning tensions within films’ narratives and shifts within the genre. The Wiz incorporates contemporary dance associated with African American culture into its quasi-ambivalent narrative. This choice maintains the overall shift in storytelling from a white rural tale to a contemporary African American interpretation. On the yellow brick road, in Emerald City, and at Poppy’s Perfume Company dance styles shift between

126 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

runway modeling, ballet and ballroom, modern, contemporary disco, and early break dancing. Choreography in “Emerald City” and the poppy dance number appears part Donna Summer video and part Broadway production number. Aggressive movement linked to aggressive conflict allows dance to compound preexisting tensions—just as the arcadian musical uses classical and folk dance to assuage conflicts that find resolution jointly through visual, aural, and narrative means. Jesus Christ Superstar numbers such as “Superstar” integrate dance more closely associated with contemporary youth culture to highlight the artifice of the film’s narrative and therefore the story’s disconnect from any shared reality or concept of religion. Silver glittery angel-divas surround the white-fringed Judas, twist, swing their arms, and bump their hips, establishing visuals more closely tied to Saturday Night Fever than the Christ tale. Although this crucifixion dance party presents the visual excess and celebration of the final arcadian production number, it evokes a contemporary flavor that separates it from the narrative closure of the Biblical story it recounts. Further, the film’s abrupt conclusion— just following “Superstar”—disrupts the communal resolution often implied by such a production number. The number ultimately does not end the film on a high, booty-shaking note. Rather, as the number abruptly ends, the film quickly returns to the outer frame of the performance within a performance as the cast and crew take off their costumes, dismantle the set, and seemingly abandon Jesus in the desert. The hip-shaking production number does not solve all ills, as the abrupt and ambiguous ending rejects clean closure.

Case study: Twyla Tharp, rock, no-name stars, and Hair Reflecting various types of performance-related innovation common to the musicals of this period, Hair engages with song and modern dance to ultimately reinforce the genre’s and the narrative’s rejection of a unified society. Combining rock music, underscored war imagery, parodic performance, and Tharp’s modern dance, the film punctuates the outsiderness of the hippies, the grueling reality of the war, and the social conflict at home. The celebrity statuses—or lack thereof—of the main ensemble work to underscore their characters’ senses of estrangement within the narrative. Largely unrecognizable to the average viewer, they present an image of ethnic diversity and everyman youthfulness. Savage and Dacus entered the production with little high profile work, but concurrent with the film’s release developed careers based on Vietnam contentiousness and rock-n-roll related work. Fellow hippies, Berger

Wanna Sing and Dance?

127

(Treat Williams), Annie (Jeannie Ryan), and Hud (Dorsey Wright) lacked a previous significant film credit between them, with Wright appearing in the cult classic The Warriors the same year and Ryan having been plucked by the film’s director from the little-known new wave band The Shirts. Together the stars provided little extratextual baggage for the characters to absorb, but their burgeoning careers added a hint of social dissent, rock, and outsider musicality. The original Broadway production of Hair had been part of the rock/youth off-Broadway movement of the 1960s. The show had been billed the “American Tribal Love-Rock Musical” when it premiered at the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theatre in 1967. At the height of the youth revolt against the Vietnam War, Hair brought a topical narrative and contemporary song and dance to a show that overtly addressed contemporary issues without granting a conciliatory ending. Filled with anti-establishment hippies, drug culture, and nudity, the show flew in the face of traditional musical subject matter. Hair would ultimately run on Broadway for nearly 2000 performances. By the time it appeared on the big screen, the show had been significantly altered, both visually and narratively. The story changed at its heart, simultaneously adhering more closely to and further abandoning arcadian dictates regarding love, conflict, and narrative structure. The original production engaged more solely with the hippies. Both Claude and Berger were members of the tribe and struggling over whether or not to dodge the draft, rather than Claude being a draftee Oklahoman fish out of water. In the play, Berger commits to dodging and Claude experiences a crisis of conscience. Contrary to the film, the play omits clear narrative conflicts such as “will Claude get the girl” and “will Claude go to Vietnam.” Instead, it is more of an organically forming story of the hippies, drug culture, and greater social crises. The organic quality present in the stage version, although dissipating narratively, appears through the film’s choreography. Tharp’s amalgamation of classical dance and freeform movement complement the socially conflicted narrative by producing simultaneously tight and fluid screen images. Such images create a sense of mutability associated with the counterculture ensemble floating on the edges of society: more in tune with their bodies than their society and more sensual than romantic. Unlike earlier choreographers such as Robbins and de Mille, Tharp’s choreography often works to distance the characters from meaningful relationships with each other and the culture at large. These hippies move as an amorphous mass in the spaces they inhabit but cannot truly usurp from those in power. In the arcadian

128 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

musical, characters often dance as unified groups or pairs—bodies merging as they smoothly execute classical or folk-style choreographed movement—reinforcing heterosexual romance and a utopian sense of community. Fosse’s ambivalent numbers subvert communal comfort for mechanical, jerky individual movements that reinforce the narrative’s sense of social estrangement. Tharp’s choreography deviates from both styles and reinforces Hair’s social divisions through the visual presentation of opposites: the organic movement of the hippies and the staid physical actions of the powers that be. Her choreographic style embodies an almost organic union within a youth culture that lies outside the regimented laws of society. Narratively and visually, Tharp’s hippies exist outside of the mainstream. Already visually separated from draftee Claude and his farmer father at the film’s outset, the draft card-burning hippies quickly juxtapose against the dominant structure of the police and Sheila’s uptight horse riding companions. Tharp underscores the social positioning and personal connections of the hippies as the New York City phase of the film begins with a shirtless African American man and white woman swaying to “Aquarius” as, facing one another, their arms entwine. Next, an Asian woman executes martial arts movements in a slow choreographed fashion. The draftee Claude stumbles upon a group of multi-ethnic hippies slowly bumping and grinding with their backs to him. As he sees them, they—in unison—turn to stare at him (Figure 6). The camera then turns to two hippies mimicking the horses ridden by the mounted police. As they execute movement, the horses follow in turn—to the consternation of their riders. The choreography of one group of dancers morphs into the next group as the sensual grinding becomes leaping and then becomes martial arts. This opening moment typifies Tharp’s choreography throughout the film. Dance stands outside of and disrupts social order. While including an internal logic or methodology itself, the dance and dancers stand in visual contradiction to the society connected to money, military, and social order. The flowing, sensual, and unstructured movement in which bodies— unlike those in Fosse’s numbers—fully engage with one another visually replicates the sense of oneness between its diegetic executors as bodily boundaries almost disappear. Continually leaping, falling, and enveloping into each other’s arms while maintaining eye contact, the dancers visually communicate their emotional and social investments in each other but ultimate estrangement from dominant society. Numbers such as Claude’s drug-induced wedding hallucination/ pseudo-dream ballet, “Manchester,” “I’m Black,” and “Hare Krishna”

Wanna Sing and Dance?

129

Figure 6 As Hair opens, Twyla Tharp’s choreography for “Aquarius” creates an amorphous mass of counterculture humanity. (United Artists/Photofest)

further draw on the cohesion of the small or large ensemble and include this type of fluid choreography combining ballet movement and modern dance. Tharp’s choreography of Claude’s acid trip is one of the longest dances within the film. Shortly after Claude ingests an acidlaced sugar cube, “The Electric Blues/Old Fashioned Melody” number occurs. Shifting between a psychedelic rock sound and one more akin to Lawrence Welk, the song underscores Claude’s shifting hallucination. With a series of disorienting zooms, Claude and Sheila appear inside a church, as a hovering female minister performs an imagined marriage ceremony. This then morphs into “Hari Krishna” as a chorus of dancers in various states of undress scoot and slither in an indoor rainstorm as Claude rides his horse into an exaggerated version of Sheila’s formal dining room. Berger dances into the room, spins a dancer suspended in air, and approaches a pregnant Sheila who flaps her arms and flies through the air. Tharp’s dancers largely remain in a blended mass, not separated by character or narrative purpose as they join in Claude’s trip. As with “Aquarius,” the trip highlights the separation of the hippies from dominant culture. Although both groups are present, the sterility and stability of Sheila’s family becomes chaos as the chorus of dancers fly, slither, and spin through the

130 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

space, engaging with each other and avoiding cooption into the formal dinner party. As evident in the trip sequence and “Aquarius,” song and dance in Hair not only work to portray the hippies as an organic mass of togetherness, but also reject the arcadian dictates of the musical, as musical numbers often underscore social division, rather than unity. Rather than encouraging the unification of battling sides—such as farmers and cowmen, financiers and actors, workers and administration—the film repeatedly focuses on the hippies and their overt disruption of acceptable social mores. In his attempt to antagonize Sheila’s equestrian friends, Woof follows on his rented horse as he sings “Sodomy.” Bereft of dance, this number aurally assaults the society ladies as quite melodically he extols the virtues of sodomy, fellatio, and cunnilingus. Directly thereafter, Woof loses his horse. Claude catches it and speeds toward Sheila performing horse tricks. Simultaneously, Berger sings “Donna” as the remaining hippies shriek the number, while in and out of unison they shake, run in place, shuffle their feet, and roll around each other. Again, as the music and narrative rails against the establishment and leads to the mortification of Sheila’s friends and family; Hud, Berger, Jeanie, and Woof appear as one (slightly un-syncopated) whole. The greater hippie community reinforces this separation from the larger society and unity amongst each other as Tharp again uses the ensemble in a combination of ballet, organic movement, running, sliding, and embracing to connect the hippies as they sing about everything they “ain’t got.” As “Sodomy” aurally assaults the senses, “Ain’t Got No” becomes almost unintelligible as this isolationist group inventories their material and social shortfalls: shoes, pot, gloves, underwear, mind, and so on. Ultimately the song devolves into sputtered words—banjo, records, M-1s, toothpicks—and machine gun sounds. Throughout, the dancers throw themselves at each other, twirl, and stumble up and down the steps to the upbeat groove of the song. They shake their heads and butts, feign punching each other, swing under each other’s arms as they squat, stand, and move in seemingly unmotivated patterns up and down the stairs and street, ending in a final embrace. Although some of the dance evokes the energy and freedom associated with the acrobatic Kelly, the choreography and haphazard and rapid-fire lyrics jointly reinforce the groups’ estrangement from organized and sanctioned society. In Kelly’s case, he draws in other groups to make a cohesive whole. Straying further from traditional choreography or recognizable denotative movement than the ballets and jazz dances of de Mille and Robbins, Tharp’s dances complement the ambivalent tone of the musical as one

Wanna Sing and Dance?

131

distant from and critical of an organized and knowable set of social mores. Even Hair’s engagement (or lack thereof) with movement beyond Tharp’s integrated dances corresponds with characteristics common to darker film musicals of this period. After the joyous and satiric “Black Boys” and “White Boys” numbers and following Claude’s induction into the Army, the film almost wholly lacks choreography. It instead favors voiceover singing over violent military training and marching (“Walking in Space” and “Let the Sun Shine In”) and motionless singing. The only real exception is the rocked out “Three-Five-Zero-Zero” performed as performance art by black-clad dancers at the National Mall in Washington D.C. This overall lack of dance in the second half of the film follows the ambivalent practice of highlighting narratives’ seriousness or internal processes through other types of visual portrayal. Whereas the aforementioned songs play over military maneuvers, “Easy to Be Hard” and other parts of “Walking in Space” focus on the pained emotions of the singers, Hud’s estranged wife and a Vietnamese peasant. Hud’s wife soulfully belts “Easy to Be Hard” as she faces the coldness of her husband’s rejection of his family for his “cosmic consciousness and all that kind of shit.” The camera focuses mainly on her face as she watches the hippies in the distance attempt to talk to her husband. This number is perhaps the most traditional diva ballad showstopper in the film. Belted with the power and soul of Judy Garland in I Could Go On Singing (1963) or Jennifer Holliday in the Broadway production of Dreamgirls (1981), the number pulls back any sense of visual excess to focus on the emotions of this rejected lover. The lack of choreography or other visual pizzazz during such moments allows for greater focus on the problematic narrative and personal suffering. Hair, both in its Broadway and filmic forms, exemplifies the musical’s integration of rock-n-roll music and dance into the genre in ways that run counter to social reaffirmation. In the context of its original production and diegesis, the narrative engages with an uncomfortable contemporary American reality and a challenge to the dominant social system. Through its infused rock edge, dark narrative, and combination of decentered dance and Tharp’s fluid modern technique, Hair embraces the ambivalence the musical had developed toward traditional generic norms and social order. All in all, non-classical movement and more avant-garde or contemporary popular dance styles work with this period’s films’ narratives to establish a sense of timeliness associated with or contrary to the diegesis itself. Further, such choices in movement create a new sense

132 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

of unification both within sub- and countercultures and against the dominant society with whom characters are in conflict. Such divergent styles of dance, as with Fosse, refocus visually on the erotic, the exotic, and social upheaval, marginalizing organized dancing duos and unified communities.

Conclusion Underscoring and compounding the shifts occurring within the genre, musical performance and musical performers clash with or complement narratives and visuals. Both stars and their performances reflect changing cinematic tastes, cultural conflicts, and musical styles. Whether marginalized or centered, vocal and bodily disruptions through song and dance often reinforce the narrative society’s inability to overcome increasingly complex and contentious choices as they overtly reject the genre’s once solid goals: social utopia and romantic heterosexual union. Films minimize the inclusion of song and dance, employ more contemporary and connotatively divisive performance styles, and shift performances to ones of cynical introspection rather than communal celebration. These ultimately combine with narratives that render satisfactory conclusions unlikely or serve as a reminder of a time when such unrest could easily be solved through a soft-shoe, tap routine, or water ballet. On a larger scale, however, song and dance in the integrated musicals of the 1966–1983 period commonly diverge from an earlier style that brought crisp, unified, and studio system trained bodies and voices together in worlds that welcomed music and movement into the very natures of their reality. As the musical’s social reality becomes disorderly, so follows the comfortable and amenable position of musical performances that once reflected and even aided in the maintenance of that social order.

4 The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity

This project began with a discussion of the necessity of repetition in the creation and solidification of a film genre. Without repeated character and setting types, storylines, and ideological goals, a genre cannot materialize. Only through the retelling of a similar story that hashes out social conflict through recognizable textual and visual patterns can a body of films emerge and come to be recognized as a genre. As the arcadian musical accomplishes this task through a combination of narrative types, ideological goals, and aesthetic selections, it concurrently establishes linked norms of gender—or what is deemed masculine or feminine. Gender, like genre, can only be articulated through the repetition of behaviors or actions that define it. As narrative norms come to fruition, so come gendered norms and expectations associated with those narrative choices. Cinematography frames the diegesis and constructs the meaning of bodies circulating within it. Narratives repeat stories that establish a “natural” resolution of conflict. Stars bring with them—diegetic and non-diegetic—repeated performances of self. These clustered repetitions help to assemble a cohesive meaning of the musical genre and the gender relations therein. Ultimately, the changes discussed throughout this book lead to not only a new more complicated notion of the musical world, but ultimately create more applicable reflections of contemporary gender in the real world. Judith Butler’s theory of gender performance—like genre reliant on repetition—speaks to shifts in the arcadian and ambivalent forms. In Gender Trouble, Butler adheres to the notion of a socially constructed subject, but simultaneously sets out to question the very means of the existence of that subject. Like genre, gender readability relies not on an individual or isolated act but the contextual reiteration of a series of acts or performances that circulate within an overall discourse of gender. 133

134 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

If one behaves in a way congruent with social norms of a specific gender, the subject performs that social gender and becomes read as male or female. Prior to the repetition of these “sanctioned” gendered acts, the subject cannot be understood by others; rather, she or he stands as an ambiguous mass. The repeated performance of actions or behaviors not associated with the “right” sex and gender correspondingly works to highlight or critique the very absence of a natural or essential gender.1 This Butlerian version of gender construction can explain both the creation and maintenance of a film genre and the materialization of gender within the genre itself. As the body itself means nothing, neither does the mere inclusion of music in a narrative context. Not until various films repeat similar stories, visuals, and ideologies can the genre truly take an identifiable shape. Only through articulating itself via the repetition of these characteristics can a film perform as “a musical.” The differences between the repeated characteristics of the arcadian and ambivalent varieties of the genre illustrate this process of meaning formation. At the heart of this genre once celebrating the visual, textual, and musical union of bodies, couples, and towns, lie stringent notions of appropriate gender and sexual performance. Wild men of the arcadian musical repeatedly change their ways to emerge as responsible breadwinners. (In many cases, their heroines start out musically pining for men to make honest women of them.) These men continually shed their crazy bachelor ways and stop wandering, roping, and philandering to take the responsible road to domestic bliss within a community of likeminded folk. They dance each other’s dances, croon duets with their lovers, and find the utopic possibilities just under the surface of their idealized communities, conflicts, and cities. Ultimately, through repetition, these men and their stories perform the musical. As the musical ushers in a wealth of change in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s as discussed in Chapters 1 through 3—visual, narrative, and performative—a resultant change occurs within the overall articulation of gender in the dominant form of the genre. Those disparate narratives, visuals, stars, and forms of performance deny a consistent repeated performance of community and romance. As this occurs, men take center stage—often in the quest or career-oriented musicals—as a more conflicted notion of society permeates the genre as the foregone conclusion of companionate marriage within a supportive society wanes. Subtle and significant changes, specifically with regard to masculinity, result from the combination of changes happening within this genre. Where a stable notion of community, visual idealism, and narrative closure once built images

The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity 135

of manhood equally reflective of social hegemonic norms, the musical’s burgeoning ambivalence throws norms of masculinity into question. The changes in gender occurring within the musical genre reinforce the argument by Thomas Schatz that genres must remain socially relevant to retain their ideological viability. These ambivalent musicals and their changing heroes arrive alongside an extended period of gendered upheaval. The subcultures and countercultures emerging through the final decade of dominance of the arcadian musical—playboy, beat, gray flannel rebel—preface additional and greater changes/movements to come. The very year that begins this study, 1966, coincides with the emergence of two organizations that would challenge the primacy of the white, male breadwinner: the National Organization for Women and the Black Panthers. The next three years saw the rise of the hippies, Woodstock’s graphic displays of free love, the de-idealization of the American soldier in Vietnam, and an emergent Gay Liberation Movement in the wake of the Stonewall riots. The 1966–1983 period identified here would ultimately illustrate social change in American gender norms and expectations as a variety of events took place. Medical professionals identified health-related risks tied to the hard-driven working man. Richard Nixon would leave the White House in shame. The rise of the sensitive new age guy and preppie would—like Hugh Hefner’s playboy in the 1950s—produce contradictory notions of male consumerism, ornamentality, domesticity, emotion, and employment. These conflicts would, as a result of and in congress with changes occurring within the once happily domesticated genre, manifest themselves alongside greater structural, formal, and aesthetic changes within the musical. As these new musicals repeatedly produce ambivalent or conflicted images of and expectations for male performance, an overall view of masculinity as fluid emerges.

Performance of masculinity in the arcadian musical As the arcadian musical developed as the dominant form of integrated Hollywood musical, a version of masculinity associated with the genre simultaneously surfaced. This masculinity, resultant of repeated narrative goals, performance types, and aesthetic choices, ultimately confined much musical masculinity to an image of domesticity and inactivity. As part of a body of entertainment defined by its similarities, the musical male assumes his gender identity a priori to the actual narrative performance. His inclusion in a musical associates him with a form of masculinity determined outside of an individual film narrative or

136 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

performance, one identified comparatively or in relation to all past and present performances within that genre. As Howard Keel performs in the context of Gene Kelly, in the context of Fred Astaire, and in the context of Vic Damone, the choices repeatedly made as the genre comes to fruition mark the masculinity of the male agents within a given film. Through a series of similar stories—most often heavily reliant on the romance formula—a repeated version of proper masculinity emerges. In this context, future—and concurrent—musical males surface in comparison to the protagonists and antagonists who recur throughout the genre. A view of hegemonic masculinity based on the singing, dancing, and domesticated heterosexual breadwinner becomes the bar against which musical males will be measured. As discussed in previous chapters and by scholars such as Rick Altman and Schatz, the arcadian musical narratively strives toward an end point of heterosexual and monogamous romance and a satisfactory reconciliation of any communal tension.2 With the romance structure underlying that of the musical, the lovers repeatedly work their ways through barriers—based on obstacles such as class, professional role, or defining personality type—to find ultimate truth and happiness in the arms of their beloveds. Working through such impediments eventually makes the couple stronger and often more compatible to the ever-important dominant community. Although non-cinematic society has often historically constructed masculinity as something defined by utility, work, or rationality, the musical, by nature of its over-determined romance narrative, has contextualized work as that serving the domestic—the ultimate locale for the successfully coupled duo.3 This redirection of the male character’s personal agency also emerges through what Stacy Wolf sees as the female focus in the musical. She identifies musicals— those falling under the category here discussed as arcadian—as largely revolving around the female lead, both in terms of narrative goals and overall performance space and time.4 Although male characters may assume roles that demonstrate active or utilitarian masculinity (sailor, cowboy, gangster), those roles often serve as rationale for the activation of repeated romantic storylines. The activities culturally associated with those male-centered careers do not ultimately factor highly into the characters’ attainment of the goals that lead to the films’ resolutions. The cowboys of Oklahoma!, Annie Get Your Gun, or Calamity Jane may use their positions to instigate fistfights, cavort with showgirls and Indians, perform roping tricks, and prove themselves a sure shot, but those skills neither factor into the ultimate resolution of communal tension nor remain necessary to the maintenance of the couple’s implied climactic

The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity 137

domestic bliss. Rather, Oklahoma!’s Curly will forego his career as a cowboy to support his beloved as a farmer. In Annie Get Your Gun, Frank’s veneer of show business cowboy bravado must crumble to win his girl. Similarly, in Calamity Jane Bill’s cowboy trappings simply serve as a posture of active masculinity and a comparison to Calamity’s masculine femininity.5 In none of these cases does the cowboy use his vocation to accomplish much more than a pose of male skill and dexterity, and in all three cases, this must ultimately give way as something foolish and pretentious in order for the cowboy to find the domestic bliss toward which the narrative pushes him. Films such as Hit the Deck and On the Town (both sailors) and The Pajama Game (businessmen) illustrate a similar trend. Male protagonists who present activity, bravery, and efficiency on the surface ultimately use those qualities to catch their women. Sailors attract the fairer sex by virtue of their fancy dress whites and business deals serve as bait for a union-organizing gal. Such films repeatedly render the decisions or works of the active male secondary and use traditional male positions to construct a specific (and physically powerful) hegemonic image of masculinity for characters whose ultimate goals lie somewhere on the homier side. This construction of non-hegemonic masculinity—inactive or domesticated—further solidifies itself with the inclusion and contextualization of the performance of song and dance. Again, positioned to highlight the conflicts and resolutions associated with the romantic and conciliatory narrative conclusions, bodily performance commonly both stylistically and contextually places the arcadian male in a position that subjugates his active social role while featuring his predetermined domestic one. Complementing the narrative progression toward the successful domestic relationship, the visual and performance-based excess of the final celebratory production number often places narrative attention on the ultimate goal of marriage or communal harmony and detracts from the individual needs and actions of the male protagonist. The male protagonist nonetheless often emerges as defined by his joint participation in civil and social union, whether or not he participates in these excessive musical numbers through choreography. Final numbers in films such as Guys and Dolls, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Pajama Game ignore the hero’s gangster ways, rugged individuality, or keen business mind, bringing attention to the union and creating another level of disruption to his personal agency. As Schatz states, this grand moment of performance and festivity halts the narrative prior to any complication of the utopic resolution.6 Any potential future

138 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

agency is rendered irrelevant as the film concludes at the romantic—if problematic—climax. Again, the arcadian qualities foregrounded in these musical males include provider, partner, and status quo follower. Although the clean ending may seem incongruous, begging questions such as “will the Nazis catch the Von Trapps?” or “what will Silk Stockings’ Russians do when they realize that Ninotchka and her flunkies have all defected?,” the final moment of visual excess and overall rejoicing often detracts from any possibility of failed masculinity. This narrative halt further denies the male any opportunity for action or utility; he never needs to prove that he can solve greater social problems or successfully battle the side of darkness (like fascism or communism). Neither the male nor female must worry his or her pretty little head over such trivialities. Like the female, the male need merely learn to apply his talents within the domestic realm to attain proper genderization. Associated with the visual excess and narrative short-circuiting of the musical, the types of performances included in this version of the genre add to the overall focus on the domestic and the positioning of musical masculinity within the traditionally feminine. The performance of song and dance—as well as musical theatre—culturally has been associated with non-hegemonic or queered masculinity.7 Matthew Tinkham and Steven Cohan connect the overall visual excess and narrative disruption common to the musical—specifically the MGM Freed Unit—to the musical’s camp sensibility and subtle or subtextual projection of a queer sensibility and (hyper)masculinity, while Steve Neale and Richard Dyer point out that the physical display of the male body may lead to a cultural feminization or queering of the male.8 Neale cites the feminized genres of the melodrama and musical as specularizing the male body, referring to both the physical exposure of flesh and a display through dance. He states such exploits actively feminize—via putting on display—the male form.9 Similarly, Dyer’s early study on the male pinup examines the positioning of male models who exist to be looked at. To avoid eroticization or feminization and maintain their superior gendered position, they engage in “manly” activities or evade eye contact with the viewer.10 This type of recuperative mechanism of imposing traditionally masculine performance atop problematized actions can be found in the arcadian male’s performance of song and dance. Although these men often perform songs and dances directly associated with their traditionally masculine roles—baseball activities in Damn Yankees’ “Heart,” horse roping and train catching in Oklahoma!’s “Kansas City,” and wood

The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity 139

chopping and log splitting in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’ “Lonesome Polecat”—lyrics and movement often aurally and visually connect the romantic duo. Through dual solos, duets, and battling dances that work through romantic conflicts, the couple becomes recognized through its musical performances. Here, the male protagonist’s dominant masculinity comes under fire not only via his performance of song and dance, but also as these perhaps gender-threatening moments become inextricably linked with narrative elements denoting a dubious masculinity. Both narratives and performances evoke the private sphere and distance from the public (that often associated with masculine utility). Virtuoso performances by actors already linked to questionable activities—singing and dancing—place bodily actions within multiple layers of non-hegemonic masculinity. Simultaneously, performances of body and narrative squelch opportunities to establish masculinity as connected to the utilitarian.

Masculine ambivalence is nothing to sing about Along with the changes in the overall generic construct associated with the musical, related shifts in the construction of gender surface. Although the musical emerged as a form that reinforced contemporary ideals of an accepted status quo, companionate marriage, and the domestic breadwinner, it diverges from the idealism of its dominant earlier form to favor an articulation of more complex societies, irresolvable discord, a muddier sense of right and wrong, and conflicted and alienated protagonists. No longer does an inclusion in the musical genre predetermine a conciliatory ending full of song, joy, bright colors, dancing, and marriage. In addition, this shift in overall ideological expression brings with it—through its repeated presentation of like narrative and performance elements—an associated heightened intricacy of male gendering commensurate with the cracks appearing in society’s conceptualization of hegemonic masculinity. The expectation of successful romance and a bonded community falters. The musical shifts in the 1966–1983 period from a narrative structure that had often hearkened to that of the romance to one more closely akin to the melodrama or personal quest. Whether in the form of a “fallen man” narrative (Camelot, Pennies from Heaven, All That Jazz), an overall critique of social morality (How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), a personal or religious quest (Xanadu, Jesus Christ Superstar, Tommy), or a combination thereof, this new popular form of the musical pulls focus

140 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

away from the romance—that often still exists, if decentered or dysfunctional. These stories often focus more firmly on internal or public conflicts and question social and gendered norms once taken for granted in the genre. The conflicts embedded in this newly popular form of the musical genre provide complex articulations of masculinity previously disassociated from a genre derided for its social idealization and questionable/domesticated masculinity. Here, a sense of cultural and personal confusion and conflict leads to a repeated presentation of men and masculinity separate from the domestic breadwinner and handsome musical husband. Gender takes on more inconclusive characteristics. These more ambivalent musicals possess an overall uncertainty in relation to masculinity, due not to a lack of repeated and recognizable performances, but rather the repetition of conflict in and foregrounding of male performance implicit throughout this version of the genre. These changes in form and budding generic norms lend themselves to a masculinity defined not as passive or by its relationship to domesticity or successful romance, but rather one that highlights its association with personal drives, foregrounds itself as performance rather than nature, and holds an overall troubled and varied association with sex. Part of this metamorphosis of masculinity occurs in response to the overall shifts occurring in the motion picture industry and the United States culture. As cultural and industrial contexts may have colluded to help form the generic norms discussed in earlier chapters, they too implicate gendered norms relating to both the arcadian and more ambivalent forms of the genre. The domesticated version of masculinity equated with many earlier musicals stems partially from pre-film generic codes and cinematic industrial dictates that accompanied the transfer of the musical from stage to screen. Although early burlesque had equivocated music and sexually suggestive material, a dominant musical form such as the operetta—based on a romantic coupling in a fantastical or exotic land—provided a set of generic expectations reliant on the romantic union of the protagonist couple. The operetta, simultaneously, proved to be one of the forms most influential on what would come to be known as the musical play—most closely associated with the works of Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. The musical play altered and defined the Broadway musical almost simultaneous to the emergence of cinematic synchronous sound and the possibility for a successful transportation of the musical to the motion picture screen. Within these contexts of the genre, masculinity had already been defined as something inextricably reliant on a romantic entanglement

The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity 141

and resolution with a female protagonist. Not generally concerned with actions that lay outside of the romance, these vehicles narratively and by virtue of their over-determined diegetic goals inevitably produced a masculinity commensurate with their forms. In addition to the generic precursors to and initial influences on the early film musical, the very dictates of the motion picture industry participated in the limited and perhaps domesticated construction of masculinity in these musical films. When the genre first exploded on the cinematic horizon, films such as the grittier Warner Bros. musicals brought more sexually explicit plots that were less dependent on resolving diegetic complications in ways that reinforced domestic bliss and monogamy. With the lustiness of a Chevalier and the casting couch of 42nd Street, these early film musicals created spaces for varied forms of acceptable or identifiable masculine behavior.11 As the Production Code developed in the 1920s and solidified in the 1930s, narratives shifted even more heavily toward integration and companionate romance. The messiness of lurid or uncommitted sex took a back seat to plots that parlayed the musical couple into the eventual romantic one, a narrative constriction that led to a masculinity more heavily tied to the task and goal of wooing, winning, and hopefully wedding his intended. Plots connected more closely to male professions and therefore accomplishments and utility outside of the domestic sphere waned or became decentered in these narratives. (Rather than being a driven producer as in Footlight Parade, the male hero often became a producer who woos a musical heroine as in Silk Stockings. More often than not, musical cowboys, gangsters, sailors, and businessmen all set out on a path to tie the knot rather than seek their fortunes.) So here, along with emergent norms regarding the integration of music and narrative, motion picture regulations pushed the performance of musical masculinity away from personal agency and social utility, thereby creating an overall limited notion of proper masculine behavior, goals, and conquests. At the onset of the period discussed through the bulk of this project, 1966–1983, both the cinematic and regulatory norms of the motion picture industry experienced changes that would directly impact the definition of the musical genre and the articulations of masculinity it bore. These shifts allowed for more complicated and contentious representations of society overall and masculinity specifically. As the Production Code gave way to the MPAA rating system in the mid-sixties, films engaging with more overtly sexual and socially critical subject matter challenged the stability, wholesomeness, and legitimacy of dominant society. Leading up to and including this time, avant-garde, French New

142 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

Wave, and New American Cinema products popularized a view of masculinity that questioned the innate role of the breadwinner and the notion of an inherent strength/authoritativeness associated with masculinity. European and U.S. films such as The 400 Blows, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, The Graduate, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid popularized not just a view of society, but also a view of masculinity that placed dangling question marks where once existed indisputable answers.12 Reflective of the youth counterculture, challenges caused by minority movements, and the problematic place of those serving in Vietnam, hegemonic masculine characteristics of stability, strength, and uprightness gave way to confusion, oppression, suppression, and an ultimate lack of clarity between good and evil. Cinematic masculinity no longer carried with it a definitive course of action, as men’s very senses of self—the qualities that once defined them as properly masculine men— came under fire—inside and outside of motion pictures—as fallacious and unstable. As well, shifting narrative and stylistic components of the Broadway (and off-Broadway) musical merged with the previously staid musical genre to foster an ambivalent space where society and masculinity emerged as simultaneously proactive and multifaceted. As this sense of social ambivalence toward masculinity and social conflict made its way into the general cinematic consciousness, even traditional genres such as the musical illustrated the residual effects of an overall ideological shift. Escaping from the bounds of the simplistic successful romance— the ones films such as The Graduate and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf debunked—more musicals resituate their narrative foci and intended outcomes. The over-determined nature of the conciliatory ending gives way to one more unsure and unsettled. Simultaneous to changes occurring in film form, the new dearth of musical male stars discussed in Chapter 3 demanded a new form of leading man. These new tough guys, rock stars, and comics stray from the safety of arcadian musical mores and more closely align with extratextual materials that further complicate the ideological goals and masculine performances of the musical. These new men, types, and presentations of performance—dictated by ideological goals, cinematic trends, and actors’/singers’/dancers’ abilities—place this new musical masculinity at a distance from the acts once associated with domesticated, queered, and dancing masculinity. By separating from such masculinities or creating a hyperawareness to the self-conscious or ironic performance of masculinity, the associated implications of gender shift as these men sing and dance (or do not sing and dance). Actively

The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity 143

pursuing goals outside of romance and the maintenance of the status quo, this revised musical male hero repeatedly emerges as the embodiment of a conflicted, active, and ultimately ambivalent expression of masculinity. As musicals of this period repeatedly perform masculinity through moments of action, contention, and confusion, a generic notion of masculinity emerges as variant and contradictory—not by unclear or disjointed performance or establishment of gender norms, but by the very conflicted state of those oft-repeated standards.

Driven by and in control of his own interests Integrated musical vehicles of the late sixties to early eighties repeatedly, through extratextual, narrative, and aural means, establish and reestablish an image of masculinity associated with the process of selfdetermination and self-actualization. Counter to the earlier diegetic and musical tendency to associate masculinity with the breadwinner role, many of these later films repeatedly and through various means pull gender away from such a constrictive definition. The focus turns away from the needs and actions of the couple, as romance becomes decentered, to those of the individual (or community through the actions of the individual). These musical men reject the be-all-end-all romance and determine their own destinies through personal and professional male-driven quests and/or journeys. They make choices that impact upon their lives and the lives of those around them, not merely the women they hope to marry and the status quo they hope to maintain. This musical male projects action, utility, and autonomy; however, along with personal agency comes the possibility of unattained goals or dreams. Films such as Fiddler on the Roof, 1776, Hair, Lost Horizon, and Tommy—although some still including a subplot relating to romance— deprioritize romantic and associated societal goals in favor of acts more closely linked to the utilitarian, moral, or spiritual needs of the male protagonists. This shift in motivation threatens the ultimate attainment of the conciliatory resolution once common to the musical. As the romance takes a back seat, male action comes to the fore and repeatedly links the hero’s masculinity to an active process of decision-making and social efficacy. Where once the male was generically predestined to meet and marry his musical soul mate, these films place different types of challenges before their leading men. Fiddler on the Roof may include various marriages, but the larger conflict engages more directly with Tevye’s internal struggles regarding the shifting place of tradition and

144 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

the changing political climate in Anatevka. The pursuits of couplehood serve as mini-conflicts that narratively activate this protagonist’s internal struggle and his active pursuit of a greater understanding of his own emotions and the events occurring around him. Relatedly, Perchik’s— the husband of Tevye’s daughter Hodel—role as revolutionary functions as more than a narrative device for wooing women. His contentious political status serves as a locus for challenging both his marital relationship and the overall beliefs and actions of Tevye in relation to the changing world. Various relationships—Motel and Tzeitel, Perchick and Hodel, Fyedka and Chava, and Tevye and Golde—may drive aspects of the film’s narrative, but the ultimate conclusions do not rest on their successful unions or even the unions themselves, but rather struggles within the greater family unit and society as a whole. As the men in this narrative develop throughout the action, their levels of acceptability within the overall diegesis and diegetic community rest not solely on domestic entanglements, but on ways in which their actions as leaders exist within the personal and greater social spheres. Distancing masculinity from all-knowingness and unquestionable social power, Fiddler on the Roof redefines hegemonic musical masculinity from a position of contemplation and compromise. Similar constructions of masculinity surface in Lost Horizon as romance plotlines implicate issues of male utility. The romance neither restrains nor wholly defines Richard’s deliberation over whether to stay in Shangri-La and assume the position of High Lama (and remain with his new love Catherine) or attempt an escape back to England with his brother. Like the other male castaways—Harry who abandons his soulless life as a cheap lounge comic to assume a life as an educator and Sam who foregoes his self-seeking ex-patriot/fugitive life for the role of Shangri-La engineer—Richard’s romance is secondary to the greater ideological changes that his character faces. Lives and choices are no longer tethered to marriage, but guided by a sense of inner-direction.13 Camelot similarly implicates the romance plotline in the success and failure of Arthur’s utopia. In this case, the failure of Arthur’s marriage and the ultimate expulsion of Lancelot and Guenevere redirect narrative focus to the public rather than private life of the king. It concludes with Arthur’s decision—anomalous to the arcadian musical—to allow the adulterous pair to go free as he charges headlong into battle with the hope that his beloved Camelot will at the very least remain as a shining beacon of past triumphs. Masculinity emerges in such films as a genderization that eludes and complicates the positioning of men as the protectors of women and

The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity 145

society at large. Arthur bases his decisions regarding Camelot and his failed marriage on his own personal needs and desires, not those of the status quo; they thereby appear much more complex than the dictate simply to marry and support the community’s goals. Adhering to this more complicated process of decision-making, characters such as those in Lost Horizon and The Little Prince shift to more self-centered positions while simultaneously serving the needs of others. Lost Horizon’s Richard, Harry, and Sam make narrative choices that serve both their inner needs—Richard’s to return to Catherine and his position as High Lama, Sam’s to help irrigate the community, and Harry’s to educate—and the needs of the greater community. Such men have shifted from a self-serving inner-directedness—or desire to serve one’s self—to desires inclusive of the greater society. Although in charge of their own destinies, they implicate the futures of others and better serve the community. The Little Prince’s Pilot finds a similar end. Driven by his need to need and be needed—feelings avoided since his childhood—he attempts to comfort and aid the Little Prince. Through this, he succeeds not in utilitarian tasks, but the satiation of a personal spiritual necessity through the care of someone else. Because of the musical’s redirection of male energy away from the domestic sphere and into the public and personal, masculinity itself becomes more closely linked to the proactive decisions of the male protagonist. Other narrative elements feed into this notion of masculinity as inextricably associated with male utility and male decision-making. Aside from the emergence of male work as an integral diegetic element— not merely a device to activate the romance or serve as a façade of more traditional masculinity—the overall inconclusiveness of the narratives themselves redirect the locus of masculinity. As these narratives no longer imply a predetermined and conciliatory romantic conclusion, the choices and actions of men appear to factor more fully into the ultimate outcome of the stories themselves. At the same time, this increase in personal agency results in a heightened level of risk and possibility of failure. The couple will not necessarily, against all odds, arrive at a joyous place of marital bliss. Suspense often ultimately trumps narrative over-determination. Emergent trends in visuals support this revised version of musical masculinity. The cinematic presentation of the male character shifts away from one centered on dance and visual coupling and toward an establishment or underscoring of male introspection. Camelot, Fiddler on the Roof, 1776, Sweet Charity, and All that Jazz all employ visual techniques that pull the presentation of their characters toward the

146 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

meditative. Many of these narratives focus on the ultimate choices of their men, and the associated visuals reinforce the diegetic decisionmaking process. Fiddler on the Roof accomplishes this during Tevye’s contemplation of his second daughter’s suggestion that she shall marry for love (despite tradition). The use of double-exposure and deep focus visually reinforces the narrative’s focus on Tevye as a man struggling with shifting tradition and his ability to function within a changing world. Techniques such as freeze-frame and other cinematography effects, editing, and sound design replicate the mental processes and physical behaviors of characters. All That Jazz’s Joe Gideon’s quick-paced morning routine of stimulants and the presentation of his heart attack as bereft of diegetic sound beyond his own making directs attention to his actual feelings, decisions, and internal processes. Rather than remaining “realistically” centered and presented as a member of the romantic couple, these techniques prioritize the personal needs of the male and define him as one bound to personal functions and desires and actively in pursuit of solutions to the situations placed before him. Sweet Charity uses still photography at the wedding party to foreground Oscar’s realization that he cannot marry Charity. Man of la Mancha and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, for example, use subjective narration to replicate visually the thought processes of their protagonists—as when Alonso Quijana’s frantic behavior underscores his personal struggle between personae or Pseudolus and Hero lust after slaves. These types of visual gimmicks or devices emphasize the degree of introspection involved in the male decision to love, not love, or abandon love altogether for private or public pursuits. Men are no longer wedded—pun intended—to a predetermined station in life. The camera implicates the protagonist who now bears some control over his own destiny, rather than merely replicating a fatalistic and predetermined end. The visual representation through mise-en-scène furthers a definition of masculinity as linked to self-actualization and utility. Along with the narrative digression from the conciliatory ending and inevitable narrative closure, the recurring departure from a world of nostalgia and perfection reinforces the unpredictability of real life. Hair, Lost Horizon, Godspell, Can’t Stop the Music, and On a Clear Day You Can See Forever use varying levels of realistic settings and costumes to link their stories and characters to real worlds of uncertainty. These depictions of the material world move toward a denial of the perfection—and therefore immutability—of the fictional world of the arcadian musical. The wartorn third world setting of Lost Horizon’s opening and the contemporary

The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity 147

Manhattan of Godspell and Hair bring with them associations of conflict and upheaval. Unlike an idealized and stylized depiction of New York in Guys and Dolls or On the Town, no façade of social perfection or erasure of cultural rift exists. The goal of individuals in these settings, therefore, must be the active toppling of or challenge to such social strife, one ultimately overcome by the behaviors of diegetic heroes within those worlds. The idealism of a society without serious conflict disappears through mise-en-scènes comprised of grime, unruly crowds, and real locales. As a result, the films force a diegetic confrontation or management of the contentious aspects in such societies. Along with emerging conventions of narrative and mise-en-scène, the very bedrock of the musical film—visual presentation and performance of song and dance—underscores these shifts in masculinity within the genre. The musical and musical performance in general once brought with them a questionable masculinity. Both from the cultural connotations of the acts and the diegetic contexts of the performances, song and dance saddled musical masculinity with labels such as domesticated, coupled, or possibly even queered. Professionally groomed singers and skilled dancers performed numbers that visually and aurally emphasized the narrative’s emerging romance. The destined duo showed their initial disdain, burgeoning love, or eventual devotion through early aggressive or ultimate graceful commingling of choreographed bodies. These performances implied a physical—or erotic—union explicitly absent from the censored cinematic screen and tied masculinity to a predestined trajectory of domesticity and romance. These musicals that project an ambivalence toward earlier norms, however, often present song and dance—stylistically and contextually—as severed from the seemingly indissoluble link between male action and domestication. Dance declines in these films and much less often serves as a visual performance of ensuing couplehood. In addition, with the popularization of voiceover and montage sequences and the rising presence of talksing—and decrease in some cases of the singing male—the presentation of male-centered song and its physical performance takes on a changing overtone. As in the cases of cinematographic introspection, Lost Horizon, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and The Little Prince use voiceover as a means to highlight personal reflection. Whether tied to a budding romance in Goodbye, Mr. Chips or related to personal emotional development in The Little Prince, these moments deny the diegetic performance of song and dance and forego a pandering plea to the community at large— one once generically integral to the solution of the narrative conflict. These moments foreground the significance of the character’s mental

148 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

processes and his associations with the personal rather than the greater public good. Compounding the updated visual and vocal presentations of song, the infusion of rock-n-roll into the genre conjoins masculinity with aggressiveness and personal agency. Tommy, Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band place masculinity in a context of male vocal production culturally associated with less conciliatory or fixed visions of social interaction. Each of these films contextualizes the male protagonist and his religious, political, or professional quest within an aural realm of the counterculture. Contrary to the musical’s once status quo-reinforcing generic formula, the rock-flavored narratives of this stage of the musical culturally preclude such easily contained social harmony. Implying the rebellion of youth and through the hardedge of the music itself, the sounds of such films beg conflict. Tommy shows a male protagonist unable to control his own destiny, with rockn-roll performances—such as Eric Clapton’s “Eyesight to the Blind” and Tina Turner’s “Acid Queen”—aurally replicating his silent struggle and heightening the stakes of Tommy’s dependence. Upon gaining his eyesight, Tommy immediately bursts into “I’m Free.” Throughout, the protagonist and those surrounding him use the aggressive tones and lyrics of the rock-n-roll genre to reinforce cultural and personal upheaval. These narrative disruptions must be acted against to discover any type of conclusive or even inconclusive resolution. Similarly, the personal stakes and personal powers of Jesus Christ Superstar’s Jesus and Judas repeatedly surface through their respective solos and duets filled with vocal screeches and shouts. Both culturally and aurally, rock music intensifies conflicts already explicit through the film’s narrative. These two male protagonists (note the absence of any true female protagonist in this story) use heightened vocal stakes as aural weapons as they force their own viewpoints regarding their internal and external struggles and take charge of their own destinies—one actively takes his own life and one sacrifices his for others. Not only elements overtly present in these ambivalent musicals reinforce this notion of a more proactive masculinity; outside factors inextricably linked to the genre through intertextual means further this multi-layered performance and determination of gender. Rock stars’ (The Who, Alice Cooper, and Aerosmith) or tough guys’ (Burt Reynolds, Clint Eastwood, George Kennedy, Peter O’Toole, and Lee Marvin) cultural and industrial overtones reinforce the narrative and visual presence of masculine utility or they implant one where narratively and aesthetically it may be lacking.14 Unable to disavow wholly the actors’

The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity 149

previously performed roles—at least in the case of such high profile performers listed above—the musical personae assumed in the many ambivalent musicals of the 1966–1983 period take on heightened senses of male utility. The demise of the studio system’s musical male damages the stability of his generic connotation as the films must rely on an influx of male stars previously associated with films and other entertainment forms ideologically incongruous to the likes of Astaire, Kelly, or Keel. Although O’Toole’s characters in Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Man of la Mancha themselves display sporadic evidence of personal effectiveness or aggressiveness, the actions of O’Toole’s Lawrence of Arabia (1962), King Henry II (of The Lion in Winter [1968]), and Becket (1964) come to bear on the performances of the introspective boys’ school professor and the ineffective dreaming knight errant. Similarly, the war personae of George Kennedy (Lost Horizon) and Lee Marvin (Paint Your Wagon) intertextually undercut their respective characters’ choices of passivity or domesticity, just as Clint Eastwood’s asocial performances in Coogan’s Bluff and the Sergio Leone Westerns create a rift with his domesticated performance in Paint Your Wagon. Though Pardner ultimately chooses to build a life as a farmer, breadwinner, and husband, the narrative remains infused with the inextricable connotation of an Eastwood protagonist: asocial, isolated, and driven to action by a personal code of justice or vengeance. Tough guys of earlier musicals (James Cagey in Footlight Parade and Yankee Doodle Dandy or Victor Mature in No, No, Nanette [1940] or Footlight Serenade [1942]) worked within the genre when a stable sense of masculinity reigned. Supported by conclusive narratives and repeated presentations of successful caretakers, these powerful star personae did not push against the mold so strongly. In such a stable genre, stars were more apt to be subsumed into the kinder and gentler formula, while adding tough guy nuance with their existing connotations. As many facets of the genre change—narrative, aesthetic, performance— leading to a cumulative sense of generic instability, the musical can no longer contain the integration of actors who threaten the ideological connotation of the genre. Later tough guys, along with volatile rock stars such as Keith Moon, Roger Daltrey, and Alice Cooper, bring along with them star images that must either easily commingle with their onscreen characters or create tension between the two. In either situation this results in an overlay of a masculinity distanced from arcadian characteristics of communal harmony and domestic monogamy. A proactive and self-concerned masculinity that acts against or in defense of the greater society and for the good or self-destruction of the individual replaces one guided by his fated and wedded end.

150 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

Masculinity as indefinable or variant Each element of these more ambivalent musicals adds to a construction of masculinity divergent from that in the arcadian and favors one founded on personal motivation toward internal and external goals (beyond domestic bliss and social utopia). In doing this, it brings to the fore a complicated version of gender removed from a singular defining characteristic. The arcadian male clings to his innate drive toward marriage. Diverse narrative and visual/performance-based conventions popularized during this later period often detract from any one defining characteristic of successful or traditional masculinity, as the very instability and indefinability of gender itself emerge as trademarks of the genre. No longer simply the breadwinner and now encumbered with the unpredictability of narrative conclusions, the musical male’s defining characteristics become less clearly demarcated. No one characteristic drives his actions. In fact, the very core of masculinity emerges as comparatively fluid, constructed, and/or without a central essence. The increased variation in narrative goals and lack of assured closure (that is, the dissolution of the predestined conciliatory and socially utopic ending) leads to the emergence of a space that fosters dissimilarity in masculine gender. No one definable characteristic will lead toward the acceptable narrative conclusion. Masculinities associated with homosocial bonding (Paint Your Wagon), social elitism or class distinction (At Long Last Love, A Little Night Music), professional pursuits (Camelot, Xanadu, Doctor Dolittle, 1776), spirituality (Tommy, Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, Lost Horizon), social and domestic behaviors (Good Times [1967], Popeye, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band), asocial or lascivious desires (All That Jazz, The Rocky Horror Picture Show), or combinations thereof (The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, Bugsy Malone, Zoot Suit, The Pirate Movie) emerge equally throughout this later articulation of the genre to reinforce a gender inclusive of movement and discrepancy. Masculinity loses the predictability that legitimizes the notion of a singular core and instead finds association with various types of repeated gendered drives. In response, a heterogeneous notion of gender emerges. Masculinity defined as something variable, situational, and constructed becomes further entrenched through the appearance of men both visibly different from each other and personally internally conflicted. Although musicals undeniably had always included tall, short, rich, poor, dancing, gun-slinging, and gambling men (and many inbetween), the generic need for ideological stasis and social reinforcement dictated by the recurring patterns within the genre led to a dearth

The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity 151

of racial and ethnic variation. Dependent on the successful union of conflicting communities, the musical seldom forayed into issues of racial diversity—unless isolating racial Others within their own vehicles (Porgy and Bess, Flower Drum Song) or relegating them to isolated minor roles (Hit the Deck, Road to Hong Kong).15 A negotiation of the need to keep it light appears in some of the darker musicals of the past. Way Down South focuses on young white Timothy’s (Bobby Breen) attempt to save his plantation’s slaves from sale in the wake of his father’s untimely death. Although the film includes both African American and white major characters and focuses on an unpleasant moment in American history, it nonetheless whitewashes the musical narrative and portrays the slaves as pleased to be owned by the benevolent Timothy. Doing otherwise would force the narrative to confront social inequities or racial disparities perhaps too unruly to result in the musical’s traditional utopic ending. Consequently, masculinity in the arcadian form of the genre most always accompanies domesticity with a sense of whiteness, perhaps infused with a tad of white European ethnicity—Irish, Scottish, or French. Free to engage with perpetual conflict, musicals like Lost Horizon, Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar, Zoot Suit and Hair present racially/ethnically mixed ensembles. Some of these same films engage overtly with racial conflict and visually and textually foreground racially/ethnically-specific notions of masculinity. In contrast to Porgy and Bess and Flower Drum Song, these ambivalent narratives neither eliminate nor prioritize white characters. Zoot Suit’s centering of the Chicano male’s struggle at the hands of a largely white-dominated social structure presents a type of ethnicallymotivated conflict heretofore unexamined by the genre. With unruly social problems as a typical feature of the ambivalent musical, this narrative allows for the presentation of social norms contrary to those seen as reaffirming of the status quo. The Chicano masculinity of Zoot Suit, illustrated through clothing, machismo, and clique loyalty—and presented by the white ruling body as erratic, violent, and irredeemable—stands as something unique and ethnically specific, despite its positioning as outside of the social norm. Similarly, Hair’s “Colored Spade” foregrounds Hud’s masculinity through the repetition of associated stereotypes and performed dance styles. Following the racial epithets spewed by Woof during a discussion about the uncertain paternity of Jeannie’s baby (that could ultimately be white or of mixed race), the song serves as a rebuttal to the hierarchization of white masculinity and the derogation of anything other than. Only the new narrative norms of the musical could allow room for such irresolvable racial division and individuality.

152 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

One of the most defining characteristics of variable masculinity within this critical form of the genre stems from the overwhelming appearance of overt performances of self. The very materiality or stability of masculine gender comes into question through the repeated use of observable narrative techniques: the frame of performance within a performance, the presence of overt stereotypes of masculinity, and actors’ intertextual personae that inform their characters’ senses of gender. Rather than a stable gender, as presented through the recurring domestic provider, many repeated later performances of masculinity work to expose the very cultural construction or façade of masculinity deemed appropriate via historical, cultural, or situational contexts. In doing so, masculinity itself comes into question: a costume being donned by yet another player in the real or diegetic world. A Little Night Music, Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, Man of la Mancha, and Zoot Suit present narratives within narratives, foregrounding the contrivance of the story being told. These films break the fourth wall by presenting the internal story as a performance put on by players. The actors take on roles laid bare for the audience to see, rather than assume ones naturalized by the self-effacing work of narrative and visual devices (even in a genre known for an overtly self-conscious narration). This process can be seen as the choreographed, proscenium-bound opening of A Little Night Music shifts into a circumscribed narrative of a hypermasculine and randy soldier, sexually frustrated and breast beating youth, and older gentleman who seems to have found true—beyond carnal—love and peace with his own masculinity. Similarly, the telling and performance of multiple parables in Godspell create an opportunity for multiple characterized performances of masculinity through physical poses of muscle men or violent outbursts from deviants. Gender appears as a form of posturing that satisfies cultural expectations for character types and actions. As the ensemble members—both male and female—strip themselves of their individuality to join John the Baptist’s merry group, they simultaneously divest themselves of individuality. They abandon individual personalities or gender traits (beyond those connected through biology) to take on cartoonish gendered personae—thugs, cowboys, Mae West, cartoonishly voiced criminals—as they tell their stories. Humanity relies not on gender, but emerges as something modeled after the image of God and including the ability to love, forgive, and sacrifice. Jesus Christ Superstar also projects this type of fallacious gender performance. Beginning the film with the actors “out of character,” it portrays members of an acting troupe en route to perform the Christ

The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity 153

story in an Israeli desert. From a somewhat undifferentiated mass of longhaired men and women working together to erect settings, unpack properties, and don costumes, gendered stereotypes emerge through the putting on of metaphorical masks. A type of masculinity associated with force, violence, and the hard body—albeit questioned by the presence of a purple tank top—surfaces as the Roman soldiers assume their positions. Wearing their tank tops, camouflage pants, combat boots, and shiny silver-painted helmets and carrying machine guns and long spears, they visually equate masculinity with contemporary and period images of socially sanctioned violence while punctuating the ensemble with incongruous shocks of ornamentality—linking more closely to a contemporary gay aesthetic and possibly pushing this construction of masculinity into butch queerness. The priests take on alternating basso profundo and falsetto vocal qualities, wavering between excessively masculine and implied feminine traits while wearing large black phallic and vaguely Middle Eastern hats with bare chests negligibly covered by their leather and chains (again reminiscent of gay or straight leather or S&M culture).16 Both Pilate and Herod evoke various periods of ornamental masculinity, displaying their power through their bodily displays: Pilate wearing a purple velvet cape, toga, and golden laurel headdress and Herod sporting white shorts and a swinger-like gold medallion on his hairy chest (while his backup dancers—male and female—wear makeup, silver lamé briefs, blonde curly wigs, sparkly glasses and/or braids, and caress him as he sings). Throughout the film, various periods and versions of masculinity collide within the same character or scene to foreground the trappings that can be worn to project differing versions of gender. The foregrounding of an “acted” masculinity puts into question its very validity, while the more diegetically sympathetic (or at least fleshed out) characters assume a more androgynous face of gender. A soft-spoken—yet rock-edged—Jesus wears a flowing white robe and his followers wear their hair, including facial hair, natural with neutral flowing pants and shirts. Bereft of the trappings of masculine construction evident in the rest of the diegetic community, masculinity appears as something more subtle, contextual, or fluid with these characters. By presenting these performances within a performance in the contrived theatrical space, incongruous visual and aural presentations of masculinity emerge as diegetically reasonable but simultaneously ideologically perplexing. In addition to the blatant theatricality in Jesus Christ Superstar and Godspell, further overt presentations of masculinity occur within ambivalent musical texts that lack the performance within a

154 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

performance. As the aforementioned films highlight the baselessness or instability of masculinity, Xanadu, Popeye, Bugsy Malone, Pennies from Heaven, The Pirate Movie, and Can’t Stop the Music include evident gendered contrivances within their singular narratives. By drawing attention to tropes of constructed masculinity—through mismatched performances of gender, satiric displays of masculinity, or the inclusion of hypermasculine visual and diegetic non sequiturs—these films lay bare conscious choices made in masculinity and therefore distance gender itself from any stable and predetermined form. Again, such variance in gender performance does not preclude the presence of a stable and identifiable masculinity; rather, through repetition, it establishes masculinities associated with change and selection. Performance conventions used in Bugsy Malone and Pennies from Heaven aid in the separation of any stable presentation of gender or the characters performing it. Both films’ uses of contrasting bodies and voices draw attention to the expected performance of gender. By lending a notion of disappointment or surprise to something often presented as natural, gender’s instability becomes evident (Figure 7). Bugsy Malone’s kid boxers and gangsters wielding the weapons and singing voices of

Figure 7 The Bugsy Malone boys project genre and gender critique as they embody their grownup counterparts in costume and stance while wielding childlike whipped cream weapons. (Paramount/Photofest)

The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity 155

stereotypical (adult) aggressive masculinity—while encased in a narrative that overtly critiques such gendered aggressiveness—simultaneously destabilize gender and comment on the social expectation of masculinity as related to violent behavior and one-upmanship. Similarly, Pennies from Heaven uses sex-inappropriate voices in the presentation of selected musical numbers. By using standard recordings of classics and lip-synching by the film’s characters (regardless of the sex of the recorded singer) an expectation of specific gender performances comes to light. As Arthur’s dream sequence begins and he and the bank manager sing “Yes, Yes” flanked by the visual excess of a Busby Berkeley-esque musical extravaganza, the manager takes both the vocal and visual role of the woman as they lip sync to the Sam Browne and The Carlysle Cousins recording. The number begins with the two men changing their initial body positions to match their newly assumed roles: leaning across the desk, kissing, joining arms, and making their way down the newly materialized staircase. The manager’s enactment of the female-sexed position includes mincing steps, soprano murmurings accompanied by restrained hand waving, and extended clinging to his male dance partner, Arthur. As with Bugsy Malone’s contradiction in visual and aural age, this act plays on expectations, a disappointment of which highlights a lack of predictability or genuineness in relation to masculinity. Tom’s (Lulu’s pimp’s) performance of “Let’s Misbehave” creates a similar dissolution of gendered norms. The gangster/sleazebag bursts into a suave performance of song and a grandiose acrobatic tap number, ultimately landing on the bar, stripping away all but his boxers and garters, and revealing a giant red heart tattoo reading “LuLu” on his chest. In the meantime, manly, blue-collar, drunken bar patrons switch between embodying bubbly female-voiced backup singers and male members of a big band, all the while sporting the same dirty pants, hats, and shirts. Both the singers and the band members contrast greatly to the characters portrayed by those actors earlier in the scene, illustrating the ease with which gendered personae are recognizable with minor changes in vocal quality and body position.17 This sex-swapping device simultaneously unsettles gender and genre. To challenge the musical genre as Pennies from Heaven attempts to do, the bedrock of the formula must be shaken: gendered and sexual norms that lead to the one clear conciliatory conclusion. By reversing sex and associated gendered behavior, the “logical” musical outcome too comes into question through the exposure of the fallacy (or constructedness) of its dictates. Will the boy get the girl? (Well, not if he keeps acting like that!) Contrary to arcadian dictates—where gangster, lover, or hoofer all adds up to

156 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

the same lovable and loyal husband—the sexed and gendered shifts and narrative movement between reality and fantasy highlight the falsity of a promised musical utopia. At the end of the day, Tom is a sleazy bum and not an amiable Gene Kelly. Combining narrative device and stylistic gimmick, Can’t Stop the Music, Xanadu, and The Pirate Movie—all walking the line between arcadian idealism and generic ambivalence—foreground masculine stereotypes by overtly announcing their trappings or randomly and incongruently implanting them into the diegesis. More than merely masculine characteristics, these films highlight fully produced hegemonic masculinities to critique or illuminate the construction of gender. Through the overt “putting on” of such guises or the nonsensical appearance of such stereotypes within a diegesis, the lack of substance to these images comes to the fore. The Village People perform this act through the very creation of their own gimmick. Dressed in the costumes of the Indian, leather man, cowboy, army man, and construction worker—while performing within the androgen, queered, or ornamental genre of disco—they shake their tail feathers, chaps, and tool belts, defying the utilitarian and aggressive natures of their alter egos. During one revealing moment of pre-show jitters, the leather man—an Irish tenor in his diegetic audition—drops his masculine façade. Stripped of his leather gear and wearing a robe and slippers, he confronts his own stereotyped persona and mutters, “Leather men don’t get nervous! Leather men don’t get nervous!” Similarly, Xanadu announces the putting on of masculinity in the dance number “All over the World.” As Kira and Sonny help Danny find appropriate dress for the opening of Xanadu, Danny shifts from male type to male type through a stunning variety of costume changes. Macho Zoot Suiter, bib overall-wearing farmer, fringed and booted Texas millionaire, or suave tuxedoed gent, Danny assimilates to the costumes worn by men of various gendered connotations—lusty, earthy, ballsy and self-made and refined. All the while, Sonny sports his flowing locks and pink buttondown as male and female backup dancers—often wearing androgynous jumpsuits and slathered with dramatic makeup and brightly colored hair dye—surround Danny, destabilizing the notion of recognizable and separable sex. Whether through Xanadu’s costumes, Can’t Stop the Music’s repositioning of male stereotyping, or The Pirate Movie’s hypermasculine yet queered pirates and non-sequitured inclusions of a Sheik or Indiana Jones, these types of overt announcements of existing male stereotypes—not supported by narrative context as in Take Me Out to the

The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity 157

Ballgame or On the Town—undermine the legitimacy of those gendered generalizations. Finally, as with the presentation of masculinity as utilitarian rather than domesticated, the pre-existing careers of the films’ leading men work to destabilize any notion of consistent gender. The putting on of a disguise or character becomes evident through the foregrounding of the Village People’s sexuality in the press preceding the release of the film, performances against type by Burt Reynolds and Clint Eastwood, and diegetic and non-diegetic performances of excess by wacko comics such as Robin Williams and Steve Martin. For example, Williams’s well-known penchant for overblown bodily humor parlays into his performance in Robert Altman’s arcadian-leaning Popeye. As his bizarre behaviors on Mork and Mindy draw attention to the need to learn earthling behavior, his cartoonish performance as Popeye—squinky eye, bulging arms and all—brings with it a similar denaturalization of gendered conduct. Mork foregoes sitting on his rear for sitting on his head, drinks with his finger, and talks to eggs, while Popeye’s clumsy and caricatured violence inflates characteristics commonly associated with masculinity: aggressiveness, chivalry, and action. Williams’s history of overblown performances combines with this specific one to foreground further its contrivance of aggressive masculinity and complicate the films relationship with traditional notions of the genre. Eastwood’s and Reynolds’s past performances too bring with them preestablished associations with aggressive masculinity, rendering more explicit the contrasts in gender between their musical alter egos and the men’s men they had portrayed in previous films. Although The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas appears more congruous with previous Reynolds roles such as those in Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and The Longest Yard—both good old boys out to topple the bad guys for the hell of it or personal pride—At Long Last Love’s MOP stands in stark contrast. Afraid of a football, relegated to wearing a nose plug for a casual day of swimming, unable to shave without cutting himself, and surrounded by the trappings of an inactive and pampered gentleman, this character’s intense dissimilarity to previous roles forces a recontexualization and reformulation of masculinity. The contrast in MOP’s qualities from Deliverance’s hypermasculine (and ultimately damaged) Medlock and The Longest Yard’s irreverent (and incarcerated) football hero Crew becomes even more evident in the shadow of Reynolds’s existing cultural persona. Both cinematically and popularly constructed as tough, proactive, and an irresistible ladies’ man, Reynolds’s celebrity

158 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

masculinity highlights its contradictions with MOP’s foibles, indecisiveness, and inability to woo back Kitty. The break between diegetic and celebrity masculinity also emerges through the inconsistency between a proclivity for violence and a personal moral code in Eastwood’s earlier characters and Pardner’s agrarian and domestic desires and his sense of responsibility to and alliance with Rumson. This complex relationship between character and star complicates Paint Your Wagon’s narrative that ultimately resolves itself through conciliatory romance. Throughout this period of the musical, narrative and extratextual conflicts in identity produce ambivalence toward the notion of a stable gender identity. Arcadian musicals present the cowboy, sailor, soldier, and lover as iconic masculine figures capable of accomplishing the task of successful heterosexual romance. These ambivalent vehicles—by virtue of their narrative frame within a frame or performance gimmicks— decontextualize such façades of traditional masculinity and point to the very act of their construction and instability. The cowboy, sailor, and soldier become false constructions or calculated performances of a certain kind of masculinity. In addition, intertextual tough guy performances and presentations of excess or gender reflexivity embodied by celebrities foreground the construction, dissembling, and rearticulating of various masculinities. This construction of masculinity as just that—a construction—creates a wider array of acceptable masculine behaviors, breaking down walls separating satisfactory and deviant notions of gender within the musical genre.

Sexuality beyond domestic monogamy (but not that far beyond) The very bedrock of the arcadian musical narrative and its definition of acceptable masculine behavior come under fire throughout the ambivalent incarnation of the genre. No longer saddled with the neverending quest to find the perfect wife, men and the construction of masculinity burst from the constraints of heterosexual monogamy to present a gender definition based on both an awareness of carnal lust and an identity readable in the absence of a female mate. The changing form and diminished presentation of song and dance simultaneously distance the ambivalent musical male from suspect activities (skilled theatrical singing and dancing) and broaden appropriate types of sexual behavior—though really still falling short of advocating alternatives to heterosexuality and monogamy. Various types of stories deny the assumption of the conciliatory heterosexual and domesticated ending

The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity 159

and instead usher in masculinities/sexual proclivities separate from that espoused by the arcadian musical. The ability to experiment with, fail in, and shun sexual relationships in these emerging musical narratives enables the production of a masculinity based on a repeated set of options, rather than a proscribed solution. As discussed earlier in this chapter, male performances in musicals following more closely to arcadian norms and cultural assumptions linked to the male’s performance of song and dance produce a locus of questionable masculinity: queer or domesticated. The ambivalent musical’s changes in such performances—visually, aurally, and numerically— reduce associations with both traditional dance and dance as a prelude to musical marriage. The waning of dance and large production numbers and the influx of songs presented through voiceover (Lost Horizon, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, The Little Prince, Sweet Charity) or montage sequence (Tommy, Godspell, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Camelot, The Pirate Movie) succeed in visually separating song and dance from the male performer and his construction of gender. This shift from performance as being associated with romance and enacted in the queer realm of song and dance to one more visually and narratively linked to mental processes, introspection, and action (Camelot, Lost Horizon, Fiddler on the Roof ) brings masculinity back from the brink of domesticity or queerness to the precept of male utility and self-actualization. For example, Fiddler on the Roof expresses Tevye’s heightened emotion through double-exposure and personal asides instead of song or dance. His dream—a rationalization for Tzeitel to marry Motel instead of her previously promised butcher—emerges as one distanced from the male storyteller and sung mainly by featured females. Male and female chorus members distance Tevye—here a seer instead of singer—from actual bodily performances. Popular non-singers also forego traditional notions of singing for a spoken presentation of song, reducing their association with questionable forms of genderassociated performance. More often than in the more arcadian musicals, song and dance emerge as something disconnected from the domestic and simultaneously distanced from traditional notions of musical performance. The ambivalent presentation of sexual expression and relationship forms expands musical masculinity’s association with sex and sexuality. Through the decentering of sexual/domestic exploits and/or the questioning of the inevitable happiness associated with the heterosexual relationship, musical masculinity moves from inextricably linked to the breadwinner role to unclearly demarcated in relation to sexual and

160 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

domestic behavior. Successful domestic monogamy certainly remains central in arcadian-leaning films of the 1966–1983 period such as Half a Sixpence, The Pirates of Penzance, Good Times, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Hello, Dolly! and plays a side role in others like How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and Popeye. A considerable number of musicals of this period, however, present other options—though often met with narrative difficulty—to the male protagonists. Despite narrative resistance to embracing such alternatives to heterosexual marital bliss, the repeated presence of options complicates the idea of a proper sexuality in the context of a stable masculinity. A stable or singular masculinity no longer exists. A range of homosocial/platonic relationships, promiscuity, and nonheterosexual or non-consensual sex appear in musicals of 1966–1983. Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar, Tommy, and The Little Prince, for example, dedicate little if any narrative time to the development of romantic or sexual relationships. Rather, they transfer the narrative drives to actions and characteristics more directly linked to the spiritual or literal quests and needs of their protagonists. Although Jesus Christ Superstar includes a brief implication of a liaison between Mary and Christ, the relationship garners no screen time and does not factor into the overall goals of the diegesis. Wholly removed from the climactic moment, this type of relationship is marginalized within the narrative, distanced from the decision-making of the male, and therefore negligibly tied to his personal or narrative construction of masculinity. Similarly, neither Tommy nor Godspell ties the spiritual journey of its men to a form of self-actualization or social legitimization based on sexual behavior. Zoot Suit surely implicates virility and heterosexuality in the construction of Henry Reyna—as he establishes relationships with both the Chicana Della and his Jewish lawyer Alice Bloomfield. The narrative outcome, nonetheless, depends more on his process of personal discovery and sense of cultural heritage. The film concludes with three possible endings to the troubled life of its conflicted protagonist—dying a criminal, dying a decorated war hero, or marrying to raise five successful and ethnically proud children. Only one assimilates him back into the traditional domestic relationship, leaving options of both positive and negative identities based on non-eroticized or domesticated masculinity. In addition to eliminating heterosexuality as the definitive quality of gender identification, the ambivalent musical further challenges arcadian dictates by presenting sexual lifestyles and behaviors running counter to the domestic bliss common in earlier musicals. Films of the

The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity 161

1930s, 1940s, and 1950s surely had their share of musical rogues, such as Oklahoma!’s prurient Jud Frye and Funny Face’s scoundrel Beat poet Emile Flostre. These types of sexual predators, however, most often stood in obvious contrast to appropriate mates, and merely served as temporary—and easily eliminated—roadblocks on the way to the real couples’ wedded bliss. Central male characters such as All That Jazz’s Joe Gideon and Paint Your Wagon’s Pardner and Sam Rumson, however, make choices contrary to the niceties of monogamy. Suitable masculinities spread beyond the narrow definition articulated through previous norms. Joe’s sexual promiscuity, though presented as a contributing factor to his failing health and unresolved relationships with his daughter, girlfriend, ex-wife, and a bevy of busty nurses and chorines, stands as a possible and legitimated characteristic of masculinity. Joe’s sexual desires and lifestyle illustrate alternative performances of sexuality beyond the marriage bed. Although the ambivalent musical’s proclivity for contentious, irresolvable, or messy narratives often leads to such characters failing to find personal satisfaction in these relationships, possibilities within the complicated world of the diegesis still exist. After Paint Your Wagon’s ménage-a-tois, Pardner and Elizabeth remain together as Rumson heads off to the next homosocial mining town, and in the end, All That Jazz’s Joe makes peace within his various relationships during his climactic deathbed finale.18 Similarly, The Rocky Horror Picture Show and (intertextually) Can’t Stop the Music present male sexuality as fluid beyond even the bounds of heterosexuality.19 The homosocial and queer visual excess of Can’t Stop the Music belies the film’s idealistic and quasi-hetero surface text. Despite their iconic and homoerotic visuals—cowboy, Indian, construction worker, leather man, policeman, and army man—and a series of gay-themed disco hits—“Fire Island,” “Macho Man,” and “Y.M.C.A.,” the public’s awareness of the band members’ true sexualities remained in question. Reviews, however, quipped, “If Can’t Stop the Music had the nerve to be the first big-budget musical to accept what it hints at, it might—just might—have been interesting,”20 and “It’s a rather tall order, turning a group of leering homosexual fetishists into the Mouseketeers, but producer-promoter Alan Carr (responsible for such diverse cultural products as ‘Survive,’ ‘The Deer Hunter,’ and AnnMargret) would seem just the man for the job.”21 Somewhere between homosociality and homosexuality, the diegetic Village People and their bevy of bare-chested butches create a space acknowledging homosexuality as an option. Despite the film‘s avoidance of any overt sexual relationships for the protagonist musical group, the combination of

162 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

aesthetic and intertextual connotations implies what the film—per critics—feared to address and places the group’s proposed gayness just under the surface. In this case, implied queer masculinity can succeed diegetically, as the film climaxes with the group winning a record contract and performing a glittery finale for the screaming throngs of San Franciscans. In a similar though more narratively contentious vein, The Rocky Horror Picture Show implicates its male protagonists in overt bisexuality. Brad, Rocky, and Frank-N-Furter engage in sexual activity with both men and women. Brad initially resists Frank-N-Furter’s advances, discovering that Frank-N-Furter, not Janet, has come to seduce him. Regardless, he quickly submits to his own physical desires. After much teeth gnashing regarding proper sexual behavior, all of Frank-N-Furter’s converts (Brad, Janet, Rocky, and Columbia) relinquish their preconceived notions of proper sexuality to embrace both him and the type of sexuality and masculinity he embodies—one based on fluidity and an acknowledgement of the inescapability of carnal lust. The musical numbers leading up to the climax foreground this transformation in the male protagonists through a visual and spiritual shift in conceptions regarding their own masculinity and sexuality. Now wearing fishnets, corsets, and boas—trappings already adopted by Frank-N-Furter—both Brad and Rocky warble their feelings about their emerging senses of self. Rocky revels in his own perfect body as he poses and sings about his uncontrollable libido and his “orgasmic rush of lust.” Brad immediately follows with a cry of help for his mommy. Initially disturbed by the changes he has experienced while at the Frank-N-Furter mansion, he opens with a tone of resistance only to begin sensually stroking his own fishnet-bedecked leg and lapse into irrepressible convulsions as uncontainable feelings of lust rush over him. Readjusting their sexual norms to those commensurate with Frank-N-Furter’s—illustrated further in the aqua-orgy of “Don’t Dream It, Be It”—Brad and Rocky realign their identities visually (through their accepted and sensual donning of clothing culturally connected to a lusty or suspect femininity or a queered masculinity) and narratively (through their erotic engagement with other men and ultimate physical and emotional defense of Frank-N-Furter, their once corruptor and oppressor) (Figure 8).22 Although Riff Raff and Magenta ultimately kill Frank-N-Furter, Rocky, and Columbia and leave the rest of the erotic ensemble decimated in the rubble of the castle, narrative sympathies lie with those killed and left behind. The sympathetic protagonists do not automatically triumph over the antagonist; neither, however, do the actions of the slain male leads lose their narrative and

The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity 163

Figure 8 The Rocky Horror Picture Show ensemble enjoys an aqua-orgy as FrankN-Furter convinces Brad, Janet, Columbia, and Rocky that sexual fluidity beats heterosexual monogamy any day. (20th Century-Fox/The Kobal Collection)

ideological impact. Although their expanded and more malleable sexualities do not lead them to ultimate diegetic happiness (Who is really happy in the ambivalent musical anyway?), Brad and Janet nonetheless assumedly carry their newly developed senses of self into their post-diegetic lives and merge these new identities into their ongoing productions of gendered selves. As with the other elements of gender identity, established actors who dominate the ambivalent musical add to the notion that masculinity goes beyond the bounds of the committed heterosexual relationship. Sex symbols like Reynolds, whose public personae and press coverage revolve around their ability to attract and hobnob with a multitude of sexy babes, and rock stars such as The Who or Aerosmith, who had been associated with a raucous rock-n-roll lifestyle often assumed to be rife with hotel room chaos, substance abuse, and groupie worship, infuse the genre with more variant and sexually daring intertext.23 In addition, the Village People and a flamboyant Elton John—though not publicly declaring his bisexuality until a Rolling Stone interview one year after the

164 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

release of Tommy—infuse the ambivalent musical with a gay sensibility neither sidestepped by narrative marginalization nor wholly erased by recuperation into diegetic heterosexuality.24 These actor types contrast to the dyed-in-the-wool song and dance men of the arcadian musical and their possible subtextual queerness and bring sexualized personae to the films’ narratives and their eroticized and sexually variable characters.

Conclusion Within the movie musicals of the 1966–1983 period, masculinity expands far beyond the expectations laid out by and repeated throughout the earlier established musical format. The variety of possibilities produced in these films constructs masculinity as something fluid and ultimately situationally constructed. Whereas generic norms in arcadian musicals of the past and present evoke a sense of stability, many of these later musicals project a sense of ambivalence toward pre-established norms and suggest the possibility of change. As generic norms emerge through the enactment of a recurring multiplicity of gendered identities, maleness as a whole separates from a point of stasis. The men of Camelot, Xanadu, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Tommy live in worlds much more ideologically complex and narratively irresolvable than their Oklahoma! and Gigi brethren and consequently take on broader and more fluid senses of self. Like the social and political movements of the corresponding society, this change reflects a challenge to the primacy of the white, middle-class, breadwinner. Many of the musicals of this period create protagonists whose gender identities and associated sexual behaviors go beyond those deemed viable for the arcadian male hero and reflect the new move toward sexual liberation in the sixties and seventies. The simultaneous connection of such behaviors with the downfall of the male protagonists may beg an argument for the ambivalent musical truly making a backhanded plea for the reaffirmation of domestic monogamy. Regardless of the narrative outcome, however, these films still stand in stark contrast to their arcadian counterparts. The complex construction of social problems, unlikelihood of any kind of clean narrative closure, and the high probability of continued conflict between characters or within the main character him or herself disqualifies this expanded sexuality as the singular cause of the failed utopic narrative. Rather, the more complex and fluid nature of gender identity via association with sexuality—gay, straight, bisexual, monogamous, promiscuous, or disinterested—rests

The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity 165

among other characteristics present in the decidedly imperfect worlds of these new musicals. Reflecting the complication of gender roles and overall identity politics in society, no one characteristic—marriage or homogeneity—emerges as the one that prevents the attainment of a conflict free society. Through visual constructions, performances, and narrative trajectories, this ambivalent faction of the musical constructs the worlds of King Arthur, Frank-N-Furter, and Judas as fraught with problems of various causes and no clear-cut solutions.

Epilogue: I Could Go On Singing

From the very introduction of synchronous sound into Hollywood motion pictures, the musical emerged as a highly profitable and high profile cinematic product. The presence of the genre post-1950s, while perhaps not as evident through capital gains or the sheer number of films produced, cannot be denied. Not as dead in the seventies and eighties as often claimed, the musicals of the 1966–1983 period illustrate an exciting innovation in the genre. Ranging from economic success stories, such as Fiddler on the Roof and Funny Girl, to stylistic extravaganzas like Tommy and The Wiz to the few that are perhaps best forgotten (Lost Horizon?), examples of generic tradition and innovation sprinkle this more than 25 year period. Perhaps not providing as publicly palatable or happy-go-lucky stories and characters as their predecessors, these films illustrate the resilience of the musical as a genre and its ability to articulate—through song and dance—ideological and cultural messages beyond those commonly associated with its foundational years. During this fertile period of American film, this seemingly stagnant genre possessed malleability in form and content to blend into the changing cinematic and cultural landscapes. I hope this book brings well-deserved attention to this understudied and perhaps misunderstood period of the genre. This project sought to shed further light on the widening scope of the integrated Hollywood musical’s formal and ideological project. Despite its common characterization, the musical has not merely been something stuck in the past, incapable of change, or lacking understanding beyond a human condition simplified through romantic and cultural utopias. Responding to shifts in cinematic technique over time and evolving to represent greater ideological complexities, 166

I Could Go On Singing 167

the musicals of the late 1960s to early 1980s—especially those fitting under the category of ambivalent—have proven the elasticity of this generic form. Aptly reflecting a period that saw the waning of John F. Kennedy’s Camelot, the founding of the Black Panthers, the emergence of the hippie movement (represented directly in Hair and Sweet Charity and aesthetically through the hippie-inspired dress in Paint Your Wagon), the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr, and the burgeoning Women’s and Gay Movements, shifts in narrative and visual form, performance style, and actor participation create an alternate generic mode capable of capturing more ambivalent or inconclusive slices of life. By creating a broader scope of narrative possibilities through shifts in form, the genre has ushered in more encompassing depictions of contemporary life, whether through the recognition of social struggle and changing mores related to personal and sexual relationships or more aggressive styles of music and dance. Accompanying the broadening of the generic form in the 1966–1983 period, an associated increase in gendered options emerges. Challenging scholars and critics who summarize the genre as one tied to the conciliatory resolution of communal conflict through personal romantic union, these ambivalent musicals open up definitions of gender beyond domestic bounds. Presented at times as self-sufficient, inner-directed, and selfaggrandizing and at others as concerned with romance or community service, ambivalent musical men and the masculinity that defines them defy the restrictions often asserted by the generic form in which they circulate. As these emergent dictates in musical form solidify through repetition of performance and visual style as well as narrative structure and content, expectations regarding gender—repeated through the various possibilities articulated through these new norms—surface as independent of domesticity and variable in number. Complicated cultural, racial, and internal conflicts surface in this new form that open up narrative possibilities and consequently encourage more complex constructions of masculinities. Stars such as The Who, Burt Reynolds, and Steve Martin infuse the genre with star personae incongruous to old generic dictates, further complicating the attainment of a closed and conciliatory ending and highlighting the overall instability or malleability of generic form. Whether recuperated into a happy narrative or left to languish in self-imposed uncertainty or failure, the ambivalent musical male—tough guy, rock star, or bozo—gains narrative legitimacy through his repeated appearance as complex and not wholly recuperable or definable.

168 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

Dancing into the millennium Although the bulk of this book focuses on the generic innovation occurring from the late 1960s through the early 1980s, I would in no way attempt to characterize those films as indicative of a new and definitive form of the integrated movie musical. Rather, as I have argued, they reflect emergent norms of the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s and surely speak to—but do not define—what has become the future of the genre. Just as filmed and staged musical entertainment shifted through various forms—ballad opera, burlesque, operetta, musical play—and responded to changes in social mores, Broadway products, and motion picture regulation, the genre—its characteristics and ideological underpinnings—have continued and will continue to morph in response to social, artistic, and industrial influences. A look at later films illustrates the continuing and expanding movement within the genre. This epilogue serves as a preliminary survey of and springboard for further analysis of the genre in the two decades following the drought of the early eighties, touching on two main periods: 1984–1995 and 1996 to the present. What became a new musical boom starting in the midnineties defines this periodization, one generally conceptualized as preand post-Evita. After a major drought in integrated musicals, 1996 was the first year to experience multiple integrated musical releases, as well as the release of films that would stylistically and ideologically reflect what would become trademarks of the ever-shifting genre. This epilogue touches on popular trends of those periods, suggests how they might be explained by or reflective of their social and industrial contexts, and ultimately focuses mainly on their relationship and deviation from different generic forms within the musical. The mid-eighties to mid-nineties has been largely dismissed or dealt with as an anomaly by musical scholars because of the abandonment of live-action integrated music. The genre—at least the non-animated variety—nearly disappeared between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s, with only a handful of integrated or quasi-integrated films being released—Purple Rain (1984), Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984), A Chorus Line (1985), Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Earth Girls are Easy (1988), School Daze (1988), Cry Baby (1990), and Newsies (1992)—and only Little Shop of Horrors and Newsies truly embrace the integrated form. As traditional integrated musicals were few and far between, live-action integration was largely replaced by a renewed boom in animated movie musicals—mainly of the Disney variety—and the rise of music movies that rejected or marginalized integrated song and dance in favor of focusing on professional or amateur singers and dancers. Like

I Could Go On Singing 169

both the arcadian and ambivalent forms, these styles reflect a contemporary relevance and a keen awareness of pre-established rules of the musical genre. The more recent period, 1996–2009, has revitalized the integrated musical. Since the mid-1990s, the genre has seen heightened commercial success and an increase in sheer numbers. I resist making any grand statements about a successful revival of the genre, as the audience’s feelings about the integrated musical are still up for debate based on the overall economic shortcomings of high profile films such as Evita, The Phantom of the Opera (2004), The Producers (2005), and Rent (2005). What this renewed interest in the film musical does provide is a body of work reflective of its new industrial and social contexts. Many films, including many of the most successful ones, either eschew the arcadian visual stylings of Rodgers and Hammerstein for one more closely aligned with the MTV aesthetics of the eighties—Moulin Rouge! (2001) and Chicago (2002)—or fall closer in line with older narrative and visual devices— Hairspray (2006) and Enchanted (2008)—with a new reflexive edge. Overall, the integrated films of the mid-nineties through the first decade of the new millennium embrace techniques that reflect contemporary artistic, social, and industrial norms. Through their operatic narratives, generic self-awareness, MTV-style visuals, invisible communities, and overwhelming sense of introspection, this new group of integrated musicals embodies both a reliance on high concept texts for visual and economic clout and an increasing social context—one defined by niche markets and individually tailored and mediated communication—that complicates the genre’s traditional goals of communal unification.

The groovin’ eighties and nineties: Teens and tots From 1984 through the mid-nineties, the forms proving most successful and common for music-oriented films neither provided major innovation nor should they have come as any surprise to the viewing audience. Since the mid-seventies, motion pictures had taken a turn away from the edgier fare of Bonnie and Clyde, Clockwork Orange, and the like, and instead embraced the blockbuster mentality of the late fifties and early sixties. Films like Star Wars (1977), Superman (1978), and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) had favored action, spectacle, product tie-ins, and franchise development over biting ideological critique and character development and targeted the largest growing audience, the baby boomers babies or Generation Xers who were storming into shopping mall multiplexes by the millions. Studies showed that by 1977, 87 per cent of

170 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

movie tickets were purchased by patrons under 40, 57 per cent were bought by those under 25, and the 12–20 group was thriving.1 Scholars such as Thomas Schatz and Justin Wyatt have discussed this demographic and formal turn toward “New Hollywood” or “high concept” fare as providing a diminishment in the complexity of narratives and rather a stronger focus on image and affect. Wyatt highlights high concept’s tunnel vision focus on “the look, the hook, and the book” and places the new filmmaking and marketing style within its larger industrial context. He states, “The larger structural changes within the industry—such as conglomeration, the development of new technologies, and the rise of marketing and merchandising—operate to privilege films that can be summarized in a single sentence.”2 This style of filmmaking privileges products that can be sold across platforms—soundtracks, tie-ins, video games—and embraced internationally because of their striking images and lack of complex culturally specific narratives. Along with lending themselves to the desired international audience, these flashy films also embrace elements that would have targeted the strengthening youth audience through recognizable narrative tropes, flashy images, and music tie-ins. Schatz describes a similar phenomenon in his discussion of the “New Hollywood.” Turning away from the edgy filmmaking of the late sixties and early seventies, Hollywood found itself relying more on fewer films for the bulk of its profits. Tracing back to the smashing summer success and sweeping exhibition patterns of Jaws, Schatz discusses the shift in narrative and visuals in similar terms as Wyatt. He points to James Monaco’s identification of the “Bruce aesthetic,” named after the mechanical shark in Jaws, as a cinematic effect that is “visceral—mechanical rather than human.” Schatz further defines this filmic quality as, “more exciting than interesting, more style than substance.”3 More plot driven than character driven, these films lacked the level of social and individual complexity common to the New American Cinema but were nicely positioned to target the youth audiences that were peopling the staggering rise in mall-bound multiplexes. Simultaneous to this shift in cinematic content that favored mallstrolling teens, Warner Amex took a gamble and introduced the first all-music television station. MTV launched in the United States in 1981, and by 1983 had penetrated most markets, including the ever-important New York and Los Angeles markets. Although music videos had been around in various forms for decades and aired on television shows such as Video Concert Hall (1978–1981) and Night Flight (1981–1988), the launch of MTV brought the form by force into the mainstream. The

I Could Go On Singing 171

new network, that largely served as promotion for musical artists as their commercial-like videos hawked their new albums, well suited the marketing and image-heavy style of filmmaking that had been transforming the Hollywood aesthetic. J. Hoberman argues that, Within two years, rock videos rejuvenated the moribund record industry (saving it from the threat of video games) and made the leap to network television. The often derided MTV aesthetic had already spawned two Hollywood blockbusters (Flashdance and Purple Rain) as well as at least one television series (Miami Vice)4 Not only would MTV aid in a possible rejuvenation of the music industry, but along with the high concept style of New Hollywood it would help to redefine—narratively, visually, and socially—a largely moribund musical genre. This confluence of marketing, style, and televisual innovation marked and arguably drove the 1980s rise of the music-oriented film. Blockbusters such as Flashdance (1983), Footloose (1984), and Dirty Dancing (1987) embraced these popular cinematic and televisual trends and produced new one-time dancing stars in Jennifer Beals, Kevin Bacon, Patrick Swayze, and Jennifer Gray with their iconic danceinspired posters, omnipresent music videos, and chart-topping soundtrack albums.5 These underdog protagonist dancer films brought contemporary music and dance and MTV-reminiscent visuals into the youth-targeted quasi-musical, as they simultaneously hearkened back to the Gene Kelly tradition of bringing freedom and dance to the stifled everyman. As Kelly brought freedom and rhythm through Anchors Aweigh and An American in Paris, Johnny Castle (Dirty Dancing) and Ren (Footloose) unbound the repression of their respective partners and communities. While reinvigorating the genre through partial adherence to old norms, these films embraced new audiences and industrial practices as they increased their economic viability by finding steady rotation for their music videos and thereby hawking their soundtracks to their biggest and most desirable target market. Hitting cinemas simultaneous to the widespread proliferation of MTV and the cinematic success of Footloose and Flashdance, a spate of break dancing films (Beat Street [1984], Breakin’ [1984], Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo) further capitalized on the (although sanitized) exotic nature of urban youth, underdog narratives, and contemporary musical styles. Through the eighties, music-focused films would continue to hit and miss with repeated attempts to capture the youth audience though music-heavy

172 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

and narrative-light fare. Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1986) and Satisfaction (1988) provided pre-Spiceworld (1997) glimpses of musical girl power, while John Waters’s Hairspray (1988) added a bit of a satirical edge to the dance pic. Prince both hit and missed with the highly successful Purple Rain and the dismal follow-up Under the Cherry Moon [1986]. Largely excuses to showcase his music (and that of The Time in Purple Rain), like other MTV-styled music flicks, they provided outlets for music fans without wholly embracing the format of the integrated musical. As the American motion picture industry focused on its mall-going young audiences with a deluge of singing and dancing kids, Disney experienced a renewed surge in animated success and production. Through the seventies and early eighties they had released a handful of musical animated films that had experienced varying levels of success (Aristocats [1970], Robin Hood [1973], Fox and the Hound), but the late eighties and nineties brought a whole new world of Disney and a strengthened conviction to capitalize on the youth audience through both its films and its never-ending stream of ancillary products produced by and marketed through any number of the Disney Corporation’s holdings. In 1987 Disney opened its first Disney Store, a retail store that would spread—like the multiplex—to malls around the country (and world). In a period where integrated musicals were few and far between, the Disney musical capitalized on the genre, the youth audience, and the company’s ability to sell, resell, and repackage the product. In 1988 Disney released the marginally successful Oliver and Company, but the animated movie musical would be defined by the phenomenal success of 1989’s The Little Mermaid. Grossing an initial $84 million in domestic box-office, the film would reach back into the Davy Crockett (1955) and Mickey Mouse Club (1955) playbooks and revitalize the power of the tie-in. With The Little Mermaid fast food tie-ins, stuffed animals, video tapes, underwear, and games, Disney found a renewed economic viability for the musical in the latter part of the twentieth century. Following close behind, films such as Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King would go on to usher in the new Disney generation of consumers and highlight the economic power of the animated musical. Within a few short years, The Lion King had again redefined animated success with its $313 million in domestic gross and nearly $1 billion intake including ancillary products.6 The new animated Disney fare not only redefined a sense of generic viability, but also—like its non-integrated music movie cousins— redefined the target market for the contemporary musical. Their

I Could Go On Singing 173

crossover appeal—with catchy music, pop culture intertextuality, and engaging characters and stories—encouraged the adult audience to follow the younger patrons into the theatres, but it was Disney’s colorful princesses and anthromorphized animals, as well as the dance films’ underdog performing youths that lured the teens and pre-teens who would feed the box-office coffers and flock to their local Disney and record stores for the latest tie-ins. Despite this seemingly heavy-handed drive to tailor often superficial or rote narratives to the target audience du jour, the films that came to define the musicals of the early eighties to mid-nineties brought with them an overall perkier set of narrative devices than those discussed in the first four chapters of this book. Perhaps due to the new dominant style of narrative-light cinema, the newly defined target audience, or a respite from the social anxiety that had defined the late sixties through the seventies, the bulk of these films eschew the narrative, intertextual, and performative markers that defined ambivalent musicals as introspective, dark, and generically and socially critical. Dancing to our own arcadias: Narrative utopia in the new guard J.P. Telotte and Marc Miller discuss the shift in this period to the music-oriented film and the animated Disney musical. Miller focuses on the rise in Disney animation and the textual and generic negotiations present in an industry hostile to the integrated musical, as Telotte argues that the films of the late seventies and eighties simultaneously escape the tenuous grasp on realism often possessed by fully integrated musicals that struggle to musicalize the real world and somewhat lose the battle to establish a narrative utopia.7 Although narratives such as Saturday Night Fever, The Buddy Holly Story, and Footloose carve out spaces where song and dance can provide a sense of social advancement or individual or generational escape, he argues that they also find resolutions where that escape is limited and fleeting. Saturday Night Fever’s Tony can only find freedom and escape in the enclosed space of the disco. Footloose’s Ren can bring small town teens out of their oppressed shells and into a nearby town to dance their pants off, but he cannot overcome the oppressive world being created by the town’s adults (a point which is perhaps arguable). Buddy Holly may have provided a space for African Americans and Southern whites to come together in a time of social strife, but only until his plane went down in a fiery heap. For Telotte, these musicals cannot overcome the internal incoherence discussed by Richard Dyer as repeatedly overshadowed by the utopian sensibility produced through song, dance,

174 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

and mise-en-scène. Instead, the musical cure—unlike in the arcadian musical—is fleeting.8 I would argue, however, that a return to a sustainable sense of unity and social integration commonly associated with arcadian musicals unites the animated musicals and many of the dance/band films of this period—while perhaps not the tragic biopics such as LaBamba (1987) and Sweet Dreams (1985). The Disney musicals make this renewed sense of musical utopia most evident. Narratives commonly revolve around an outcast character who must find his or her way in a “Whole New World” (Aladdin) or discover how to be “Part of Your World” (The Little Mermaid) or how to “Be Our Guest” (Beauty and the Beast) in a new and magical place.9 Much like more traditional arcadian musicals where the coupled protagonists come from different worlds (well, towns or classes), these animated heroes and heroines meet under unlikely circumstances and negotiate villains (not so different from Oklahoma!’s Jud Frye) to find some sense of compromise and love between worlds. Dyer would likely argue they negotiate problematic projections of race, ethnicity, and gender as they project through song, dance, color, and sound a utopic sense of idealism and energy. Many of the dance/band musicals follow a similar path to arrive at a comparable rosy outlook on life. Rejecting Telotte’s notion of the limited respite provided by dance, break dance flicks like Breakin’, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, and Beat Street provide almost textbook cases of arcadian musical utopia as they embrace the youth audience, the sense of hopefulness projected by President Reagan’s “morning in America” mantra, the prosperity evoked by a yuppified United States, and the friendly multiculturalism of Diff’rent Strokes (1978–1986), Gimme a Break (1981–1987), and The Cosby Show (1984–1992).10 Although they place a grittier spin on the worlds presented—as nostalgic Paris and New York City become more rundown versions of Los Angeles and Manhattan—they provide sustainable idealistic conclusions. Beat Street revolves around a multi-cultural group of street kids in New York City who make their livings and define themselves by mixing it up as a DJ (“Double K”), staging dance battles with rival break dance troupes (Lee), and converting subway cars into modern graffiti art (“Ramo”). Throughout, the narrative frames contemporary New York City as something threatening. Double K and Lee have lost a brother on the street. Ramo, to the disgust of his father, cannot support his girlfriend and baby because of his unwillingness to abandon his graffitidriven dreams. From its opening moments the film defines the cityscape through images of the dark and gritty projects—only transcended by

I Could Go On Singing 175

Figure 9 Like many films of the mid-eighties, Beat Street targets the MTV generation with urban aesthetics, contemporary dance styles, and a story of hard knocks and redemption. (Orion Pictures/Photofest)

bursts of dancing color, gloriously painted and hopeful subway cars, and jammin’ beats (Figure 9). Despite the resistance of parents, the authorities, and “Spit”—a renegade graffiti artist who continuously defaces Ramo’s work—the three struggle to maintain their own artistic visions. Just when Ramo finds a way to support his family while practicing his art, he dies in a freak subway accident while chasing his arch rival Spit. (Don’t touch the third rail!) After building up to reflect the hopelessness of the previous decades, all grit, struggle, and dismay fall away—in perfect arcadian style—as rival break dance troupes and swells of rappers unite in a grandiose musical memorial for Ramo. Although many of the fraught plot points more closely reflect the ambivalence the previous two decades had toward the notion of musical utopia, an endless sense of hope persists at the film’s conclusion. Whether realistic or not, it leaves no dangling questions about whether society can see through these conflicts. The urban community of rappers and dancers unite to provide for Ramo’s family and show a semi-religious expression of joy and unity. Similar conclusions reinforce a sense of sustainable peace in Dirty Dancing, Breakin, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, Hairspray, Cry Baby,

176 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

Footloose, and Flashdance. Reflective of arcadian norms, these films establish conflicts between the rich and poor and the old and the young. Ethnicity, class, and perceptions of high and low art divide the lovers— just as differences in class and profession had plagued Astaire and Rogers decades earlier. Dirty Dancing’s Baby and Johnny must hide their burgeoning love and their secret dances from her parents and the resort administration, just as Breakin’s Kelly and Ozone (in Breakin’ 2) must hide their feelings from each other and her parents who immediately judge him by his ethnicity—with not so subtle verbal slurs—and criticize her for wasting her time with “those people” when she could be going to college or doing proper dance. In the end the lower class hero shows the judging parents his true sense of valor and ultimately—as in any good celebratory musical—the two groups join together in a rousing dance number. Baby’s parents ultimately join the dancing throngs after the dance instructors burst into a group number to accompany Baby and Johnny’s smoldering sexual tension, and Kelly’s parents rush to the rescue of the community center with checkbook in hand as they take the stage to (although quite hollowly) unite classes and show their approval for the work of their daughter and Ozone. Again, no external force looms outside the final number. As in the aforementioned Disney films, the villain has been excised, the groups have been united, and the performance of dance has been the magical cure-all to make it happen. Narratively a trend takes hold in this era that—although distancing itself from the musical tropes of the integrated musical—embraces the idealistic vision so inherently connected to the genre’s earlier days. These narratives reflect a decided shift in period from the previous decades as the Reagan Era produced a sense of hopefulness—if a bit hollow as may have been the case in light of Iran-Contra, trickle-down economics, and AIDS. These films simultaneously embraced a multicultural sense of hope and traditional mores of unification as heterosexual romance took front and center in nearly all of the music-oriented films of the era. Although the films’ women and girls were often poised for rebellion (Dirty Dancing, Footloose, Flashdance, Breakin’, Hairspray, Cry Baby) in this era resting between the second and third waves of feminism, they almost always found their man in the end.

I want my MTV: Visuals in the music movie Although many of the music movies of the mid-eighties to mid-nineties embraced the ideological and narrative mores common to the arcadian musical, they set themselves apart by their burgeoning visual norms.

I Could Go On Singing 177

Rather than embracing the folk dance and gracefully captured choreography that often reflected the ultimate bonding of musical lovers and feuding communities, films commonly betrayed their narrative unity as they embraced visuals that distanced themselves from the actual narrative action. This narrative-visual interplay created a sense of internal contradiction in the films and simultaneously tied them to their unique industrial, aesthetic, and cultural moment. Stylistically, these films often transcend the flourishes most common in the darker musicals of the previous decades and solidly reflect the quick cutting and fetishizing cinematography commonly linked to the music video, MTV style, and the high concept notion of the easily sellable and recognizable striking image.11 Using a style easily translated into ancillary advertisement through the music video, the presentation of performance in these films often temporarily or consistently removes the body and the narrative action from being the central focus of the shot. Whereas the actions—physical and narrative—of the King and Anna, Maria and Captain VonTrapp, and a variety of Fred and Ginger characters take control of the screen image, this defining style of the eighties visually denies the unification of the lovers and the communities, even when unification is narratively granted. This kind of distancing or segmenting camerawork drives the visual focus away from the diegetic characters and focuses more closely on the technology of filmmaking or the spectacle of the moment. Contrary to the form of musical spectacle discussed by scholars such as Schatz and Brett Farmer that drove the viewer closer into the grandiose world of the narrative by surrounding the dancing body with a burst of visual excess, these films function more like the estranging musicals of the sixties and seventies.12 Camerawork here, however, provides spectacle at the expense of the visual presentation of narrative itself. Unlike Tommy, All That Jazz, and Fiddler on the Roof where the visual distanciation reflects the narrative ambiguity or diegetic tension, here the disjointed visuals’ denial of social unity contradicts the films’ narrative messages. As almost an apologia for musical performance, these stylistic flourishes—whether through montage or quick cutting and scattered close-up shots—detract from the performance occurring within the narrative as they almost erase the flow of the narrative itself. Films such as Purple Rain, Footloose, Flashdance, and Dirty Dancing exemplify the stylistically-driven internal contradiction created between utopic narratives and visuals that are easily translatable into marketable music videos. Throughout each of these films—and stylistically replicated in others such as School Daze, Earth Girls are Easy, and

178 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

the break dancing pics—large song and dance numbers continually reject presentation of a seamless cinematic narrative and instead appear in ways that are ripe for easy transplantation into the music video. Their extensive use of the montage sequence and striking imagery— bold silhouettes, close-ups, fast-paced cutting—visually reflects the high concept style while narratively pulling focus away from the actions occurring within the film. Both Flashdance and Dirty Dancing produced multiple music videos that incorporated the films’ imagery. The story of a welder/exotic dancer/aspiring classical dancer, Flashdance begins with a striking montage sequence underscored by Irene Cara’s “What a Feeling.” Throughout the film, music underscores her dance performances at the club—often more performance art than erotic—and in her abandoned warehouse apartment. Michael Sembello’s “She’s a Maniac” soon underscores a montage depicting Alex’s at-home workout and introducing her passion for dance. In these scenes and others, quick shots shift to the beat of the contemporary pop tunes as the camera isolates close-up shots of her body parts, such as tapping feet, feet running to the beat, and Alex’s gyrating pelvis. Both the danced montage sequences and the stage-bound club dances distance the act of dance from the greater narrative action. The dance does not engage Alex with others. It separates her from them, whether because of spatial isolation, isolating camera work, lighting that obscures others, or narrative positioning. Here, the dance—or once musical cure-all—maintains its position as something outside of natural daily activity. In addition, the choices in cinematography distance Alex from the diegetic world itself (not just other characters within). As with Berkeley-esque excess, the MTV-styled cinematography halts the film as it inserts the pop number and dance sequence. In the case of the two club numbers, the dance seems incongruous to the world of the film. As Alex takes the stage for her hooting and hollering audience, she sports stylized Kabuki-esque makeup, bizarre pointy-shouldered dresses, and all-around more clothes than the other dancers. Although the dances culminate to maximize her physical exposure and include the iconic Flashdance image of Alex being drenched as she arches her back on her prop chair, they seem to be more useful for the resultant music videos than the actual narrative. Cara’s “What a Feeling” video combines bits of the opening montage, along with clips from most of the dance scenes in the film. The video for Sembello’s “She’s a Maniac” incorporates similar imagery, but also includes footage from her second club dance that includes stylized make-up, strobe lights, and bizarre floundering around that seemed unlikely for the low-class club in which she dances (but ideal for an

I Could Go On Singing 179

insane asylum motif in the video). While the film fails to integrate dance moments into the larger relational conflict, the shooting of those dance numbers—as well as her welding and her friend’s extraneous ice skating subplot—translate beautifully into music video. The quick-paced cutting, the stark back lighting, rhythmic welding, and close-ups on dancing body parts blend together in the videos much more effectively than they articulate the narrative. As Schatz and Wyatt discuss, the image and the affect become the thing. The actual relationship between the dance and the plot become secondary. Footloose, Purple Rain, and Dirty Dancing follow a similar trend as the films use the hoped-for pop hit to underscore integral or strictly performative moments of the films. As with Flashdance, Footloose connects a montage sequence to nearly every song used in the film—“Footloose,” “Let’s Hear it for the Boy,” “Holding Out for a Hero,” “Dancing in the Sheets,” and “Never.” At one point, Ren performs an updated version of a Gene Kelly dream ballet to Moving Pictures’ “Never” as he combines acrobatics and dance in his solo performance of rage in a local mill. With its montage-heavy shooting style, even non-dance numbers (such as a game of chicken played with tractors to Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero”) translate easily into the title song’s music video. Footage from nearly every montage sequence appears in Kenny Loggins’s “Footloose” video, one that begins with diegetically detached images of teenagers tapping their feet from the film’s opening credit sequence. Ultimately, dance does heal and unite factions of the small Oklahoma community, just as dance unites Alex and her boss-man lover in Flashdance. Again, however, the striking image of Ren repeatedly flying through the air in his dance of rage transcends any narrative function, as the time spent on his big, angry dance montage—and all other montages—outweigh their narrative function. Surely, the arcadian musical often leaned toward visual and performative excess, but generally to an end of articulating or reinforcing narrative conflict or relationships. Here, pop montage often pulls away from the narrative and allows the images to serve their secondary master. Roger Ebert’s review in The Chicago Sun-Times pinpoints this tension. “Footloose is a seriously confused movie that tries to do three things, and does all of them badly. It wants to tell the story of a conflict in a town, it wants to introduce some flashy teenage characters, and part of the time it wants to be a music video.”13 Similar looks at Purple Rain—nearly a video in and of itself—and Dirty Dancing—which produced film-inspired videos of Eric Carmen’s “Hungry Eyes,” Patrick Swayze’s “She’s Like the Wind,” and Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes’s “(I’ve had) The Time of My Life”—would produce a similar picture. The

180 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

films thrive on their montages, find narratives halted or sidetracked in moments of heightened performance, and translate beautifully into music video. Of the group, Dirty Dancing truly comes closest to embracing the tenets of arcadian performance, as the couple is the focus of the performance, even if the cinematographic depiction continually pulls away from the moment in favor of fractured and protracted imagery. The MTV-style proliferated through the music movies of the period, whether translating into actual music videos or chart-topping music sales. Breakin’ closes and Beat Street opens with montage sequences comprised of a mixture of still shots and action footage and underscored by didactic raps that extol the hard times faced by urban youths. Earth Girls are Easy and School Daze both include a combination of integrated numbers and musical montage sequences. Neither film fully embraces the musical genre, as music often seems to be an afterthought or extra added bonus rather than integral part of the narratives. The 1984– 1995 period as a whole struggles with its relationship with the musical genre. Vacillating between narratives that continue to embrace an earlier idyllic time for the genre and visuals that defy the ideological and narrative connotative power of the performances themselves, the films form a picture of a genre in crisis in a new era. As the musical showed decided evidence of a rebirth in the years to come, the same characteristics that created this muddled version of genre would come to visually, narratively, and ideologically define the integrated musicals of the next decade.

The millennial upturn The mini-boom in the musical genre that began in the mid-1990s speaks more fully to the larger generic issues dealt with in the first several chapters of this book: musical and social integration or a lack thereof. Although I would hesitate to predict a strong and sustainable sense of economic viability for the musical at this point, the American film industry has seen a decided rise in the integrated form of the genre. Whereas barely more than half a dozen integrated or quasi-integrated musicals had been released between 1984 and 1995, since 1996 nearly two dozen have hit the screens, some finding both the financial and critical success that had been eluding the genre for decades. 1996 alone ushered in the release of three, each somewhat indicative of how the next decade would negotiate generic norms and contemporary times: Evita, Cannibal: The Musical, and Everyone Says I Love You. Bringing respectively big budget and star-studded casts, tongue-in-cheek generic

I Could Go On Singing 181

satire, and somewhat of an apology for daring to dabble in the largely extinct genre, the musicals of 1996 reflect the generic identity crisis and narrative and visual styles that would define the genre during this later period. As well, they underscore the genre’s rising reflection of communal estrangement in a world and industry contemporarily defined by niche markets, stereotypical Generation X isolation or self-absorption, and an ever-rising sense of mediation or mechanical intervention in person-to-person communication in the era of the i-pod, PC, DVR, VCR, and Internet. Although Evita, Cannibal, and Everyone Says I Love You may not be the most prolific or successful examples of the contemporary movie musical, they indeed speak to the narrative, stylistic, and ideological underpinnings of what came to be the millennial musical. After decades of rumored film versions of the Andrew Lloyd Webber-Tim Rice historical opera—rumored to be starring everyone from Meryl Streep to Barbra Streisand to Charo—musical veteran Alan Parker (Bugsy Malone, Fame [1980], Pink Floyd: The Wall [1982]) helmed a big budget version of Evita with megastar MTV maven Madonna and international hunk Antonio Banderas. With its rocked-up score and a slightly altered narrative—that provided Eva with new songs that made her seem like less of a celebrityseeking shrew—the film provided audiences with the first big budget straight-up Hollywood musical since the eighties releases of A Chorus Line and Little Shop of Horrors (and the crashing failure of Disney’s liveaction Newsies). Rife with screaming electric guitars and quick-paced montage sequences, it hearkened back to the MTV-styled dance films of the eighties while simultaneously providing unapologetic opera. The New Yorker referred to the film as “the biggest, loudest, and most expensive music video ever made.”14 Despite mixed reviews, it appeared as if the integrated musical might have been finding its way back. Simultaneously, Woody Allen released his latest New York comedy in the form of Everyone Says I Love You, a musical starring well-known non-musical stars Edward Norton, Drew Barrymore, Alan Alda, and Goldie Hawn. Somewhat reflective on the genre, the film foregrounded the everyman quality of its actors as they warbled through their musical numbers in a schlubbish style indicative of Allen’s work. As Miller discusses in “Of Toons and Tunes,” the film took the musicality out of the musical, as actors were encouraged to embrace their own less than stellar singing skills and song emerged not at moments of high emotion, but just because. Finally, Trey Parker’s Cannibal embodied the savvy wink common to the millennial musical. Parker—who with partner Matt Stone would later create one of the sharpest commentaries on the genre itself,

182 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut—used generic norms of fraught love, battling communities, the nostalgized American past, and spontaneous performance to create a tongue-in-cheek musical romp about the trial of a suspected cannibal. The joke was not lost on critics, as one noted: Where “Evita” flopped on the screen and “The Phantom of the Opera” is stalled somewhere, director/writer/composer/star Trey Parker has forged ahead with an all-singing, all-dancing, all-chomping tribute to the palmy days of MGM. It’s finger-licking good, a tasty 90 minutes of yummy production numbers and intense spiritual crises.15 Despite the marginal success of this first wave of movie musicals, an array of films broke into wide (and some not so wide) release over the next decade or so, varying in musical and visual styles. Some reflect a more throwback take on the genre (The Fantasticks [1995], Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000)); some drive headlong into genre revision and satire (Moulin Rouge!, The Producers, Enchanted); others embrace the MTV visuals that defined the past decade (Chicago, Across the Universe); and still others provide a combination thereof (Dreamgirls [2006], Hairspray). Regardless of style, the resurgence of the genre has been undeniable and quite reflective of actions occurring—narratively and synergistically—not just in film but also on the Broadway stage. Simultaneous to this millennial musical boom, Broadway—which had always proven to be a stylistic and narrative source for the Hollywood musical—had taken several turns. Although new feel-good shows like Mary Poppins (2006), The Drowsy Chaperone (2005), and Mamma Mia! (2001) still find critical and popular success and revivals of Oklahoma! and The Pajama Game abound, the stage has seen a spate of off-Broadway to Broadway musicals that, through performance style, narrative convention, and subject matter, further push the original bounds of the musical play. Like Hair and Oh, Calcutta! before them, they eschew the pleasantries of the arcadian musical. Tony Award-winning musicals like Rent (1996), Urinetown (2001), Avenue Q (2003), and Spring Awakening (2006) that blend stylistic characteristics combine rampant integration with opera, social unrest, and social satire as they draw on poverty, AIDS, homosexuality, and lurid sex (at times between puppets) with varying levels of seriousness and irony. Avenue Q combines live actors with randy puppets in a musical about struggling 20- and 30-somethings in a fictional New York borough, capitalizing on the Generation X relationship with the televisuals

I Could Go On Singing 183

and puppetry of Sesame Street (1969). Urinetown uses a Brechtian style related to agitprop theatre to highlight the conventions of melodrama and musical (while not calling the audience to action). Through such shows, the genre moves even further into the type of critique seen in the ambivalent film musicals of the sixties, seventies, and eighties while pushing preexisting boundaries of generic reflexivity.16 Simultaneous to these new generic critiques, revivals such as Cabaret (1998), Assassins (2004), and Threepenny Opera (2006) use the cultural cachet and ideological residue connected to Studio 54—the 1970s hotbed of sex, drugs, and disco, now renovated into a theatrical performance space—to recontextualize their narratives with an intertextual sense of irony. In subject matter, production style, and space, these musicals continue to breach the arcadian arrangement regarding propriety and social stability while commonly adding an ironic wink. Accompanying such critique and edginess, however, a current trend in converting integrated, non-integrated, and/or non-musical motion pictures into integrated stage musicals has reversed the traditional directional flow of musical products—Victor/Victoria (1982 and 1995), Saturday Night Fever (1977 and 1999), Footloose (1984 and 1998), The Producers (1968 and 2001 and back to screen in 2005), Hairspray (1988 and 2002 and back to screen in 2007), The Wedding Singer (1998 and 2006), Xanadu (1980 and 2007), and 9 to 5 (1980 and 2009).17 This Broadway trend toward generic critique and reflexivity through cinematic poaching, as with previous periods of the genre’s evolution, ultimately reflects trends on the big screen. Of the three most critically acclaimed onscreen musical successes of the twentieth century, two came from re-imagined Broadway successes and one reflected the high level of reflexivity present both on the big screen and stage: Chicago, Dreamgirls, and Moulin Rouge!. 2000’s Moulin Rouge!, directed by Australian metteur-en-scène Baz Luhrmann, brought MTV visuals, a raging sense of pastiche, computer-generated spectacle, and relatively big names together. A non-stop pop culture reference, the film takes a page from the high concept playbook with its striking images, poached music, and well-known stars as it provides a playful wink to a new hip version of the genre. The New Yorker nails the film and the emergent feel of the genre when it states, Moulin Rouge!, the Baz Luhrmann musical starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor, is the absolute paradigm of our current restlessness. In this frantically ambitious pop pastiche—postmodernism in a nutshell—no single song is performed from beginning to end,

184 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

no dance number is staged without the dancers’ movements being kaleidoscoped into a dozen angles.18 The film could have easily been plugged as Lurhmann’s Romeo + Juliet had been four years earlier. To paraphrase, Moulin Rouge! was “not your father’s musical!” Chicago and Dreamgirls, like Moulin Rouge! and Evita before them, also reflect the stylings of music video, with a heavy reliance on quick cutting and montage sequences to break up the presence of performance. This new slick version of the genre seems to have met with some kind of critical and popular approval, with the three aforementioned films making respectable profits—as well as providing well-selling soundtrack albums—and each garnering multiple Academy Award nominations, with wins for both Jennifer Hudson (Dreamgirls) and Catherine Zeta Jones (Chicago). Notably, Chicago was the first musical to win the Oscar since Oliver! in 1968.19 As the genre continues to develop in this new mediascape that relies more heavily on big budgets, low risk, and high concept, Chicago, Dreamgirls, and Moulin Rouge! provide glimpses of both the negotiations occurring within the contemporary version of the genre and perhaps what audiences or financers seem ready to accept in this recently rejected genre. On some levels, since the mid-nineties the genre seems to have returned to its old arcadian form. Many new high-profile musicals include grand production numbers, omnipresent song and dance, and joyous and rousing musical conclusions. The style and stars of the sixties and seventies musicals had often resulted in a minimization of integrated performance, whereas newer films like those already discussed, as well as Rent, Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008), and Across the Universe revel in their overt musicality and foreground the musical performances of their actors and actresses. On deeper narrative, performative, aesthetic, and ideological levels, however, many of these newer musicals project a more complex relationship with the genre, a less-than shocking reflection of contemporary culture and social relationships, and a simultaneous attraction and repulsion to the genre itself. Engaging with a variety of narrative, aesthetic, and musical performance styles, the millennial musical presents a wide range of stories, tones, and visuals. With their diversity, however, lies an emergent picture of generic consistency. Through a number of these films, an overall projection of social estrangement emerges to defy the once generic imperative of social unification. The group may still exist, but the niche or the otherly occupied individual reigns. These later films, through their musical and visual style, imply not impossibility but apathy. Opera

I Could Go On Singing 185

and sung soliloquy reposition song as something other than a vicarious transplantation of the viewer into a familiar but magical place where song and dance are the magical cure for all that ills society. Just as opera destroys the link between the filmic and real worlds and destroys the specialness of diegetic song, the soliloquy narratively erases the group just as self-involved narratives have. MTV montage and reflexive narratives lead to similar ends, as they draw attention to generic artifice, rather than textually embracing the sincerity of song and dance and its once healing quality. Embracing in vogue visual norms, contemporary leanings toward the transtextual, and a wealth of faux-arcadian song and dance, this new boom projects the superficial communal engagement projected by contemporary marketing and communication trends. They may appear to be about “us,” but attention to the “I” or the distracted individual rings much truer in these new musical films.

Enough already—Visual and musical excess These millennial musicals continuously obscure one of the main characteristics scholars have recurrently linked to the genre: the physical and emotional connection of individuals. Schatz addresses such a tie through a discussion of the diegetic mirroring the real and providing a vicarious sense of satisfaction for the viewer as he or she sees relevant social conflicts solved through the musical narrative. For Jane Feuer, musical tropes such as the passed-along-song and folk dance invite the same viewing audience to vicariously perform along with the community; a community who sings and dances together stays together. As the arcadian musicals project Altman’s notion of the unified couplecum-unified community, song and dance serve as a bonding agent for both the internal and external communities. As musicals took a turn toward the ambivalent during the sixties and seventies, this same connection to the real underpinned the formal shifts occurring within the genre. The disappearance of integrated song and the inability to find communal harmony reflect that the conflicts the musicals themselves showed could no longer be solved through a square dance. However, that absence of communal performance—as in Camelot’s largely dancebereft story of political and romantic betrayal—spoke to the changing state of musical and cultural mores. The community—neither diegetic nor by proxy the real—could not join in because both societies’ conflicts were equally irresolvable. Unity could not occur socially, musically, or narratively.

186 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

Reflecting stylistic norms that speak to the contemporary moment and a movie industry that popularized the MTV-like music movies, these films reject the close ties to the real once so integral to the generic project. Following in vogue cinematic and Broadway techniques, many of these musicals favor performative and visual styles—such as opera and MTV-style montage—that sever the relationship between the real and musical worlds and the characters living within them. As reflected in high concept “character light” storylines and our contemporary attention toward the individual or niche, the necessity to communicate within the film or between film and viewer diminishes as individually tantalizing visual and musical excess takes the fore. Building on the introspective visuals established in the edgier musicals of the sixties and seventies and MTV-style montages common to the high concept dance films of the eighties and early nineties, cinematographic and editing techniques highlight a sense of social estrangement and generic apologia in this latest crop of integrated movie musicals. As they obscure bodily performance, a focus on technology and quick, striking imagery overrides actual communication between authentic performing voices and bodies. Through a flood of quick cutting and montage sequences, a focus on visual style overwhelms the presentation and unification of the performing bodies within the films’ narratives. Films such as Chicago, Moulin Rouge!, Dreamgirls, and Evita fully embrace this visual style to create simultaneously frenetic, stunning, and narratively disruptive visuals. Although All that Jazz, The Pirate Movie, and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum had used similar visual technique to project their sense of generic ambivalence, they generally did so to punctuate isolated moments, project an ironic sense of generic critique, or to illustrate the inner processes/neuroses of their characters. More recently, heavy-handed visuals have become the norm rather than the exception to the rule. Moulin Rouge!, although not as financially successful as some of the contemporary musicals that followed it, perhaps stands as a model of the millennial musical form. Self-referential and visually frenetic, the story of the lovelorn poet and Parisian courtesan bursts forth from preexisting popular music, shaky camerawork, and digital effects. Although the love story develops in a heart-wrenching, almost West Side Story fashion, the associated visuals continually pull away from any sense of reality—slightly fantastical or otherwise. From the film’s beginning, the playful falsity of an anachronistic/fantastic 1890s Paris appears visually though quick cutting, flying characters, and a combination of fast and slow motion. Its over-the-top visual style comes to a head early on as

I Could Go On Singing 187

Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” combines with Labelle’s “Lady Marmalade” and “Zidler’s Rap.” The screen floods with a sea of humanity, combining the tuxedoed upper-class, bizarre circus folk (tattooed dancing musclemen, snake charming lovelies, and the like), and the emcee Zidler and his Diamond Dog dancers. Despite the communal presence that reflects the developing narrative conflict between the show folk, the bohemians, and the Duke, the camerawork pulls attention away from any solid sense of individual interaction to highlight disjointed groups of people who are negligibly shown in actual interaction with each other. The image overpowers the narrative as the green fairy sends the bohemians swirling through the air, Zidler flies and jerkily moves in regular and slow motion, and the camera zooms through the crowd at an irregular, yet breakneck, pace to burst through the doors of the Moulin Rouge. This frenetic quality manifests itself through visual flourishes throughout the film, whether through the CGI effects present in its more intimate moments (as the lovers sing atop the giant elephant before a computer generated Paris) or the struggle between love and money that emerges through the visually stunning “Roxanne Tango.” With quick camera cuts, short shots showing isolated pairs of dancing feet, overhead shots distancing from the dancers to render them simply patterns on a Berkeley-esque dance floor, jerky cuts between characters, and occasional intercutting from one scene to the next, the tango sequence illustrates the tensions implicated through the song and the action, but as with the opening number it overshadows personal interaction with the overwhelming focus on bold visuals. Instead, individual passions, torture, and jealousies blend with faceless body parts to highlight the antithesis of Feuer’s community-bonding dance. Here bodies are disconnected from each other and the narrative itself as the visual image defies a causal logic based on action and follows one more fully dependant on technology and the strength of the image. Simultaneously, these images deny the viewer the vicarious connection and narrative resolution projected through the gracefully mingling bodies of Rogers and Astaire or the coming together of the entire town in a community celebration like Music Man’s “Seventy-Six Trombones” reprise. The reflection of the real fades as the significance of technology takes hold. Similar distanciation from actual personal interaction further emerges through the use of underscored montage sequences. Much like Footloose and Flashdance used the music video-inspired technique to create nearmusicals out of films bereft of integrated song, films such as Dreamgirls, Rent, Evita, From Justin to Kelly (2003), and Across the Universe make heavy

188 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

use of the montage sequence, temporarily or consistently drawing their performances away from the once generically predetermined function of personal expression and/or communal unification. This technique of montage momentarily tears the performance away from the characters performing it to either focus on a larger view of the diegesis—not connected to the actual singing—or to allow space for (often quite didactic) visual flights of fancy. Alan Parker’s Evita diverges from its stage opera form as its rocked-up arrangements underscore montage sequence after montage sequence. On stage the character of Che functions as an angry Our Town-like narrator who occasionally drifts into and out of the depicted moments of Eva’s rise and fall. This filmic version of his participant–observer existence translates into occasional diegetic interaction and repeated montage underscoring. Placing him even further outside the narrative than on stage, Che’s musical numbers emerge through musical montage as quick-paced images create a “realistic” trajectory of Eva’s personal and political rise and fall. As well, numbers performed by “the people” such as “New Argentina” and “Peron’s Latest Flame” appear through montage, replacing the congregated folk of the folk dance and minimizing any sense of co-presence of the female protagonist and those who adore or despise her. This technique—along with the modernizing of the score—removes the focus from the actual people and narrative and replaces it with an overall feel of music video: slick and inhuman (although not wholly inaccurate for Eva). Best known for her stage designs for Lion King and Cirque du Soleil, Julie Taymor embraces similar visuals for her Beatles-inspired Across the Universe. Her trippy hyper-stylized montage sequences and riots repeatedly deny music’s primary power of narrative unification. Although as with Evita, integrated music stands at the center of the narrative, it often appears to be swirling around an inducted soldier, frightened child, or riotous mob, as a flood of bold and quick images truly keep the characters outside of a seamlessly flowing diegesis (Figure 10). Individuals do not sing the music to each other or for each other. It emerges amid a rush of visual and aural chaos. Perhaps the most awkward and generically telling version of this phenomenon occurs in Dreamgirls. In what appears an attempt—as with Evita—to overcome the nearly operatic nature of the stage version, Dreamgirls relies almost wholly on stage performances and montage sequences for nearly the first hour of the film. In the original stage incarnation, almost the entirety of the narrative is sung. On Broadway, songs doubled as narrative and stage numbers. Songs such as “Steppin’ to the Bad Side,” “Cadillac Car,” and “Heavy” functioned as material sung by

I Could Go On Singing 189

Figure 10 Julie Taymor uses her trademark hyper-stylization to create a visual/aural estrangement between character, action, music, and voice in the draft board scene from Across the Universe. (Sony Pictures/Photofest)

the company members to verbalize stage action and then cleanly morphed into stage numbers sung by performers such as the Dreamettes and James Early. In the film, particularly early on, musical numbers function almost wholly as stage numbers or serve as underscoring of montage sequences that push the narrative along. “Steppin’ to the Bad Side” and “Cadillac Car” underscore montage sequences that depict the economic dealings that allowed for the creation of the film’s Afro-centric Motownesque record label. By erasing the integrated level of such numbers, the film more closely adheres to the less generically daring dance film and thereby nearly erases the actual musical interactions and communication of the characters. For a brief moment in “Dark Side” C.C. and Curtis appear to sing along with the music as they strut down a dark alley, but the low key lighting and overall darkness of the mise-en-scène obscure their performance as they are rendered little more than dancing outlines amid a wash of images within the greater montage. Ultimately the film illustrates its own sense of generic confusion when nearly an hour into the film it breaks the rules of its own established cinematic universe and the full company bursts into an awkwardly choreographed rendition of “Family.” As everyone tries to convince Effie not to abandon the group, talk slowly transfers into recitative and then into song as the Dreamettes and the men croon about the power of family and the camera sets up shop almost as if shooting from the audience’s perspective in a proscenium theatre. Momentarily, as this outburst of communal

190 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

bonding through song emerges, Dreamgirls seems to struggle with its own identity. Is it The Sound of Music or is it The Coal Miner’s Daughter? From that point on it engages with a combination of montage, stage, and integrated numbers, although it never truly embraces the hybrid form used on Broadway. Music stays in a safe space, often distanced from the thoughts, emotions, and relationships of its tumultuous characters. Just as the stylistic flourishes in cinematography and editing render irrelevant and separate the larger society—that which in the past has defined the genre—the use of opera exacerbates the division between the real and fictional. Largely absent since the early film musical and the popularization of the operetta, the operatic form returned to the modern day movie musical through the contemporary work of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Jesus Christ Superstar brought Webber’s opera to the big screen for the first time in 1973, but since the mid-nineties, this form has found itself more fully represented. Films such as Evita, Repo! The Genetic Opera, Sweeney Todd (2007), and The Phantom of the Opera take an extreme diversion from the films of the eighties that seemed to almost fear engaging in integrated song and dance. These newer largely operatic films, instead, avoid or strongly minimize non-sung dialogue. They build their diegetic realities through musical performance that springs from the lives of their inhabitants. Whereas scholars once argued that the musical form had created a magical interim space where viewers could see the musical magical cure-all functioning in worlds similar—if nostalgized or fantasized—to their own, these films underscore the millennial musicals’ pull away from connecting the real and the diegetic.20 This integration of opera distances the diegetic from the real as the film constantly reminds of its own difference. When Rodgers and Hammerstein had Ado Annie and Fraulein Maria hash out their problems with Will Parker and Captain Von Trapp, the heightened performance style allowed them to transcend the humdrum realities of farming and child-rearing to negotiate moments of dramatic conflict through the nearly magical musical moment. Instead, the aforementioned contemporary musicals begin their narratives in song and almost wholly remain sung until the films’ ends. A world similar to the real— and a projection of real life solutions—moves further into the distance as the film continuously announces itself as something unreal. As characters constantly communicate through song, the film becomes less apt to communicate with audiences in ways earlier theorized. Style transcends the connection between the cinematic and the social. As Evita begins, for example, a diegetic audience sits watching a motion picture. As an announcer proclaims the death of Eva Peron, Che steps out of the moment as all else freezes and he begins narrating the

I Could Go On Singing 191

ensuing hysteria with “Oh What a Circus.” From that moment on, the film unfolds almost wholly though song. This continual sense of heightened musical reality pulls the form away from the traditional book musical in several ways. First, the diegetic community always appears as some kind of fictitious singing other. Second, the film repositions the function of music as something other than the magical cure or—as was more commonly the case in the ambivalent-leaning musicals— something reserved to express more heightened moments of conflict or emotion. This more operatic form reduces all moments to a similar level. In Evita, music projects the hysteria of Eva’s death (“Oh What a Circus”), the long process of her sleeping to the top (“Goodnight and Thank You”), the otherwise unseen military and upper-class’s disapproval of her as a lover/wife for Juan Peron (“Peron’s Latest Flame”), and a corrupt government’s recent financial success (“And the Money Kept Rolling In”). The narrative never returns to a world reflective of the real (non-musical) one as Eva ultimately speaks fewer than 200 words. Similarly, Repo! The Genetic Opera begins with a complex musical narrativization performed by the grave robber, a character not dissimilar to Che. Through an unsettlingly upbeat song overlaid by comic book images depicting the story, a dark, futuristic world of pay-for-play organ transplants, plastic surgery mania, and grave robbing emerges. GenCo provides those in need with new organs. A missed payment, however, results in repossession of the transplanted organ by the heinous Repo Man. The story unfolds as part horror, part family melodrama, and part opera. The film is wholly sung, as moments of high drama, gruesome murders, and daily chit chat garner similar kinds of musical treatment. Although the higher the drama the louder the vocals, the film as a whole blends one moment of song into the next. The music establishes its presence in these films, perhaps more than ever before, but its contextualization as something special (or at least unique) gives way to an over-presence of performance that obscures the narrative projection of a recognizable and relatable society. Instead, what emerges is a false sense of place. Through their constant integration of song and the visual distance created through high concept stylized visual excess, such films deny the healing connection between the musical and the real worlds.

Communal apathy—Let’s sing and talk about me Along with the stylistic excess projected through visual and aural devices, a sense of communal irrelevance—not simply division— emerges further through musical narratives and song positioning.

192 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

Scholars have traditionally described movie musical narratives as repeatedly working through diegetic conflicts of two opposing sides. Both Schatz and Altman highlight the dueling duos of the musical. Their conflicts, representative of larger social divisions, drive the genre. Per Schatz, genre cinematically negotiates the socially irresolvable as conflicts between cowboys and farmers, men and women, and producers and actors project the possibility of unification and social solution.21 As Grease’s Danny and Sandy negotiate their differing social strata to unite the greasers and the good girls, the film projects the possibility of actual social harmony or unification of the sexes. The more ambivalent musicals often contained similar battling groups but failed to resolve their conflicts, more reflective of the strains of racial, gendered, and sexual conflict of the time (Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, At Long Last Love). Many films of this later period reject this idealized position of stasis by either fully rejecting the desirability of social unity or failing to establish any social conflict which to combat. As with the visual and musical excess of the millennial musical, this narrative tendency projects a sense of overall communal estrangement from within the genre’s emergent form. The communication between groups—whether successful or failed—once integral to the genre’s project fails to emerge through narrative focus on the individual or the niche. The Fantasticks, The Producers, High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008), and Sweeney Todd arrive at similar points of communal apathy, although from strikingly different directions. Despite their disparate narratives, conflicts, periods, and takes on romance and crime, each film develops a storyline that pulls focus from the group or the satisfaction thereof. The Fantasticks—shot in 1995 but not released until 2000—retreats from the grand narratives of many old-school musicals, ultimately providing a very small story. It develops much along the lines of traditional arcadian musicals—boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back; however, following its off-Broadway, small-space roots, it renders the larger community not only invisible but unmentioned. Only four members exist in these opposing communities. The film revolves around Luisa and her father Amos and their neighbor Matt and his father Henry. The fathers conspire to unite the couple, only to find them quickly bored by their parents’ ultimate approval of the relationship. Although the film visually and narratively reflects the mores of the arcadian—with the dark circus people standing in for the villains and rival suitor—the film includes no other community members. They lack larger families. The town appears devoid of any other occupants. In contrast to a film like Godspell, where the young followers of Jesus and John the Baptist

I Could Go On Singing 193

overtly escape the harsh realities of a contemporary New York City, The Fantasticks provides no rationalization for the communal omission. The larger community—or connection to society—remains unimportant and nonexistent. The focus stays on the individuals, the niche. Society plays neither a villainous nor savior role. It just does not matter. To a similar implication, relational conflicts or the need to solve them rest outside the scope of many millennial musicals. Simultaneously lacking the darkness of failed resolution often present in the sixties and seventies and often engaging fully with performative elements and upbeat endings of the arcadian musical, these films project the sense of utopia discussed by Richard Dyer. The energy created through integrated song, blasts of color and spectacle, and rousing dance numbers projects the utopic sensibility Dyer argues could override any lingering questions or conflicts. In the case of films such as High School Musical 3: Senior Year and The Producers, no significant relational conflicts ever emerge to be resolved through the flood of song and dance. Although the films burst forth with the trappings of the arcadian musical, they lack that possibility of a struggled for sense of unification—as a rift never exists or protagonists see communal unity as a non-issue. Whereas the first and second High School Musical films—both released solely on the Disney Channel—produced traditional musical conflicts between the jocks and the brains and the rich and the poor, High School Musical 3: Senior Year falls back on minimal conflict and maximum spectacle. It largely avoids traditional polarizing conflicts (with almost everyone as friends from beginning to end). Troy has to decide where he wants to go to school. Gabriella wants to take early enrollment in college, but knows it will wreck her prom plans. The Evans twins scheme to vie for the Julliard scholarship and attempt to steal their final high school play from the rest of the gang. Briefly Troy and Gabriella’s relationship appears to be in crisis, but even so, the conflict is theirs and not that of the group. The film has no Sharks and Jets, cowboys and farmers, professionals and amateurs. The larger community remains almost irrelevant, except for their needed presence in big production numbers. Similarly, neither Sweeney Todd nor The Producers include traditional notions of dueling sides or make a sense of communal resolution relevant to their outcomes. As with the invisible community of The Fantasticks or the conflict free High School Musical 3: Senior Year, these films engage narratives bereft of any form of social unification. In the film version of the Broadway musicalization of Mel Brooks’ 1968 film The Producers—as was the case in the arguably edgier and more culturally critical original—the community does not seek unification. The dual

194 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

male protagonists hope to pull a fast one on “the people” (the investors). They hope to produce a colossal Broadway flop so that when the show closes quickly they can embezzle the money gained from over-selling stakes in the play. No one stands on the opposing sides of Bialystock and Bloom as they construct the monstrosity that is Springtime for Hitler. They are surrounded by bumbling idiots—actors, cross-dressing directors, and horny octogenarian investors—and never seek to find any kind of unity. Like other films of this period, it embraces the trappings of the community-uniting, social-ill eradicating musical. Giant production numbers (“Springtime for Hitler,” “I Wanna Be a Producer,” “Little Old Lady Land”) provide the visual unification and syncopation that had traditionally foreshadowed the unification of battling sides, but in this case the production numbers remain hollow bursts of visual excess as they reflect no greater bond. In the end, the rogue producers find themselves in prison with no aspiration to atone for their ills. Even if they had such desires for repentance, the narrative never clearly identifies their victims or opposition. Rather they were wholly self-serving. At the film’s conclusion, they remain the same as they were in the beginning, over-selling their prison-themed musical to the prisoners and prison workers and rehearsing a dreadful production they hope will bring them a financial windfall through its failure. They continue pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes, but again without the cynicism or overt social critique more prominent in the films of the mid-sixties to early eighties. Here, the opposing side remains nameless, faceless, and utterly clueless. The same can be argued for Sweeney Todd, a film whose plot engages with cannibalism and murder. Unification never truly comes into question. Compounding the sense of communal ennui established throughout many of these newer musicals’ narratives, the relegation of songs to internal monologue places focus on the internal workings of characters and at times their inabilities to share those with others. Just as the montage sequences, flashy cinematography, and fast-paced editing pull away from the conflicts occurring between individuals within the narrative and detract from actual musical and social integration, the sung soliloquy or musical dream diversion removes the song and singer from the physical and temporal bond once created by music. By no means did these performances represent the first occurrence of internalized song in the musical. Gene Kelly mastered the danced soliloquy or internal monologue with his recurring dream ballets. Such otherworldly song and dance numbers (Oklahoma!’s “Out of My Dreams” or Singin’ in the Rain’s “Broadway Ballet”) removed characters from the presence of the real world to allow them the opportunity to subconsciously work

I Could Go On Singing 195

through their problems and discover real-world solutions. The more contemplative ambivalent musicals lent themselves to camerawork and musical numbers that distanced from real interactions and focused more heavily on the individual, as discussed in Chapter 2. This sense of introspection often overwhelms any larger performative displays, reflecting the larger ideological picture of the films themselves. The Little Prince, Camelot, and Fiddler on the Roof, for example, include numbers that distance from the actions of others to place focus on the personal struggles of their protagonists. As discussed in Chapters 1, 2, and 3, the visuals, narratives, and musical integration of many such films tend toward highlighting the more torturous internal workings of protagonists, rather than focusing on the unification of community and lovers. In many of the films of this millennial boom, the trend toward musical soliloquy further highlights the genre’s contemporary contradictory nature. Although characters often tend toward internal reflection in moments of song, the overall narratives do not reflect the introspection dominant in All That Jazz or The Little Prince. Instead, these narratives often project a sense of utopian possibility more reflective of the earlier arcadian version of the genre. On the surface they project the possibility of unified community, successful romance, and the eradication of narrative conflicts, yet the music circulates outside of the conflict. The music, or magical cure-all, stands apart from the action, perhaps highlighting the superficiality of both the resultant joy and the apparent resolutions within communities only superficially bonded. The music historically evokes the bond, although here—through its introspective or other-worldly nature—it fails to spatially unite the singer(s). This shallow use of music occurs heavily in Across the Universe as it follows the contemporary Broadway trend toward using preexisting songbooks to comprise new musical narratives (Good Vibrations [The Beach Boys, 2005], All Shook Up [Elvis, 2005], Ring of Fire [Johnny Cash, 2006], Rock of Ages [hair-bands of the 1980s and 1990s, 2009]). As with Mamma Mia! (2008), the narrative already suffers from an attempt to shoehorn unrelated songs into a new cohesive narrative. Beatles music tells the story of the tumultuous journeys of American and English 20-somethings during Vietnam. Like Hair, it engages with the war, drug culture, and class wars. Unlike Hair, however, the film largely sidelines the ideological righteousness of the war for a focus on the romance between the expat Brit Jude and the upper-class girl who has followed him to the big city, Lucy, while providing glimpses of other aptly Beatle-inspired characters: the drafted Max (“Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”), musicians Jo-Jo and Sadie (“Get Back” and “Sexy Sadie”),

196 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

and lovelorn lesbian Prudence (“Dear Prudence”). Along with the witty naming of characters, the film wedges songs into its narrative, often without complete rationality. The predetermined lyrics lend themselves to montage sequences (“I Want You’s” psychedelic military induction, “Helter Skelter’s” 60s revolt) rather than meaningful interactions, as well as stage performances (such as “Oh Darling” and “Why Don’t We Do It In the Road”) and overall drug-addled numbers that require no sensical explanation (like Eddie Izzard’s star turn in “Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite”). In addition to hedging integration, throughout Across the Universe, characters use the awkwardly incorporated songs as monologues or sing around others who appear completely unaware that they are being serenaded. Jude repeatedly utilizes this technique. He begins singing “Hold Me Tight” to his girlfriend on the dance floor in England as Lucy sings it to her boyfriend across the ocean. The connection of the song to the others in the scene appears negligible, as it again does shortly thereafter as Jude begins “All My Loving” as he stands with his girlfriend prior to his departure for the United States. The scene, however, does not show any connection between Jude and the girlfriend. Characters singing, as others in the vicinity go fully unaware, appear throughout the film. Music surrounds the characters, but often does not connect them to anything. Mamma Mia! more fully integrates its ABBA tunes, but similarly announces its own awkwardness though its self-reflective and clunky narrative integration of pre-existing lyrics. Taking a similar tack, Chicago short circuits musical/social integration and character interaction by continually stepping outside of the narrative to unrelated fantasy sequences in moments of musical presentation. Very seldom do characters sing and dance—unless on stage—within the real world of the film. The Broadway production did serve as a precedent for some kind of distanciating performance, as the Broadway revival as a whole set itself outside the realm of realistic presentation. Largely draped in black costumes unrealistic for the era or the scene at hand, the company performed their Fosse-inspired choreography in this circuslike otherworld separate from the real time and place of the narrative. The film took this technique further. Whereas the play—and the consistent space of the stage—allowed the narrative, musical numbers, leading players, and ensemble to coexist in a common space, the film version maintains the other-worldliness of the stage version by creating multiple unrelated worlds from song to song. From the “Cellblock Tango’s” sexy and stylized parade of murderesses, to the vaudeville-esque lament of a chagrined husband (“Mr Cellophane”) and a smoky jazz club crosscut

I Could Go On Singing 197

with the diegetic women’s prison (“When You’re Good to Mama”), music functions as something outside the action. The somewhat simple narrative—women kill their men and seek to capitalize on the publicity for show business careers—constantly fades away as these fantasy numbers interrupt the story. As with the montage sequence, repeated soliloquies, and hyper-kinetic editing, this division created between the musical numbers and the actual narrative action works to underscore a lack of communication, a lack of interaction, and a lack of musical unification in these films. As with High School Musical 3: Senior Year, From Justin to Kelly, The Producers, The Fantasticks, and Across the Universe, Chicago ends as most arcadian musicals do—and contrary to the ambivalent—with a bang (in this case literally). These narratives of the millennial musical do not fade away with a sense of ambiguity. Unlike Camelot’s melancholy reprise of its title song, Tommy’s vaguely optimistic ending, or Zoot Suit’s polysemous conclusion, these films conclude with united couples, grand production numbers, and/or a present full community. What these musical techniques do, however, is underscore the lack of connection established between characters, community, and music throughout. This highlights the superficial performances of unity or non-existent conflicts that never threatened an already bonded community. Through both narratives and musical integration, these films go through the motions of the musical genre, but undercut the diegetic connectivity and power of the music itself. I know what you are, you’re a musical: Generic and narrative reflexivity A final characteristic prevalent in these films and—perhaps along with visual stylings—the most definitive of the period is an ever-increasing sense of generic-reflexivity, parody, and pastiche. Like contemporary trends toward intertextuality and personal satisfaction through engagement with the ironic or nostalgic (for example tongue-in-cheek cinematic remakes of 1970s action TV shows, films such as Pleasantville [1998] and The Wedding Singer, viewer created fanvids and fan fiction, and so on), these musicals rely on a viewer’s identification with and appreciation for past pop culture for present satisfaction. Complimenting the generic estrangement from the “we” and the focus on the “I,” this rising level of self-awareness simultaneously denies the vicarious sense of social unification and rewards viewers with a personal sense of pop culture identification. Films like Mamma Mia!, Across the Universe, Moulin Rouge!, South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny (2006), and Cannibal beg for recognition of their

198 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

ironic play with the musical genre, varying musical styles, and preexisting pop music hits. Just as the constant intrusion of heavy-handed camerawork and non-stop opera distance the musical from the once common reflection of real-world problems (and hoped for solutions), this strong presence of reflexivity drives a wedge between sincere reflection of social mores and a playful sense of mocking—of both social norms and the musical itself. This disconnect between the sincere projection of musical reality (Look, if we can do it, you can do it) and the ironic sense of the millennial musical (This musical thing is just too silly) emerge partially through the repeated use of pre-existing musical numbers in new contexts. Whereas the integrated music of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Lowe, and Gilbert and Sullivan sprung forth from characters’ mouths as if magically transforming their thoughts into music, the music of Mamma Mia!, Moulin Rouge!, and Across the Universe comes equipped with its own ironic baggage. These films reposition music initially intended for other purposes. Lyrics no longer evoke the unique thoughts of the narrative’s character as popularized by the book musicals. They recall their previous context and announce their own insincerity and displacement. As discussed regarding opera and excessive style, this trend—extremely popular on the contemporary Broadway stage—announces its own artifice. As Across the Universe transplants iconic Beatles tunes into a story of romance and revolution, the film begs for a pat on the head for its witty combination of classic lyrics and narrative and musical integration. As each character takes his or her name from a lyric, the film reinforces its own artifice. Mamma Mia! functions similarly as the extremely weak narrative forces songs into its structure. Non-sensical blocking and choreography (such as smoking cigars in “Lay Your Love on Me” to legitimize a line or broad prop comedy in “Dancing Queen”) and frenetic performances (especially by Meryl Streep—in her oddest performance to date—and her two comrades) attempt to cloak the fact that the songs really add little to the weak narrative. Fitting even worse into the narrative than in Across the Universe, the songs stand as little more than a reminder that in a past era and unrelated context ABBA was extremely popular. Moulin Rouge!’s integration of pop songs embraces a similar sense of nostalgic reminiscence and intertextuality while embracing a stronger sense of personal gratification and irony. Unlike the aforementioned films, the music does not come wholly from a given artist. Instead, Luhrmann brings a combination of pop music, musical theatre, Hindi-inspired orchestrations, and new tunes to accomplish the height

I Could Go On Singing 199

of pastiche. As seemingly non sequitured songs crop up throughout—at times alone and at others combined with each other—the film engages in a game of “name that tune.” As with visuals distracting from the somewhat arcadian narrative itself, the musical form embraced in the film encourages a focus on the witty music choices themselves, from the opening medley to the “Elephant Love Medley’s” unexpected combination of U2, David Bowie, The Beatles, Dolly Parton, and Elton John and titillating re-contextualizations of The Police’s “Roxanne” and Madonna’s “Like a Virgin.” As musicals traditionally use recitative to blend word into music, Moulin Rouge! uses the technique to toy with the audience as it attempts to guess what piece of popular music will appear next and how it will be used. The possibility for the vicarious solution of social problems fades as the film places style and witty integration of music ahead of narrative. Moulin Rouge!—like Mamma Mia! and Across the Universe—is not your father’s musical. It is yours and yours alone as the viewer combs his or her pop culture knowledge for ultimate satisfaction. This narrative invasion by a heavy-handed intertext and reliance on pop culture knowledge and intertextual appreciation transcends the new jukebox musicals. As John Travolta takes his drag turn as Edna Turnblad in 2006’s Hairspray and the unseen Mel Brooks re-vocalizes “Don’t be stupid, be a shmartie, come and join the Nazi Party” from the 1968 The Producers in the 2005 remake, they deny the uniqueness of their current roles and playfully recall earlier productions. Brooks overtly evokes his earlier production and Travolta references the genderswitching casting of Divine in the 1988 version and performs Vincent Vega’s dance moves from Pulp Fiction (1994). Both films make small nods to their earlier incarnations and other films. This wink reflects the playfulness emergent in the genre on stage and screen during this later period. As discussed earlier, shows such as the puppet-driven Avenue Q, various playful film-to-stage musicalizations (for example, The Wedding Singer, High Fidelity [2000 and 2006], and 9 to 5), and the pee-for-pay Tony winner Urinetown had ushered in a sense of playfulness to a form that had taken a serious turn with Miss Saigon (1991), Les Misérables (1987), and The Phantom of the Opera (1988) in the 1980s and 1990s. This playfulness escalated on the screen with small and large productions such as Moulin Rouge!, South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, and Cannibal. These three films transcend the playful winks of Hairspray and The Producers in favor of full-blown genre play. The former two showcase their creators’ knowledge of generic tropes and pop culture, while the latter flays any serious take on the genre itself.

200 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

Despite staying clear of any discussion of animated musicals—except in the previous section where they defined the genre in lieu of live action integration—ignoring South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut in this contemporary time of genre parody seemed simply unconscionable. Released one year prior to Moulin Rouge! and four years after its director’s first foray into the musical with Cannibal, South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut strikes a scathing blow at the genre. Embracing old school generic tropes—battling sides (Americans vs. Canadians), villains (Saddam Hussein and Satan), nostalgized America, and a mystical quest for love (in Stan’s search for the clitoris)—the film uses generic norms and styles reflective of a history of musical film and theatre. As the film opens with the television show’s trademark childlike animation, the boys of South Park sing “Mountain Town.” As the passed-along-song goes from Stan to fellow townspeople, it extols the virtues of their perfect mountain home. Soon, rude passersby and Kenny’s redneck parents encroach upon the idyllic scene and lyrics devolve into defining the town as “redneck,” “white trash,” and “podunk.” Writers Parker and Stone continue to use musical tropes for their own playful purposes as they weave familiar visuals and musical styles into their numbers. As Satan laments Saddam Hussein’s shortcomings as a lover he sings “Up There,” a song evoking Disney’s “A Whole New World” and “Part of Your World.” Simultaneously the number visually suggests the famous CGI overhead swooping 360 degree ballroom shot from Beauty and the Beast’s title song as “Up There” begins with a whooshing 90 degree spinning shot of Hell. They evoke Les Misérables through vocal quality and layering of songs as battling factions combine lyrics of “Blame Canada,” “Tomorrow Night,” “Up There,” “Uncle Fucka,” and “La Resistance” to create a ridiculous incarnation of the iconic stage show’s climactic end of Act I “One Day More.” Similar trends emerge through Moulin Rouge! as it alternately uses lyrics from “Sound of Music,” the musical style of Jacques Offenbach (“The Pitch”), and elements of the cinematic style of Busby Berkeley (“Like a Virgin” and “The Roxanne Tango”). These films transcend the playfulness of the intertextuality and winking montages of The Pirate Movie and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. The self awareness of these films transcends a state of critiquing the generic dictates of romance, nostalgia, and musical integration and instead elevates to a point of laying the tropes bare for mocking and indiscriminate use. Such films largely distance themselves from contemplation on the social implications of the form—as the ambivalent musical reflected on the problematic norms of the arcadian—and use them as toys in an alternating game of parody and

I Could Go On Singing 201

pastiche. Less than commenting on or reflecting social trials and tribulations, they reflect a contemporary sense of personalization of what was once public as the form is reworked to fit individual vehicles and viewers are asked to use their personal cultural knowledge—learned at the foot of the VCR, DVR, i-pod, PC, and television—to play along.

Conclusion As with my arguments regarding the 1966–1983 period, I would never claim that the forms popularized over last two decades will stand as the new and definitive Hollywood musical form. Although a certain articulation of the genre may be the more prominent at a given time, musicals will always exist on a sliding scale of generic adherence and rejection. Diversity will remain within the musical, and the genre will continue—as it has for decades—to respond to shifting artistic, cinematic, theatrical, and social norms. However, I hope this epilogue helps pique interest in the current development of the genre and its reflection of a developing society that enjoys a tenuous relationship with the social mores promulgated by the more arcadian musicals of an earlier era. More in tune with the hyper-mediated and me-directed realities of Generation X and Generation Y, its forms and tales address the individual. Rather than redefining the musical, this book has sought to broaden the ideological discussion of the Hollywood musical and bridge existing gaps between the areas of film studies and gender studies. Although the gendered deviations of the genre’s last quarter century pale in comparison to those of the 1966–1983 period, the genre’s overarching gendered project—and its direct connection to generic norms—begged for deeper interrogation. While film and gender have been deep in conversation for over 30 years and scholarship has turned to question once seemingly incongruous relationships between gender and Hollywood genre—such as male melodrama and the female action hero—gendered study of the musical often has focused on examinations of queered masculinity, queer spectatorship, heterosexual romance, and the specularization of the female or male body through dance. While not dismissing the importance of works on masculinity in the film musical by scholars such as Brett Farmer, Steven Cohan, Steve Neale, and David Gerstner (along with the works of D.A. Miller and John Clum on the theatrebound musical), I hope that this project has pulled these two disciplines closer together, exploring the largely uncharted waters where men dance the aqua ballet. Focusing not only on marginalized masculinities or the narrative threat implied through the musical formula, this book has set

202 Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical

out to implicate the place, performance, and redefinition of hegemonic and non-hegemonic masculinities within the genre. Men need not be queered to sing and dance. Narratives do grow beyond that of romantic domestication. The identification and analysis of these emerging narrative strains and the visual and performative styles that accompany them bring to light a wider view of the circulation of men within a genre often separated from masculinity studies. All in all, my hope has been to expand the discussion of the Hollywood musical. Yes, the overall visual and performative excesses associated with the genre surely bring multiple levels of joy to its viewers. How can one watch the visual dynamism of Moulin Rouge!’s “Roxanne Tango” or social critique present in Sweet Charity’s “Rhythm of Life” (after all, Sammy Davis Jr was groovy) without engaging on a purely aesthetic level? However, beyond the pure joy associated with the toe-tapping music and visual spectacle, these films transcend the fluff and reinforcement of social norms often associated with the genre to present biting critiques of the society into which they emerge and the gender identities of those living in it. I have sought to make explicit the changing shape of this oft-labeled traditionalist genre and the implications of masculinity that accompany its generic incarnations. Further, it has sought to highlight the genre’s greater context in the wealth of cinematic innovation and industrial and cultural change occurring since the mid-1960s. True, even the musical found itself wrapped up in the New American Cinema and the crazy social conflicts of the sixties, seventies, and eighties. Guys like Robert Altman, Martin Scorsese, and Mike Nichols did not corner the market on edginess and artistic innovation. Congruently, today’s musicals continue to follow industrial, ideological, and artistic trends as they often favor forms of narrative and visual selfawareness that put a playful (yet somewhat socially estranged) twist on the ever-evolving genre. Within these greater historical and artistic contexts, repeated performances of narrative, stylistic, and ideological tropes commingle to establish readable forms separate from that of the arcadian. While many genres have been studied through their various historical incarnations, the musical—a foundational genre of the motion picture industry since the very emergence of sound—has perhaps been under-investigated, often relegated to discussions of social and sexual conformity. Evolving from early and socially biting musical vehicles like the Beggar’s Opera to the ultimate idealistic conclusions of Rodgers and Hammerstein and then back to socially contentious subject matter, the musical has gone beyond mere cultural back-patting to create overt critiques of the

I Could Go On Singing 203

societies—and cinematic conventions—that once served as its bread and butter. The popularization of the ambivalent form of the musical from the late sixties to mid-eighties surely illustrates the means by which even seemingly conservative genres alter both superficially and structurally to suit different needs, both cultural and stylistic. As the musical continues to evolve and messages created by the back and forth flow of stage to screen images move even farther toward social and cultural reflexivity, the musical genre seems almost ready to implode. It once contained social norms by naturally and neatly wrapping narratives up with a quaint marital bow, but new films and stage productions continue to point out and make light of the fallacious and overt construction of norms implicated by early incarnations of the genre. Moving from naturalization to cynicism to overt parody and stylization, the genre continues to gesture toward a space where a conscious performance of song and dance—once rendered natural by its narrative context—has turned into the means by which the musical highlights the social condition and lack of unity. While the genre has certainly produced decades of hoedowns, marital production numbers, and metaphorical group hugs, more and more new versions of the musical meet such events with cynicism and manipulate them to undermine the established generic form for its own self-exposure. No longer can Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney put on a show to save the town. The town is often unsalvageable (or at least unimportant). As the happy—although perhaps also cannibalistic, solipsistic, or intertextually parodic—singers and dancers perform in their dreams, as they murder, or as they sing someone else’s song, it becomes painfully or hysterically self-evident that the “Shapoopie,” square dance, or communal polka will not always save the day.

Appendix A

Integrated Musicals 1966–1983 Date

Title

Director

Male Star(s)

Producer(s)

American Distributor(s)

1966∗ A Funny thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Richard Lester

Zero Mostel, Jack Gilford, Buster Keaton, Phil Silvers, Michael Crawford

Quadrangle Films

United Artists

1967∗ Camelot

Joshua Logan

Richard Harris, Franco Nero, David Hemmings

Warner Bros./Seven Arts

Warner Bros./Seven Arts

1967

Doctor Dolittle

Richard Fleischer

Rex Harrison, Anthony Newley, Richard Attenborough

20th Century-Fox Film Corporation

20th Century-Fox Film Corporation

1967

Good Times

William Friedkin

Sonny Bono

MPI

Columbia Pictures

1967∗ How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying

David Swift

Robert Morse, Rudy Vallee, Anthony “Scooter” Teague

Mirisch Corp.

United Artists

1967∗ Half a Sixpence

George Sidney

Tommy Steele, Cyril Ritchard

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures

1967

Thoroughly Modern Millie

George Roy Hill

James Fox, John Gavin, Jack Soo, Pat Morita

Universal

Universal

1968

Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

Ken Hughes

Dick Van Dyke, Lionel Jeffries, Benny Hill

Dramatic Features/ Warfield

United Artists

1968∗ Finian’s Rainbow

Francis Ford Coppola

Fred Astaire, Tommy Steele, Don Francks

Warner Bros./Seven Arts

Warner Bros./Seven Arts

1968∗ Funny Girl

William Wyler

Omar Sharif, Walter Pidgeon

Columbia Pictures Corporation, Rastar

Columbia Pictures Corporation

204

205 1968∗ Oliver!

Carol Reed

Ron Moody, Oliver Reed, Mark Lester, Jack Wild

Romulus Productions

Columbia Pictures

1969

Herbert Ross

Peter O’Toole, Michael Redgrave

APJAC Productions, MGM

MGM

1969∗ Hello, Dolly!

Gene Kelly

Walter Matthau, Michael Crawford, Tommy Tune, Danny Lockin, Louis Armstrong

20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, Chenault Productions

20th Century-Fox Film Corporation

1969∗ Paint Your Wagon

Joshua Logan

Clint Eastwood, Lee Marvin, Harve Presnell, Ray Walston

Paramount Pictures, Malpaso Pictures

Paramount Pictures

1969∗ Sweet Charity

Bob Fosse

John McMartin, Stubby Kaye, Sammy Davis Jr, Ricardo Montalban

Universal

Universal Pictures

1970∗ On A Clear Day You Can See Forever

Vincente Minnelli

Yves Montand, Jack Nicholson

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures

1970

Ronald Neame

Albert Finney

Cinema Center 100 Productions, Waterbury Productions

National General Pictures

1970∗ Song of Norway

Andrew L. Stone

Toralv Maurstad, Frank Porretta

ABC Pictures, American Broadcasting Company

Cinerama Releasing Corporation

1971

Robert Stevenson

David Tomlinson, Roddy McDowall

Walt Disney Productions

Buena Vista Distribution Company

1971∗ The Boy Friend

Ken Russell

Tommy Tune, Christopher Gable

MGM, Russflix

MGM

1971∗ Fiddler on the Roof

Norman Jewison

Topol, Leonard Frey, Paul Michael Glaser, Paul Mann

Mirisch-Cartier Productions

United Artists

1971

Mel Stuart

Gene Wilder, Jack Albertson, Peter Ostrum

David L. Wolper Productions

Paramount Pictures

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

Scrooge

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

206 (Continued) Date

Title

Director

Male Star(s)

Producer(s)

American Distributor(s)

1972∗ 1776

Peter L. Hunt

William Daniels, Howard DaSilva, Ken Howard

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Columbia Pictures

1972∗ Man of La Mancha

Arthur Hiller

Peter O’Toole, James Coco

Produzioni Europee Associate Production

United Artists

1973∗ Godspell

David Greene

Victor Garber, David Haskell, Merrell Jackson, Gilmer McCormick, Jeffrey Mylett

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Columbia Pictures

1973∗ Jesus Christ Superstar

Norman Jewison

Ted Neeley, Carl Anderson, Barry Dennen, Josh Mostel

Universal Pictures

Universal Pictures

1973

Lost Horizon

James Jarrott

Peter Finch, George Kennedy, Michael York, John Gielgud, James Shigeta, Bobby Van, Charles Boyer

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Columbia Pictures

1973

Tom Sawyer

Don Taylor

Johnny Whitaker, Jeff East, Warren Oates, Noah Keen

Readers Digest, Apjac International

United Artists

1974

Catch My Soul

Patrick McGoohan

Ritchie Havens, Lance LeGault, Tony Joe White

Metromedia

Cinerama Releasing Corporation

1974

Huckleberry Finn

J. Lee Thompson

Jeff East, Paul Winfield, Harvey Korman, David Wayne

Readers Digest, Apjac International

United Artists

1974

The Little Prince

Stanley Donen

Richard Kiley, Steven Warner, Gene Wilder, Bob Fosse

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures

Daniel Mann

Brock Peters, Clifton Davis, Paul Rogers

Cinévision Ltée, American Film Theatre

American Film Theatre

1974∗ Lost in the Stars

207 1974∗ Mame

Gene Saks

Robert Preston, Bruce Davison, John McGiver

ABC, Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Pictures

1975

At Long Last Love

Peter Bogdanovich

Burt Reynolds, Duilio Del Prete, John Hillerman

20th Century-Fox Film Corporation, Copa del Oro

20th Century-Fox Film Corporation

1975

Funny Lady

Herbert Ross

James Caan, Omar Sharif, Ben Vereen

Columbia, Rastar Pictures, Vista

Columbia Pictures

1975

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Jim Sharman

Barry Bostwick, Tim Curry, Meatloaf, Richard O’Brien, Jonathan Adams, Peter Hinwood

20th Century-Fox Film Corporation

20th Century-Fox Film Corporation

1975

Tommy

Ken Russell

Roger Daltrey, Keith Moon, Elton John, Peter Townshend, John Entwistle, Oliver Reed, Jack Nicholson, Eric Clapton

Hemdale Film Corporation, Robert Stigwood Organization

Columbia Pictures

1976

Bugsy Malone

Alan Parker

Scott Baio, John Cassisi, Martin Lev

Robert Stigwood Organisation Ltd., Bugsy Malone Productions, Goodtimes Enterprises, National Film Finance Consortium, National Film Trustee Company, The Rank Organisation

Paramount Pictures

Harold Prince

Len Cariou, Laurence Guittard, Christopher Guard

Sascha-Verleih, S&T Film Berlin

New World Pictures

1977∗ A Little Night Music

208 (Continued) Date

Title

Director

Male Star(s)

Producer(s)

American Distributor(s)

1978∗

Grease

Randal Kleiser

John Travolta, Jeff Conaway, Sid Caesar, Edd Byrnes, Frankie Avalon, Sha-Na-Na-Na

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures

1978

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

Michael Schultz

The Bee Gees, Peter Frampton, Frankie Howerd, Donald Pleasence, Steve Martin, Alice Cooper, Aerosmith, George Burns

Robert Stigwood Organization

Universal Pictures

1978∗

The Wiz

Sidney Lumet

Nipsey Russell, Michael Jackson, Ted Ross, Richard Pryor

Universal Pictures, Motown

Universal Pictures

1979

All That Jazz

Bob Fosse

Roy Scheider, Ben Vereen

Columbia Pictures Corporation, 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation

20th Century-Fox Film Corporation

1979∗

Hair

Milos Forman

John Savage, Treat Williams, Dorsey Wright, Don Dacus

CIP Film Produktions GMBH

United Artists

1980

Can’t Stop the Music

Nancy Walker

The Village People, Paul Sand, Bruce Jenner, Steve Guttenberg

EMI

Associated Film Distribution

1980

The Blues Brothers

John Landis

John Belushi, Dan Ackroyd, James Brown, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, Henry Gibson

Universal Pictures

Universal Pictures

1980

Popeye

Robert Altman

Robin Williams, Ray Walston, Paul Dooley, Paul L. Smith

Paramount Pictures, Walt Disney Productions

Paramount Pictures

1980

Xanadu

Robert Gene Kelly, Greenwald Michael Beck

Universal Pictures

Universal Pictures

209

∗

1981

Pennies From Heaven

Herbert Ross

Steve Martin, John McMartin, Christopher Walken

MGM, SLM Entertainment, Ltd., Hera Productions

MGM

1981

Zoot Suit

Luis Valdez

Daniel Valdez, Edward James Olmos, Charles Aidman

Universal Pictures

Universal Pictures

1982∗

Annie

John Huston

Albert Finney, Tim Curry, Geoffrey Holder

Columbia Pictures, Ray Stark Productions

Columbia Pictures

1982∗

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas

Colin Higgins

Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise, Jim Neighbors, Charles Durning

RKO

Universal Pictures

1982

Grease 2

Patricia Birch

Adrian Zmed, Maxwell Caulfield, Sid Caesar, Tab Hunter

Paramount Pictures

Paramount Pictures

1982

One from the Heart

Francis Ford Coppola

Frederic Forrest, Raul Julia, Harry Dean Stanton

Zoetrope Studios

Columbia

1982

The Pirate Movie

Ken Annakin

Christopher Atkins, Ted Hamilton, Bill Kerr

Joseph Hamilton International Productions

20th CenturyFox Film Corporation

1983∗

Pirates of Penzance

Wilford Leach

Kevin Kline, Rex Smith, George Rose

Universal Pictures, St. Michael Finance Limited, Timothy Burrill Productions

Universal Pictures

1983

Yentl

Barbra Streisand

Mandy Patinkin, Nehemiah Persoff

Barwood, Ladbroke Investments, United Artists

MGM/UA Entertainment Company

Ran on Broadway before coming to the screen.

210 1984–1995 (Pre-Evita) Quasi-Integrated, Integrated, and Dance/Band Musicals Date

Title

Director

Star(s)

Producer(s)

American Distributor(s)

1983

Flashdance

Adrian Lyne

Jennifer Beals, Michael Nouri, Lee Ving

Paramount Pictures, A PolyGram Pictures Production

Paramount Pictures

1984

Purple Rain

Albert Magnoli

Prince, Apollonia Kotero, Morris Day

Warner Bros. Pictures, Purple Films, Water

Warner Bros. Pictures

1984

Footloose

Herbert Ross

Kevin Bacon, Lori Singer, John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Chris Penn

Paramount Pictures, IndieProd Company Productions

Paramount Pictures

1984

Beat Street

Stan Lathan

Rae Dawn Chong, Guy Davis, Jon Chardiet, Robert Taylor

Harry Belafonte, David V. Picker

Orion Pictures Corporation

1984

Breakin’

Joel Silbert

Lucinda Dickey, Adolfo Quinones, Michael Chambers

Golan-Globus Productions

The Cannon Group, MGM/UA Entertainment Company

1984

Breakin’ 2 Electric Bogaloo

Sam Firstenberg

Lucinda Dickey, Adolfo Quinones, Michael Chambers

Cannon Films

Cannon Pictures, Hoyts Distribution, RCA-ColumbiaHoyts Home Video, TriStar Pictures

1985

Girls Just Want to Have Fun

Alan Metter

Sarah Jessica Parker, Helen Hunt, Lee Montgomery

New World Pictures, Girls

New World Pictures

1985∗ A Chorus Line

Richard Michael Attenborough Douglas, Michael Blevins, Yamil Borges

Embassy Film Associates, PolyGram Filmed Entertainment

Columbia Pictures

1986∗ Little Shop of Horrors

Frank Oz

Rick Moranis, Ellen Greene, Vincent Gardenia, Steve Martin

The Geffen Company

Warner Bros. Pictures

1986

Prince

Prince, Jerome Benton, Kristin Scott Thomas

Warner Bros. Pictures

Warner Bros. Pictures

Under the Cherry Moon

211 1987

Dirty Dancing

Emile Ardolino

Jennifer Grey, Patrick Swayze, Jerry Orbach, Cynthia Rhodes

Great American Films Limited Partners, Vestron Pictures

Vestron Pictures

1988

Hairspray

John Waters

Ricki Lake, Divine, Ruth Brown, Sonny Bono, Deborah Harry

New Line Cinema, Stanley F. Buchthal, Robert Shaye Productions

New Line Cinema

1988

Earth Girls are Easy

Julien Temple

Geena Davis, Jeff Goldblum, Jim Carrey, Damon Wayans, Julie Brown, Michael McKean

DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group, Earth Girls, Kestrel Films

Vestron Pictures

1988

Satisfaction

Joan Freeman

Justine Bateman, Liam Neeson, Julia Roberts, Deborah Harry, Scott Coffey

20th CenturyFox Film Corporation, National Broadcasting System

20th Century-Fox Film Corporation

1988

School Daze

Spike Lee

Spike Lee, Laurence Fishburne, Giancarlo Esposito, Tisha CampbellMartin, Kyme

40 Acres & a Mule Filmworks, Columbia Pictures Corporation

Columbia Pictures

1990

Cry Baby

John Waters

Johnny Depp, Amy Locane, Susan Tyrrell, Polly Bergen, Iggy Pop, Ricki Lake, Tracy Lords

Universal Pictures, Imagine Entertainment

Universal Pictures

1992

Newsies

Kenny Ortega

Christian Bale, David Moscow, Max Casella, Luke Edwards

Touchwood Pacific Partners 1, Walt Disney Pictures

Buena Vista Pictures

212 (Continued)

∗

Date Title

Director

Star(s)

Producer(s)

American Distributor(s)

1992 Sarafina!

Darrell Roodt

Leleti Khumalo, Whoopi Goldberg

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Distant Horizons, Hollywood Pictures, Ideal, Les Films Ariane, Miramax Films, Vanguard Productions (II), Videovision Entertainment

Buena Vista Pictures

Ran on Broadway before coming to the screen.

1996–2009 (Post-Evita) Integrated Musicals Date

Title

Director

Star(s)

Producer(s)

American Distributor(s)

1995+

The Fantasticks

Michael Ritchie

Joel Grey, Barnard Hughes, Jean Louisa Kelly, Joe McIntyre, Jonathon Morris

Michael Richards Productions, The Radmin Company, Sullivan Street Productions

United Artists

1996

Cannibal! The Musical

Trey Parker

Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Dian Bachar, Jason McHugh, John Hegel, Toddy Walters, Stan Brakhage

Avenging Conscience, Cannibal Films Ltd.

Troma Entertainment, Screen Edge,

1996

Everyone Says I Love You

Woody Allen

Edward Norton, Drew Barrymore, Alan Alda, Goldie Hawn

Miramax Films, Buena Vista Pictures, Magnolia Productions, Sweetland Films

Miramax Films

1996∗

Evita

Alan Parker

Madonna, Antonio Banderas, Jonathan Pryce, Jimmy Nail

Hollywood Pictures, Cinergi, Dirty Hands

Buena Vista Pictures

213 1999

South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut

Trey Parker

Trey Parker, Matt Stone, Mary Kay Bergman, Isaac Hayes

Comedy Central Films, Comedy Partners, Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures

Paramount Pictures

2000

Dancer in the Dark

Lars Von Trier

Bjork, Catherine Deneuve, David Morse, Peter Stormare, Joel Grey

Zentropa Entertainments, Trust Film Svenska, Film i Väst, Liberator Productions, Pain Unlimited GmbH Filmproduktion, Cinematograph A/S, What Else? B.V.

Fine Line Features

2000

Love’s Labour’s Lost

Kenneth Branagh

Alessandro Nivola, Alicia Silverstone, Kenneth Branagh, Matthew Lillard, Natascha McElhone, Adrian Lester, Nathan Lane

Arts Council of England, Intermedia Films, Pathé Pictures International, Shakespeare Film Company

Intermedia, Miramax Films

2001

Moulin Rouge!

Baz Luhrmann

Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor, John Leguizamo, Jim Broadbent, Richard Roxburgh

Angel Studios, Bazmark Films, 20th Century-Fox Film Corporation

20th CenturyFox Film Corporation

2002∗ Chicago

Rob Marshall

Taye Diggs, Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Richard Gere, Queen Latifah, John C. Reilly

Miramax Films, Producers Circle, Storyline Entertainment, Kalis Productions GmbH & Co. KG

Miramax Films

2003

Andre Champagne

Alan Bernhoft, Lisa Peterson

Andre Champagne Productions

Omega Entertainment

The Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde Rock ’n Roll Musical

214 (Continued) Date

Title

Director

Star(s)

Producer(s)

American Distributor(s)

2003

From Justin to Kelly

Robert Iscove

Kelly Clarkson, Justin Guarini, Katherine Bailess, Anika Noni Rose

19 Entertainment

20th CenturyFox Film Corporation

2003

The Singing Detective

Keith Gordon

Robert Downey Jr, Robin Wright Penn, Mel Gibson

Keith Gordon, Haft Entertainment

Paramount Classics

2004∗ The Phantom of the Opera

Joel Schumacher

Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Patrick Wilson, Miranda Richardson, Minnie Driver

Odyssey Entertainment, Warner Bros. Pictures, Really Useful Films, Scion Films, Joel Schumacher Productions

Warner Bros. Pictures

2005∗ The Producers

Susan Stroman

Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Uma Thurman, Will Ferrell

Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures Corporation, Brooksfilms

Universal Pictures

2005∗ Rent

Chris Columbus

Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal, Rosario Dawson, Jesse L. Martin, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Idina Menzel, Tracie Thoms, Taye Diggs

Rent Productions LLC, 1492 Pictures, Revolution Studios, Tribeca Productions

Columbia Pictures, Sony Pictures Releasing

2006∗ Dreamgirls

Bill Condon

Jamie Foxx, Beyoncé Knowles, Eddie Murphy, Jennifer Hudson, Anika Noni Rose, Keith Robinson

DreamWorks SKG, Paramount Pictures, Laurence Mark Productions

Paramount Pictures

215 2006

Colma: The Musical

Richard Wong

Jake Moreno, HP Mendoza, LA Renigen, Sigrid Sutter, Brian Raffi

Greenrocksolid

Roadside Attractions

2007∗

Hairspray

Adam Shankman

John Travolta, Christopher Walken, Michelle Pfeiffer, Amanda Bynes, James Marsden, Queen Latifah, Brittany Snow, Zac Efron, Elijah Kelley, Nikki Blonsky

New Line Cinema, Ingenious Film Partners, Storyline Entertainment, Zadan/Meron, Offspring Entertainment, Legion Entertainment

New Line Cinema

2007∗

Sweeney Todd

Tim Burton

Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jamie Campbell Bower, Jayne Wisener

DreamWorks Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, Parkes/ MacDonald Productions, The Zanuck Company, Dombey Street Productions, Tim Burton Productions

Paramount Pictures

2007

Enchanted

Kevin Lima

Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, James Marsden, Timothy Spall, Idina Menzel, Julie Andrews

Walt Disney Pictures, Andalasia Productions, Josephson Entertainment, Right Coast Productions

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

2007

Across the Universe

Julie Taymor

Evan Rachel Wood, Jim Sturgess, Joe Anderson, Dana Fuchs, Martin Luther, TV Carpio

Revolution Studios, Gross Entertainment, Team Todd, Prologue Films

Columbia Pictures, Revolution Studios, Sony Pictures Entertainment

2008∗

Mamma Mia!

Phyllida Lloyd

Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård, Julie Walters, Dominic Cooper, Amanda Seyfried, Christine Baranski

Universal Pictures, Littlestar Productions, Relativity Media, Playtone, Internationale Filmproduktion Richter

Universal Pictures

216 (Continued) Date

Title

Director

Star(s)

Producer(s)

American Distributor(s)

2008

High School Musical 3: Senior Year

Kenny Ortega

Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale, Lucas Grabeel, Corbin Bleu, Monique Coleman

Borden and Rosenbush Entertainment, Walt Disney Pictures

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures

2008

Repo! The Genetic Opera

Darren Lynn Bousman

Alexa Vega, Paul Sorvino, Anthony Head, Sarah Brightman, Paris Hilton, Bill Moseley, Nivek Ogre, Terrance Zdunich

Twisted Pictures, Burg/Koules Productions

Lionsgate

∗

Ran on Broadway before coming to the screen. running production in the history of American theatre, running from 1960–2002 at the Sullivan Street Playhouse and then revived in 2006 and still running at the time of writing. Although the film is dated 1995, it was not truly released until 2000. + Longest

Notes

Introduction: The Musical and Masculinity Take a Turn for the Ambivalent 1. Rev. of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Variety 2 June 1954: 6. 2. Penelope Gilliant, Rev. of Tommy. The New Yorker 7 April 1975: 123–4. 3. Only four integrated musicals were released between 1983 and 1996, and not until the mini-musical boom of 1996 with Everyone Says I Love You, Evita, and Cannibal: The Musical did any given year see more than one integrated musical released. 4. For more on women standing at the center of the musical see Stacy Wolf’s A Problem Like Maria. Stacy Wolf, A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002). 5. Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres (New York: Random House, 1981) 28–9; Rick Altman, American Film Musical (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987) 28–32. 6. Richard Dyer, “Entertainment and Utopia,” Hollywood Musicals: The Film Reader, ed. Steven Cohan (London and New York: Routledge, 2002). 7. Steven Cohan, Incongruous Entertainment: Camp, Cultural Value, and The MGM Musical (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2005) 164–83, 107–32. 8. In Open a New Window: The Broadway Musical in the 1960s, Ethan Mordden cites that decade as a turning point in the Broadway musical. He situates this shift within various shows that would ultimately come to screen by the 1970s, such as Fiddler on the Roof (1964), Man of la Mancha (1965), Camelot (1960), Cabaret (1966), Hair (1968), and 1776 (1969). As the Rodgers and Hammerstein era came to a close, Broadway musicals began to show more edgy chops. With shows such as Fiddler on the Roof, Man of la Mancha, and Cabaret set in less utopian scenarios; 1776 de-romanticizing The Declaration of Independence while almost entirely eliminating dance and largely keeping its romantic couple separated; and Hair bringing rock music into the fray, the genre was demonstrating a significant shift from the old standbys of American musical theatre. Ethan Mordden, Open a New Window: Broadway Musical in the 1960s (New York: Palgrave, 2001). 9. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990) 134–41. 10. John Mueller, “Fred Astaire and the Integrated Musical,” Cinema Journal 24:1 (1984): 28–40. 11. Jerome Delamater, Dance in the Hollywood Musical (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1981) 98. 12. Mueller, Cinema Journal, 28–40. 13. Altman, American Film Musical, 115. 14. Ibid., 16–27. 217

218 Notes 15. For more on bricolage and choreography, see Jane Feuer’s The Hollywood Musial. Jane Feuer, The Hollywood Musical, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis and Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) 3–13. 16. J.P. Telotte points to the pessimistic turn of the non-integrated musical in “A Sober Celebration: Song and Dance in the ‘New’ Musical.” While linking the earlier integrated musical’s use of song and dance to an overall projection of social and internal harmony, he highlights the newer trend toward musical films appearing in the non-integrated variety of biopic, dance film, and concert documentary. He examines films such as The Last Waltz (1978), Saturday Night Fever, and American Hot Wax (1978) and highlights the discontinuity between the freedom and celebration projected through music and dance—in these cases occurring in a separate performative space such as radio, the disco, or the concert—and the overall oppressive qualities of life itself. J.P. Telotte, “A Sober Celebration: Song and Dance in the ‘New’ Musical,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 8:1 (1980): 2–14. 17. Both film and sociological scholars highlight utility as a major function of the American male. While Susan Faludi states, “The men who worked at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard didn’t come there and learn their crafts as riggers, welders, and boilermakers to be masculine; they were seeking something worthwhile to do. Their sense of their own manhood flowed out of their utility in a society, not the other way around,” Barbara Ehrenreich focuses on the struggles of postwar men shifting from goal-oriented manual labor to white-collar number crunching and pencil-pushing. Both identify visible declines in male utility as contributing to various types of male upheaval: hopelessness and rebellion of the men in the grey flannel suits. The integrated musical commonly disassociates performance from utility. Driven by emotion rather than duty, these singing and dancing males cannot attribute their bodily displays to employment or social productivity. Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men (New York: Doubleday, 1983); Susan Faludi, Stiffed (New York: W. Morrow and Co., 1999) 607. 18. Rick Altman, Film/Genre (London: BFI Publishing, 1999) 13–18. 19. Schatz, Hollywood Genres, 31. 20. Ibid., 24–9. In Hollywood Genres Schatz also notes that this type of ending provides a false sense of security; ending at the moment of celebration, the narrative is not forced to contend with the hasty resolution of seemingly incongruous social types. The spectator dismisses the problems of the morning after in lieu of the joy of communal celebration. 21. Dyer, Hollywood Musicals, 182. 22. Altman, American Film Musical, 47–8. 23. Ibid., 50. 24. Feuer, The Hollywood Musical, 3, 13. 25. Dyer, Hollywood Musicals, 20. 26. Even when using real island locales for South Pacific, Rodgers and Hammerstein fell short of fully embracing the full aesthetic of the actual locales. In addition to not fully incorporating the ocean landscape, an unfortunate light filtering effect led to unrealistically popped colors. As with On the Town—which used major New York City tourist attractions and still projected a cardboard sense of the city—location shooting does not preclude idealization.

Notes

219

27. Altman identifies the romantic couple as the device that drives the genre’s storytelling. Altman, American Film Musical, 28–45. 28. Custen sees these nostalgic musicals as foregrounding an idealized notion of the past—a characteristic common throughout the arcadian musical— and therefore ignoring contemporary racial and economic conflicts. George F. Custen, Twentieth Century’s Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Culture of Hollywood (New York: BasicBooks, 1997) 199–205. 29. David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985) 12–69. 30. Altman points to the irrelevance of the cause–effect process within the musical, as the generically determined ending relies not on a logical causal chain of events, but rather on a series of matched visuals, songs, and dances that create a visual and narrative link between the two lovers. Altman, American Film Musical, 16–24. 31. The ambivalent musical will follow the lead of the arcadian, with regard to breaking the bounds of classical Hollywood cinema; however, it will even further belie the dictates of the closed narrative system, as such musicals present inconclusive or unsettling endings where the arcadian brought a status-quo affirming (if a bit contrived) conclusion. Schatz identifies the musical’s practice of concluding at the celebratory moment. This choice freezes the couple in wedded bliss, foregoing any unsavory bickering (or daresay divorcing) of the wedded couple. Schatz, Hollywood Genres, 200. 32. Gerald Mast, Can’t Help Singing: The American Musical on Stage and Screen (Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1987) 290–319. 33. Ibid., 292–3. 34. The practice of block booking enabled studios to package less desirable films with high-demand popular fare. This type of bundling forced exhibitors to purchase more of a studio’s films in order to obtain the few they desired. Blind buying refers to the practice of exhibitors buying films without having first seen them. Both practices enabled the studios to foist second-rate product on exhibitors. 35. Arthur Freed served as the producer for a series of highly successful MGM musicals in the 1940s and early 1950s. At a time when the producer served as the unifying force of productions, Freed had the power to corral technical and creative talent and guide the aesthetic of his films. Producing films such as Meet Me in St Louis (1944), Yolanda and the Thief (1945), The Pirate (1948), Annie Get Your Gun, and Singin’ in the Rain, Freed brought together the talents of individuals such as Judy Garland, Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, and Vincente Minnelli. After the demise of the studio system, the producer’s power declined as studios were at times reduced to economic rather than creative forces. 36. Marc Miller, “Of Tunes and Toons: The Movie Musical in the 1990s,” Film Genre 2000: New Critical Essays, ed. Wheeler Winston Dixon (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000) 45–6. 37. Rosalind Russell never ceased claiming she had performed all of her own songs and Christopher Plummer threatened to leave the film when told he would not be doing his own vocal work. After being talked into a trial period, Plummer heard his own playback and agreed to the vocal dubbing.

220 Notes

38.

39.

40.

41.

42. 43. 44.

45.

46.

47.

Rosalind Russell and Chris Chase, Life is a Banquet (New York: Random House, 1977) 201; Max Wilk, Overture and Finale: Rodgers and Hammerstein and the Creation of Their Two Greatest Hits (New York: Back Stage Books, 1993) 175–6. West Side Story delved into more emotional subject matter than contemporary Broadway musicals—startling critics with a death at the end—and allowed for further combination of traditional dance with everyday movement. Robbins was hired to co-direct the film version. After he conceived of the famous opening aerial shot of New York City and choreographed “Cool,” the production company fired him from the project. Although location shooting had been practiced earlier in films such as On the Town that used actual New York locales, a two-dimensionality, perhaps tied to the attraction of nostalgia, had saddled the genre for years. For more on avant-garde or experimental film see P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, 1943–2000, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). For more on the French New Wave see Richard Neupert, A History of the French New Wave Cinema (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2002). Steve Neale, “New Hollywood Cinema,” Screen 17:2 (1976) 117–8. Thomas Elsaesser, “The Pathos of Failure: American Films in the 70’s,” Monogram 6 (1975) 13–15. The mid 1960s also brought a time of musical experimentation offBroadway. Shows such as Man of la Mancha and Hair tackled darker themes (insanity and death) and embraced burgeoning youth counterculture and rock music. Upon the first screening of Rock Around the Clock, reports were made of teens leaving the film in a hyped-up frenzy, vandalizing properties and “snaking” down the street. Thomas Doherty, Teenagers and Teenpics: The Juvenilization of American Movies in the 1950s (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988) 82. Barry Grant examines the musical’s generic resistance to rock, Broadway’s initial avoidance of the harsh emergent style, and the musical’s eventual absorption of the ideologically loaded youth-driven music into the changing form of the genre. Barry K. Grant, “The Classic Hollywood Musical and the Problem of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” The Journal of Popular Film and Television 13:4 (1986) 195–205. Per Dyer, the connotation of the nonrepresentational elements of performance (melody, rhythm, dance style, and so on) will impact upon the overall perception of the film. Through this logic, the presence of music containing a hard beat could lead to the overall unsettling of the narrative. Films such as Tommy and Jesus Christ Superstar possess a screeching rock sound that deviates greatly from the melodic tunes common to the arcadian musical and creates a sense of unsettledness. Dyer, Hollywood Musicals, 20. Similarly, Feuer cites musical style as a defining element of character type. Again, in the context of the already established musical genre, the integration of these newer and harsher styles of music will be measured against those from earlier incarnations of the genre. Feuer, The Hollywood Musical, 54.

Notes

221

1 Nothing Is Comin’ Up Roses: The Desertion of Narrative Utopia 1. For Altman this definition led to an exclusion of films from his study that did not engage with romance at their core (such as Shirley Temple films, The Wizard of Oz, Oliver!). Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres (New York: Random House, 1981) 28–9; Rick Altman, American Film Musical (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987) 28–32. 2. Altman, American Film Musical, 309–12. 3. Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men (New York: Doubleday, 1983) 42–51, 68–87. 4. Marvin B. Sussman, Suzanne K. Steinmetz, Gary W. Peterson, The Handbook of Marriage and Family, 2nd ed. (New York: Springer, 1999) 55. 5. Marc Miller, “Of Tunes and Toons: The Movie Musical in the 1990s,” Film Genre 2000: New Critical Essays, ed. Wheeler Winston Dixon (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000) 45–6. 6. An addendum to such a list would include the larger group of films that conclude with an unhappy romance, but do not use the romance as the center of the narrative. Examples would be Oliver! (1968) (Bill Sikes murders Nancy), Mame (1974) (Beau falls to his death leaving Mame alone), Scrooge (1970) (Scrooge must relive losing his fiancée with no possibility of changing his actions), and Lost Horizon (1973) (Maria, who truly was in her eighties and merely preserved by the low-stress utopia of Shangri-La dies when she leaves the settlement to return to England with George. Upon seeing her dead, elderly body, George reacts by screaming and falling off a cliff to his death. His brother Richard must then turn back and trek alone to his abandoned love who waits inside the gates of Shangri-La.). 7. Altman, American Film Musical, 154, 307. 8. Fosse filmed an alternate version of the film’s conclusion, per the request of the studio. In this alternate version, Oscar is haunted by his loss of Charity and rushes to her as she stands forlornly on the bridge from which Charlie had pushed her. In ultimate arcadian style, they find each other in the end and (assumedly, although we have no proof) live happily ever after. 9. Highlighting the shifting mores of the film musical, the narrative of the 1951 Broadway version of Paint Your Wagon bears little resemblance to Paddy Chayefsky’s cinematic script. Chayefsky’s Ben–Elizabeth–Pardner threesome had replaced a somewhat less scandalous gold rush tale of father–daughter drama and inter-ethnic romance. 10. Toril Moi, “Appropriating Bourdieu: Feminist Theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology of Culture,” New Literary History 22:4 (Autumn 1991) 1026–7. 11. This shift to male focus in the musical reflects not only high-profile movements afoot at the time—anti- and pro-war groups, feminism, gay rights— but also others simmering just below the surface. Early incarnations of the American Men’s Movement emerged from the Black Panther Movement and Women’s Movement of the sixties and seventies. By the mid-1970s the group that would become the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS) had begun staging Men and Masculinity Conferences. The

222 Notes

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

groups that would grow out of the early movement partook in various forms of personal introspection and gender-role examination. For more on the American Men’s Movement see Judith Newton, From Panthers to Promise Keepers: Rethinking the Men’s Movement (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005) and Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America (New York: The Free Press, 1996). In her discussion of screenplay form, Linda Seger defines the role of the confidant as one serving largely as a sounding board for the internal struggles of the protagonist. In the case of 1776, John is able to show vulnerability with Abigail, an opportunity not given by the other male members of the Continental Congress. Linda Seger, Making a Good Script Great (Hollywood and New York: Samuel French, 1994) 201–3. Earlier films favoring arcadian characteristics were not totally without social critique. Show Boat (1951), often considered the penultimate integrated musical, attended to issues of slavery and miscegenation, as did Rodgers and Hammerstein’s The King and I (1956). Similarly, films had dealt with mob activity, murder, racism, war, and poverty, but most such problems would easily be either solved through the power of joy and music or subsumed by the more dominant romance plotlines. Seldom did narratives make the social injustice or unseemliness the center of the action without painting a rosy glow on top (for example, gangsters do not kill in Guys and Dolls (1955); they are too funny!). Many backstagers from the first few decades of the Hollywood musical (for example, Ziegfeld Girl [1941], Glorifying the American Girl [1929], The Five Pennies [1959]), carry a similar career focus and pessimism, but they fall into a separate category by virtue of their lack of integrated musical numbers. To the contrary, many later musicals use musical integration to underscore their complexities and pessimism associated with the careers at the center of the narratives. The film takes place as a sort of play within a play, as a busload of 20somethings unload props and costumes to perform the Christ story in an Israeli desert. Just following the resurrection, the actors—minus the man who plays Jesus—reload the bus and leave. While Alan Jay Lerner’s and Frederick Lowe’s Brigadoon (1954) presents a similar quandary of a protagonist literally torn between two worlds, the central focus of Brigadoon’s narrative and the deciding factor for the protagonist Tommy revolves around his desire to be with Fiona, not a choice between worlds and ideologies. I do not intend to suggest a complete lack of ethnic, economic, or generational unrest in earlier arcadian musicals. Flower Drum Song (1961) conducts both cultural and ethnic balancing acts and Porgy and Bess (1959) depicts African American poverty. Even pieces considered musical fluff— such as the Beach Party series or Bye, Bye Birdie (1963)—present generational conflicts. These films, however, present these problems as either easily dismissed or recuperated. The cultural and generational conflicts present in Flower Drum Song fade into the background as the couple—one member traditional and one Americanized—marries, while the generational conflicts of teen-oriented rock-n-roll films often become minimized or trivialized by the excessive caricaturization of the opposing two groups

Notes

223

(hysterical female fans vs. martyred parents or stodgy adults vs. teen beats or surfers). 18. The 1936 version of the film—released just two years after strict implementation of the Hays Code—included Helen Morgan from the pre-Code Applause as the controversial mulatta Julie LaVerne. 19. Scholars such as Richard Dyer, Sean Griffin, and Arthur Knight have examined the lack or generic/ideological problematic nature of racial integration in the Hollywood musical. Dyer highlights the overall dearth of non-whites in musicals taking place in worlds such as the Caribbean (The Pirate), the South Pacific (South Pacific), and the American West (Oklahoma!) and puts it succinctly when he states, “Even when such stars as Louis Armstrong, Pearl Bailey, Cab Calloway, the Nicholas Brothers, Bill Robinson, Hazel Scott, Ethel Waters and Lena Horne were used, it was nearly always in one kind of ghetto or another: the all-black musical . . . , the number that can be dropped without doing violence to the story or editing (such as Horne’s intense ‘Where or When’ in Words and Music . . .) , or, in the case of the sublime Bill Robinson, kiddies’ corner, squiring Shirley Temple.” Griffin’s “The Gang’s All Here: Generic Versus Racial Integration in the 1940s Musical” discusses the early integrated musicals’ overall lack of racial integration. Reflecting on Dyer’s argument from “Entertainment as Utopia” that the musical reinforces a utopian sense of abundance, energy, and community, Griffin hypothesizes about the generic and narrative complications that the inclusion of African Americans on Meet Me in St Louis’s trolley or Native Americans in Oklahoma!’s hoedown would have presented. Both Arthur Knight’s Disintegrating the Musical and Griffin highlight the complications related to cultivating African American musical leading ladies (such as Lena Horne), African American inclusion in the Black cast musicals such as MGM’s Cabin in the Sky, and the reliance on specialty performance numbers to showcase African American talent (for example, the Nicholas Brothers at Fox). Knight further examines the overall landscape of African Americans in the heyday of the film musical, from the aforementioned categories, to the prominent role of blackface for both whites and African Americans and the conflicted space of African American resistance once possible with a live audience and improbable in the controlled and unidirectional space of the motion picture house. Richard Dyer, “The Colour of Entertainment” Sight and Sound 5:11 (November 1995) 29, 31. Sean Griffin, “The Gang’s All Here: Generic Versus Racial Integration in the 1940s Musical,” Cinema Journal 42:1 (2002) 21–7. Arthur Knight, Disintegrating the Musical (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2002). 20. The film includes songs such as “Black Boys” and “White Boys” sung at Claude’s appearance before the draft board and extolling the sexual prowess and desirability of the men. Accompanying women from the ensemble, African American and white Army officers sing suggestive and amorous lyrics as they inspect naked recruits. The film also includes numbers such as “Sodomy,” listing various sex acts and their associated perverse connotations, sung as the character of Woof rides past Sheila’s crew on horseback. As the film vacillates between tongue-in-cheek and decidedly maudlin numbers such as “Ain’t Got No” and “Ripped Open” it creates a balanced picture of social satire and biting critique.

224 Notes 21. Jane Feuer, “The Self-Reflexive Musical,” Hollywood Musicals: The Film Reader, ed. Steven Cohan (London and New York: Routledge, 2002) 32; Jane Feuer, The Hollywood Musical, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis and Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) 35–8; Altman, American Film Musical, 200–9. 22. Mary Desjardins, “Systematizing Scandal: Confidential Magazine, Stardom, and the State of California,” Headline Hollywood: A Century of Film Scandal, eds Adrienne L. McLean and David A. Cook (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001) 210. 23. Desjardins, Headline Hollywood, 224. 24. Further, the character of Joe—pill popping, smoking, screwing, and drinking—strays from heroes of earlier show within a show vehicles. Neither rehabilitated nor altogether rejected Joe escapes being dispelled narratively. Even in death, he remains the central focus and his demise the final production number. Despite Joe’s repellent nature and the overall negative portrayal of the theatre industry, Feuer defends the film as preserving the idealization of show business within the musical genre. “Even All That Jazz ultimately glorifies the director’s art at the expense of his life, with his death portrayed as a razzle-dazzle production number in the best Bob Fosse style. An alumnus of MGM, Fosse can afford to be cynical about entertainment as long as he’s still giving it to us in the process.” Feuer, Hollywood 91. 25. The film’s finale culminates in a production number that aesthetically resembles the cover of the Beatles’s Sgt. Pepper album. The following is a partial list of the credited “Guests at Heartland” who appear: Stephen Bishop, Keith Carradine, Carol Channing, Donovan, Yvonne Elliman, José Feliciano, Leif Garrett, Heart, Etta James, Mark Lindsay, John Mayall, Curtis Mayfield, Cousin Bruce Morrow, Peter Noone, Robert Palmer, Wilson Pickett, Anita Pointer, Bonnie Raitt, Helen Reddy, Chita Rivera, Sha-Na-Na, Del Shannon, Connie Stevens, Tina Turner, Frankie Valli, Gwen Verdon, Grover Washington, Jr, Hank Williams, Jr, and Wolfman Jack. 26. Feuer, Hollywood, 29–32; Altman, American Film Musical, 202–7. 27. A related, occurrence appears in The Rocky Horror Picture Show as an audience of royalty briefly appears in the empty auditorium (only truly existing in Frank’s mind) and congratulates Frank on a job well done. In the end, this audience again disappears and music fails to unite the diegetic community as Magenta mocks the assumed power of song declaring it “sentimental” just before Riff Raff murders Frank. 28. As Schatz describes in his genres of social integration and Altman shows with his discussion of the dual hero, the successful joining of the romantic couple also brings about a unification of differing social groups. Schatz, Hollywood Genres, 27–8; Altman, American Film Musical, 16–27. 29. Schatz, Hollywood Genres, 200; Feuer, Hollywood, 29–32. 30. Those films of the 1966–1983 period closely resembling earlier arcadian musicals most often retain the reaffirmation of the concluding production numbers—Popeye (1980) with “Popeye the Sailorman” and Hello, Dolly! with a bouncy reprise of “Hello, Dolly.” Similarly, Half a Sixpence, Can’t Stop the Music, the Grease films, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and The Pirate Movie all wrap up with some giant celebration—the latter two with actual weddings.

Notes

225

31. For more on Pachuco culture see Catherine Sue Ramirez, “Crimes of Fashion: The Pachuca and Chicana Style Politics,” Meridians 2:2 (2002) 1–35. 32. For more on the Zoot Suit Riots and Henry Leyvas see Eduardo Obregón Pagán, Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime L.A. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 2003). 33. Actual audience reception is beyond the scope of this project, but the basis of Brecht’s theory of distanciation underscores this book’s attendance to visual choices made in staging. This does not imply that viewers will receive images in a certain way, but simply that the creators have constructed the visual image in such a manner that includes the distanciation necessary for critique. Feuer, citing the musical’s apolitical use of direct address, discusses the opposing ideological projects of the musical and Brechtian films of JeanLuc Godard. The overt theatricality that emerges though Zoot Suit’s address, cinematography, and mise-en-scène (as well as other more self-referential texts such as Jesus Christ Superstar and Pennies from Heaven) brings the musical closer to a modernist critique Feuer once cited as absent. In her second edition, she examines the modernist project of Pennies from Heaven. Feuer, Hollywood, 35–6, 126–30.

2 On a Clear Day You Can See the Cracks in the Scenery: Visual Reflexivity and Realism Trump Nostalgic Idealism 1. Richard Dyer, “Entertainment and Utopia,” Hollywood Musicals: The Film Reader, ed. Steven Cohan (London and New York: Routledge, 2002). 2. Rick Altman, American Film Musical (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987) 147, 277–80. 3. Dyer, Hollywood Musicals, 20. 4. David Bordwell, “Classical Hollywood Cinema,” Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, ed. Philip Rosen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986) 24. 5. Ibid., 27. 6. David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985) 374. 7. In “All That Jazz: Bob Fosse’s Solipsistic Masterpiece,” Alvin J. Seltzer states, “All That Jazz is a spectacular achievement in many ways, but certainly one of its greatest triumphs is its artistic expression of a unique vision: life as it is lived, perceived, and experienced through one person’s head, heart, and nervous system.” (99) He discusses the narrative and visual/aural techniques used to replicate the frenetic life and personal perceptions of Joe Gideon/Fosse. Alvin J. Seltzer, “All That Jazz: Bob Fosse’s Solipsistic Masterpiece,” Literature/Film Quarterly 24:1 (1996) 99–104. 8. The musical had never fully escaped the taint of drug and alcohol addiction, but had largely kept it at bay behind the screens rather than on (examples include the off-screen woes of Judy Garland’s drug addiction and Gordon MacRae’s and Lorenz Hart’s alcoholism). 9. The style of camerawork very much replicates that popularized on the late 1960s variety show Laugh-In. As a bikini-clad woman danced, the camera

226 Notes

10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

17.

would zoom toward and away from her body, eventually settling on one of the woman’s various painted-on tattoos. For more on bricolage and choreography, see Jane Feuer’s The Hollywood Musial. Jane Feuer, The Hollywood Musical, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis and Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) 3–13. Leo Braudy, The World in a Frame: What We See in Films (Garden City, N. J.: Anchor Press, 1976) 155. Motion pictures commonly use montage sequences to condense long periods of time and cut actions down to the most relevant moments. A passage of years can be shortened into less than a minute using key moments that include signposts denoting the actual time and order in which the events take place. (Famous examples include Susan’s opera career montage in Citizen Kane [1941] and Lena’s Broadway montage in Imitation of Life [1959].) Altman, American Film Musical, 16–27. Altman points to the reactivation of this type of nostalgia in what he terms the “folk musical”—those that present life through idealized pictures of the past. Altman, American Film Musical, 273–81. This push away from artifice, however, does not indicate that all Hollywood musicals of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s show a complete break from the dominant form. Traits associated with the arcadian musical remain present to varying degrees in musicals of the 1966–1983 period. For example, nostalgic and exotic locales often associated with the fantasy or safetyaffirming status quo still occur in films such as Grease, Grease 2, The Pirate Movie, Oliver!, Doctor Dolittle, Half a Sixpence, and others. The settings of many of these films visually and ideologically represent a simpler version of the American (or European) past. Although slightly edgier with risqué content, Grease’s soda shop version of the 1950s does not differ greatly from the equally nostalgic—though perhaps even then self-aware— version presented in the Elvis parody Bye, Bye Birdie. Straying little from traditional poodle skirts, leather jackets, high schools, and drag strips presented in film and television vehicles attempting to capitalize on the sanitized notion of the period, Grease and Grease 2 use this romanticized notion of a simpler 1950s to rationalize the idealized resolutions of their conflicts. A fashion spread for Lost Horizon appeared in an issue of Men’s Wear magazine, plugging the modern look for the relaxed new man. Publicity material for Camelot repeatedly refers to the film as mod or having “Mod Medieval Splendor,” and J. P. Stevens and Co., who produced a line of lingerie and loungewear “inspired” by the Warner Bros. picture, capitalized on its contemporary flavor. Clipping Files, Lost Horizon Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles, California; Press Book, Camelot Collection, 1967 Box 2 File 643A, University of Southern California Warner Bros. Archives, Los Angeles, California; Program for “Sounds of Trumpets,” Camelot Collection, 1967 Box 1 File 14943A, University of Southern California Warner Bros. Archives, Los Angeles, California. In this number Tevye tells his wife a story about a dream. The dream serves as an omen that will rationalize him breaking his word to Lazar Wolf the butcher—to whom he has promised his eldest daughter Tzeitel’s hand in

Notes

18.

19.

20.

21.

227

marriage—and allow him to grant his daughter permission to marry Motel the tailor. When attempting to visually capture a group who has been so specifically idealized in history, it is difficult not to stereotype. This struggle can be seen within Hair and Sweet Charity. Although a similar technique exists in The Wizard of Oz and in various musical dream sequences, Godspell’s foregrounding of its own artifice, erasure of its larger community, and distance from a nostalgized setting (with chaotic New York City serving as the site for the outside narrative) create a more irresolvable rift. Through the recognition of her real-life pals and enemies in the inhabitants of Oz, Dorothy is able to see the good in her farm and family. The ensemble of Godspell is wholly removed from its greater society, finding peace only in each other and the empty streets. Feuer touches on this in her “Postscript for the Nineties.” Reflecting on her first edition’s “predictive powers,” she discusses Pennies from Heaven’s modernist rewriting of the genre. Highlighting its musical artifice and critically reflexive content, she discusses the film and sets it up as a musical anomaly to the 1980s, an era when the non-integrated Footloose (1984), Flashdance (1983), and Dirty Dancing (1987) brought teens to the theatres in droves. Hollywood 126–38. Bertholt Brecht, “Theatre for Pleasure or Theater for Instruction,” The HBJ Anthology of Drama, ed. W.B. Worthen (Fort Worth, TX and Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1993) 549.

3 Wanna Sing and Dance? These New Guys Are Ambivalent About It 1. 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. 2. Rick Altman, American Film Musical (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987) 16–24. 3. Ibid., 307. 4. Jane Feuer, The Hollywood Musical (London: BFI, 1982) 3–7. 5. Altman discusses Agnes de Mille’s introduction of the folk-infused ballet number into the Broadway and Hollywood musical. This new combination of styles allowed for simultaneous interpellation of the diegetic and theatrical audiences via the presence of folk dance and the narrative progression allowed through a more literal style embodied by the classical movement of ballet. Altman, American Film Musical, 281–5. 6. 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.

228 Notes 7. Britton, Stardom: Industry of Desire, 202. 8. Gledhill, Stardom: Industry of Desire, 215. 9. Joel Whitburn, Top Pop Albums: 1955–199 (Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research, Inc., 1996) 943–4. 10. Vincent Canby, “Lerner-Loewe Musical Adapted to Film,” The New York Times 16 October 1969: 56. 11. Edgier stars like Elvis, Sinatra, and Dean Martin often played musical roles tamer than their star personae, Sinatra more innocent than co-star Kelly in both Take Me Out to the Ballgame and On the Town. 12. Judith Crist, Rev. of Catch My Soul, New York 25 March 1974. Clipping File, Catch My Soul Collection, Margaret Herrick Library, Los Angeles, California. 13. Note Lost Horizon, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, All That Jazz, and Xanadu were written for the screen, not transferred from the stage. One may then assume that the music exists in tact per the original intention (excluding the extensive cutting from Lost Horizon, which initially ran much longer for the road show than later releases showed). All of these films include non-singers, many of whom are displaced diegetically into voiceover (Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Lost Horizon) or erased altogether and replaced with non-character motivated underscoring (such as the majority of Xanadu being comprised of songs by Electric Light Orchestra). 14. African American culture was used in earlier films to aurally project such a vocal otherness. Hallelujah and Way Down South accomplish this vocal hysteria through the shrieking and wailing of the African American chorus at funerals, religious meetings, and crop-related celebrations. 15. 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). 16. The process of vocal dubbing was not new to the later musical. From the inception of film sound, dubbing had been used within the musical for various reasons. Early sound technology had been riddled with problems regarding synchronicity, and the bulkiness of the cameras, lights, and sound equipment made it difficult to effectively capture all of the sounds necessary in a film musical (singers, taps, and orchestra). The process of dubbing vocal performances emerged early. As well, early films integrated voiceover singing as a means to simultaneously toy with the artistic possibilities of the musical and avoid technological pitfalls. The visually complex “By a Waterfall” number in Footlight Parade continually shifts between showing the ensemble singing and using a non-diegetic voiceover throughout the number. 17. At the hands of the sinister record producer and music thief Swan, the Phantom has been physically mangled and left without functioning teeth or vocal chords. Unbeknownst to him, Swan too has signed his soul and talents over to the devil. With physical defect complicating the erasure of the singer’s voice, the Phantom’s music emerges through both synthesizer and voiceover—though it is often unclear which of the tormented souls, Swan or the Phantom, the songs represent. 18. Siefert, Journal of Communication, 58.

Notes

229

19. 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. 20. This number was cut from the original film and restored on the later DVD release. Anecdotal evidence suggests the deletion could have been due to poor reception of the number, the dance’s excessive length, or Richard Nixon’s pressuring of Jack Warner to remove a number that may have been read as negatively reflecting the contemporary political right. Ferdinand Lewis, “Heated Debate about ‘Cool’ Cut,” Los Angeles Times 7 September 2001. . 21. 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. 22. Such distancing production numbers appear in early films such as Take Me out to the Ballgame, which includes a final number where Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra call each other by their real names. 23. Both Jesus Christ Superstar and Xanadu include large production numbers just prior to their conclusions. In both cases, these production numbers are followed by moments of narrative disruption. Jesus Christ Superstar’s 20something cast dismantles the performance within a performance, abandons the Christ actor, and departs from the desert. Xanadu’s ambiguous ending has Sonny see a waitress (played by Olivia Newton John) who looks like Kira, but he appears unaware of her identity. In both cases, the final dramatic moments upset the narrative closures created by the final production numbers “Superstar” and “Xanadu.” 24. Feuer, The Hollywood Musical, 73. 25. The stage more so than film uses dance as a way to negotiate scene shifts. Often a character sings in front of a drop suggesting a street scene or otherwise vague location or alongside moving scenery to serve as a transition from one scene or site to the next. My Fair Lady’s “A Street with No Name” or Annie Get Your Gun’s “There’s No Business Like Show Business” served such purposes, allowing for complete scenery changes behind the drop. Not using a realistic mise-en-scène, Zoot Suit uses methods other than mere cuts to change locales. As in the stage-bound product it mimics, dance moves characters via a not wholly realistic means to the next scene. 26. 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. 27. Cabaret repeats this classic Fosse style of lascivious disconnect three years later, with its bizarre and perverse pixie-ish Master of Ceremonies and sexually raw Sally Bowles. As with “Big Spender’s” taxi dancers, the Kit Kat Klub’s female chorus appears emotionally deadpan and physically contorted as they backup Sally’s song of sexual freedom, “Mein Herr.” The film, however, truly falls outside of the scope of this book, having been stripped of all of its integrated numbers in its shift from stage to screen. Interestingly, shifts in the narrative and musical stylings between stage and screen spoke

230 Notes

31.

volumes about the times. “Mein Herr”—the Fosse-est of all of the show’s dance numbers—was added to the film for Liza Minnelli, along with “Maybe This Time.” As well, the filmed version would purge all integrated numbers, purge a storyline involving an older couple, and instead inject the narrative with stories more relevant to the day’s trends: one of youth and one of homosexuality. J.P. Telotte’s “All That Jazz: Expressionism on Its Own Terms” addresses “Air-Otica” to underscore the film’s reconfiguring of the function of entertainment and entertainers in such newer movie musicals. Contrary to Jane Feuer’s notion that the integration of music leads to the successful integration of individuals’ relationships, “Air-Otica” expresses the hollowness of sexual relationships and articulates the overall disjuncture between entertainment (and Joe Gideon as entertainer) and communal harmony. Through Fosse’s dance style, Gideon’s role of megalomaniacal director, and the film’s ultimate refusal to bring Gideon back into the fold (or forgive him his sins), Telotte examines the film’s use of musical performance to underscore a shift away from using song and dance as a means to social unity. He states, “By its title, All That Jazz hints at an alternative view of this potential for harmony. The phrase denotes not a driving force of expression so much as a dismissal or degeneration; for the very word ‘jazz’ translates here not as music, but as a metaphor for the trivial, for that which is not worth speaking, and its use in this way suggests a certain jadedness in the drive for expression.” (112) J.P. Telotte, “All That Jazz: Expressionism on Its own Terms,” Journal of Popular Film and Television 11:3 (1983), 104–13. 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. In The Art of Exaggeration, a short documentary on the production design of Sweet Charity, Edith Head discusses the satirical goals of the film’s creative team. The dances, as do the costumes, function as a satire of modern life. Numbers such as “The Rich Man’s Frug” employ exaggerated versions of popular dance to compound the social critique of the characters themselves—in this case, the bored, self-absorbed social elite. The Art of Exaggeration, Sweet Charity, dir. Bob Fosse, 1967, DVD, Universal, 2003. Dyer, “Entertainment,” Hollywood Musicals, 21.

4

The New Guard’s Musical Masculinity

28.

29.

30.

1. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1990) 134–41. 2. Admittedly, acceptable masculinity differs by culture and by time period. As discussed by Barbara Ehrenreich in The Hearts of Men, postwar masculinity was inextricably linked to the notion of the successful breadwinner. The successful attachment to and support of a suitable mate could save the male from association with deviant sexual behavior or an overall appearance of stunted mental capacity. However, she also describes this period of masculine identification as one rife with complications. Resisting the term crisis in masculinity—as masculinity is always in flux—she does highlight this period as a significant and difficult realignment of masculine dictates

Notes

3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

231

in comparison to traits heretofore associated with the self-made man: utility, self-motivation, and independence. This time of male domesticity also coincides with a rise in male-focused entertainment—Western films, television shows, and novels—that engages with images of traditional masculinity. Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men (New York: Doubleday, 1983). See discussions on utilitarian masculinity by scholars such as Susan Bordo and Susan Faludi. Susan Bordo, The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999) 26. Susan Faludi, Stiffed (New York: W. Morrow and Co., 1999) 607. In A Problem Like Maria, Stacy Wolf contextualizes the woman’s place in the musical, stating: “Most of the shows focus on women, and they tend to be the stars—think of Merman then Martin in Annie Get Your Gun, Merman in Gypsy, Martin in The Sound of Music, Andrews in My Fair Lady, and Streisand in Funny Girl, to name a few.” Stacy Wolf, A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002) 16. This type of masculine façade or surface structure of traditional masculinity does not altogether disappear from the musicals of the 1966–1983 period. The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, for example, includes an extended musical number performed by the double whammy of football playing cowboys. As the Texas A&M Aggies defeat the University of Texas Longhorns, the team bursts into a locker room-originating song and dance that ends in their victorious arrival and alcoholic and erotic imbibement at the whorehouse. While they do not ultimately fall in love and marry their respective ladies of the evening—and in fact, the lead dancer is a bit on the effeminate side— neither do their traditional cloaks of masculinity play an integral part in the overall narrative; however, they do make for a dynamic performance of a football-hoedown celebration of aggressiveness and virility. Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres (New York: Random House, 1981) 24–9. Further discussions of the feminization of dance can be found in works such as Gaylyn Studlar’s chapter on Valentino, Steven Cohan’s Incongruous Entertainment, David Gerstner’s “Dancer from the Dance: Gene Kelly, Television, and the Beauty of Movement,” John Clum’s Something for the Boys: Musical Theatre and Gay Culture, and D.A. Miller’s Place For Us: Essays on the Broadway Musical (a performative autobiographical account of the gay man’s relationship to the Broadway musical). Gerstner chronicles Kelly’s overcompensation for the cultural connotation of dance in Kelly’s episode of Omnibus “Dancing: A Man’s Game,” calling the show “a common strategic move in 1950s America: a male artist defending himself from powerful homophobic and misogynist accusations. Presenting himself as a dancer with whom men would feel ‘safe’ (a commonsensical balance between creativity and masculinity, popular entertainment, and Art), Kelly refutes the cultural charges of effeminacy that, as he sees it, have debased the art of dance and stripped it of its masculine origins.” Clum, to the contrary, focuses on the connection of musical theatre to gay men as both fans and practitioners. His chapter entitled “Chorus Boys” discusses the “suspect dancing boy” and the very derogation of the term “chorus boy,” pigeonholing these male dancers as “male, but not quite men.” John M. Clum, Something for the Boys: Musical Theatre and Gay Culture (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1999) 197–209; David

232 Notes

8.

9. 10. 11.

12.

13.

14.

Anthony Gerstner, “Dancer from the Dance: Gene Kelly, Television, and the Beauty of Movement,” The Velvet Light Trap Spring 2002: 50; Gaylyn Studlar, This Mad Masquerade: Stardom and Masculinity in the Jazz Age (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Steven Cohan, Incongruous Entertainment: Camp, Cultural Value, and The MGM Musical (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2005); D.A. Miller, A Place for Us: Essays on the Broadway Musical (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1998). Matthew Tinkham’s “Working Like a Homosexual” focuses on the Vincente Minnelli films of the Freed Unit and the gay-labor that collaborated to create its associated camp sensibility. Steven Cohan’s Incongruous Entertainment performs a large-scale study of the camp sensibility related to the MGM Freed Unit’s production, visual and narrative excess, reception, and fandom. Matthew Tinkham, “ ‘Working Like a Homosexual’: Camp Visual Codes and the Labor of Gay Subjects in the MGM Freed Unit,” Hollywood Musicals: The Film Reader, ed. Steven Cohan (London and New York: Routledge) 115–28; Steven Cohan, Incongruous Entertainment: Camp, Cultural Value, and The MGM Musical (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2005). Steve Neale, “Masculinity as Spectacle,” Screening the Male, eds. Steven Cohan and Ena Rae Hark (London and New York: Routledge, 1993) 18. Richard Dyer, “Don’t Look Now: The Instabilities of the Male Pin-Up,” Screen (1982) 23:3–4 63–7. While occasional exceptions to the rule may have occurred in the fully developed arcadian musical (such as Oklahoma!’s murderous Jud Frye or Road to Hong Kong’s or Damn Yankee’s effeminate villains) such exceptions to the monogamous and ultimately somewhat domesticated male appear as anomalies or threats to the diegetic hero. Even stars who enter the diegesis with Casanova personae—Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin—must ultimately find happiness within the confines of the successful monogamous romance. Genres such as film noir, male and family melodrama, and social problem films had presented problematic or unsavory images of masculinity. At this time (and in the ambivalent musicals of this period), non-hegemonic masculinity equates not with an individual flaw, but the very instability and unpredictability of gender (and life) itself. Structural functionalists, such as Talcott Parsons, had designated males as being “instrumental” in their roles. They were straightforward, rational, and task-oriented. The post-World War II “other-directed” man assumed the qualities of the structural functionalists’ female who was driven by emotion and the needs of others. While the pre-war male was identified by his self-directedness or his desire to serve himself, the post-World War II male shifted. Through his role as bureaucratic cog and domestic breadwinner, his actions—both at home and on the job—served the needs of others. His ability to serve himself fell to the wayside. Talcott Parsons, Family: Socialization and Interaction Process (New York: Free Press, 1989) 23. Here, as discussed with regard to the repositioning of male ventures beyond the realm of romance, the profession of rock star means something more divisive than in the arcadian. As the cowboy was used in the arcadian musical as a disguise of traditional masculinity within a domesticating narrative, the rock star shifts from a whipping boy (Bye, Bye Birdie) threatening the social order to one more aggressively challenging that social order. Although real singers associated with excessive, wild, or asocial behavior

Notes

15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

233

(Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin) appeared in the arcadian musical, they were most often tied directly to the reinforcement of the breadwinning status quo. Toned down and coupled up, these singers commonly circulated in narratives that actively sought to neutralize extratextual connotations that ran counter to the dictates of the arcadian musical. To the contrary, musicians such as The Who, Aerosmith, Alice Cooper, Elton John, Eric Clapton, and Ritchie Havens embody narratives that thrive on their deviant and aggressive personae. This type of complementary participation between star personae and narrative development only works to compound the restructuring of masculinity beyond that evident in the arcadian musical. This is not to imply, however, that all appearances of rock or pop stars in these later musicals serve as reinforcement of antisocial behaviors. The Wiz places teen idol Michael Jackson in a socially reaffirming role of the scarecrow while Can’t Stop the Music takes the sexually marginal position of The Village People and neutralizes it through desexualization and heterosexualization of the band and its social-bonding narrative. Flower Drum Song, while wholly peopled by characters of Asian descent, presents a narrative in which many characters strive to disassociate themselves with their own ethnicity and assimilate fully into a white middle class American social and cultural structure. Basso profundo is the lowest male bass singing voice, whereas falsetto refers to a singer producing a sound that is pitched higher than his natural range. Dance does not immediately equate with feminization or gender incongruity. Tom’s dance performance in Pennies from Heaven deviates from performances commonly used in the arcadian musical. In such films, dances most often associate congruently with the character type performing them. For example, Fred Astaire’s suave gentleman will often perform graceful ballroom dances that, in terms of body movement and pace, appear congruent with his character, while films such as It’s Always Fair Weather or Oklahoma! place their male characters in situations where their dance steps reflect their masculine fronts of soldier or cowboy respectively. In Pennies from Heaven, Tom’s performance—although punctuated with lascivious gropings of his female backup dancers—works in direct contrast to his established personality type. Shifting from gruff to suave vocally and producing an exuberant burst of choreographic energy where once stood a seething, controlled, violent undercurrent, Tom’s striptease highlights failed expectations for gender-specific sexually explicit behavior. Rather than a busty broad with gorgeous gams, Tom leaves us with a skinny man with oversized boxers and garters. More unsettling and awkward, the hoofer, lover, and sleazebag do not immediately and comfortably coexist in the same body. Arcadian musicals most often end with the happy couple taking hands and literally or symbolically pledging their lives to each other as all narrative conflicts fall to the wayside. All That Jazz’s more ambivalent narrative also uses the final production number as a time to wash away conflicts between Joe, Audrey, Kate, and Michelle. Rather than leading to a life of marital bliss, however, this ambivalent magical conclusion can only happen in death. The domestic resolution either cannot or need not exist to define Joe in memoriam. Visual displays of masculinity exceeding the bounds of heterosexuality appear throughout arcadian musicals in the performance of queer-associated

234 Notes

20. 21. 22.

23.

24.

visual and physical traits. Most often occurring as a means to further other a character who stands as threatening to the protagonist and his narratively sanctioned relationship, these characters appear as the effeminate Mr Applegate in Damn Yankees or the eerily effeminate—and doubly Russian—aliens who plan to take over the world in Road to Hong Kong. Rather than expanding the bounds for gender performances, these inclusions of queered characters demonize any behavior beyond heterosexuality without even first presenting them. Sheila Benson, “Whither the People and the Music?” Los Angeles Times 20 June 1980: pt. VI, 13. David Ehrenstein, “Can’t Stop the Closet Power,” Los Angeles Herald-Examiner 20 June 1980: D8. As with All That Jazz, the expansion of sexual identity and legitimate performance of masculinity occurs within the climactic musical number. As the deviant connotation of Joe Gideon’s promiscuity dissipates as the finale presents reconciliations in his various female relationships, The Rocky Horror Picture Show’s Brad and Rocky verbally express and physically display their broadened senses of self within the climactic musical moment, again replacing the arcadian conciliatory and marital resolution with one that legitimizes sexual and gender identity contrary to the heterosexual domestic. Reynolds’s relationship with Dinah Shore throws a minor wrench into this public conception of the star. Early press had focused on his athleticism, physical prowess, and attractiveness to women. During his relationship with Shore, articles begin to reframe his lifestyle. Is he truly the swinging bachelor we thought? Is he tamer than originally considered? The May–September romance with a squeaky-clean American icon problematized his position as single, swinging sex symbol and member of the young partiers. As his career continued through the seventies and into the eighties, a decided shift occurred in his public persona, one distancing him from the solitary role of sex symbol. This was encouraged by Reynolds’s diversification in motion picture roles beyond the action genre. Barney Cohen, “Burt Reynolds: Going Beyond Macho,” The New York Times Magazine 29 March 1981: 18, 52–7; Gwen Davis, “Burt Reynolds Talks About Loving and Being Loved,” McCall’s March 1975, 16, 22–8. 146; Claire Safran, “The Burt Reynolds Nobody Knows,” Redbook January 1974: 72–3, 110–12; Cliff Jahr, “Burt Reynolds: A Sex Star Comes of Age,” Ladies Home Journal September 1979: 69–71+; “Life Isn’t Always a Bed of Roses for an Actor Working on a New Star Image,” People 25 December 1978: 114–5. “Elton John: It’s Lonely at the Top,” Rolling Stone 7 October 1976: 11, 16–17.

Epilogue: I Could Go On Singing 1. J Hoberman, “Ten Years That Shook the World,” Hollywood: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, vol. 1, ed. Thomas Schatz (New York and London: Routledge, 2004) 322. 2. Justin Wyatt, High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994) 18. 3. Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres (New York: Random House, 1981) 19.

Notes

235

4. Hoberman, Hollywood, 330. 5. Although Flashdance was released in 1983, its aesthetic, narrative, and tie-ins truly set the stage for musicals of the 1984–1995 period. Adhering to the rigid period breaks and not addressing this film during this period would have been an unfortunate omission. The Flashdance soundtrack sat at Billboard’s number one position for two weeks (charting for a total of 78). Footloose held the number one position for ten weeks (and stayed on the charts for 61), and Dirty Dancing charted with two different albums, the first topping the charts for 18 weeks (charting for 96) and “More Dirty Dancing” topped out at number three. Joel Whitburn, Top Pop Albums: 1955–1996 (Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research, Inc., 1996) 897, 893. 6. Marc Miller, “Of Tunes and Toons: The Movie Musical in the 1990s,” Film Genre 2000: New Critical Essays, ed. Wheeler Winston Dixon (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000) 54. 7. J.P. Telotte, “The New Hollywood Musical: From Saturday Night Fever to Footloose,” Genre and Contemporary Hollywood, ed. Steve Neale (London: BFI, 2002) 48–61; Miller, Film Genre 2000, 45–61. 8. Telotte, Genre and Contemporary Hollywood, 55–60. 9. Despite the rather utopic endings of the Disney musicals, they have been repeatedly critiqued for their problematic projections of race and ethnicity, whether the exoticization of characters in Aladdin or the historically inaccurate portrayal of Pocahontas. This simplistic or indelicate treatment of race and ethnicity reflects the whitewashed and/or exoticized treatment of non-whites in early arcadian musicals where simplistic or mono-racial characterizations prevent socially contentious examinations of race and ethnicity within somewhat simplistic and idealistic narratives. 10. The “Morning in America” television advertisement served as the cornerstone of Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign. While depicting happy families, workers, and patriots, the commercial touted a decline in interest and inflation rates, a drop in unemployment, a rise in home buying, and an overall sense of hope for America. 11. Marco Calavita refutes the link of this style of filmmaking solely to the rising prominence of MTV, but additionally attributes it to the attention demanded by the technology of the video recorder, the new practice of nonlinear electronic editing, and the influx of television commercial directors into Hollywood cinema (such as Flashdance’s Adrian Lyne and Top Gun’s [1986] Tony Scott). Marco Calavita, “ ‘MTV Aesthetics’ at the Movies: Interrogating a Film Criticism Fallacy,” Journal of Film and Video 59:3 (Fall 2007) 15–31. 12. Schatz, Hollywood Genres, 200; Brett Farmer, Spectacular Passions: Cinema, Fantasy, and Gay Male Spectatorship (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000). 13. Roger Ebert, Rev. of Footloose, Chicago Sun-Times 1 January 1984. 18 September 2009. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article? AID= /19840101/REVIEWS/401010339/1023 14. Miller, Film Genre 2000, 75. 15. Allan Ulrich, Rev. of Cannibal: The Musical, San Francisco Examiner 13 November 1998. 18 September 2009, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi? f=/e/a/1998/11/13/WEEKEND15865.dtl 16. Charles Isherwood, Rev. of Urinetown, Variety 24 September 2001: 37.

236 Notes 17. At the turn of the century, it has become difficult to talk about “new” Broadway musicals. A strong majority of new musicals come from preexisting texts—music catalogs (The Beach Boys and Good Vibrations [2005], Johnny Cash and Ring of Fire [2006], Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons and Jersey Boys [2005]), musical and non-musical films (Dirty Rotten Scoundrels [2005], Spamalot [2005], Chitty Chitty Bang Bang [2005], Legally Blonde [2007]), and a world of Disney products (Beauty and the Beast [1994], Lion King [1997], The Little Mermaid [2008]). Discussions of the decline of the original Broadway musical thrive in the current theatrical environment. 18. David Denby, Rev. of Moulin Rouge! The New Yorker 18 September 2009, http://www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/film/moulin_rouge_luhrmann 19. All three film soundtracks charted well on the Billboard top 200 album charts: Dreamgirls (#1), Chicago (#2), and Moulin Rouge! (#3). Billboard.com. 1 April 2010. http://www. billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_ content_id=1003530344#/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id= 1003530344; Billboard.com. 1 April 2010, http://www.billboard.com/chartsdecade -end/ soundtracks? year=2009 #/album/ original- soundtrack/chicagothe-miramax-motion-picture-soundtrack/560711; Billboard.com 1 April 2010. http://www.billboard.com/album/christina-aguilera-lil-kim-mya-pink/moulinrouge- original-soundtrack / 476047#/ album / christina -aguilera-lil -kim-myapink/moulin-rouge-original-soundtrack/476047. 20. Feuer implicates this interim space in her extended discussion of the natural and spontaneous integration of dance into the musical narrative. Song and dance cloaks its own work as it blends into the daily lives of the film’s inhabitants. Similarly, she argues the earlier musicals continually conflate the real world and the stage; the blurring of the real and performative converts the former to a more special locale where fantastic things can occur. Schatz too discusses the “basic tension between everyday reality and its imaginary ‘realistic’ conflicts and its ‘idealistic’ resolution” at the musical conclusion. The tension between the real and the fictional creates the magical space of musical reconciliation. Jane Feuer, The Hollywood Musical, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis and Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993) 1–34; Schatz, Hollywood Genres, 188. 21. Schatz, Hollywood Genres, 29.

Bibliography

Allan, Blaine. “Musical Cinema, Music Video, Music Television.” Film Quarterly 43(3) (1990): 2–14. Allen, Robert. Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Altman, Rick. The American Film Musical. Indianapolis and Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Altman, Rick. Film/Genre. London: BFI Publishing, 1999. “The Art of Exaggeration.” Sweet Charity. Dir. Bob Fosse, 1967, DVD, Universal, 2003. Atkins, John. The Who on Record: A Critical History, 1963–1998. Jefferson NC and London: McFarland and Company, 2000. At Long Last Love Collection. Margaret Herrick Library. Los Angeles, California. Auslander, Philip. From Acting to Performance: Essays in Modernism and Postmodernism. New York: Routledge, 1997. Austin, JL. How to Do Things With Words. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962. Barrios, Richard. A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Bazin, Andre. What is Cinema? Berkley: University of California Press, 1971. Benson, Sheila. “Whither the People and the Music?” Los Angeles Times 20 June 1980: pt. VI, p. 13. Best Little Whorehouse in Texas Collection. Margaret Herrick Library. Los Angeles, California. Bingham, Dennis. Acting Male. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994. Biskind, Peter. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex, Drugs, and Rock-n-Roll Generation Saved Hollywood. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998. Bordman, Gerald. American Operetta: From H.M.S Pinafore to Sweeney Todd. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. Bordo, Susan. The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999. Bordwell, David, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson. The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Bordwell, David. “Classical Hollywood Cinema.” Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. Ed. Philip Rosen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. Braudy, Leo. The World in a Frame: What We See in Films. Garden City, NJ: Anchor Press, 1976. Brecht, Bertholt. “Short Description of a New Technique of Acting Which Produces an Alienation Effect.” Star Texts: Image and Performance in Film and Television. Ed. Butler, Jeremy G. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991. 237

238 Bibliography Brecht, Bertholt. “Theatre for Pleasure or Theater for Instruction.” The HBJ Anthology of Drama. Ed. W.B. Worthen. Fort Worth, TX and Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1993. Brittan, Arthur. Masculinity and Power. London: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Britton, Andrew. “Stars and Genre.” Stardom: Industry of Desire. Ed. Christine Gledhill. London: Routledge, 1991. Brooks, Tim and Earle Marsh. The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows. New York: Balantine Books, 1995. Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London and New York: Routledge, 1990. Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. Cagle, Jess. “And All That Jazz: The Movie Musical Gets a Shot in the Arm—and the Chest—in a Rollicking Big-Screen Version of Chicago.” Time 16 December 2002: 68+. Calavita, Marco. “ ‘MTV Aesthetics’ at the Movies: Interrogating a Film Criticism Fallacy.” Journal of Film and Video 59(3) (Fall 2007): 15–31. Camelot Collection. University of Southern California Warner Bros. Archives. Los Angeles, California. Canby, Vincent. “Lerner-Loewe Musical Adapted to Film.” The New York Times 16 October 1969: 56. Canby, Vincent. “Not So Bad, Not So Good.” The New York Times 16 March 1972: sec. 2, p. 17. Canby, Vincent. Rev. of At Long Last Love. The New York Times 7 March 1975: 22. Canby, Vincent. “The Sailor Man Sails.” The New York Times 12 December 1981: sec. 3, p. 5. Catch My Soul Collection. Margaret Herrick Library. Los Angeles, California. Clum, John M. Something for the Boys: Musical Theatre and Gay Culture. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. Cocks, Jay. Rev. of At Long Last Love. Time 31 March 1975: 6. Cohan, Steven. “ ‘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. Cohan, Steven. Masked Men. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997. Cohan, Steven. “Introduction.” Hollywood Musicals: The Film Reader. Ed. Steven Cohan. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Cohan, Steven. Incongruous Entertainment: Camp, Cultural Value, and The MGM Musical. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2005. Cohen, Barney. “Burt Reynolds: Going Beyond Macho.” The New York Times Magazine 29 March 1981: 18+. “Comedians.” Time 31 October 1977: 98. Cook, David A. A History of Narrative Film, 3rd Edition. New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1996. “Cosmo’s Playmate of the Year!—Why?” Cosmopolitan April 1972: 185–7. Crowther, Bosley. “Rev. of Li’l Abner.” The New York Times 12 December 1959: 19. Custen, George F. Twentieth Century’s Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Culture of Hollywood. New York: BasicBooks, 1997.

Bibliography

239

Davis, Gwen. “Burt Reynolds Talks About Loving and Being Loved.” McCall’s March 1975: 16+. Decatur, Stephen. “Robin ‘Mork’ Williams Out of This World Charm.” Ladies Home Journal February 1979: 33+. Denby, David. “Broadway Melody of 1979.” New York 31 December 1979: 61+. Denby, David. Rev. of Moulin Rouge! The New Yorker 28 May 2001: 140. Denby, David. Rev. of Moulin Rouge! The New Yorker 18 September 2009, http:// www.newyorker.com/arts/reviews/film/moulin_rouge_luhrmann Desjardin, Mary. “Systematizing Scandal: Confidential Magazine, Stardom, and the State of California.” Headline Hollywood: A Century of Film Scandal. Ed. Adrienne L. McLean and David A. Cook. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001. Doane, Mary Ann. “Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator.” Screen 23(3–4) (1982): 74–87. Doherty, Thomas. Teenagers and Teenpics: The Juvenilization of American Movies in the 1950s. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988. Dwight, Whitney. “Clint Eastwood is an Explosive Combination of Contradictions Attached to a Short Fuse.” TV Guide 1 December 1962: 24–6. Dyer, Richard. “Don’t Look Now: The Instabilities of the Male Pin-Up.” Screen 23(3–4) (1982): 61–73. Dyer, Richard. “The Colour of Entertainment.” Sight and Sound 5(11) (November 1995): 28–31. Dyer, Richard. Stars. London: BFI Publishing, 1998. Dyer, Richard 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. Dyer, Richard. “Entertainment and Utopia.” Hollywood Musicals: The Film Reader. Ed. Steven Cohan. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Easthope, Anthony. What a Man’s Gotta Do: The Masculine Myth in Popular Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992. Ebert, Roger. “Rev. of Footloose.” Chicago Sun-Times 1 January 1984. 18 September 2009, http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19840101/ REVIEWS/401010339/1023. Ehrenreich, Barbara. The Hearts of Men. New York: Doubleday, 1983. Ehrenstein, David. “Can’t Stop the Closet Power.” Los Angeles Herald-Examiner 20 June 1980: D8. Ellis, John. Visible Fictions. London and New York: Routledge, 1982. Elsaesser, Thomas. “The Pathos of Failure: American Films in the 70’s.” Monogram 6(1975): 13–9. “Elton John: It’s Lonely at the Top.” Rolling Stone 7 October 1976: 11+. Eskow, John. “Full Tilt Bozo.” Rolling Stone 23 August 1979: 40–4. Faludi, Susan. Stiffed. New York: W. Morrow and Co., 1999. Farber, Stephen. “ ‘Deliverance’—How it Delivers.” The New York Times 20 August 1972: sec. 2, p. 7. Farmer, Brett. Spectacular Passions: Cinema, Fantasy, and Gay Male Spectatorship. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. Fehr, Richard and Frederick G. Vogel. Lullabies of Hollywood: Movie Music and The Movie Musical, 1915–1992. Jefferson, NC & London: McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers, 1993.

240 Bibliography Felton, David. “King of Hearts Come Down and Dance.” Rolling Stone 1 December 1977: 58–67. Feuer, Jane. The Hollywood Musical. Indianapolis and Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982. Feuer, Jane. “The Self-Reflexive Musical.” Hollywood Musicals: The Film Reader. Ed. Steven Cohan. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Flinn, Denny Martin. Musical! A Grand Tour. New York: Schirmer Books, 1997. Foster, Susan Leigh. Reading Dancing. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986. Foster, Susan Leigh. Choreographing History. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995. Foster, Susan Leigh. “The Ballerina’s Phallic Pointe.” Corporealities: Dancing Knowledge, Culture and Power. Ed. Susan Leigh Foster. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. “Frog Prince.” Time 21 August 1972: 43. Gambaccini, Paul. “Tommy Premiers on a London Stage.” Rolling Stone 18 January 1973: 6–7. Gerstner, David Anthony. “Dancer from the Dance: Gene Kelly, Television, and the Beauty of Movement.” The Velvet Light Trap Spring 2002: 48–66. Gilliant, Penelope. Rev. of Tommy. The New Yorker 7 April 1975: 123–4. Gledhill, Christine. “Stars and Genre.” Stardom: Industry of Desire. Ed. Christine Gledhill. London: Routledge, 1991. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York, London, Toronto, Sydney, and Auckland: Anchor Books, 1959. Goodman, Eric. “Merry Mork.” McCall’s December 1979: 102–3+. Goodwin, Fritz. “What Makes Burt Brood?” TV Guide 17 October 1970: 32–5. Grant, Barry K. “The Classic Hollywood Musical and the Problem of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” The Journal of Popular Film and Television 13(4) (1986): 195–205. Griffin, Sean. “The Gang’s All Here: Generic Versus Racial Integration in the 1940s Musical.” Cinema Journal 42(1) (2002): 21–45. Grossvogel, David I. Vishnu in Hollywood. Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2000. Hano, Arnold. “How to Revive a Dead Horse, or Rawhide Rides Again.” TV Guide 2 October 1965: 19–23. Hay, Carla. “Chicago Boosts Film Musicals.” Billboard 5 April 2003: 6. Hoberman, J. “Ten Years That Shook the World.” Hollywood: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies. Volume 1. Ed. Thomas Schatz. New York and London: Routledge, 2004. Hopkins, Jerry. “Keith Moon Bites Back.” Rolling Stone 21 December 1972: 42–6. Horrocks, Roger. Male Myths and Icons. Houndmills, Basingstoke, and Hampshire: Macmillan, 1995. “How to Keep Fit.” TV Guide 15 August 1959: 20–1. Internet Movie Database. 1 April 2010, http://www.imdb.com/ Isherwood, Charles. “Rev. of Urinetown.” Variety 24 September 2001: 37. Jahr, Cliff. “Burt Reynolds: A Sex Star Comes of Age.” Ladies Home Journal September 1979: 69–71+. Jeffords, Susan. Hard Bodies: Hollywood Masculinity in the Reagan Era. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1994. Jowett, Garth. Film: The Democratic Art. Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown, and Company, 1976.

Bibliography

241

Kael, Pauline. “Rev. of Paint Your Wagon.” The New Yorker 25 October 1969: 176–9. Kael, Pauline. “Somebody Else’s Success.” The New Yorker 25 October 1969: 176–9. Kael, Pauline. “The Rear Guard.” The New Yorker 24 March 1975: 93–4. Kimmel, Michael. Manhood in America. New York: The Free Press, 1996. King, Neal. Heroes in Hard Times: Cop Action Movies in the US. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1999. Kirk, Elise K. American Opera. Urbana, IL and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001. Kislan, Richard. The Musical: A Look at the American Musical Theatre. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980. Klinger, Barbara. Melodrama and Meaning. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994. Knight, Arthur. Disintegrating the Musical. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2002. Kolker, Robert. Cinema of Loneliness. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980. Krutnik, Frank. In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, Masculinity. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. Kuhn, Annette. “Women’s Genres: Melodrama, Soap Opera, and Theory.” Screen 25(1) (1984): 18–28. Kuleshov, Lev. “The Training of the Actor.” Star Texts: Image and Performance in Film and Television. Ed. Butler, Jeremy G. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991. Lehman, Peter. Running Scared. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993. “Life Isn’t Always a Bed of Roses for an Actor Working on a New Star Image.” People 25 December 1978: 114–5. Lo, Kwai-cheung. “Muscles and Subjectivity: A Short History of the Masculine Body in Hong Kong Popular Culture.” camera obscura 39(1996):104–25. Lost Horizon Collection. Margaret Herrick Library. Los Angeles, California. Mast, Gerald. Can’t Help Singing: The American Musical on Stage and Screen. Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press, 1987. Mates, Julian. America’s Musical Stage: Two Hundred Years of Musical Theatre. Westport, CT and London: Greenwood Press, 1985. Mellencamp, Patricia. “Spectacle and Spectator: Looking through the American Musical Comedy.” Cine-Tracts Summer 1977: 44–63. Miller, D.A. Place for Us: Essays on the Broadway Musical. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1998. Miller, Frank. Censored Hollywood: Sex, Sin & Violence on Screen. Atlanta, GA: Turner Publications, 1994. Miller, Marc. “Of Tunes and Toons: The Movie Musical in the 1990s.” Film Genre 2000: New Critical Essays. Ed. Wheeler Winston Dixon. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. Moi, Toril. “Appropriating Bourdieu: Feminist Theory and Pierre Bourdieu’s Sociology of Culture.” New Literary History 22(4) (Autumn 1991): 1017–49. Moore, Mary Ellen. The Robin Williams Scrapbook. New York: Ace Books, 1979. Mordden, Ethan. The Hollywood Musical. New York: St. Martin’s Press: 1981. Mordden, Ethan. Open a New Window: The Broadway Musical in the 1960s. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure in Narrative Cinema.” Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. Ed. Sue Thornham. New York: New York University Press, 1999.

242 Bibliography Mulvey, Laura. “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ inspired by King Vidor’s Duel in the Sun (1946).” Feminist Film Theory: A Reader. Ed. Sue Thornham. New York: New York University Press, 1999. Neale, Steve. “New Hollywood Cinema.” Screen 12(2) (1976): 117–20. Neale, Steve. “Masculinity as Spectacle.” Screening the Male. Ed. Steven Cohan and Ena Rae Hark. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. Neupert, Richard. A History of the French New Wave Cinema. Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2002. “New Formula for Violence.” Life 14 April 1967: 95–6. Newton, Judith. From Panthers to Promise Keepers: Rethinking the Men’s Movement. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. Orth, Maureen. “Silly Putty.” Newsweek 31 January 1977: 59. Pagán, Eduardo Obregón. Murder at the Sleepy Lagoon: Zoot Suits, Race, and Riot in Wartime L.A. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 2003. Parsons, Talcott. Family: Socialization and Interaction Process. New York: Free Press, 1989. Patterson, Ben. “Steve Martin: Wild, Crazy, and Empty.” U.S. Catholic January 1980: 31–2. Peck, Abe. “The Cartoon that Conquered the World: The Village People.” Rolling Stone 19 April 1979: 11–4. Phelan, Peggy. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. “The Pirate with Gene Kelly, Judy Garland, and Walter Slezak, at Music Hall.” The New York Times 21 May 1948: 19. Ramirez, Catherine Sue. “Crimes of Fashion: The Pachuca and Chicana Style Politics.” Meridians 2(2) (2002): 1–35. “Rev. of Oklahoma!.” Time 24 October 1955: 104–5. “Rev. of Pennies from Heaven.” National Review 5 February 1982: 123–4. “Rev. of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.” Variety 2 June 1954: 6. “The Robin Williams Show.” Time 2 October 1978: 86. Russell, Rosalind and Chris Chase. Life is a Banquet. New York: Random House, 1977. Russo, Vito. “The Closet Syndrome: Gays in Hollywood.” Village Voice 25 June 1979: 77. Safran, Claire. “The Burt Reynolds Nobody Knows.” Redbook January 1974: 72–3, 110–2. Schaffner, Nicholas. The British Invasion. New York: McGraw-Hill Company, 1982. Schatz, Thomas. Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking and the Studio System. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981. Schwartz, Tony. “Comedy’s New Face.” Newsweek 3 April 1978: 60–71. Seger, Linda. Making a Good Script Great. Hollywood and New York: Samuel French, 1994. Seitz, Michael H. “Musclemen.” The Progressive February 1981: 50–1. Seltzer, Alvin J. “All That Jazz: Bob Fosse’s Solipsistic Masterpiece.” Literature/Film Quarterly 24(1) (1996): 99–104. Sennwald, Andre. “Rev. of Top Hat.” The New York Times 30 August 1935: 12. Siefert, Marsha. “Image/Music/Voice: Song Dubbing in Hollywood Musicals.” Journal of Communication 45(2) (1995): 44–64.

Bibliography

243

Sitney, P. Adams. Visionary Film: The American Avant-Garde, 1943–2000, 3rd Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Sklar, Robert. City Boys. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. “Some Typical Longhairs.” TV Guide 10 March 1962: 12–13. Stacey, Jackie and Lynne Pearce. “The Heart of the Matter: Feminists Revisit Romance.” Romance Revisited. Eds Lynne Pearce and Jackie Stacey. London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1995. Staiger, Janet. Bad Women. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. Staiger, Janet. Media Reception Studies. New York: New York University Press, 2005. Stanislavski, Constantin. “When Acting is an Art.” Star Texts: Image and Performance in Film and Television. Ed. Jeremy G. Butler. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991. Stearns, Peter N. Be a Man!: Males in Modern Society. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1990. Steyn, Mark. “That’s Showbiz.” Spectator 25 January 2003: 56–7. Studlar, Gaylyn. This Mad Masquerade: Stardom and Masculinity in the Jazz Age. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Sussman, Marvin B., Suzanne K. Steinmetz, and Gary W. Peterson. The Handbook of Marriage and Family, 2nd Edition. New York: Springer, 1999. Tasker, Yvonne. Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre and the Action Cinema. London and New York: Routledge, 1993. Telotte, J.P. “A Sober Celebration: Song and Dance in the ‘New’ Musical.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 8(1) (1980) 2–14. Telotte, J.P. “The Movie Musical and What We ‘Aint Heard’ Yet.” Genre-Forms of Discourse & Culture 14(4) (1981): 505–35. Telotte, J.P. “All That Jazz: Expressionism on Its own Terms.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 11(3) (1983): 104–13. Telotte, J.P. “Ideology and the Kelly-Donen Musicals.” Film Criticism 8(3) (1984): 36–46. Telotte, J.P. “The New Hollywood Musical: From Saturday Night Fever to Footloose.” Genre and Contemporary Hollywood. Ed. Steve Neale. London: BFI Publishing, 2002. “This Cowboy Feels He’s Got it Made.” TV Guide 4 February 1961: 8–11. Tinkham, Matthew. “ ‘Working Like a Homosexual’: Camp Visual Codes and the Labor of Gay Subjects in the MGM Freed Unit.” Hollywood Musicals: The Film Reader. Ed. Steven Cohan. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Tomko, Linda J. “Fete Accompli: Gender, ‘Folk-Dance,’ and Progressive-era political ideals in New York City.” Corporealities: Dancing Knowledge, Culture and Power. Ed. Susan Leigh Foster. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. Townshend, Peter. “In Love With Meher Baba.” Rolling Stone 26 November 1970: 25–7. Townshend, Peter. “Meaty, Beaty, Big and Bouncy.” Rolling Stone 9 December 1971: 36–8. Traubner, Richard. Operetta: A Theatrical History. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1983. TV Tome Website. 12 February 2004, http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/ PersonDetail/personid-66369/ Unterberger, Richie. Eight Miles High: Folk Rock’s Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock. Milwaukee, WI: Hal Leonard Corporation, 2003.

244 Bibliography Warshow, Robert. Immediate Experience. New York: Atheneum, 1974. Whitburn, Joel. Top Pop Albums, 1955–1996. Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research Inc., 1996. Wilk, Max. Overture and Finale: Rodgers and Hammerstein and the Creation of Their Two Greatest Hits. New York: Back Stage Books, 1993. Wolf, Stacy. A Problem Like Maria: Gender and Sexuality in the American Musical. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. Wolfe, Charles. “What’s Entertainment? Recent Writings on the Film Musical.” Quarterly Review of Film Studies Spring 1985: 143–52. Wyatt, Justin. High Concept: Movies and Marketing in Hollywood. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. Yanc, Jeff. “ ‘More Than a Woman: Music, Masculinity and Male Spectacle in Saturday Night Fever and Staying Alive.” The Velvet Light Trap 38(Fall 1996): 39–50.

Index

1776 (1972), 24, 26, 35, 39, 41, 50, 54, 55, 96, 115, 143, 145, 150, 222 1776 (stage, 1969), 97, 217 20th Century-Fox, 1–2, 14, 17, 223 400 Blows, The (1959), 19, 31, 142 42nd Street (1933), 13–14, 46, 62, 75, 93, 141 9 to 5 (1980), 183, 199 9 to 5 (stage, 2009), 183, 199 Academy Awards, 184, 187 acid rock, 106 Across the Universe (2007), 182, 187, 188, 189, 195–6, 197–8, 199 Adler, Richard, 28 Aerosmith, 23, 47, 94, 101, 148, 163, 233 agitprop theatre, 183 Airport (1970), 100 Aladdin (1992), 172, 174, 235 Alice’s Restaurant (1969), 21, 108 Allen, Woody, 181 All Shook Up (stage, 2005), 196 All that Jazz (1979), 2, 4, 6, 22, 23, 24, 35, 36, 46, 63–4, 72, 82, 100, 104, 115–16, 120–2, 139, 145–6, 150, 161, 177, 186, 195, 224, 225, 228, 230, 233, 234 Altman, Rick, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 21, 27, 29, 32–3, 47, 53, 60, 61, 67, 69, 72–3, 74, 76, 88–9, 112, 136, 185, 192, 219, 221, 224, 226, 227, 234 Altman, Robert, 19, 63, 95, 157, 202 Alton, Robert, 88 ambivalent definition, 9–10 American in Paris, An (1951), 90, 171 Anchors Aweigh (1945), 5, 65, 171 Andrews, Julie, 2, 94, 231 Anger, Kenneth, 19 Annie (1982), 27, 79, 89

Annie Get Your Gun (1950), 28, 93, 136–7, 219, 229, 231 Ann-Margret, 79, 161 antihero, 20, 31, 39, 40, 63–4, 64–5 Applause (1929), 2, 44, 223 April Love (1957), 21 arcadian, 9, 27–9, 42–3, 61, 75–6, 87–91, 92–3, 112–14, 118–20, 127, 134–9, 175–6 definition, 9 Aristocats (1970), 172 Arkin, Alan, 95 Assassins (stage revival, 2004), 183 Astaire, Fred, 1, 2, 3, 15, 23, 28, 55, 76, 87, 91, 93, 94, 96, 97–8, 101–2, 118, 121, 122, 124, 125, 136, 149, 176, 187, 233 At Long Last Love (1975), 2, 4, 6, 33, 34, 50, 73, 96, 100, 118, 119, 150, 157–8, 192 Auberjonois, Rene, 95 audience diegetic, 29, 47, 51, 54, 75, 78, 112, 190 invisible, 47–8, 116 non-diegetic, 29, 10, 11, 12, 16, 47, 51, 54, 65, 75, 76, 77, 78, 112, 115, 186, 190 Avalon, Frankie, 21, 101, 105 avant-garde, 2, 19, 60, 141 Avenue Q (stage, 2003), 182, 199 Babes in Arms (1939), 43 Babes on Broadway (1941), 14, 44 backstage musical, 2, 9, 14–15, 35, 44, 47, 111, 196, 222 Bacon, Kevin, 171 Baio, Scott, 109 ballad opera, 12, 168 Banderas, Antonio, 181 Band Wagon, The (1953), 41, 44, 113 Barkley’s of Broadway, The (1949), 88

245

246 Index basso profundo, 153, 233 Beach Party (1963), 17, 21, 105, 125, 222 Beals, Jennifer, 171 Beatles, The, 21, 70, 188, 195–6, 198, 199, 224 Beat Street (1984), 171, 174–5, 180 Beauty and the Beast (1991), 26, 172, 174, 200, 236 Becket (1964), 149 Bee Gees, The, 47, 101 Beggar’s Opera, The, 202 Bells are Ringing (1960), 22 Berkeley, Busby, 14, 47, 62, 75, 110, 118, 155, 178, 187, 200 Berlin, Irving, 17, 28 Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, The (1982), 2, 104, 150, 157, 231 Beymer, Richard, 18 Big Brother and the Holding Company, 106 Bikini Beach Party (1967), 125 Billboard charts, 97, 235, 236 Billy Jack (1971), 38 Billy Rose’s Jumbo (1962), 90–1 Birth of the Blues (1941), 88 Blackboard Jungle (1955), 20, 105 Black Panthers, 135, 167 blockbuster films, 17–18, 95–6, 169, 171 Blue Lagoon, The (1980), 74 Blues Brothers, The (1980), 101 Bogart, Humphrey, 92 Bogdanovich, Peter, 34, 96 Bonnie and Clyde (1967), 19, 31, 39, 169 Boone, Pat, 21, 102 Bordwell, David, 15, 62–3 Bostwick, Barry, 36 Bourdieu, Pierre, 37 Boy Friend, The (1971), 4, 26, 35, 46, 48, 64, 78 Boys in the Band, The (1970), 50 Brakhage, Stanley, 19 Brando, Marlon, 18 Braudy, Leo, 65, 66 Brazzi, Rossano, 88 break dancing, 125–6, 171, 174–6, 178 Breakin’ (1984), 171, 176, 180

Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984), 168, 171, 174, 175–6 Brecht, Bertholt, 54, 76, 183, 225 Breen, Bobby, 151 Britton, Andrew, 92, 97 Broadway, 4, 12, 16–17, 87–8, 96–7, 113, 140, 142, 182–3, 195, 217, 220, 236 self-reflective shows, 182–3 symbiotic relationship with Hollywood, 4, 15, 16–17, 87–8, 96–7, 182–3 Brooks, Mel, 193, 199 Brown, James, 101 Buddy Holly Story, The (1978), 8, 173 Bugsy Malone (1976), 3, 22, 24, 73, 74, 109–11, 112, 116, 150, 154–5, 181 burlesque, 140, 168 Burns, George, 92 Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), 38, 142 Butler, Judith, 6, 25, 133–4 Bye, Bye, Birdie (1963), 17, 21, 105, 124, 125, 222, 226, 232 Bye, Bye, Birdie (stage, 1960), 17 Cabaret (1972), 4, 8, 120, 217, 229 Cabaret (stage, 1966), 4 Cabaret (stage revival, 1998), 183 Cabin in the Sky (1943), 2, 29, 41, 52, 55, 56, 85, 223 Cagney, James, 18, 92, 93, 94 Calamity Jane (1953), 89, 93, 136–7 Call Me Madam (1953), 88 Camelot (1966), 4, 6, 8, 23, 33, 35, 41, 49, 51, 55, 66–8, 70, 103–4, 111, 114, 139, 144–5, 150, 159, 164, 167, 185, 195, 197, 226 Camelot (stage, 1960), 4, 217 Candide (stage, 1957), 17 Cannibal:The Musical (1996), 180, 181–2, 197, 199, 200, 217 Cantor, Eddie, 87 Can’t Stop the Music (1980), 22, 146, 154, 156, 161, 224, 233 Carousel (1956), 2, 55, 81, 90, 113 Carousel (stage, 1945), 13, 88 Carradine, Keith, 95 cast recordings, 97, 109, 227

Index Catch My Soul (1974), 101–2 character development, 55, 63, 66, 68, 82–3, 95, 107–8, 169, 170 Charo, 181 Chevalier, Maurice, 68, 93, 96, 103, 141 Chicago (2002), 169, 182, 183, 184, 186, 196, 197, 236 Chorus Line, A (1985), 168, 181 cinematography, 15, 19, 20, 21, 60, 62, 65–9, 177, 191 distracts from performance, 177–80, 183–4, 186–8, 194 presents psychological subjectivity, 23–4, 60, 62, 63–5, 66–8, 83–4, 131, 145–7, 159, 186 replicates drugs, 64 Civil Rights Movement, 17, 20, 29 Clapton, Eric, 46, 101, 148, 233 Clark, Dick, 46 Clark, Petula, 94 Classical Hollywood Cinema, 15–16, 19, 31, 62, 219 Clockwork Orange, A (1971), 108 Clum, John, 201, 231 Coal Miner’s Daughter, The (1980), 8, 190 Cohan, George M., 13 Cohan, Steven, 5, 25, 112, 138, 201, 232 Collins, Joan, 43 community bonding, 28–9, 49, 69, 93, 97, 134, 195 division, 23, 28, 32, 49–52, 60, 65, 79, 104, 119, 139, 181 invisible/irrelevant, 169, 192–3 Coogan’s Bluff (1968), 96 Cooper, Alice, 47, 74, 101, 102, 106, 148, 149, 233 Cooper, Gary, 92 Cosby Show, The (1984), 174 Cosmopolitan (magazine), 96 Country Girl, The (1954), 2, 18, 93 Court Jester, The (1956), 18, 69 Crosby, Bing, 42, 43, 88 Cry Baby (1990), 168, 175, 176 Curry, Tim, 37 Custen, George F., 14, 219

247

Dacus, Donnie, 95, 126 Daltrey, Roger, 102, 149 Dames (1934), 93 Damn Yankees (1958), 16, 55, 89, 120, 138, 232, 234 Damone, Vic, 136 dance absence/reduction of, 23, 24, 51, 67, 107, 112, 114–15, 131, 147, 159 ballet, 90, 91, 113, 121, 126, 129, 130, 227 bricolage, 7, 65, 89, 90 communal bonding, 88, 89, 113, 115, 119, 130 dream ballet, 48, 62, 90, 112, 116, 128, 179, 194 erotic/sensual, 4, 112, 114, 118–19, 121, 124, 126, 128, 130 folk, 7, 65, 90–1, 114, 115, 177, 227 jazz, 24, 91, 113, 130 mechanical, 91, 114, 120, 122–4, 128 modern, 24, 124, 126, 130 non-choreography, 7, 88, 113, 119, 130 romantic, 3, 4, 112, 123, 139, 176–7 visually distanced from narrative, 177–80, 183–4, 186–8 Darin, Bobby, 21 Davis, Jr, Sammy, 43, 124, 202 Davy Crockett (1955), 172 Day, Doris, 28, 88 Deer Hunter, The (1978), 95, 161 DeHavilland, Olivia, 45 Delamater, Jerome, 6 Deliverance (1972), 96 Del Prete, Duilio, 34 deMille, Agnes, 88, 113, 125, 127, 130, 227 DeNiro, Robert, 95 Deren, Maya, 19 Desjardins, Mary, 45 Devils, The (1971), 79 Diff’rent Strokes (1978), 174 Dirty Dancing (1987), 26, 171, 175–6, 177–80, 227, 235 Dirty Dozen, The (1967), 100 disco, 46–7, 126, 156, 161, 183

248 Index Disney, 26, 168, 172–3, 174, 181, 193, 200, 235, 236 Disney Channel, 193 marketing, 172 store, 172 divorce, 10, 29–30, 32 Doctor Doolittle (1967), 2, 103, 150 Dog Star Man: Part I-IV (1962–4), 19 Donen, Stanley, 113, 114, 219 Don’t Knock the Rock (1956), 20, 105 Dreamgirls (2006), 182, 183, 184, 186, 187, 188–90, 236 Dreamgirls (stage, 1981), 131 Drowsy Chaperone, The (stage, 2005), 182 drugs in culture, 64–5, 102, 106, 127 in film, 4, 21, 36, 46, 47, 64–5, 74, 84, 102, 106, 128–9, 196 dubbing, 18, 24, 88, 99, 102, 103, 109–12, 116, 154–5, 219, 227, 228 Duran Duran, 9 Durbin, Deanna, 1, 4, 14 Dyer, Richard, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 27–8, 45, 61, 69, 70, 72, 73, 76, 92, 118, 122, 125, 138, 173, 174, 193, 220, 223 Earth Girls are Easy (1988), 168, 177, 180 Easy Rider (1969), 31, 39, 64, 107 Eddy, Nelson, 18, 91, 103 editing, 19, 20, 21, 60, 65–9, 80, 191 continuity, 15 distracts from performance, 177–80, 183–4, 186–8, 194, 197 montage, 23, 66, 67, 81, 104, 147, 159, 177–80, 184, 185, 186, 187–9, 194, 196, 197, 200 presents psychological subjectivity, 23–4, 60, 62, 63–5, 66–8, 81, 83–4, 145–7, 159, 186 Ehrenreich, Barbara, 218, 230 Eisenstein, Sergei, 19 Elsaesser, Thomas, 20 Enchanted (2008), 169, 182 entertainment industry corrupt, 5, 21, 24, 31, 32, 44–8, 64 ideal, 5, 44–5, 93

Everyone Says I Love You (1996), 180, 181 Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) (1969), 35 Evita (1996), 25, 26, 168, 169, 180, 181, 182, 184, 186, 187–8, 190–1, 217 Ewell, Tom, 18 Fabian, 21 falsetto, 153, 233 Fame (1980), 181 Fantasticks, The (1995), 182, 192, 193, 197 Farmer, Brett, 177, 201 Feuer, Jane, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 21, 47, 54, 65, 66, 74, 78, 89–90, 112, 115, 116, 118, 185, 187, 220, 224, 225, 227, 230, 236 Fiddler on the Roof (1971), 22, 24, 39, 68, 71, 80, 82, 115, 143–4, 145–6, 159, 166, 177, 195, 217 Finch, Peter, 24 Finian’s Rainbow (1968), 29, 94 Fireworks (1947), 19 Flashdance (1983), 171, 176, 177–9, 187, 227, 235 Flock of Seagulls, 9 Flower Drum Song (1961), 7, 29, 43, 52, 56, 90, 151, 222, 233 Flower Drum Song (stage, 1958), 13 Follow the Fleet (1936), 76, 118 Fonda, Henry, 92 Footlight Parade (1933), 44–5, 93, 141, 149, 228 Footlight Serenade (1942), 149 Footloose (1984), 26, 171, 173, 176, 177, 179, 183, 187, 227, 235 Footloose (stage, 1998), 183 Fosse, Bob, 4, 24, 28, 36, 64, 91, 99, 114, 120–4, 128, 132, 196, 221, 224, 225, 229, 230 Foster, Jodie, 109 fourth wall, 16, 47, 62, 68, 152 Fox and the Hound, The (1981), 8, 172 Freed, Alan, 46 Freed Unit, 6, 15, 17, 138, 219, 232 French Connection, The (1971), 50, 100

Index French New Wave, 2, 10, 19, 29, 31, 47, 60, 71 Friedan, Betty, 38 Friml, Rudolf, 13 From Justin to Kelly (2003), 187–8, 197 Funny Face (1957), 41, 88, 161 Funny Girl (1968), 6, 33, 166, 231 Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A (1966), 64, 66–7, 114, 139, 146, 159, 186, 200 Gardner, Ava, 42 Garland, Judy, 1, 2, 4, 14, 16, 18, 131, 203, 219, 225 Garr, Teri, 94 Gay Rights Movement, 3, 10, 29, 135, 167, 221 generation X, 26, 169, 181, 182, 201 genre blending, 22 critique, 36, 38, 67, 75, 109, 111, 118–20, 181 gangster, 74, 110 men’s, 24–5, 38, 54–9, 134 parody, 24, 26, 34, 73–6, 169, 197, 200 reflexivity, 74 science fiction, 181, 183, 185, 186, 197–201 social relevance, 30, 37, 59, 135, 169, 185, 230 Western, 38, 92, 96, 100, 149 women’s, 4, 38, 136 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), 12 Gershwin, George, 13, 16 Gershwin, Ira, 13, 16 Gerstner, David, 201, 231 Gigi (1958), 7, 15, 68, 69 Gilbert, W.S. and Arthur Sullivan, 198 Gimme a Break (1981), 174 Gimme Shelter (1970), 8 Girl Most Likely, The (1957), 90 Girls Just Want to Have Fun (1986), 172 Gledhill, Christine, 92 Glorifying the American Girl (1929), 44, 222 Godard, Jean-Luc, 9, 19, 225

249

Godspell (1973), 4, 6, 23, 43, 47–8, 55, 66, 72, 75, 81, 95, 115, 116–18, 146–7, 150, 151, 152, 153, 159, 160, 192–3, 227 Godspell (stage, 1971), 4 Going My Way (1944), 42 Gold Diggers of 1933, The (1933), 13–14, 75, 111 Goodbye, Mr Chips (1969), 24, 50, 51, 103, 104, 108, 147, 149, 159, 228 Good Times (1967), 150, 160 Good Vibrations (stage, 2005), 195, 236 Gould, Elliot, 95 Graduate, The (1967), 19, 31, 32, 63, 67, 107, 142 Grateful Dead, 106 Gray, Jennifer, 171 Grease (1978), 15, 22, 28, 49, 115, 192, 224, 226 Grease 2 (1982), 49, 224, 226 Guthrie, Arlo, 21 Guys and Dolls (1955), 18, 23, 61, 69–70, 88, 89, 137, 147, 222 Gypsy (1962), 17–18, 88, 95, 107, 231 Hair (1979), 4, 6, 23, 24, 39, 43–4, 51, 64, 71, 95, 105, 106, 125, 126–32 Hairspray (1988), 172, 175, 176, 183 Hairspray (2006), 169, 182, 183, 199 Hairspray (stage, 2002), 183 Hair (stage, 1968), 4, 17, 105, 127 Half a Sixpence (1967), 2, 28, 49, 89, 113, 160, 224, 226 Hallelujah (1929), 2, 29, 56, 81, 228 Hammerstein II, Oscar, 2, 6, 7, 13, 14, 18, 22, 52, 97, 140, 169, 190, 198, 202, 217, 218, 222 Hard Day’s Night, A (1964), 21 Harrison, Rex, 24, 99, 103 Harris, Richard, 24, 103–4 Havens, Ritchie, 101, 102, 233 Head (1968), 21 Hefner, Hugh, 30, 135 Hello Dolly! (1969), 2, 27, 29, 49, 103, 113, 160, 224 Hepburn, Audrey, 18, 88, 95, 109 high concept, 26, 169, 170–1, 177, 178, 179, 183–4, 183, 184, 186–7, 191

250 Index High Fidelity (2000), 199 High Fidelity (stage, 2006), 199 High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008), 192, 193, 197 High Time (1960), 21 Hiller, Arthur, 63 hippies, 39, 43–4, 51, 70, 71, 77, 124, 126–30, 135, 167 historical background, 52–3 Hit the Deck (1955), 23, 43, 137, 151 Hoberman, J., 171 Hoffman, Dustin, 95 Holden, William, 18, 93 Holliday, Jennifer, 131 Holliday, Judy, 22 Hope, Bob, 43 Hound Dog Man (1959), 21 House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), 45 How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), 41, 55, 116, 139, 160 Hudson, Jennifer, 184 Hudson, Rock, 95 I Could Go On Singing (1963), 131 I’ll Take Sweden (1965), 21 integration, 6–9, 12–13, 15–16, 48, 66–7, 89–90, 113, 116, 141, 168–9, 191, 194, 195, 196–9, 200, 222, 230, 236 intertextual, 21, 24–5, 74–6, 87, 118, 148–9, 161–3, 173, 183, 186, 197–200, 203 In the Navy (1941), 47 It’s Always Fair Weather (1955), 90, 233 Jackson, Michael, 112, 233 Jailhouse Rock (1957), 125 Jaws (1975), 100, 170 Jefferson Airplane, 106 Jerk, The (1979), 96 Jesus Christ Superstar (1973), 23, 24, 41–2, 47, 51, 54, 55, 75–7, 81, 95, 105–6, 116–17, 125, 126, 139, 148, 150, 151, 152–4, 160, 192, 220, 225, 229 Jesus Christ Superstar (stage, 1971), 4, 17, 190

John, Elton, 163, 199, 233 Johnson, Candy, 125 Jones, Catherine Zeta, 184 Jules and Jim (1962), 19 Jungle Book, The (1967), 8 Kahn, Madeline, 34 Keel, Howard, 2, 88, 91, 93–4, 99, 103, 136, 149 Keitel, Harvey, 95 Kelly, Gene, 1, 2, 3, 5, 16, 18, 23, 65, 90, 91, 93, 94, 96, 97–8, 101, 113, 118, 124, 130, 136, 149, 156, 171, 179, 194, 219, 228, 229, 231 Kennedy, George, 94, 100, 148, 149 Kern, Jerome, 6, 12, 13, 140 Kibbee, Guy, 93 Kidd, Michael, 88, 91, 113, 114 Kidman, Nicole, 183 King and I, The (1956), 113 King and I, The (stage 1951), 13, 17 King Jr, Martin Luther, 31, 167 Kismet (stage, 1953), 17 Kiss Me Stupid (1964), 18 Kubrick, Stanley, 108 LaBamba (1987), 174 Laugh-In (1967), 64, 225 Lawrence of Arabia (1962), 149 Leone, Sergio, 96, 100, 149 Lerner, Alan Jay and Frederick Lowe, 198, 222 Les Miserables (stage, 1987), 199, 200 Levittown, 30 Lewis, Jerry Lee, 106 Li’l Abner (1959), 113, 116 Lion King, The (1994), 26, 172 Lion King, The (stage, 1997), 188, 236 Lion in Winter, The (1968), 149 Little Big Man (1970), 38 Little Mermaid, The (1989), 26, 172, 174 Little Mermaid, The (stage, 2007), 236 Little Nellie Kelly (1940), 29 Little Night Music, A (1977), 35, 48, 114, 116, 150, 152 Little Prince, The (1974), 23, 26, 40, 50, 54, 108, 120, 145, 147, 159, 160, 195

Index Little Shop of Horrors (1986), 168, 181 Longest Yard, The (1974), 96, 157 Lost Horizon (1973), 8, 22, 24, 26, 42, 49, 51, 70, 100, 104, 108, 143, 144, 145, 146–7, 149, 150, 151, 159, 166, 221, 226, 228 Love Me or Leave Me (1955), 88 Love Me Tonight (1932), 35, 93 Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000), 182 Lurhmann, Baz, 183, 198 MacLaine, Shirley, 33, 94 MacRae, Gordon, 93, 95, 99, 102, 103, 225 Madonna, 181, 199 magical quality of music, 104–5, 109–10, 112, 115, 176, 185, 190–1, 195 Malcolm X, 31, 167 Mamma Mia! (2008), 195, 196, 197, 198, 199 Mamma Mia! (stage, 2001), 182 Man of la Mancha (1972), 23, 35, 50, 63–4, 72, 103, 114, 146, 149, 152 Man of la Mancha (stage, 1965), 217, 220 Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The (1962), 100 Martin, Dean, 228, 233 Martin, Mary, 4, 18, 87, 88, 94, 231 Martin, Steve, 2, 25, 36, 47, 94, 96–100, 102, 157, 167 Marvin, Lee, 36, 100, 101, 103, 148, 149 Mary Poppins (1964), 26, 51, 79 Mary Poppins (stage, 2006), 182 Masculine Feminine (1966), 19, 31 masculinity the body, 25, 138, 153, 162, 201 breadwinner, 6, 25, 30, 92, 134–6, 137, 138, 139, 147, 149, 150, 159 dancing, 138, 159 homosocial, 101, 150, 160, 161 instability, 150, 158, 167 ornamental, 135, 153, 156 performed, 25, 110–11, 133–4, 140, 142, 153–5, 157 playboy, 25, 30, 135

251

queered, 5, 23, 25, 138, 142, 147, 153, 159, 162–4, 201, 202 stereotype, 58, 109, 151, 152, 153, 154–5, 156 M∗ A∗ S∗ H (1970), 19 Mason, James, 18, 92, 93 Mast, Gerald, 16 Matthau, Walter, 103 Mature, Victor, 18, 149 McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), 38, 63, 107 McDonald, Jeanette, 94 McGregor, Ewan, 183 McNichol, Kristy, 24, 94 Mean Streets (1973), 63 Mellencamp, Patricia, 115 Melody Cruise (1933), 3, 35 Melody in Spring (1934), 93 Merman, Ethel, 4, 87, 88, 231 Meshes in the Afternoon (1943), 19 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), 5, 6, 15, 17, 138, 182, 219, 224, 232 Mickey Mouse Club, The (1955), 172 Midnight Cowboy (1969), 37 Miller, D.A., 201, 231 Miller, Marc, 17, 30, 173, 181 Minnelli, Liza, 8, 46, 94, 230 Minnelli, Vincente, 219, 232 mise-en-scene, 69–78, 80, 193 ahistorical, 23, 69–70, 153 built or play within a play, 23, 69, 76–8, 77 costumes, 71–3, 74, 75, 76–7, 80, 81, 82–4, 119, 121–2, 146–7, 151, 153, 156, 178, 187, 196 lighting, 178, 179, 189, 218 nostalgic, 13, 60–1, 69, 70, 73–4, 134, 146–7, 200 realistic, 12, 18, 20, 23, 24, 60–1, 69–71, 69–73, 75, 78–9, 83, 174–5 setting, 13, 18, 71–3, 74, 75, 76–8, 80, 83, 107, 117, 119, 146–7, 153 stylized, 24, 60–1, 69, 71–6, 78–9, 82–4, 99, 107 Miss Saigon (stage, 1991), 199 Monkees, The, 21 Moon, Keith, 2, 25, 149

252 Index Moon Over Harlem (1939), 30, 43 Mork and Mindy (1978), 96, 157 Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) Rating System, 10, 19, 35, 39, 52, 141 Moulin Rouge! (2001), 169, 182, 183–4, 186–7, 197, 198–9, 200, 202, 236 MTV history, 170–1 style, 26, 169, 171–2, 176–80, 181, 182, 183, 185, 186, 235 Mueller, John, 6 multiplex, 169, 170 Muscle Beach Party (1964), 125 musical play, 12, 13, 17, 22, 140, 168, 182 Music Man, The (stage, 1958), 17 Music Man, The (1962), 7, 16, 51, 69, 89, 187 music videos, 26, 170–1, 177–80, 181, 184, 187, 188 My Fair Lady (1964), 17, 88, 96, 229, 231 My Sister Eileen (1955), 120 narrative career, 6, 41, 94, 104, 134, 136–7, 140, 143, 146, 147, 150 conciliatory ending, 2–3, 15, 16, 23, 69, 91, 134, 142, 155, 174–5, 176, 195 death/violence, 6, 18, 23, 29, 40, 44, 47, 52, 78–80, 81, 85, 104, 105, 119, 131, 160–1, 162, 174 decentered romance, 39–42, 54–5, 63, 143, 144, 146 failed romance, 6, 23, 31, 32–5, 50, 104, 139 inconclusive or unhappy ending, 6, 18, 23, 31, 33, 34, 37, 44, 47, 53, 57–8, 69, 80, 82, 85, 99, 104, 111, 114, 118, 127, 136, 139, 143, 150, 163, 167, 173, 193 linear, 20 lusty, 81–2, 82–4, 94, 99–100, 104, 141, 150, 162 personal quest/journey, 38–42, 53–9, 60, 94, 134, 139, 143

religious quest, 40–2 self-involved/introspective protagonist, 20, 24, 41, 51, 63, 64–5, 68, 108–9, 139, 140, 144–5, 146, 147, 148, 161, 195 successful romance, 3, 5, 12, 27, 88, 93, 97, 114, 136–7, 140–1, 147, 160, 166, 195 Nashville (1975), 8, 31 National Organization for Women, 135, 221 Neale, Steve, 19–20, 138, 201 Neptune’s Daughter (1949), 18 Nero, Franco, 111 New American Cinema, 10, 19–20, 31, 36, 47, 60, 95, 98, 142, 202 films, 19, 31, 60, 63, 64, 142 narrative style, 19–20, 29, 31, 36, 47, 170 visual style, 19–20, 23, 60, 63, 64, 67–9, 71 New Hollywood, 170–1 Newsies (1992), 168, 181 New York, New York (1977), 8 niche markets, 169, 181, 186, 199 Nichols, Mike, 19, 50, 63, 67, 95, 202 Night Flight (1981), 170 Nixon, Marni, 109 Nixon, Richard, 135, 229 No, No, Nanette (1940), 149 off-Broadway, 4, 105, 127, 142, 182, 192, 220 Offenbach, Jacques, 200 Oh, Calcutta (stage, 1969), 4, 182 Oklahoma! (1955), 13, 14, 18, 32–3, 35, 69, 81, 85, 88, 89, 90, 113, 120, 136–7, 138, 161, 164, 174, 182, 194, 223, 232, 233 Oklahoma! (stage, 1943), 13 Oliver! (1968), 184, 221, 226 Oliver and Company (1988), 172 On a Clear Day You Can Forever (1970), 24, 50, 114, 146 On the Town (1949), 5, 65, 72, 88, 89, 90, 113, 137, 147, 157, 218, 220, 228 One from the Heart (1982), 4, 94

Index One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937), 14, 111 opera, 12, 169, 181–2, 184–5, 186, 188, 190–1, 198 operetta, 12, 13, 140, 168, 190 opposites attract, 11, 28, 33, 111, 174, 176, 192 Paint Your Wagon (1969), 2, 4, 35, 36, 49, 96, 100, 101, 103, 114, 149, 150, 158, 161, 167 Pajama Game, The (1957), 28, 90, 116, 120, 137, 182 Pajama Game, The (stage, 1954), 120 Pal Joey (1957), 88 Pan, Hermes, 113 Paramount Decision, 17, 45 Parker, Alan, 181, 188 Parker, Trey, 181–2, 200 Parton, Dolly, 199 pastiche, 20, 26, 183, 197, 199, 200–1 Payola, 46 Penn, Arthur, 19 Pennies from Heaven (1981), 2, 6, 23, 24, 35–6, 73, 74, 75, 96, 99–100, 109–11, 118–19, 139, 154–5, 225, 227, 233 performance within a performance, 47–8, 53–4, 57–8, 76–8, 114, 116, 117, 126, 152–3, 222 personal agency, 15, 109, 136, 137–8, 141, 143, 145, 148, 150, 159 personal enjoyment of texts, 185, 197–201 Pesci, Joe, 95 Peters, Bernadette, 24, 36, 94, 96 Phantom of the Opera, The (2004), 169, 182, 190 Phantom of the Opera, The (stage, 1988), 199 Phantom of the Paradise, The (1973), 21, 108 Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982), 181 Pirate, The (1948), 5 Pirate Movie, The (1982), 3, 49, 66–7, 73, 74–5, 94, 150, 154, 156, 159, 186, 200, 224, 226 Pirates of Penzance, The (1983), 96–7, 160

253

Playboy (magazine), 30 Pleasantville (1998), 197 Plummer, Christopher, 18, 88, 96, 219 Popeye (1980), 3, 22, 96, 111–12, 150, 154, 157, 160, 224 Porgy and Bess (1959), 29, 43, 151, 222 Porter, Cole, 7, 17, 34 Powell, Dick, 18, 91, 93, 94, 95 Powell, Jane, 4, 15, 94 pre-existing music, 195, 198–9 Presley, Elvis, 17, 20, 21, 105, 195, 228, 233 Priest Killer, The (1971), 100 Prince, Hal, 4 Producers, The (1968), 183, 199 Producers, The (2005), 169, 182, 183, 192, 193–4, 197, 199 Producers, The (stage, 2001), 183 Production Code Administration (PCA), 12, 14 Hays Code, 12, 18, 37, 141, 223 Pre-Code, 13–14, 35, 91, 223 production number, 16, 23, 24, 28, 29, 32–3, 37, 51, 57, 75–6, 87, 90–1, 110, 113, 115, 118, 119, 121–4, 126, 127, 137, 147, 182, 184, 193–4, 224, 229, 233 psychedelic rock, 106, 129 Pulp Fiction (1994), 199 Purple Rain (1984), 168, 171, 172, 177, 179 quiz show scandals, 46 race in the musical conflict, 43–4, 52, 55–8, 176 diversity, 121, 126, 151, 174 lack of conflict, 42–3, 150–1, 219 Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), 169 Raitt, John, 28 Reagan, Ronald, 174, 176, 235 recitative, 13, 89, 189, 199 Redford, Robert, 95 Redgrave, Vanessa, 103–4 Reed, Oliver, 80 Reinking, Ann, 94 religion, 41–2, 46, 51, 79 Rent (2005), 169, 184, 187 Rent (stage, 1996), 182

254 Index Repo: The Genetic Opera (2008), 184, 190–1 Reynolds, Burt, 2, 34, 96, 100, 102, 148, 157–8, 163, 167, 234 Riding High (1950), 29 Ring of Fire (stage, 2006), 195, 236 Road to Hong Kong (1962), 43, 151, 232, 234 Robbins, Jerome, 88, 113, 120, 125, 127, 130, 220 Robin Hood (1973), 172 Robinson, Edward G, 92 Rock of Ages (stage, 2009), 195 Rock Around the Clock (1954), 20, 220 rock-n-roll cultural upheaval, 17, 20–1, 91, 101, 103, 105–7, 124, 131, 147–8 the musical, 4, 12, 17, 20–2, 24, 47, 105–7, 124–5, 126, 131, 147–8 singing/musical style, 12, 17, 24, 61, 103, 105–6, 124, 126, 130, 181, 187, 188, 220 Rocky Horror Picture Show, The (1975), 6, 23, 35, 36–7, 51, 73, 74, 75, 81, 118–19, 150, 161, 162–3, 224, 234 Rodgers, Richard, 2, 6, 7, 13, 14, 18, 22, 52, 97, 140, 169, 190, 198, 202, 217, 218, 222 Romeo + Juliet (1996), 184 Ronstadt, Linda, 24, 94, 96 Rooney, Mickey, 14, 91, 93, 94, 203 Rose, George, 97 Ross, Diana, 94, 112 Ross, Jerry, 28 Ruggles, Charles, 93 Russell, Ken, 78–9 Russell, Nipsey, 112 Russell, Rosalind, 18, 88, 219 Ryan, Jeannie, 127 Rydell, Bobby, 17, 21, 101–2 Sarandon, Susan, 36 satire, 34, 180–1, 182, 223, 230 Satisfaction (1988), 172 Saturday Night Fever (1977), 8, 126, 173, 183, 218

Saturday Night Fever (stage, 1999), 183 Saturday Night Live (1975), 97 Savage, John, 95, 126 Say One for Me (1959), 42 Schatz, Thomas, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 27, 30, 32, 53, 74, 76, 115, 135, 136, 137, 170, 177, 179, 185, 192, 218, 219, 224, 236 Scheider, Roy, 36, 100, 104 School Daze (1988), 168, 177, 180 Scorpio Rising (1964), 19 Scorsese, Martin, 8, 63, 95, 108, 202 Scrooge (1970), 115, 221 Sesame Street (1969), 183 Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954), 1, 5, 12, 16, 35, 61, 88, 93, 102, 113, 121, 137, 139 sex/sexuality, 32, 78, 79–80 kinky/non-consensual, 35, 36, 160, 161, 162 monogamous, 2, 6, 23, 30, 35, 37, 44, 59, 67, 69, 101, 111, 119, 136, 160 non-heterosexual, 23, 25, 35, 37, 119, 140, 157, 159, 160, 163 non-monogamous, 23, 35, 100–1, 104, 111, 119, 121–2, 140–1, 143, 150, 158, 160–1, 163 overt, 35–8, 47, 141 Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), 2, 24, 35, 46–7, 73–4, 79, 96, 98–9, 101–2, 105–6, 116, 125, 139, 148, 150, 164, 224 Shepherd, Cybill, 34, 94 Show Boat (1951), 42, 222 Show Boat (stage, 1927), 12, 13 Silk Stockings (1957), 15, 28, 102 Simon and Garfunkel, 67 singing passed-along song, 78, 90, 107, 113, 185, 200 talk-sing, 99, 102, 103–4, 109, 112, 114 voiceover, 24, 51, 66, 68, 102, 104, 107–9, 112, 114, 116, 117, 131, 147, 159, 189 Singin’ in the Rain (1952), 26, 75, 90, 124, 194, 219 Skelton, Red, 18, 92, 94

Index Smith, Rex, 96 Smokey and the Bandit (1977), 157 Song of Norway (1970), 2, 115 sound psychological subjectivity, 64, 67, 68, 81, 146 Sound of Music, The (1965), 1–2, 3, 13, 17–18, 88, 96, 102, 107, 115, 190, 200, 231 soundtrack albums, 170–1, 184, 235, 236 South Pacific (1958), 7, 26, 41, 42, 70, 88, 107, 218, 223 South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut (1999), 182, 197, 199–200 Spiceworld (1997), 172 Spring Awakening (stage, 2006), 182 Staiger, Janet, 15, 62 stand-up comedy, 96, 97, 98 Star is Born, A (1954), 2, 18, 93 Star is Born, A (1976), 8 stars comedians, 94, 96, 97–100, 142, 157, 167 contracts, 1, 45, 94 contradictory image, 24–5, 87, 94, 101, 149, 157–8, 163, 167 everyman, 95, 106, 126, 181 genre, 92–102 non-singers, 4, 18, 24, 93, 102–5, 107, 159, 228 rockers, 2, 17, 21, 23, 94, 101–3, 106, 142, 148, 149, 163, 167, 233 serious actors, 92, 94, 149 studio-groomed, 16–17, 66, 87–8, 92–4, 99, 147, 164 teen idols/pop stars, 20–1, 94, 96, 101–2, 105 tough guys, 2, 96, 99, 100–1, 142, 148, 149, 158–9, 163, 167 Stars on Parade (1944), 15 Star Wars (1977), 169 State Fair (1962), 18, 21, 73, 120 Steele, Tommy, 113 Steppenwolf, 107 Stewart, James, 92

255

Stone, Matt, 181, 200 Stonewall Riots, 30, 135 Stormy Weather (1943), 43 Streep, Meryl, 181, 198 Streisand, Barbra, 94, 181, 231 Studio 54, 32, 46, 183 Summer, Donna, 46, 126 Superman (1978), 169 Swayze, Patrick, 171, 179 Sweeney Todd (2007), 190, 192, 193, 194 Sweet Charity (1969), 6, 22, 23, 33–4, 43–4, 49, 64, 71, 120–4, 145–6, 159, 167, 202, 227, 230 Sweet Dreams (1985), 174 tabloids, 45 Tamblyn, Russ, 3 taxes, 17, 45, 94 Taxi Driver (1976), 108 Taymor, Julie, 188–9 teenage audience, 17, 20–1, 26, 105, 169–70, 173, 220, 227 Telotte, JP, 173–4, 218, 230 Temple, Shirley, 14, 221, 223 Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny (2006), 197 Tharp, Twyla, 24, 114, 124, 126–9, 130–1 theatricality, 24, 47–8, 53–4, 57–8, 60, 62, 69, 76–8, 116 This is the Army (1943), 15 Thompson, Kristin, 15 Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967), 2, 22, 49, 160, 224 Thousands Cheer (1943), 90 Threepenny Opera (stage revival, 2006), 183 Tin Pan Alley, 7 Tommy (1975), 2, 3, 22, 24, 40–3, 46, 55, 66, 73, 78–85, 101, 105–7, 111–12, 139, 143, 148, 150, 159, 160, 164, 166, 177, 197, 220 Top Hat (1935), 55, 124 Travolta, John, 199 Trip, The (1967), 64 Truffaut, Francois, 19 Turner, Tina, 83, 106–7, 148, 224 Turning Point (1977), 8

256 Index Two or Three Things I Know About Her (1967), 19 Tyler Moore, Mary, 94 Unsinkable Molly Brown, The (1964), 16, 90, 115 Urinetown (stage, 2001), 182–3, 199 Vera-Ellen, 65 Very Eye of Night, The (1954), 19 Victor/Victoria (1982), 183 Victor/Victoria (stage, 1995), 183 Video Concert Hall (1978), 170 Vietnam, 3, 10, 17, 30, 91, 135, 142 in film, 44, 95, 126–7, 131, 195 Village People, The, 156, 157, 161, 163, 233 Warhol, Andy, 46 Warner Amex, 170 Warner Bros, 13, 17, 45, 141 Watergate, 3, 41 Way Down South (1939), 3, 56, 151, 228 Wayne, John, 92 Webber, Andrew Lloyd, 181, 190 Wedding Singer, The (1998), 183, 197, 199 Wedding Singer, The (stage, 2006), 183, 199 Welk, Lawrence, 129 West Side Story (1961), 17, 18, 29, 88, 90, 95, 113, 186, 220 white flight, 30 The Who, 2, 22, 23, 102, 106, 148, 167, 233

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966), 18, 19, 32, 50, 142 Williams, Esther, 4, 37, 119 Williams, Paul, 21 Williams, Robin, 96, 97, 157 Williams, Treat, 127 Wise, Robert, 18 Wiz, The (1978), 4, 40, 73, 105, 111, 112, 125–6, 166, 233 Wizard of Oz, The (1939), 69, 74, 79, 221, 227 Women’s Movement, 3, 17, 20, 29, 167, 221 Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, The (1962), 69 Wood, Natalie, 18, 95 Woodstock (1970), 8, 64 Woodstock (concert), 102, 135 Wright, Dorsey, 127 Wyatt, Justin, 170, 179 Xanadu (1980), 22, 50, 72–3, 94, 104, 124–5, 139, 150, 154, 156, 164, 183, 228, 229 Xanadu (stage, 2007), 183 Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), 93, 149 youth rebellion, 20–1, 31, 43–4, 70–1, 95, 105–6, 127, 142, 148 Zanuck, Darryl, 14 Ziegfeld Girl (1941), 5, 44, 222 Zoot Suit (1981), 23, 24, 43, 52–8, 64, 76, 77–8, 96, 115, 116, 117–18, 150, 151–2, 156, 160, 197, 225, 229 historical background, 52–3