Incongruous Entertainment

Incongruous Entertainment PDF Author: Steven Cohan
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822387077
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
With their lavish costumes and sets, ebullient song and dance numbers, and iconic movie stars, the musicals that mgm produced in the 1940s seem today to epitomize camp. Yet they were originally made to appeal to broad, mainstream audiences. In this lively, nuanced, and provocative reassessment of the mgm musical, Steven Cohan argues that this seeming incongruity—between the camp value and popular appreciation of these musicals—is not as contradictory as it seems. He demonstrates that the films’ extravagance and queerness were deliberate elements and keys to their popular success. In addition to examining the spectatorship of the mgm musical, Cohan investigates the genre’s production and marketing, paying particular attention to the studio’s employment of a largely gay workforce of artists and craftspeople. He reflects on the role of the female stars—including Judy Garland, Debbie Reynolds, Esther Williams, and Lena Horne—and he explores the complex relationship between Gene Kelley’s dancing and his masculine persona. Cohan looks at how, in the decades since the 1950s, the marketing and reception of the mgm musical have negotiated the more publicly recognized camp value attached to the films. He considers the status of Singin’ in the Rain as perhaps the first film to be widely embraced as camp; the repackaging of the musicals as nostalgia and camp in the That’s Entertainment! series as well as on home video and cable; and the debates about Garland’s legendary gay appeal among her fans on the Internet. By establishing camp as central to the genre, Incongruous Entertainment provides a new way of looking at the musical.

Incongruous Entertainment

Incongruous Entertainment PDF Author: Steven Cohan
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822387077
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 379

Get Book Here

Book Description
With their lavish costumes and sets, ebullient song and dance numbers, and iconic movie stars, the musicals that mgm produced in the 1940s seem today to epitomize camp. Yet they were originally made to appeal to broad, mainstream audiences. In this lively, nuanced, and provocative reassessment of the mgm musical, Steven Cohan argues that this seeming incongruity—between the camp value and popular appreciation of these musicals—is not as contradictory as it seems. He demonstrates that the films’ extravagance and queerness were deliberate elements and keys to their popular success. In addition to examining the spectatorship of the mgm musical, Cohan investigates the genre’s production and marketing, paying particular attention to the studio’s employment of a largely gay workforce of artists and craftspeople. He reflects on the role of the female stars—including Judy Garland, Debbie Reynolds, Esther Williams, and Lena Horne—and he explores the complex relationship between Gene Kelley’s dancing and his masculine persona. Cohan looks at how, in the decades since the 1950s, the marketing and reception of the mgm musical have negotiated the more publicly recognized camp value attached to the films. He considers the status of Singin’ in the Rain as perhaps the first film to be widely embraced as camp; the repackaging of the musicals as nostalgia and camp in the That’s Entertainment! series as well as on home video and cable; and the debates about Garland’s legendary gay appeal among her fans on the Internet. By establishing camp as central to the genre, Incongruous Entertainment provides a new way of looking at the musical.

Free and Easy?

Free and Easy? PDF Author: Sean Griffin
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118322908
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
A History of the American Musical narrates the evolution of the film musical genre, discussing its influences and how it has come to be defined; the first text on this subject for over two decades, it employs the very latest concepts and research. The most up-to-date text on the subject, with uniquely comprehensive coverage and employing the very latest concepts and research Surveys centuries of music history from the music and dance of Native Americans to contemporary music performance in streaming media Examines the different ways the film musical genre has been defined, what gets counted as a musical, why, and who gets to make that decision The text is written in an accessible manner for general cinema and musical theatre buffs, whilst retaining theoretical rigour in research Describes the contributions made to the genre by marginalized or subordinated identity groups who have helped invent and shape the musical

Music & Camp

Music & Camp PDF Author: Christopher Moore
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819577839
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
This collection of essays provides the first in-depth examination of camp as it relates to a wide variety of twentieth and twenty-first century music and musical performances. Located at the convergence of popular and queer musicology, the book provides new research into camp's presence, techniques, discourses, and potential meanings across a broad spectrum of musical genres, including: musical theatre, classical music, film music, opera, instrumental music, the Broadway musical, rock, pop, hip-hop, and Christmas carols. This significant contribution to the field of camp studies investigates why and how music has served as an expressive and political vehicle for both the aesthetic characteristics and the receptive modes that have been associated with camp throughout twentieth and twenty-first-century culture. Hardcover is un-jacketed.

The Sound of Musicals

The Sound of Musicals PDF Author: Steven Cohan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1839020601
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 465

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Book Description
Despite having had its obituary written many times, the movie musical remains a flourishing twenty-first century form, and as this volume demonstrates, one that exists far beyond the confines of Broadway and Hollywood. The Sound of Musicals examines the films, stars, issues and traditions of the genre from the 1930s to the present day. Featuring sixteen original essays by leading international scholars, this illuminating collection addresses the complex history and global variety of the movie musical, and considers the delight and passionate engagement that musicals continue to inspire in audiences around the world. The contributors address key issues for understanding the movie musical: questions of genre and generic traditions; questions of history, bringing fresh perspectives to a consideration of Classical Hollywood musicals; and the musical beyond Hollywood, looking at alternatives to the Hollywood model from the 'New Hollywood' and American independent cinema to Bollywood and other national musical traditions. Individual chapters consider key musical stars such as Frank Sinatra, Julie Andrews and Barbra Streisand; film-makers including Robert Altman and Christophe Honoré, and classic musicals such as South Pacific (1958) and Hairspray (1988). In his introduction to the volume, Steven Cohan addresses the significance and enduring appeal of this multi-faceted genre, and considers its recent renaissance with movies such as the High School Musical franchise, and the success of the television series Glee.

The Boys in the Band

The Boys in the Band PDF Author: Matt Bell
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814341543
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
Scholars and students working in the disciplines of film studies, queer studies, history, theater, and sociology will surely find the book invaluable and a shaping influence on these fields in the coming years.

Classic Hollywood

Classic Hollywood PDF Author: Veronica Pravadelli
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252096738
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
Studies of "Classic Hollywood" typically treat Hollywood films released from 1930 to 1960 as a single interpretive mass. Veronica Pravadelli complicates this idea. Focusing on dominant tendencies in box office hits and Oscar-recognized classics, she breaks down the so-called classic period into six distinct phases that follow Hollywood's amazingly diverse offerings from the emancipated females of the "Transition Era" and the traditional men and women of the conservative 1930s that replaced it to the fantastical Fifties movie musicals that arose after anti-classic genres like film noir and women's films. Pravadelli sets her analysis apart by paying particular attention to the gendered desires and identities exemplified in the films. Availing herself of the significant advances in film theory and modernity studies that have taken place since similar surveys first saw publication, she views Hollywood through strategies as varied as close textural analysis, feminism, psychoanalysis, film style and study of cinematic imagery, revealing the inconsistencies and antithetical traits lurking beneath Classic Hollywood's supposed transparency.

Gay Icons

Gay Icons PDF Author: Georges-Claude Guilbert
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476633010
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Who are the most significant gay icons and how did they develop? What influence do they have on gay individuals and communities? This book focuses on the superstars, femmes fatales and divas of the gay celebrity pantheon--Mae West, Julie Andrews, Britney Spears, RuPaul, Cher, Divine, Sharon Needles and many others--and their contributions to gay culture and the complications of sexual and gender identity. The author explores their allure along with the mechanisms of iconicity.

Making Light

Making Light PDF Author: Raymond Knapp
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822372401
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
In Making Light Raymond Knapp traces the musical legacy of German Idealism as it led to the declining prestige of composers such as Haydn while influencing the development of American popular music in the nineteenth century. Knapp identifies in Haydn and in early popular American musical cultures such as minstrelsy and operetta a strain of high camp—a mode of engagement that relishes both the superficial and serious aspects of an aesthetic experience—that runs antithetical to German Idealism's musical paradigms. By considering the disservice done to Haydn by German Idealism alongside the emergence of musical camp in American popular music, Knapp outlines a common ground: a humanistically based aesthetic of shared pleasure that points to ways in which camp receptive modes might rejuvenate the original appeal of Haydn's music that has mostly eluded audiences. In so doing, Knapp remaps the historiographical modes and systems of critical evaluation that dominate musicology while troubling the divide between serious and popular music.

The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film

The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film PDF Author: Sonja Fritzsche
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 1781380384
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
The first comprehensive companion to science fiction film as a global, rather than solely Anglo-American, concern.

Oz and the Musical

Oz and the Musical PDF Author: Ryan Bunch
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190843136
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
"The Wizard is a lovable humbug, an artful salesman who gives his customers something to believe in, even if the thing is known to be pretend. Playing a role, he presents Dorothy's friends with talismans of brains, heart and courage and takes pride in showing them how he accomplished his illusions. Why do Dorothy's friends put their faith in the Wizard's abilities to grant their requests even after he has shown them that he has only been putting on a show? Perhaps his virtuoso performances inspire their own, and ours too. His humbug guides the philosophy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and the theatrical style of the first Oz musical, the extravaganza of 1902, with implications for "American" performance and participation"--