tag:theconversation.com,2011:/es/topics/musicals-9612/articles
Musicals – The Conversation
2024-02-14T12:21:04Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222647
2024-02-14T12:21:04Z
2024-02-14T12:21:04Z
Keeping a film’s identity as a musical secret is key for box office success – here’s why
<p>This winter saw the back-to-back releases of three movie musicals: <a href="https://theconversation.com/wonka-timothee-chalamet-shines-in-an-otherwise-pedestrian-prequel-219249">Wonka</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-color-purple-is-an-emotional-joyful-exploration-of-black-womanhood-in-the-deep-south-222102">The Color Purple</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/if-mean-girls-was-part-of-your-teenage-years-you-might-not-like-the-new-one-221669">Mean Girls</a>. However, many cinema-goers would have been surprised to find these were musicals at all, considering the lack of any such suggestion in their marketing. </p>
<p>All three films are based on existing stories. Their slogans read “discover how Willy became Wonka”, “a bold new take on a beloved classic” and “not your mother’s Mean Girls”. Each indicates originality and change without specifying that the change in question is musical. But why have film studios chosen this strategy?</p>
<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeetendrsehdev/2023/11/30/hiding-the-music-in-mean-girls-wonka-and-the-color-purple-is-a-missed-opportunity/?sh=4c0610906f7d">Writing for Forbes</a>, critic Jeetendr Sehdev called the “covert operation” “counterintuitive”, because it runs the risk of alienating a consumer culture that values transparency. </p>
<p>YouTube’s community of musical-themed content creators were also widely <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL-MeqmPefE">disapproving</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3uIi0ytTEw">questioning</a> the implied antipathy towards musicals. If such antipathy exists, they ask, then why are film studios making musicals in the first place? Well, because the technique seems to work. </p>
<h2>Musicals at the box office</h2>
<p>According to Paramount’s president of marketing and distribution, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/mean-girls-musical-movie-renee-rapp-b2479962.html">Marc Weinstock</a>, the word “musical” has “the potential to turn off audiences” – a sentiment supported by statistics.</p>
<p>YouTube documentary channel <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvWSGGPfNEc">Wait in the Wings</a> has highlighted the stark contrast in box office figures between musical films that market themselves as “musicals” and those that don’t. </p>
<p>While <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0CL-ZSuCrQ">In the Heights</a> (2021) and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_c_Jd-hP-s">Dear Evan Hansen</a> (2021) – films that proudly shared their musical chops in their trailers – lost money, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pdqf4P9MB8">La La Land</a> (2016) and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3vO8E2e6G0">Rocket Man</a> (2019) – films that didn’t – made huge returns. The popularity of “secret musicals” suggests audiences do enjoy musicals, but perhaps reluctantly.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">None of Wonka’s many musical numbers feature in the trailer.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Demographics are one factor. While musical theatre has long been stereotyped as predominately enjoyed by <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1525/j.ctt1pp2wk">women and gay men</a>, Hollywood remains largely male dominated. In 2022, women accounted for just <a href="https://womenintvfilm.sdsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/2022-celluloid-ceiling-report.pdf">18% of directors</a> working on the top 250 films of the year.</p>
<p>Saltburn director Emerald Fennell <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/carey-mulligan-emerald-fennell-interview-promising-young-woman-b1828987.html">has highlighted</a> a stigma around “the stuff that girls traditionally like”, challenging why they aren’t “taken seriously”. Musicals, which reside in this category, persistently challenge what it means to be “serious” by conveying dark themes and important social topics through the conventionally light methods of song and dance – Show Boat (1927), Cabaret (1966), and Spring Awakening (2006) come to mind. </p>
<p>If done well, the music does not dull the gravity of the themes, but transcribes them into (perhaps unexpected) words, tone and movement, creating a powerful and subversive spectacle.</p>
<p>No matter how much public and critical acclaim they might receive, “girl’s things” cannot seem to escape their terminal reputation of <a href="https://fortune.com/2023/07/17/barbie-movie-beauty-standards-patriarchy-queer-camp-femmephobia-feminism-scholar/">unseriousness</a>.</p>
<p>Such prejudices play a part in the musical’s taboo status, as well as the bad taste left by notable failures (sorry <a href="https://theconversation.com/cats-a-box-office-bomb-but-has-anyone-noticed-the-ethnic-stereotyping-130069">Cats</a>). However, I believe another reason lies in the “musical” label and its tendency to overpower and absorb a work’s identity. </p>
<h2>The power of the ‘musical label’</h2>
<p>For example, few would describe Sweeney Todd (1979) as a “horror” and leave it at that – arguably, the word “musical” is the first to come to mind. Perhaps this has the potential to cause lethargy for audiences, and undesirable limitations for directors who might want their work to encompass other genres. </p>
<p>Mean Girls (2004) and Mean Girls the Broadway musical (2017) are two distinctly different works. As the new musical Mean Girls film (2024) feels more like an exciting reimagining of the original film, with Tina Fey and Tim Meadows reprising their roles, than an adaptation of the stage play, it is left with little capacity to also embrace being a musical. Indeed, Weinstock calls the film a “broad comedy with music” that “could be considered a musical”, effectively hedging the film’s bets and attempting to shoo away the term “musical” as its defining identity. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">None of Mean Girls’s many musical numbers feature in the trailer.</span></figcaption>
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<p>What about Wonka? Perhaps we must think back to The Greatest Showman (2017) and its disappointing opening weekend. It was the film’s soundtrack that saved it from being a box office flop. The songs were a hit, providing <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2018/07/19/box-office-greatest-showman-legs-hugh-jackman-zendaya-zac-efron-mamma-mia/">great slow-burn advertising</a> for the film, which grew in popularity with time. Maybe it was the success of this slow-burn tactic that inspired Wonka – a similarly spectacular story of an eccentric entrepreneur – to keep its music a secret. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/jan/27/the-color-purple-review-off-note-musical-take-on-alice-walker-novel-blitz-bazawule-fantasia-barrino-taraji-p-henson-danielle-brooks#:%7E:text=Review-,The%20Color%20Purple%20review%20%E2%80%93%20off%2Dnote%20musical,take%20on%20Alice%20Walker's%20novel&text=There%20are%20certain%20stories,is%20arguably%20one%20such%20story">Some critics</a> have struggled to reconcile The Color Purple’s story with the musical format, feeling the music undermines its heavy themes or diminishes its impact. </p>
<p>Similar criticisms surrounded <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2010/sep/21/les-miserables-25-year-anniversary">Les Misérables</a> when the stage show opened in London in 1985. Perhaps The Color Purple (2023) chose to downplay its musical identity in anticipation of such criticism. </p>
<p>However, among mixed reviews, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-color-purple-is-an-emotional-joyful-exploration-of-black-womanhood-in-the-deep-south-222102">its champions</a> have applauded what the music brings. For them, the musical format allows audiences to witness Celie’s hope and imagination in vivid detail – to give her joy as much attention as her suffering. The musical number constitutes new realms of storytelling and deepened facets of character. It insists not everything has to be bleak to be taken seriously. </p>
<p>It’s been a strange time for musicals, with theatres still recovering from the pandemic and several prominent movies <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/dec/17/movie-musical-flops-west-side-story-dear-evan-hansen-in-the-heights">underperforming</a>. The “secret musical” seems to further highlight the genre’s supposed unpopularity – however, it ultimately suggests its reputation can be teased away once viewers have been persuaded into cinemas. </p>
<p>Maybe as an audience, we don’t really know how we feel about musicals. Or maybe we’re overthinking it. Maybe Wonka simply wanted us to float into the unexpected and lose ourselves. Perhaps the “secret musical” is not a dig at the genre, but a helping hand – a provocative and necessary “bold new take”.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jodie Passey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
There is a stark contrast in box office figures between musical films that market themselves as ‘musicals’ and those that don’t.
Jodie Passey, PhD Candidate, History of Musicals, Lancaster University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/223374
2024-02-12T16:26:26Z
2024-02-12T16:26:26Z
Ten of the best romantic films to watch this Valentine’s Day
<p>The shape of love and romance seems to be an ever-evolving facet of the human experience, but somehow the marketer’s dream of Valentine’s Day never seems to move beyond cliché. However the nature of love and the portrayal of different kinds of relationships have always been explored on film, right from the early days of “talkies”.</p>
<p>So if we must indulge in Valentine’s Day, let’s do it with ten very different romantic films that examine the variety of configurations of this most human of conditions. From throuples, to “just friends”, to the unforgettable blush of first love and the one that got away, there’s something here for everyone.</p>
<h2>1. The definitive romantic comedy: When Harry Met Sally … (1989)</h2>
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<p>Written by the late great <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jun/27/nora-ephron-biography-sleepless-in-seattle">Nora Ephron</a>, who made her name writing and later directing iconic romantic comedies such as Sleepless in Seattle, this film shows something that many romantic comedies often don’t: time. Taking place over 12 years, the film asks the question “Can men and women ever just be friends?” At first glance, the film’s ending might seem to say “no.” But another, perhaps more positive way of interpreting the ending is that true friendship is the bedrock for lasting romance. </p>
<h2>2. Longing for longing: Call Me By Your Name (2017)</h2>
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<p><a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/763949215">Luca Guadagnino’s</a> queer masterpiece captures the delicate feelings of love as it begins. The film is intimate and well-observed, capturing the difficulties and discoveries of young love, particularly how emotionally overwhelming it can be. The affection between Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer) often goes unspoken, but is communicated in other ways. In one crucial scene, dancing expresses what is hard to say aloud, making the film an iconic modern tale of queer romance.</p>
<h2>3. For the poly-curious: Design For Living (1933)</h2>
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<p>It’s the classic love story: boys meet girl, girl cannot decide between them, boys and girl agree to live together. <a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/polycule-polyamourous-relationship-meaning.html">Polyamory</a> – forms of non-monogomous relationships – may feel like a modern phenomenon given its recent <a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/how-polyamorous-relationships-work-ethical-non-monogamous-rules.html">media attention</a>, but <a href="http://lubitsch.com/biography.html">Ernst Lubitsch’s</a> 1933 classic romantic comedy demonstrates that relationships outside of monogamous marriage have always been on our radar. The film was released during the “<a href="https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/pre-code-hollywood-movies/">pre-code Hollywood era</a>” (1929-1934) and skirts around the principles of the <a href="https://www.acmi.net.au/stories-and-ideas/early-hollywood-and-hays-code/">Hays code</a>, a list of censorship guidelines that would be soon be introduced, but which were not yet rigorously enforced. Design For Living still surprises to this day with its subtly risqué and humorous examination of diverse forms of romantic relationships.</p>
<h2>4. For the anxiously analytical: Modern Romance (1981)</h2>
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<p><a href="https://www.albertbrooks.com/about/">Albert Brooks</a> is one of the great all-time analysts of the modern condition, and this film is no different. Co-written, directed and starring Brooks, Modern Romance explores the agonising question: “is this truly the one?” Caught between his anxious tendencies and a sense of self-importance, Bob (Brooks) has an on-again, off-again relationship with Mary (Kathryn Harrold), in which his insecure but controlling nature escalates, making for a hilarious film. </p>
<h2>5. The soundtrack to great love and grand gestures: Moulin Rouge! (2001)</h2>
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<p><a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Baz-Luhrmann">Baz Luhrmann’s</a> jukebox musical gives us two kinds of romance. The romance between Christian (Ewan McGregor) and Satine (Nicole Kidman) is a classic love story, but this tale also captures romance in another sense, that of <a href="https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/roma/hd_roma.htm">Romanticism</a>, an art movement emerging in Europe that prioritised emotional truth. Like Luhrmann’s <a href="https://www.goldderby.com/gallery/baz-luhrmann-best-movies-ranked/">other works</a>, Moulin Rouge! is the story of an artist coming into their craft through life experience, in this case, romantic love. </p>
<h2>6. Love from a political angle: Tongues Untied (1989)</h2>
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<p>“Brother to brother, brother to brother.” Rapid-fire dialogue begins and ends this poetic documentary by black gay filmmaker <a href="https://nmaahc.si.edu/marlon-riggs">Marlon Riggs</a>. As the film’s poster declares, this film is about black men loving black men. The film analyses how <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-012-0152-4">overlapping systems of privilege and oppression</a> affect marginalised groups. It examines how black gay men are often excluded from gay communities, which have historically been white-centered, while also being excluded from heterosexual society. In its poetic merging of documentary footage, poetry, dance and autobiography, Tongues Untied illustrates that black men loving black men is in itself an act of defiance and resilience.</p>
<h2>7. The charm of first love: Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop (2021)</h2>
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<p>Working at an elderly care centre over the summer, two teens forge a bond that blooms into first love. But both also have anxieties that stand in the way: Cherry around speaking in public, Smile around her buck teeth. <a href="https://www.animeboston.com/guest/guest_details/234">Kyohei Ishiguro’s</a> Anime romance warms the heart and make you yearn for the warmth of both summer and that blush of first love. </p>
<h2>8. Love in a relatable mid-life crisis: Crossing Delancey (1988)</h2>
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<p>Isabelle (Amy Irving) is a bookstore clerk who admires the world of literary elites in New York. While she has eyes for the new big-name author in town, her grandmother has other plans, working to set Isabelle up with a local pickle salesman. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jan/14/joan-micklin-silver-obituary-crossing-delancey">Joan Micklin Silver’s</a> film perfectly captures the aspirational feelings of anyone in their twenties or thirties, while also examining distinct New York groups that Isabelle is torn between: the elite <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/152533/death-wasp-elite-greatly-exaggerated">WASP-y</a> literary circles and the <a href="https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/orthodox-judaism/">Orthodox Jewish community</a>.</p>
<h2>9. The throwback romantic comedy: Down With Love (2003)</h2>
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<p>Taking inspiration from classic 1950s and 1960s romantic comedies of Doris Day, Rock Hudson and Tony Randall, Down with Love is about two writers whose pride and ambitions clash in classic romantic comedy fashion. Featuring sizzling performances by Rene Zellweger and Ewan McGregor – with hilarious turns by David Hyde Pierce, Sarah Paulson and Tony Randall himself – director <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/silencio_por_favor">Peyton Reed</a> twists the romantic comedy formula to great effect, making for a colourful, fun and feisty film.</p>
<h2>10. The bittersweet romance: Past Lives (2023)</h2>
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<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/oscar-nominees-2024-past-lives-spotlights-the-pull-of-first-love-alongside-the-yearning-for-glory-221574">Nominated</a> for best picture and best original screenplay at the 2024 Academy Awards, Past Lives rounds out this list as a bittersweet triumph. <a href="https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/celine-song-past-lives-interview-2023">Celine Song’s</a> gentle film charts the relationship of two people as they meet throughout their lives. Full of tender romance, bring some tissues for this affecting film.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223374/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jacqueline Ristola does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Big classic romcoms feature alongside some rather more unexpected entries in our special Valentine’s movie list.
Jacqueline Ristola, Lecturer in Digital Animation, Department of Film & Television, University of Bristol
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/222102
2024-01-29T12:51:02Z
2024-01-29T12:51:02Z
The Color Purple is an emotional, joyful exploration of black womanhood in the deep south
<p><em>Warning: this article includes spoilers.</em> </p>
<p>Alice Walker’s novel, The Color Purple, tells the story of Celie, an African-American woman living in rural Georgia, over 40 years as she survives and heals following abuse.</p>
<p>I research black feminism in contemporary fiction, so I was intrigued by how director Blitz Bazawule would adapt Walker’s novel into a musical film while retaining the intimate exploration of black women’s agency the book is famed for.</p>
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<p>Walker’s novel comprises personal and tender letters from Celie (played at different ages by Phylicia Pearl Mpasi and Fantasia Barrino) to God, and later to her sister Nettie (Halle Bailey/Ciara). The film moves away from this solely first-person perspective, creating space for the more spirited, strong-willed characters Nettie and Sofia (Danielle Brooks) to tell their story. This means that Celie’s story takes more of a backseat in the first part of the film. </p>
<p>But what the adaptation loses in its move away from a single protagonist, it makes up for with song. When Celie does find her voice, gradually taking up more space, we truly feel her pain, refusal and eventual joy.</p>
<p>There was a risk that contemporary viewers might interpret the rural, majority-black communities depicted in the film as living comfortable lives. Particularly through scenes that show Harpo’s (Corey Hawkins) affluent juke joint and the local lively jazz scene. But an opening song featuring domestic and field labourers shows how the characters found community despite the harsh realities surrounding them. </p>
<p>Racism rears its ugly head later on, in a brutal scene in which Sofia is beaten and jailed for refusing to become a maid to the mayor’s wife. This will strike a chord with viewers because it speaks to police brutality today.</p>
<p>Some might recognise Whoopi Goldberg’s cameo as Celie’s midwife (Goldberg played Celie in the 1985 film), a moment that shows the lineage between the adaptations and speaks to black women’s care practices, passed down through generations.</p>
<h2>Sisterhood and solidarity</h2>
<p>Celie suffers sexual abuse at the hands of her father and is married off at a young age to a violent husband known only as “Mister” (Colman Domingo). She doesn’t know her worth until she meets the glamorous, self-assured blues singer Shug Avery. </p>
<p>Shug, whose previous relationship with Celie’s husband ended because she refused to be tied down, forms a deep connection with Celie. While their intimate moments can be read more explicitly as queer in Walker’s novel, the tenderness between the women is clear. The moment they give in to desire is subtle, perhaps speaking to the clandestine way that same-sex love was expressed in this era. </p>
<p>Through Shug, Celie finds her own beauty and inner strength and regains her faith. This echoes the line from the book that gives the novel its title: “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the colour purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” </p>
<p>Similarly to Walker’s novel, black female sisterhood and solidarity rings true in the film. What differs is the space Sofia is given. In Bazawule’s film, she takes centre stage as a flawed yet complex character, strong (physically) and prone to violence, but openly vulnerable, complicating the <a href="https://www.routledge.com/Black-Feminist-Thought-Knowledge-Consciousness-and-the-Politics-of-Empowerment/Hill-Collins/p/book/9780415964722">“strong black woman”</a> trope.</p>
<p>However, less progressive is Shug’s casting as a light-skinned black woman, Taraji P. Henson. Though Henson’s performance is captivating, this casting decision contradicts Walker’s explicitly dark-skinned description of Shug and misses an opportunity to challenge colourism in the film industry. </p>
<h2>Black masculinity in The Color Purple</h2>
<p>The Color Purple centres black women’s voices and challenges patriarchy and abuse in black communities. Yet, according to <a href="https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/combahee-river-collective-statement-1977/">black feminist movements</a>, we can challenge abusive men and also understand that patriarchy harms them too. </p>
<p>Films and TV shows such as <a href="https://theconversation.com/with-moonlights-oscar-win-hollywood-begins-to-right-old-wrongs-73843">Moonlight</a> (2017) and Top Boy (2011-2023) have prompted questions about how both black and queer masculinity are represented on screen. I wondered how Bazawule would stay true to Walker’s story and also portray black men with complexity. </p>
<p>While Mister and Alfonso are indeed brutal characters, Mister tries to redeem himself at the end by selling his land to help Nettie return to the US following her time as a missionary in Africa. This differs from the book, where Nettie’s return is sudden.</p>
<p>Although Celie doesn’t openly forgive him, this is a moment of closure sealed with gospel-inspired music that echoes the self-belief, faith and community Celie finds at the end of Walker’s novel.</p>
<p>The dance sequences bring joy to the film. But they bring problems too. One scene depicts Nettie’s travels to Africa as a “return” to a place where “we were kings and queens”. This makes Africa, a diverse continent, seem like a homogeneous place, acting only as a backdrop for African-Americans to understand their blackness. </p>
<p>Nettie’s vague references to a “village in Africa” are problematic and paternalistic in a world in which the continent is increasingly the centre of black creative and cultural production. Perhaps Bazawule could have stayed less true to Walker’s novel here, which was critiqued by Nigerian feminist scholar <a href="https://africaworldpressbooks.com/african-women-and-feminism-reflecting-on-the-politics-of-sisterhood-edited-by-oyeronke-oyewumi-hardcover/">Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí</a> for its “western imperialist” perspective, which uses “stock images and ideas about Africa” to assume unrealistic commonality. </p>
<p>Ultimately, The Color Purple shows that black joy can be cultivated even through the most painful experiences. The film’s emotional depth centres black womanhood, and its continued universal appeal will connect deeply with many audiences – especially black women.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Amber Lascelles does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
This adaption of Alice Walker’s 1982 novel is an emotional yet joyful exploration of black womanhood in the early 20th century South.
Amber Lascelles, Lecturer in Global Anglophone Literature, Royal Holloway University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/219249
2023-12-06T10:07:37Z
2023-12-06T10:07:37Z
Wonka: Timothée Chalamet shines in an otherwise pedestrian prequel
<p>How do you bring a film from more than half a century ago up to date for a society more tuned into the politics of representation? You won’t find out in Wonka.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.slashfilm.com/1336323/timothee-chalamet-wonka-prequel-canon-with-gene-wilder-film/">new prequel</a> to the classic <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000698/">Gene Wilder</a> film <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067992/">Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory</a> (1971) aims to tell the backstory of the magical chocolatier long before he encountered Charlie Bucket. But in setting the dial at 1971, Wonka carries all the problematic cultural trappings of a film made for a different time.</p>
<p>At the start of the new movie, orphaned young Willy Wonka (Timothée Chalamet) disembarks from a ship with 12 sovereigns in his pocket. He soon loses or gives it all away and ends up locked into a contract, working to pay off his debt to a Dickensian hostel owner (Olivia Colman). There he encounters others in the same position, including Noodle (Calah Lane) and Abacus Crunch (Jim Carter).</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/otNh9bTjXWg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The Wonka trailer.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>He’s determined to open his own chocolate shop, but is thwarted by a cabal of three chocolatiers who have bribed the local police and clergy. Such a straightforward struggle of good versus evil doesn’t make for much of a story, and the results often seem like a montage of cliches rather than a meaningful addition to the Roald Dahl original.</p>
<h2>Shortsighted choices</h2>
<p>Hugh Grant plays an irascible Oompa Loompa. It’s a characterful performance, but it seemed unnecessary to bring back the idea of the Oompa Loompas, little people who in Dahl’s original 1964 book were black, then white in a new edition in 1973 and orange in the 1971 movie. </p>
<p>Since they were making up the new story from scratch, why bring back a character with <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-pygmies-to-puppets-what-to-do-with-roald-dahls-enslaved-oompa-loompas-in-modern-adaptations-166967#:%7E:text=In%20the%20first%20edition%20of,and%20enslaves%20in%20his%20factory.">such a fraught history</a> at all?</p>
<p>It’s especially odd because the filmmakers do seem keen to comment on serious topics, such as the corruption of the church and police, and the punitive enslavement of debtors. There is acknowledgement of how capitalism makes the system unfair. </p>
<p>But there is seemingly no thought given to why it might be problematic to depict Loompaland as a generic exotic island where Wonka’s cocoa beans grow. It doesn’t grapple at all with the relationship of all of this to enslavement in the history of chocolate production in the real world.</p>
<p>I know that Wonka is family entertainment rather than a history documentary, but the stories and images we grow up with influence our understanding of the world. Wonka does some finger-pointing (a delicious cameo from Rowan Atkinson as a chocoholic cleric) but hasn’t worked through its own complicity in the system.</p>
<p>The film’s saving grace is a charismatic performance from Chalamet in the title role. Still in his twenties, this impressive actor has an old-school lightness that makes his movement elegant and he brings a wistful quality to some of the film’s more poignant moments. <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5012254/">Christopher Gattelli’s</a> lively choreography further makes Chalamet look like a Broadway pro.</p>
<p>The film is also easy on the eye. It’s beautifully designed and the location filming (including famous sights in Oxford) could hardly have set the whole thing up better.</p>
<p>Yet writer-director <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1653753/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">Paul King</a> of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1109624/">Paddington</a> (2014) fame hasn’t served up the goods this time (the screenplay is co-written by <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1375030/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1">Simon Farnaby</a>). </p>
<p>It’s a little too dark for small children (Wonka being threatened by a corrupt policeman who submerges his head into a fountain was a particularly disturbing image for the very young). And it’s not funny enough. You know you’re in trouble when the most exciting sequence involves a CGI giraffe called Abigail – a clear sign that this was an underwritten screenplay for an excellent cast.</p>
<p>Nor is the score up to scratch. Songwriter <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0973252/">Neil Hannon</a> of <a href="https://thedivinecomedy.com/">The Divine Comedy</a> seems most at home in a terrific 1990s-style pop ballad called A World of Your Own, but it doesn’t have the poignancy of the stunning <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVi3-PrQ0pY">Pure Imagination</a>, which returns from the 1971 Willy Wonka in the underscore of the opening and in full at the close of the film.</p>
<p>Its reuse at key moments, along with the old <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkC8wPSmcPg">Oompa Loompa song</a>, causes not only a stylistic clash with Hannon’s new efforts, but also draws attention to the lack of magic and originality in most of the new songs. There are tired cliches (“cherry trees from Japan”, “a jungle in Mumbai”) and creaky attempts at made-up rhymes (“consonants” matched with “nonsen-ants”).</p>
<p>I imagine Wonka will be a hit over the holiday period, but when the central messaging doesn’t have enough clarity and the fun is in short supply, it’s not clear who this film is for. It’s decent distraction for the kids over the Christmas break – but don’t expect the intergenerational magic of Paddington 2.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dominic Broomfield-McHugh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
It’s a little too dark for small children and not funny enough.
Dominic Broomfield-McHugh, Professor of Musicology, University of Sheffield
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/218381
2023-11-24T14:14:57Z
2023-11-24T14:14:57Z
Frozen’s 10th anniversary: how the musical reignited our love for sing-along cinema
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/561369/original/file-20231123-21-bib777.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Disney Media</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Ten years ago a musical phenomenon hit our screens, one which captured the hearts of a large and diverse audience and whose songs have already become classics. The 2013 film Frozen is now widely recognised as one of the most memorable and loved Disney animated films, whether measured <a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/chart/ww_top_lifetime_gross/?area=XWW&ref_=bo_cso_ac">economically</a> or by <a href="https://editorial.rottentomatoes.com/guide/all-disney-animated-theatrical-movies-ranked-by-tomatometer/">popular critical reception</a>. </p>
<p>Frozen’s revision of the Disney Princess <a href="https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-contemporary-disney-animation.html">genre</a> clearly resonated with audiences of all ages. Its message of empowerment and self-determination spoke to present day concerns about gender, sexuality and identity. Music was central to communicating these ideas, especially the showstopping song Let It Go. </p>
<p>A large part of that musical appeal has been singalongs, inviting audiences to go beyond watching and listening to interactively participating. The popularity of Frozen singalongs might be assumed to be a new phenomenon in cinema spectatorship and consumption. However, they continue a century-long tradition of cinema singing that has been forgotten. </p>
<h2>Singalongs in cinema history</h2>
<p>In the 1910s and 1920s, <a href="https://archive.org/details/communitymusicsu00comm">community singing movements</a> became a popular shared musical activity in <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/2937/chapter-abstract/143604751?redirectedFrom=fulltext">Britain</a>, Australia, the US and beyond. </p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1pwt6dg">Community singing</a> was seen to foster musical appreciation, patriotic ideals and individual mental health. It often took place in cinemas. While songbooks or illustrated song slides were commonly used, many <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315276274-4/sing-malcolm-cook">singalong films</a> were also made, providing onscreen lyrics to support the collective singing.</p>
<p>The Fleischer animation studio innovated the “bouncing ball” lyric presentation in its <a href="https://archive.org/details/filmdaily3940newy/page/548/mode/1up?view=theater">Song Cartune singalong cartoon series</a> between 1924 and 1927. It continued as the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnovy1yH40g&ab_channel=EstherMorgan-Ellis">Screen Songs</a> series until the 1950s. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">An example of the Fleischer Screen Song series, The Peanut Vendor from 1933.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the 1930s, Mickey Mouse clubs and other children’s cinema screenings routinely included <a href="https://archive.org/details/photo42chic/page/n697/mode/2up?view=theater">communal singing</a> to bond the audience with each other and fostering brand loyalty.</p>
<p>The rise of radio and television broadcasting in the mid-20th century meant singalongs migrated to these new media. Now, the audience was increasingly expected to imagine their shared participation with a dispersed audience, mediated through these new technologies. </p>
<p>The 1930s <a href="https://archive.org/details/radiom00macf/page/n253/mode/2up?view=theater">Gillette and Palmolive Community Sing</a> radio shows, broadcast by the American CBS network, indicate the way singalongs were increasingly used as a vehicle for sponsorship and advertising. Similarly, in Australia, the local <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJZ2w6Q_Uww&ab_channel=balancedaustralia">Aeroplane Jelly</a> brand used singalongs to promote their products in cinemas. </p>
<p>The British Ovaltine malted milk drink likewise used singalongs to connect with consumers, both in radio broadcasts on <a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/works/de2b7fn3">Radio Luxembourg</a> and tie-in events with cinema clubs. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMxGmjFhHG0&ab_channel=IainLucey19">Retro reuse</a> of these examples in more recent years indicate how singalongs had become a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwk76kwuTsQ&ab_channel=AeroplaneJellyAus">nostalgic</a> relic of the past. </p>
<h2>Singing along with Frozen</h2>
<p>Frozen has tapped into this history. In January 2014, two months after Frozen’s initial box office success, Disney re-released the film in a <a href="https://www.awn.com/news/disney-announces-all-new-sing-along-frozen">singalong version</a>. This included on-screen lyrics and a bouncing snowflake to guide audiences – the bouncing ball of the Fleischer animation studio Frozen-ified.</p>
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<p>This version was subsequently released as a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1igFKuzTYc&ab_channel=WaltDisneyAnimationStudios">special edition DVD</a> in November 2014. Singing along was so popular that Disney released a singalong version of the <a href="https://www.discogs.com/release/7560462-Unknown-Artist-Disney-SingAlong-Frozen">soundtrack</a>. The CD featured instrumental versions of the songs and came with a lyric book. </p>
<p>Typical of Disney’s cross-promotional synergy, the corporation’s theme parks started hosting singalong events in 2014. <a href="https://www.discogs.com/release/7560462-Unknown-Artist-Disney-SingAlong-Frozen">For the First Time in Forever: A Frozen Sing-Along Celebration</a> opened at the Florida Walt Disney World resort in July 2014 and went on to feature at Disney parks around the world, including multiple <a href="https://www.dlpguide.com/news/2015/03/frozen-summer-fun-is-coming-to-disneyland-paris-everything-you-need-to-know/">localised language versions</a>. </p>
<p>The Disney-sanctioned singalongs have stimulated widespread fan activity and social media singalongs. In 2015, a family screening of the singalong version of Frozen in London’s Hyde Park was awarded a <a href="https://www.funkidslive.com/news/we-set-a-guinness-world-record-at-barclaycard-presents-british-summer-time-hyde-park/">Guinness World Record</a> for the most people singing live in a radio broadcast. </p>
<p>Frozen songs have become a staple for school and community choirs, with countless examples uploaded to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=school+choir+frozen">YouTube</a>. During the COVID-19 pandemic, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cipbsHbZZI&ab_channel=TaleofFantasy">virtual choirs</a> singing Frozen songs provided an opportunity for human contact during months of isolation and lockdown.</p>
<p>YouTube and TikTok are also filled with innumerable videos of fans singing along with Frozen songs. The Disney Junior UK TV channel ran a Facebook competition inviting viewers to submit their own rendition of Let It Go, and the compilation has been viewed more that <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XswVjjMmHAY&ab_channel=DisneyJuniorUK">250 million times</a>.</p>
<p>In the present day, with cinema attendance needing to compete with the convenience of streaming services, <a href="https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526140173/">special events and interactive audience participation</a> are becoming increasingly popular. </p>
<p>The renewed interest and popularity of singalongs, thanks in part to the success of Frozen, provides one way to attract audiences back. With two further Frozen <a href="https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/frozen-4-in-the-works/">sequels</a> in the works, it seems like audiences will be singing along with Anna and Elsa for the next ten years. </p>
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<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Malcolm Cook does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The musical has become a singalong sensation harking back to a day when cinema was more of a communal experience.
Malcolm Cook, Associate Professor in Film Studies, University of Southampton
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/213646
2023-11-09T19:09:35Z
2023-11-09T19:09:35Z
5 Aussie musicals you might not have heard of – but really should see
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/549255/original/file-20230920-29-ybhlcd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C2%2C1433%2C894&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gillian Armstrong's Starstruck (1982) </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>When you think of great Aussie musicals, some key films from the 1990s and 2000s come to mind: Strictly Ballroom, Muriel’s Wedding, Moulin Rouge!, Bran Nue Dae and The Sapphires. These films are often framed as “reviving” the musical genre for Australian audiences, due in large part to their box-office success. </p>
<p>While certainly fantastic films, there is actually a long history of Aussie musicals that have been popular with cinema audiences since the 1930s. </p>
<p>There are 73 films that have been classified as a “musical” or containing musical elements by the National Film and Sound Archive. They include comedies, children’s and animated films, dramas, revues, <a href="https://www.classicmoviehub.com/blog/movie-musicals-101-integrated-vs-backstage-2/">backstage musicals</a>, biopics, dance films, rock musicals, soundtrack films, television musicals and live concert films.</p>
<p>So where to begin? These are my top five Aussie musicals you may not have heard of but should definitely try to see. </p>
<p>These films represent just a snapshot of the rich history of musical cinema in Australia. They demonstrate how Australian cinema responds to international trends in musical cinema production, but also how it influences and innovates in the global musical genre.</p>
<p>These films are hard to get a hold of and only occasionally pop up on streaming services – if at all. However, you might catch them on DVD or at your local indie film festival or retrospective (there were several screenings of Starstruck when the NFSA released a digitally restored version in 2015). </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/beyond-la-la-land-the-top-ten-toe-tapping-film-musicals-71149">Beyond La La Land: the top ten toe-tapping film musicals</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<h2>1. Funny Things Happen Down Under</h2>
<p>Olivia Newton-John’s 1965 debut feature, Funny Things Happen Down Under, directed by Joe McCormick, was an adaptation of the Terrible Ten children’s television show from 1959–60. </p>
<p>It’s Christmas time in the bush and a group of country children make a plan to save their woolshed, under threat because the sheep station has to be sold. </p>
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<p>After they accidentally turn a goat’s wool multi-coloured because it drinks a strange concoction of Christmas pudding, flowers and fizzy water, they decide to feed it to the sheep to sell rainbow-coloured wool. </p>
<p>While certainly of its time (there is a scene that involves yellow face), the film has some great songs by Newton-John and New Zealand singer Howard Morrison, as well as an athletic final dance number around the shed called Click Go the Shears.</p>
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<h2>2. Oz</h2>
<p>Directed by Chris Lofven, the 1976 film Oz (also known as Oz: A Rock ‘n’ Roll Road Movie, or 20th Century Oz on its release in the United States) is a version of The Wizard of Oz as a rock ‘n’ roll road movie set in the Australian outback. </p>
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<p>Dorothy (Joy Dunstan) is hitchhiking to the city to see glam rocker The Wizard. Along the way she meets brainless surfie (Bruce “Stork” Spence) – the scarecrow – a mean mechanic (Michael Carman) – the tin man – and an overly confident bikie (Gary Waddell) – the lion. </p>
<p>Ross Wilson, the frontman of Daddy Cool and Mondo Rock, wrote and produced Oz’s musical score. The singles <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAcL8jfmENo">Livin’ in the Land of Oz</a> by Wilson and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSgbiQQe4MM">Beating Around the Bush</a> by Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons were both released in 1976 from the soundtrack. </p>
<p>Much like motorcycle road movie Easy Rider (1970), which had become a symbol of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Hollywood">New Hollywood</a>, Oz made a direct appeal to young audiences and the counterculture via a compilation soundtrack of contemporary popular music. </p>
<h2>3. Starstruck</h2>
<p>Gillian Armstrong’s Starstruck (1982) is a backstage musical set in 1980s Sydney. Barmaid Jackie (Jo Kennedy) lives above her family pub The Harbour View Hotel in The Rocks in Sydney with her mum, Nanna, cousin Angus and their pet cockatoo. </p>
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<p>Jackie dreams of being a star, falls for a guitarist and joins a band called The Wombats so they can enter a TV talent competition. </p>
<p>Cue numerous musical numbers including <a href="https://www.nfsa.gov.au/collection/curated/starstruck-body-and-soul">Body and Soul</a>, where Jackie dances on the bar, and an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjeCbzLQ4-c">eventual performance</a> at the Opera House after the band sneak on stage. </p>
<p>There’s also a fabulously camp <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/mar/23/busby-berkeley-dance-42nd-street-choreography-film-musicals">Busby Berkeley</a>-eque rooftop swimming pool number complete with co-ordinated lifeguards in speedos.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/screen-australia-celebrates-its-work-in-gender-equality-but-things-are-far-from-equal-122266">Screen Australia celebrates its work in gender equality but things are far from equal</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>4. Dogs in Space</h2>
<p>Rather than a traditional musical, Richard Lowenstein’s Dogs in Space (1986) is set in the underground punk scene in late 1970s Melbourne. It follows rocker Sammy (played by Aussie icon Michael Hutchence) through performing, partying, falling in love – and taking lots and lots of drugs. </p>
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<p>The film has some amazing cinematography with winding long takes of the cast at their crammed inner-city terrace house as it gets progressively trashed by party after party. </p>
<p>Sammy’s love story with girlfriend Anna (Saskia Post) ends in tragedy and the final song, Rooms for the Memory, effectively uses Hutchence’s brooding star presence and vocals to great effect.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-dogs-in-space-30-years-on-a-once-maligned-film-comes-of-age-56288">Friday essay: Dogs in Space, 30 years on – a once maligned film comes of age</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>5. One Night the Moon</h2>
<p>Based on true events from 1932, One Night the Moon (2001), written by First Nations director Rachel Perkins, features Aussie singer-songwriter Paul Kelly as the father of a girl (played by Memphis Kelly, his real daughter) who goes missing in the outback. </p>
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<p>The girl’s mother (played by Kelly’s then wife and Memphis’ mother, Kaarin Fairfax) wants to employ an Aboriginal tracker (Kelton Pell) to help find the girl. Her father refuses, thus sealing the fate of his daughter through his prejudice. </p>
<p>With haunting songwriting and sweeping shots of the unforgiving landscape, this is a beautiful and moving story. </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phoebe Macrossan received funding from the University of the Sunshine Coast and assistance from the National Film and Sound Archive and the Australian Film Institute Research Collection for this research.</span></em></p>
There is a long history of musicals in Australia, popular with audiences since the 1930s.
Phoebe Macrossan, Lecturer in Screen Media, University of the Sunshine Coast
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/212965
2023-09-06T04:49:15Z
2023-09-06T04:49:15Z
‘An extremely serious musical comedy’ about Whitlam? Yes. The Dismissal is great fun, witty and sharply observed
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546604/original/file-20230906-29-ehd2xt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5078%2C3388&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Squabbalogic/David Hooley</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Whitlam government has a mythical status in the Australian popular imagination. While it lasted less than two full terms between December 1972 and November 1975, it has had an outsized cultural presence ever since. </p>
<p>This is not just because of Gough Whitlam’s transformative social democratic agenda, but because of the way his government ended: <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-gough-whitlams-dismissal-as-prime-minister-74148">the dismissal</a> remains one of the most shocking events in Australian political history. </p>
<p>Each year since, we have marked the anniversary with new stories, new angles, new details. The story has all the ingredients of high drama – indeed, the story was told in a rather ponderous television <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085006/">mini-series</a> in 1983. </p>
<p>So almost 50 years on, what to make of a comedic musical retelling of these tumultuous events? </p>
<p>The Dismissal’s talented creators (Jay James-Moody, Blake Erickson and Laura Murphy) are neither Boomers who watched the dismissal from ringside seats or dewy-eyed Gen-Xers, but younger still. </p>
<p>For their generation, forged in a neoliberal world much harsher than the one that lifted up their parents and grandparents, the Whitlam policy agenda of free education, free healthcare and social democracy for all might seem like a distant, unattainable dream. </p>
<p>Crucially, the authors also don’t see the dismissal as a unique event. In their program notes, they argue the show is</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the story of our political culture writ in bold, sung in harmony and danced in formation. Over, and over again. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>So this show is not just a dramatisation of the events of 1975, it is also an attempt to understand our maddening political culture.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-gough-whitlams-dismissal-as-prime-minister-74148">Australian politics explainer: Gough Whitlam's dismissal as prime minister</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Self-referential and extremely funny</h2>
<p>Norman Gunston (a superb Matthew Whittet) guides the audience through the story and sets the tone for the show. We begin with the famous moment on the Parliament House steps. Playing Gough, Justin Smith both sounds and looks like him – no mean feat. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546600/original/file-20230906-23-tdebva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546600/original/file-20230906-23-tdebva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/546600/original/file-20230906-23-tdebva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546600/original/file-20230906-23-tdebva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546600/original/file-20230906-23-tdebva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546600/original/file-20230906-23-tdebva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546600/original/file-20230906-23-tdebva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/546600/original/file-20230906-23-tdebva.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Matthew Whittet is superb as Norman Gunston.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Squabbalogic/David Hooley</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>The Dismissal is least effective when it is striving for sincerity: the early number Maintain your Rage left me concerned the show might be too earnest to be genuinely funny. </p>
<p>However, my anxieties were assuaged by a very clever romp through the post-war years of Liberal rule (from Menzies to Holt to Gorton to McMahon), sung by suburban housewives and their lawn-mowing husbands. It is self-referential and extremely funny and sets a high bar for the rest of the show. Murphy’s lyrics are wonderful throughout, but they are especially brilliant here. </p>
<p>After Whitlam’s election, his policy achievements are dealt with in a rapid-fire slideshow, which moves things along but lowers the stakes in what follows. The real subject of the drama is the unravelling of the Whitlam government from within, thanks to the shenanigans of Jim Cairns, Rex Connor and <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/how-the-loans-scandal-became-an-affair-to-remember-20050101-gdzadn.html">the loans affair</a>, and the role played by Sir John Kerr, Malcolm Fraser and Sir Garfield Barwick in undermining him from the outside.</p>
<p>The cast are uniformly excellent. Peter Carroll is uproarious as a Mephistophelian Sir Garfield Barwick. Octavia Barron Martin manages to invest Sir John Kerr with a touch of pathos. Monique Sallé is a showstopping Tirath Khemlani, a befuddled Billy Snedden and her Queen Elizabeth II has more than a touch of Rocky Horror about her. Joe Kosky’s Jim Cairns is both pompous and ponderous, with brilliant comic timing. </p>
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<span class="caption">Octavia Barron Martin invests Sir John Kerr with a touch of pathos and Peter Carroll is uproarious as Sir Garfield Barwick.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Squabbalogic/David Hooley</span></span>
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<p>Andrew Cutcliffe’s Malcolm Fraser is stiletto-sharp and a little bit kinky. His Private School Boys is a bump-and-grind showstopper that recalls Alexander Downer’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CjCE0IsNWw">Freaky</a> from Casey Benetto’s 2005 musical Keating! </p>
<p>The song is reprised later by Lady Anne Kerr, whose purring refrain that “you’re not a match for private school girls” is a reminder that this is a story of class, mobility and social striving. </p>
<h2>Sharp, funny and astute</h2>
<p>The show’s gender-inclusive casting draws our attention to the almost all-male world of politics in the 1970s and gives many of the female performers the opportunity to behave disgracefully (Georgie Bolton as Rex Connor is spectacularly, hilariously crude). </p>
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<span class="caption">Georgie Bolton as Rex Connor is spectacularly, hilariously crude.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Squabbalogic/David Hooley</span></span>
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<p>Margaret Whitlam (Brittanie Shipway) and Junie Morosi (Shannen Alyce Quan) are voices of reason and resolve. While both are terrific, their roles in the narrative constrain their range: Margaret’s number Crash Through or Crash is an example of the ways the sincere songs don’t have the power to hold an audience in the ways that the satirical numbers do. Stacey Thomsett has much more fun with the role of Lady Kerr, who she depicts as Lady Macbeth in a Carla Zampatti suit.</p>
<p>It’s all great fun, witty and sharply observed. Yet perhaps the weakest part of the show is the ending. While we all know how this story ended, the creators didn’t seem to know how to draw their story to a close. </p>
<p>But overall, The Dismissal is sharp, funny and astute. It’s also a rare thing: an accomplished new Australian musical. I think Gough himself, with his love of Australian arts and culture, would have quite enjoyed it. </p>
<p><em>The Dismissal: An Extremely Serious Musical Comedy is at the Seymour Centre, Sydney, until October 21.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/where-are-the-new-australian-musicals-waiting-in-the-wings-79831">Where are the new Australian musicals? Waiting in the wings</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/212965/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Arrow receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is currently a Fellow at the Whitlam Institute.</span></em></p>
This new comedic musical is not just a dramatisation of the events of 1975, it is also an attempt to understand our maddening political culture.
Michelle Arrow, Professor of History, Macquarie University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/210932
2023-08-03T14:07:16Z
2023-08-03T14:07:16Z
Rock Follies review: powerful new musical brings 1970s feminist TV sensation to the stage
<p><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074049/">Rock Follies</a> was a groundbreaking television series about an all-female rock band that originally aired for two seasons in 1976 and 1977. It wove fantastical, trippy and campy rock-musical numbers together with the often less glamorous realities of show business. The television show also led to two soundtrack albums, Rock Follies and Rock Follies of ’77, that charted in the UK.</p>
<p>Now, nearly 50 years after it first aired, the show has been reimagined as a stage musical with a new book by Chloë Moss that showcases the TV show’s original music from Howard Schuman and <a href="https://www.andymackay.co.uk/">Roxy Music’s Andy Mackay</a>. </p>
<p>The Chichester Festival Theatre staging is a successful update for a contemporary live audience. It pays musical homage to the glam decadence of 1970s rock while simultaneously illustrating how far women still have to go in the ongoing struggle for equality. As political as it is fabulous, the new musical plainly shows how the patriarchy is not merely a relic of history. </p>
<h2>A strong staging</h2>
<p>The new production sounds fantastic, with strong performances by not only the Little Ladies – the name of the all-female band – but also the versatile and dynamic supporting cast.</p>
<p>Set designer Vicki Mortimer’s simple setting of stage platforms, lights and road trunks effectively transforms the Minerva Theatre studio into an intimate concert venue. The Little Ladies are backed by a live rock band whom I found myself wishing could jump over the barrier and rock out with the cast at several points during the show. </p>
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<p>Retaining the synth-heavy roots of the original show, this musical feels like a worthy addiction to the world of bombastic and flashy rock musicals like <a href="https://www.batoutofhellmusical.com/">Bat out of Hell</a> or <a href="https://www.rockofagesmusical.co.uk/">Rock of Ages</a>. </p>
<p>The show is packed with more than 30 musical numbers – standouts include Glenn Miller is Missing and The Things You Have To Do, sung by Kitty (a powerhouse Tamsin Carroll), the new American female manager of the Little Ladies. </p>
<p>But perhaps the most timely of the songs, Jubilee, is sung by the Little Ladies at a fundraising gala to protest the event’s corporate whitewashing: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Take a bus and see the dole queues
Enjoy spectacular inflation<br>
You’ll be knocked out by our poverty<br>
Another British institution<br>
Like the Silver Jubilee.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These lyrics from 1977 echo newspaper headlines from last year, about a coronation celebration amid a cost of living crisis. Sound familiar? The writers have been able to make this story of 1970s female rock power strikingly contemporary as it tackles issues like sexism, racism and income inequality. </p>
<h2>Voices for change</h2>
<p>While much of the sexism faced by the original television trio was of its time, this new iteration of Rock Follies makes it clear that the patriarchal power structure faced by Q, Dee and Anna in the 1970s are still in place today. </p>
<p>Repeatedly objectified as mere sex objects or dismissed as unqualified, the three women navigate a landscape of obstacles when it comes to establishing their own voices in the music industry. They are as passionate about music as they are about finding their own way, despite the societal pressures at both home and the workplace that keep telling them to stop. </p>
<p>Anna (Carly Bawden), a drug-addicted middle-class Cambridge graduate, is a strong singer but a much better songwriter. When she dreams of performing rock music, her husband instead encourages her to work in an office. “You’d make a good secretary!” he tells her in a backhanded compliment. </p>
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<p>Dee (a fantastic Angela Marie Hurst), who lives in a commune with her boyfriend Spike, faces not only sexism but racism by a whole array of record industry executives who either dismiss her star power as “exotic”, or refuse to support a Black performer. And the charming Q (Zizi Strallen), who offers to do another soft-core porn film to financially support the band, is weighed down by a freeloading partner who only wants her when she is successful. </p>
<p>Each of the performances is strong and charismatic. All three of the Little Ladies also posses the lung power to do Howard Schuman and Andy Mackay’s music more than justice. At a time when celebrating girl power (albeit a more complex version) is back, with big hits like the <a href="https://theconversation.com/hyper-femininity-can-be-subversive-and-empowering-just-ask-barbie-209623">Barbie film</a>, Rock Follies is a welcome fierce feminist addition to the UK’s theatre scene. </p>
<p><em><a href="https://www.cft.org.uk/events/rock-follies">Rock Follies</a> is on at Chichester Festival Theatre, till Saturday 26 August</em></p>
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<p><em>Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/something-good-156">Sign up here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210932/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erika Hughes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Foot stomping songs and charismatic performances make the stage adaptation of the 1970s TV series a hit.
Erika Hughes, Reader in Performance, University of Portsmouth
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/209794
2023-08-03T02:27:24Z
2023-08-03T02:27:24Z
New Aussie musical Bloom misses an opportunity to interrogate the gaps in aged care – and in our social fabric
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540921/original/file-20230802-26-b7ng1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C17%2C5742%2C3811&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pia Johnson/Melbourne Theatre Company</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Bloom, the new Australian musical produced by the Melbourne Theatre Company, is proudly billed by the company as born and bred right here in Melbourne/Naarm. </p>
<p>Written by Tom Gleisner (of The Castle fame) with music by Katie Weston, the show follows the story of Rose (Evelyn Krape), who reluctantly arrives at Pine Grove Aged Care Home after being told she can no longer live alone. Finn (Slone Sudiro), a university student studying music, arrives on the same day as Rose as part of a scheme offering students board in exchange for domestic duties. </p>
<p>As both Rose and Finn settle into their new accommodation, we meet the eclectic residents of the home and two dedicated care staff. Gloria (Christina O'Neill) has “accidentally” worked at Pine Grove for eight years. Ruby (Vidya Makan) gave up her communications degree at uni for a job that allowed her to do something more meaningful. </p>
<p>Fault lines soon appear. The frugal and punitive manager of Pine Grove, Mrs MacIntyre (Anne Edmonds), puts profit before people. She refuses requests for outings, fresh food and psychosocial programs designed to improve the residents’ (or as Rose puts it, inmates) lives so she can meet a tight fiscal bottom line. </p>
<p>Each character wrestles with the poignant and relatable idea that there is a gap between who they were and who they have become. </p>
<p>This gap occurs across the spectrum of ageing. Ruby asks herself in song if “maybe it’s time”, contemplating leaving Pine Grove and commencing a masters degree in aged care. Resident Sal (Eddie Muliaumaseali’i) silently looks through old photos to connect with his past and the remnants of his past self. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540922/original/file-20230803-20-6uye02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Production image: a nursing home, and a teenager." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540922/original/file-20230803-20-6uye02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540922/original/file-20230803-20-6uye02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540922/original/file-20230803-20-6uye02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540922/original/file-20230803-20-6uye02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540922/original/file-20230803-20-6uye02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540922/original/file-20230803-20-6uye02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540922/original/file-20230803-20-6uye02.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">University student Finn moves in as part of a scheme offering students board in exchange for domestic duties.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pia Johnson/Melbourne Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Dismissing the rights of older Australians</h2>
<p>This question of aged care homes as for-profit entities was brought into <a href="https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-morrison-government-needs-to-improve-rather-than-defend-its-poor-covid-aged-care-performance-144447">sharp focus</a> during the pandemic. The final report of a Royal Commission into Aged Care and Safety exposed the deep chasms in the sector. It <a href="https://theconversation.com/4-key-takeaways-from-the-aged-care-royal-commissions-final-report-156109">tabled 148 recommendations</a> to parliament in 2021 and has led to <a href="https://theconversation.com/anthony-albanese-offers-2-5-billion-plan-to-fix-crisis-in-aged-care-180419">significant legislative reform</a>. </p>
<p>The idea suggested at the core of Bloom – that student boarders in aged care homes may lead to significant innovation, intergenerational and reciprocal learning and subsequently improve the quality of life for our elders – is treated glibly and without much substance in the formulaic model of musical theatre. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/4-key-takeaways-from-the-aged-care-royal-commissions-final-report-156109">4 key takeaways from the aged care royal commission's final report</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The story references ideas of the human rights of our elders to have agency to voice complaints, to be treated with respect, to have liberty of movement and the right to social participation. </p>
<p>Specifically, Rose tries to lead an insurrection of residents during an inspection of the facility and refuses pills that make her feel groggy. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540923/original/file-20230803-26-p10zec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A woman in orange sings." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540923/original/file-20230803-26-p10zec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540923/original/file-20230803-26-p10zec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540923/original/file-20230803-26-p10zec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540923/original/file-20230803-26-p10zec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540923/original/file-20230803-26-p10zec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540923/original/file-20230803-26-p10zec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540923/original/file-20230803-26-p10zec.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Instead of being heard and respected, the residents are treated as a problem.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pia Johnson/Melbourne Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Instead of being heard and respected, she is treated as a problem. The suggestion by Mrs MacIntyre is that she is “having a little turn” during her complaints: a moment of insight into how easily we have dismissed the rights of older Australians to exercise choice and be heard on matters that impact them. </p>
<p>Here, Bloom provides an insight into the cruelty inherent in some aspects of the system, and the difference quality care and a good carer can make to someone’s life. </p>
<h2>Stark realities and missed opportunities</h2>
<p>Toward the end of the play, there is a scene where we watch Rose take her last few breaths in her small hospital bed, in a stark and all-too-familiar room. She is surrounded by Gloria, Ruby and Finn, who provide comfort in her final hours. </p>
<p>In the scene, Finn reflects that Ruby seems very comfortable with death. She responds that both her grandparents lived at her home and she was present when they died. </p>
<p>Ruby’s experience of multi-generational living arrangements that allow for care at home for the elderly is <a href="http://universaldesignaustralia.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/009_Ch2_Dufty_Jones-3.pdf">more common</a> in Australian families that include first- or second-generation migrants. </p>
<p>Finn reveals that when his mother died, he was considered too young to be at the hospital. </p>
<p>This scene at Rose’s bedside is a good representation of the missed opportunity in Bloom to starkly represent the realities of our aged care system and our dominant cultural approach to end-of-life care in this country. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540924/original/file-20230803-20-1ma7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A chorus line." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540924/original/file-20230803-20-1ma7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540924/original/file-20230803-20-1ma7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540924/original/file-20230803-20-1ma7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540924/original/file-20230803-20-1ma7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540924/original/file-20230803-20-1ma7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540924/original/file-20230803-20-1ma7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540924/original/file-20230803-20-1ma7hy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There is a missed opportunity to starkly represent the realities of our aged care system.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Pia Johnson/Melbourne Theatre Company</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Due to the intense staffing shortfall so sharply reflected in the royal commission, unless family were present, it is very possible Rose would have died alone. </p>
<p>I can’t help but imagine how seeing that uncomfortable reality on stage may have been a transformative theatrical moment, seared into the memories of the audience as they make choices about end-of-life and aged care for themselves and those they love. </p>
<p>Instead of tackling the systemic issues around aged care and end of life, Bloom wraps things neatly up in a bow, ending the musical by suggesting the death of Rose led to change at Pine Grove. An unqualified student will now work as a musical therapist and a nice manager has been found to lead the home into a new era. </p>
<p>There is a great track record of musical theatre successfully tackling overtly political material and revealing the gaps in our social fabric and problematising history and power (think of shows like Hamilton, Urinetown and Bran Nue Dae). </p>
<p>Unfortunately, Bloom seems too afraid of its own subject material to truly tackle these issues and reflect their realities back to us. </p>
<p><em>Bloom is at the Arts Centre Melbourne Playhouse for the Melbourne Theatre Company until August 26.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/we-all-hope-for-a-good-death-but-many-aged-care-residents-are-denied-proper-end-of-life-care-156105">We all hope for a 'good death'. But many aged-care residents are denied proper end-of-life care</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209794/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Austin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
There is a great track record of musical theatre tackling political material. Bloom seems too afraid of its own subject material to truly tackle the issues.
Sarah Austin, Lecturer in Theatre, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205622
2023-06-06T12:30:23Z
2023-06-06T12:30:23Z
Historians are learning more about how the Nazis targeted trans people
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529869/original/file-20230602-15-dz89pz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=267%2C0%2C4418%2C3408&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Patrons at the Eldorado, a popular LGBTQ cabaret in Berlin during the Weimar years.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/germany-berlin-schoeneberg-transvestites-men-dressed-as-news-photo/542862377?adppopup=true">Herbert Hoffmann/ullstein bild via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the fall of 2022, a German court heard <a href="https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/prozess-um-tweet-zu-ns-verbrechen-umstrittene-biologin-der-humboldt-uni-unterliegt-vor-gericht-8863906.html">an unusual case</a>. </p>
<p>It was a civil lawsuit that grew out of a feud on Twitter about whether transgender people were victims of the Holocaust. Though there is no longer much debate about whether <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/series/gay-men-and-lesbians-under-the-nazi-regime">gay men and lesbians were persecuted</a>, there’s been very little scholarship on trans people during this period. </p>
<p>The court took expert statements from historians before issuing an opinion that essentially acknowledges that <a href="https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/prozess-um-tweet-zu-ns-verbrechen-umstrittene-biologin-der-humboldt-uni-unterliegt-vor-gericht-8863906.html">trans people were victimized by the Nazi regime</a>.</p>
<p>This is an important case. It was the first time a court acknowledged the possibility that trans people were persecuted in Nazi Germany. It was followed a few months later by the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, formally releasing a statement <a href="https://www.advocate.com/news/holocaust-lgbtq-victims-german-parliament#rebelltitem1">recognizing trans and cisgender queer people as victims of fascism</a>. </p>
<p>Up until the past few years, there had been little research on trans people under the Nazi regime. <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=s1CXtTYAAAAJ&hl=en">Historians like myself</a> are now uncovering more cases, like that of Toni Simon. </p>
<h2>Being trans during the Weimar Republic</h2>
<p>In 1933, the year that Hitler took power, the police in Essen, Germany, revoked Toni Simon’s permit to dress as a woman in public. Simon, who was in her mid-40s, had been living as a woman for many years.</p>
<p>The Weimar Republic, the more tolerant democratic government that existed before Hitler, recognized the rights of trans people, though in a begrudging, limited way. Under the republic, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtac018">police granted trans people permits</a> like the one Simon had. </p>
<p>In the 1930s, transgender people were called “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23269669">transvestites</a>,” which is rarely a preferred term for trans people today, but at the time approximated what’s now meant by “transgender.” The police permits were called “transvestite certificates,” and they exempted a person from the laws against cross-dressing. Under the Republic, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtac018">trans people could also change their names legally</a>, though they had to pick from a short, preapproved list. </p>
<p>In Berlin, transgender people published several magazines and had a political club. Some glamorous trans women worked at the internationally famous <a href="https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/photo-of-the-eldorado-club">Eldorado cabaret</a>. The sexologist <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-early-20th-century-german-trans-rights-activist-who-transformed-the-worlds-view-of-gender-and-sexuality-106278">Magnus Hirschfeld</a>, who ran Berlin’s <a href="https://magnus-hirschfeld.de/ausstellungen/institute/">Institute for Sexual Science</a>, advocated for the rights of transgender people. </p>
<p>The rise of Nazi Germany destroyed this relatively open environment. The Nazis shut down the magazines, the Eldorado and Hirschfeld’s institute. Most people who held “transvestite certificates,” as Toni Simon did, had them revoked or watched helplessly as police refused to honor them. </p>
<p>That was just the beginning of the trouble.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two police officers stand in front of a shuttered nightclub, which has Nazi banners hanging in the window." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529870/original/file-20230602-29-wkde0y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/529870/original/file-20230602-29-wkde0y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529870/original/file-20230602-29-wkde0y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529870/original/file-20230602-29-wkde0y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=425&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529870/original/file-20230602-29-wkde0y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529870/original/file-20230602-29-wkde0y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/529870/original/file-20230602-29-wkde0y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=534&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nazi banners hang in the windows of the former Eldorado nightclub.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/photo-of-the-eldorado-club">Landesarchiv Berlin/U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Draconian measures’ against trans people</h2>
<p>In Nazi Germany, transgender people were not used as a political wedge issue in the way they are today. There was little public discussion of trans people. </p>
<p>What the Nazis did say about them, however, was chilling. </p>
<p>The author of <a href="https://worldcat.org/en/title/459879607">a 1938 book</a> on “the problem of transvestitism” wrote that before Hitler was in power, there was not much that could be done about transgender people, but that now, in Nazi Germany, they could be put in concentration camps or subjected to forced castration. That was good, he believed, because the “asocial mindset” of trans people and their supposedly frequent “criminal activity … justifies draconian measures by the state.” </p>
<p>Toni Simon was a brave person. I first came across her police file when I was researching trans people at the <a href="https://collections.ushmm.org/search/">United States Holocaust Memorial Museum</a>. The Essen police knew Simon as the sassy proprietor of an underground club where LGBTQ people gathered. In the mid 1930s, she was hauled into court for criticizing the Nazi regime. By then, the Gestapo had had enough of her. Simon was a danger to youth, a Gestapo officer wrote. A concentration camp was “absolutely necessary.” </p>
<p>I am not certain what happened to Simon. Her file ends abruptly, with the Gestapo planning her arrest. But there are no actual arrest papers. Hopefully, she evaded the police. </p>
<p>Other trans women did not escape. At the <a href="https://www.hamburg.de/bkm/hamburg-state-archive/">Hamburg State Archive</a>, I read about H. Bode, who often went out in public dressed as a woman and dated men. Under the Weimar Republic, she held a transvestite certificate. Nazi police went after her for “cross-dressing” and for having sex with men. They considered her male, so her relationships were homosexual and illegal. They sent her to the concentration camp Buchenwald, where she was murdered. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-7hHzmCAjg">Liddy Bacroff</a> of Hamburg also had a transvestite pass under the Republic. She made her living selling sex to male clients. After 1933, the police went after her. They wrote that she was “fundamentally a transvestite” and a “morals criminal of the worst sort.” She too was sent to a camp, Mauthausen, and murdered.</p>
<h2>Trans Germans previously misgendered</h2>
<p>For a long time, the public didn’t know the stories of trans people in Nazi Germany. </p>
<p>Earlier histories tended to misgender trans women, which was odd: When you read the records of their police interrogations, they are often remarkably clear about their gender identity, even though they were not helping their cases at all by doing so. </p>
<p>Bacroff, for example, told the police, “My sense of my sex is fully and completely that of a woman.” </p>
<p>There was also confusion caused by a few cases that, by chance, came to light first. In these cases, police acted less violently. For example, there is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/dbr021">a well-known case from Berlin</a> where police renewed a trans man’s “transvestite certificate” after he spent some months in a concentration camp. Historians initially took this case to be representative. Now that we have a lot more cases, we can see that it is an outlier. Police normally revoked the certificates.</p>
<h2>A through line to today</h2>
<p>Today, right-wing attacks against trans people in the U.S. are intensifying. </p>
<p>Though the <a href="https://www.aap.org/en/news-room/news-releases/aap/2018/aap-policy-statement-urges-support-and-care-of-transgender-and-gender-diverse-children-and-adolescents/">American Academy of Pediatrics</a> and every major medical association approves gender-affirming health care for trans kids, Republican politicians have <a href="https://www.hrc.org/resources/attacks-on-gender-affirming-care-by-state-map">banned it in 19 states, with even more moving to prohibit it</a>. </p>
<p>Gender-affirming medicine is now over 100 years old – and it has roots in Weimar Germany. It had never before been legally restricted in the U.S. Yet <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/04/24/1171293057/missouri-attorney-general-transgender-adults-gender-affirming-health-care">Missouri has essentially banned it for adults</a>, and other states are trying to restrict adult care. A host of <a href="https://www.aclu.org/podcast/why-and-how-trans-hate-is-spreading">other anti-trans bills</a> are moving through state legislatures.</p>
<p>I find it fitting, then, that “<a href="https://www.centertheatregroup.org/tickets/mark-taper-forum/2021-2/a-transparent-musical/">A Transparent Musical</a>” recently premiered in Los Angeles. In it, fabulously dressed trans Berliners sing and dance in defiance of Nazi thugs.</p>
<p>It’s a reminder that attacks on trans people are nothing new – and that many of them are straight out of the Nazi playbook.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story noted that the author’s testimony was submitted to a German court. While the testimony was submitted to a lawyer arguing in the court case, that lawyer did not ultimately submit it to the court. In addition, the story was edited in the third paragraph to more accurately reflect the decision of the German court.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205622/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Laurie Marhoefer receives funding from the Holocaust Education Foundation (Northwestern University), Stroum Center for Jewish Studies (University of Washington).</span></em></p>
Only in the past few years have the stories and experiences of trans people in Nazi Germany come to light.
Laurie Marhoefer, Professor of History, University of Washington
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/205330
2023-05-15T11:47:07Z
2023-05-15T11:47:07Z
Schmigadoon!: darker musical influences make season two a more complex, but satisfying watch
<p><em>Warning: the following article contains spoilers for Schmigadoon! series one and two.</em></p>
<p>Apple TV’s musical comedy <a href="https://tv.apple.com/gb/show/schmigadoon/umc.cmc.1tqmf2znhr4oui4vo69ircyui">Schmigadoon!</a> has just aired its second series. It follows couple Josh (Keegan-Michael Key) and Melissa (Cecily Strong) in their adventures in the magical town of Schmigadoon, which they stumble across while backpacking.</p>
<p>The musical town of the show’s first season is an amalgamation of the golden age musicals of the 1940s and 1950s. Think <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6uD9-aLCps">Oklahoma!</a> (1943), <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqgTaNqolXo">Carousel</a> (1945) and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI_Oe-jtgdI">The Music Man</a> (1957) – simple romantic storylines and a happy cast of characters who frequently burst into song for no reason.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for season two of Schmigadoon!</span></figcaption>
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<p>Melissa loves these musicals and can predict the course of events based on their familiar formula. Following the plot of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpk9JNUDr9k">Brigadoon</a> (1954), the couple can only leave the town when they find love – that is, when they fix their rocky relationship. Happily, it works: the corny musical tropes become deeply meaningful and a vital therapeutic resource for the couple.</p>
<p>When we meet them at the start of season two, Josh and Melissa are enjoying the doping effects of the musical and its required suspension of disbelief. They marry and decide to start a family. </p>
<p>However, when their fertility journey proves difficult, reality hits hard. Compared with the dopamine-fest of season one, their situation feels bleak.</p>
<p>German playwright and theorist Bertolt Brecht found <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-brecht/2D0C869D864DA0636AECA03E3E77414F">“autonomous” dramatic music</a> (music for music’s sake) suspicious. He believed that theatre should be used to challenge audiences and promote social ideas and self-reflection. This is threatened by pleasure-focused operas and musicals.</p>
<p>Brecht believed that dramatic music’s seductive charms could dupe audiences into submission, so the musical comprised a dangerous smokescreen. In Josh and Melissa’s case, the musical has distorted their sense of reality and they are about to enter a world of danger.</p>
<h2>The musical darkens</h2>
<p>As Schmigadoon did a great job of solving their problems last time, the couple decide to return, hoping it will once again work its magic. When they find the town, however, it has transitioned into Schmicago: the dark, sensual era of the 1960s and 1970s musicals such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfL1J4QVhSM">Cabaret</a> (1966), Chicago (1975) and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acHBq_oZm-8">Sweeney Todd</a> (1979).</p>
<p>This era is more concerned with terror, excitement, shock and disgust – themes familiar in gothic fiction. These musicals resemble the formulaic gothic dramas of <a href="https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/0-271-01809-7.html">excess, hyperbole and fantasy</a>, which garnered a similar mass appeal from the late 18th century.</p>
<p>This era was also associated with concept musicals, <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-companion-to-the-musical/65AF6EFD39A6DDCFF13AB3CDBD5C749E">which rejected</a> traditional storylines and linear narratives in favour of abstract ideas. </p>
<p>As concept musicals experimented with traditional structural boundaries, lines between reality and fantasy became unstable, providing a maze-like structure for eccentric stories to be told.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Ariana DeBose performs Over and Done in Schmigadoon! season two.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The characters in Schmicago musicals reflect those in English gothic <a href="https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/themes/fin-de-siecle">fin-de-siècle</a> novels. </p>
<p>Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray loses his identity in his picture, the identity of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr Jekyll becomes entangled with Mr Hyde and the victims of Bram Stoker’s Dracula lose theirs in vampirism. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bram-stokers-dracula-bats-garlic-disturbing-sexualities-and-a-declining-empire-186392">Bram Stoker's Dracula: bats, garlic, disturbing sexualities and a declining empire</a>
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<p>Meanwhile, Sweeney Todd is overwhelmed with revenge, Cabaret’s Sally Bowles sports an impenetrably vivacious facade and the world of law in Chicago is hopelessly subsumed in the world of show business.</p>
<p>The unconventional forms of these musicals represent their characters’ damaged boundaries: their inability to maintain a clear sense of morality, or to keep their delusions from infecting reality.</p>
<h2>How season two deviates</h2>
<p>Season one followed the structure of a golden age musical. Josh and Melissa inevitably realised their love for each other and escaped. Season two’s outcome, however, is less predictable. The musicals of this era have no clear moral and the couple have no idea what lesson they must learn in order to escape.</p>
<p>What’s more, the Narrator (Titus Burgess) is highly unreliable. While Melissa is an expert in old-timey musicals, she is less familiar with the Schmicago era. Her lack of foresight allows the narrative to take a chaotic shape.</p>
<p>The couple are trapped in a place that is apparently trying to destroy them. As this era is more about survival than happiness, they are forced to confront the fact that – as in many gothic tales – the only solution might be to kill the villain. The moral of the story becomes harder to untangle.</p>
<p>The Narrator is based on the narrator of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U2Ji5-MebA">Pippin</a> (1972), the Leading Player who, in the show’s climax, tries to convince Pippin to set himself on fire for the “thrilling finale”. When Josh and Melissa are about to leave Schmicago, the townspeople try to persuade them to stay and avoid the misery of reality. </p>
<p>The Narrator’s plea for them to stay in the world of “magic” echoes the Leading Player’s plea for Pippin to give up his life to perform one glorious feat of spectacle. Like Pippin, however, Josh and Melissa refuse: all they want is something real.</p>
<p>As it turns out, this was the lesson all along. The magic of a musical is only effective when contrasted with reality. Indeed, that is the appeal of a Schmicago musical, which integrates misery with joy to create a stronger emotional impact.</p>
<p>Schmicago teaches that musical logic is not meant to be applied directly to reality, or necessarily untangled, but used in configuration with reality to draw personal conclusions. The musical’s effect becomes enlightening rather than doping, providing catharsis and self-knowledge.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205330/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jodie Passey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Compared to the dopamine-fest of season one, Josh and Melissa’s situation in season two feels bleak.
Jodie Passey, PhD Candidate, Lancaster University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/199660
2023-02-10T14:53:41Z
2023-02-10T14:53:41Z
Burt Bacharach mastered the art of the perfect pop song – and that ain’t easy
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509476/original/file-20230210-18-1cgqw6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=9%2C4%2C2993%2C2025&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A pop pioneer whose songs were performed by the great and good for decades.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/photo-of-burt-bacharach-photo-by-michael-ochs-archives-news-photo/74253109?phrase=burt%20bacharach&adppopup=true">Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Easy on the ear, perhaps. But the label of “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-rise-and-fall-of-easy-listening-1435011284">easy listening</a>” often attached to the songs of Burt Bacharach belies the mastery of his talent in crafting perfect moments in music.</p>
<p>Yes, Bacharach’s back catalog is filled with memorable, catchy melodies – whether they were written with longtime partner and lyricist Hal David, former wife Carole Bayer Sager or in collaboration with more contemporary artists such as Elvis Costello, Adele and <a href="https://www.mtv.com/news/hsvl4p/dr-dre-gets-down-with-burt-bacharach">Dr. Dre</a>.</p>
<p>But there is a harmonic and rhythmic complexity to his music that elevates it above the sweet, often saccharine arrangements that can typify easy listening. It is full of <a href="https://www.allaboutjazz.com/musicians/burt-bacharach">influences from jazz chord structures and progressions</a>, as well as rhythms.</p>
<p>It is why Bacharach, who <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/02/09/561555285/burt-bacharach-obituary">died on Feb. 8, 2023</a>, at the age of 94, appealed to generations of listeners, as well as the diverse pool of singers who chose to work with him.</p>
<h2>Cross-generational appeal</h2>
<p>Bacharach began his long songwriting career in the 1950s, but it was the following decade that saw him come to prominence with a series of hit songs.</p>
<p>But with the 1960s as a backdrop – a time of <a href="https://www.readersdigest.co.uk/culture/music/the-evolution-of-music-the-music-revolution-of-the-1960s">immense innovation in popular music</a> – Bacharach may not have been taken as seriously as many of his contemporaries. It was a time when rock ‘n’ roll and <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2002/11/british-invasion-oral-history">the British Invasion</a> were at the forefront, with rhythm and blues, protest music and folk rock finding their way on the musical landscape.</p>
<p>While Bacharach’s musical counterparts were writing and performing music that responded to and reflected the political, social and cultural upheavals that defined the era, Bacharach and David’s songs focused on different themes: Theirs was music that <a href="https://theconversation.com/burt-bacharach-created-music-for-all-the-ways-men-fall-in-love-199695">dealt with relationships</a> and matters of the heart. </p>
<p>They also stood apart from other notable songwriting partners of the age – Lennon and McCartney, Jagger and Richards, for example – in that the songs were written for others to perform. In that way, they were a throwback to an earlier age of popular music, when the likes of Rodgers and Hart provided hit after hit for a roster of singers.</p>
<p>Indeed, they were a late product of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1976/07/27/archives/tin-pan-alley-remember-is-celebrated.html">Tin Pan Alley</a> – the music industry centered around midtown Manhattan. Bacharach met David in 1957 in the storied <a href="https://www.history-of-rock.com/brill_building.htm">Brill Building</a> in New York City – a place where a young songwriter could perhaps catch a break. </p>
<iframe style="border-radius:12px" src="https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/5aXCetVigndLrzE0cWOf0G?utm_source=generator" width="100%" height="352" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; fullscreen; picture-in-picture" loading="lazy"></iframe>
<p>Not long after they began working together, Bacharach came across a young backup singer at a recording session who seemed to have promise. The first single he produced with her, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDblF-J6qvY">Don’t Make Me Over</a>,” was the first of 38 songs he and David produced with Dionne Warwick.</p>
<p>Her warm tones and fluid phrasing made Warwick’s voice the perfect accompaniment to Bacharach’s music.</p>
<p>But she was one of many collaborators. Some, like Warwick, were plucked from relative obscurity. Others, like Perry Como, were already established singers. </p>
<p>The list of artists who found success with Bacharach songs in that era is astonishing: Aretha Franklin, The Carpenters, Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones and The 5th Dimension, to name just a few.</p>
<p>Through collaborators, Bacharach’s music was able to reach a fairly diverse audience. The songs were so well written that they could easily be reworked into different genres, and break the confines of “easy listening” – a genre often maligned as unhip. In the hands of Isaac Hayes, the sweet refrains of “Walk on By” becomes a psychedelic funk classic. Years later, The White Stripes transformed “I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself” into a stripped-down, guitar-heavy slice of rock.</p>
<h2>Froms Oscars to revivals</h2>
<p>The music of David and Bacharach also worked on a different level – as the <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/music-news/burt-bacharach-dead-grammy-oscar-winning-composer-1235321386/">background to movie soundtracks</a>. The 1966 Michael Caine film “Alfie” is perhaps equally known today for the title track, with versions by Cher, Warwick and British singer Cilla Black all becoming hits on the back of the film.</p>
<p>In 1969, Bacharach and David’s “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head,” sung by B.J. Thomas in the western “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” won the Academy Award for best original song. Bacharach also won the Oscar for best original score.</p>
<p>Adding to success on the charts and on screen, Bacharach also won acclaim for his work on Broadway. The 1968 show “Promises, Promises” was groundbreaking in its <a href="https://www.concordtheatricals.com/p/44675/promises-promises">use of amplification in the orchestra</a>, which included a rock band. The show contained a number of songs that topped the charts, most notably Warwick’s version of the show-stopping “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again.” </p>
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<img alt="A mana and woman sit at a recording desk." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509494/original/file-20230210-14-bqljp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/509494/original/file-20230210-14-bqljp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509494/original/file-20230210-14-bqljp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509494/original/file-20230210-14-bqljp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=368&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509494/original/file-20230210-14-bqljp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509494/original/file-20230210-14-bqljp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/509494/original/file-20230210-14-bqljp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick recording together in 1964.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/burt-bacharach-and-dionne-warwick-recording-a-song-at-the-news-photo/912534356?phrase=burt%20bacharach%20warwick&adppopup=true">Bela Zola/Mirrorpix/Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>In an <a href="https://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/2010/05/05/126514198/">NPR “Fresh Air” interview in 2010</a> – when the musical was being revived on Broadway – Bacharach discusses the number of rhythmic meter changes in the title song, “Promises, Promises,” and the difficulties these rhythmic changes presented for singers and musicians in the show.</p>
<p>The interview is also notable in that it reunited him with David – the two had a <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-05-24-ca-39251-story.html">much publicized split in 1973</a> after working on a failed movie. The breakdown of their successful musical partnership saw Bacharach lose interest in writing music for a spell, and affected his relationship with Warwick.</p>
<p>This was eventually resolved with her recording of one of Bacharach’s most memorable songs, 1985’s “That’s What Friends are For,” written with his then-wife, Carole Bayer Sager. Though the song had been first recorded by Rod Stewart for the film “Night Shift,” the Warwick & Friends’ version – the friends being none other than Elton John, Gladys Knight and Stevie Wonder – is the one that became a hit and helped revive Bacharach’s career.</p>
<p>Though best known for the songs he wrote in the 1960s through the 1980s, Bacharach continued to write music into his old age, collaborating with Elvis Costello, Adele and Dr. Dre.</p>
<p>You may have noticed the sheer number – and range – of artists Bacharach worked with. It speaks to the quality and endurance of his output. Yes, he will be remembered by some as the writer of exemplary “easy listening” songs. But Burt Bacharach’s legacy will prove that he was so much more.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199660/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gena R. Greher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Pop composer Burt Bacharach died on Feb. 8, 2023, at the age of 94. He left a legacy of classic songs beloved by generations.
Gena R. Greher, Professor of Music, UMass Lowell
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/188690
2022-11-22T19:45:30Z
2022-11-22T19:45:30Z
Puttin’ on the Ritz and improving well-being with older adults through virtual music theatre
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/493940/original/file-20221107-17-grm9wr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C31%2C1000%2C514&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Whether you’re 16 going on 17 or 79 going on 80, singing classics and new numbers virtually with a group brings joy. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Digital programming and virtual interactions, initially considered to be stop-gap measures during the first few waves of the pandemic, may now be an important part of supporting many people’s health and well-being — including the well-being of older adults. </p>
<p>During the COVID-19 pandemic, group musical activities moved online, prompting a wave of <a href="https://ericwhitacre.com/the-virtual-choir">virtual choir</a> experiments and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rzZ2F18MwI">virtual orchestra</a> offerings. </p>
<p>These and other online communities weren’t limited to students. A <a href="https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/45-28-0001/2021001/article/00027-eng.htm">Statistics Canada survey</a> found that more than half of Canadians between the ages of 64 and 74 increased their participation in online activities during the pandemic by connecting with family and friends through video conferencing, or accessing entertainment online. </p>
<p>Virtual opportunities in the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252956">performing arts are ripe with potential</a> for older adults to foster skills and creativity, and to improve well-being. </p>
<h2>Social connection</h2>
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<img alt="A woman in headphones laughing while looking at computer screen." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495162/original/file-20221114-15-7g5ay5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495162/original/file-20221114-15-7g5ay5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495162/original/file-20221114-15-7g5ay5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495162/original/file-20221114-15-7g5ay5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495162/original/file-20221114-15-7g5ay5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495162/original/file-20221114-15-7g5ay5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495162/original/file-20221114-15-7g5ay5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">More than half of Canadians between 64 and 74 increased their participation in online activities during the pandemic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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<p>Going digital serves many purposes, the most important of which may be social connection. </p>
<p>Since <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/23748834.2020.1788770">connecting with others</a> remains important for older adults, this can be achieved through, or in addition to, virtual leisure or entertainment opportunities. </p>
<p>Our research has revealed that <a href="https://storage.googleapis.com/wzukusers/user-20563976/documents/598184972c66407e9334c5df1b37bb91/Renihan%2C%20Brook%2C%20Draisey-Collishaw.pdf">virtual music theatre — music theatre online — allows for a more accessible and a less exclusive way to engage with this art form</a> with many benefits for participants.</p>
<h2>Online performing arts</h2>
<p>The performing arts allow performers and audiences to feel, be creative in community, express themselves and communicate or play through song, movement or storytelling. </p>
<p>Benefits associated with participation in the arts include <a href="https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/329834">improved mood and well-being</a> and sense of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/parents/thrive/turn-to-the-arts-to-boost-self-esteem">belonging</a>.</p>
<p>Research has also documented associations between seniors’ participation in the arts and improved <a href="https://doi.org/10.1159/000499402">mobility</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.archger.2018.02.012">vocal health</a>.</p>
<p>Before the pandemic erupted, we had started leading a program, <a href="http://www.riseshinesing.ca/">Rise, Shine, Sing!</a>, that created opportunities for local citizens typically excluded from the creation of music theatre due to age, ability and access. The program was mostly attended by older adults, some with Parkinson’s Disease or other chronic conditions.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A trailer for the ‘Rise, Shine, Sing!’ program.</span></figcaption>
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<p>We held three weekly face-to-face sessions from the end of February 2020, until mid-March, and then moved the program online (via Zoom) for 12 sessions from April until June 2020. The program continues to be offered, with many participants indicating a preference to continue virtually.</p>
<p>Somewhat to our surprise, when the program moved online, the fact that participants could only hear the facilitator and themselves singing was not a deterrent to participating. Participants enjoyed singing, dancing and creating characters using costumes and props based on cues and feedback from facilitators.</p>
<h2>Paradigm shift for music theatre</h2>
<p>Virtual music theatre presents a serious paradigm shift for the genre. Most of the time when people think of music theatre, they think of live bodies moving in perfect synchrony <a href="https://www.americantheatre.org/2022/02/04/what-can-be-said-with-and-about-broadway-dance/">to choreographed movement</a>, and voices singing in perfect harmony while performers are physically present together.</p>
<p>Researchers have examined how group singing and movement fosters togetherness, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-00549-0">community</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01096">social bonding</a>.</p>
<p>Music theatre has made strides to become more inclusive over the course of the 21st century. <a href="https://www.deafwest.org/">Los-Angeles based Deaf West Theatre</a>, for example, creates works of music theatre that can be experienced and performed by members of the Deaf and hearing communities. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">ASL version of ‘We Don’t Talk About Bruno,’ from Disney’s ‘Encanto’ with Deaf West.</span></figcaption>
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<p>A multitude of new works, stagings and casting practices are highlighting and supporting the experiences of marginalized groups, by <a href="https://www.blackoperaalliance.org/">diversifying</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.3390/arts9020069">queering</a> the field, for example. </p>
<p>Such works offer resistance and new stories to an industry that has traditionally been ableist, white and ageist.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/canadas-theatre-community-must-nurture-bipoc-leadership-to-improve-racial-equity-162786">Canada's theatre community must nurture BIPOC leadership to improve racial equity</a>
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<p>But despite a healthy <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/beyond-broadway-9780190639525?cc=ca&lang=en&">community music theatre scene</a> in North America, most opportunities still leave out many people due to issues related to social anxiety, experience, mobility, family life and/or finances.</p>
<h2>Music theatre meets universal design</h2>
<p>We drew on the intersection of <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/629960/pdf">music theatre performance</a> and <a href="https://www.cast.org/impact/universal-design-for-learning-udl">universal design for learning</a> to develop a model where success could look different from person to person. </p>
<p>In terms of the movement, participants could synchronize with the facilitator and/or other members of the group. They were equally welcome and encouraged to customize or adapt their movements to suit their own needs and interests. </p>
<p>We embraced dancing from both a seated and standing position, to explore different levels and to accommodate different mobility capabilities. Participants controlled how much they shared by deciding how visible they wanted to be on camera. </p>
<h2>Classics and newer numbers</h2>
<p>We drew on musical classics or standards from <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Singin-in-the-Rain-film-1952"><em>Singin’ in the Rain</em></a>, the <em>Sound of Music</em>, <a href="https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/stage/2022/08/23/joseph-and-the-amazing-technicolor-dreamcoat-coming-to-toronto-as-a-test-run-for-possible-broadway-revival.html"><em>Joseph and The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat</em></a> — as well as newer numbers from <em>Wicked</em> and other popular songs. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495163/original/file-20221114-14-ufus7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Colourful lettering shows the 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat' sign above a lit theatre marquee" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495163/original/file-20221114-14-ufus7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/495163/original/file-20221114-14-ufus7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495163/original/file-20221114-14-ufus7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495163/original/file-20221114-14-ufus7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=376&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495163/original/file-20221114-14-ufus7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495163/original/file-20221114-14-ufus7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/495163/original/file-20221114-14-ufus7p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=473&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">‘Rise, Shine, Sing!’ drew on songs from musicals like ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat’ as well as newer numbers.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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<p>We also <a href="http://www.riseshinesing.ca/glow.html">co-created our own songs</a> by combining our shared memories or inspirations through image, lyrics and movements to explore themes of joy and resilience in difficult times. </p>
<p>While the program was led virtually, before sessions, leaders dropped off or mailed prop boxes to all participants. These were filled with costumes including small scarves and ribbons that could be used for choreography. </p>
<h2>Promise of virtual musical theatre</h2>
<p>Virtual music theatre has shown incredible promise, even in the short time we have been exploring it. Digital connections reframe being together at the same time and in the same space. This adds new unexpected dimensions to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2012.06530.x">making music in a group</a>.</p>
<p>First, goals and expectations of uniformity are replaced with goals of individual empowerment and creative exploration. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/music-helps-us-remember-who-we-are-and-how-we-belong-during-difficult-and-traumatic-times-136324">Music helps us remember who we are and how we belong during difficult and traumatic times</a>
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<p>Second, participants remain committed to the community and group endeavour, but are also free to tailor and adapt the ways they engage with the material and with one another. If group members invite friends or family in other cities to participate virtually, as some in our group did, the virtual community also expands in meaningful ways. </p>
<p>Finally, participants can also adjust their personal comfort by sharing as much or little of themselves with the group without feeling like they are letting the group down.</p>
<h2>Our hybrid future</h2>
<p>The pandemic catalyzed the need for virtual interaction. While we know that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/occmed/kqab041">Zoom fatigue</a> is pervasive, virtual opportunities for music theatre participation and creation offer a new paradigm of artistic experience. </p>
<p>These opportunities also offer striking promise for bringing performers some of the <a href="https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00778">same benefits</a> as in-person music theatre experiences. </p>
<p>In some cases, they also facilitate new access to music in community, and allow participants to engage with the art form and one another in ways that support personal agency and independence, while also maintaining social connection and interactivity. <a href="https://www.lyrics.com/lyric/6358131/George+Gershwin/I+Got+Rhythm">Who could ask for anything more</a>?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188690/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julia Brook receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Colleen Renihan receives funding from The Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation. </span></em></p>
I’m happy again: A pandemic-induced move to virtual music theatre presents a paradigm shift for the genre, yet reveals surprising benefits in facilitating new access to music in community.
Julia Brook, Director and Associate Professor, DAN School of Drama and Music, Queen's University, Ontario
Colleen Renihan, Associate Professor and Queen's National Scholar in Music Theatre and Opera, Queen's University, Ontario
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/188363
2022-09-27T20:10:04Z
2022-09-27T20:10:04Z
‘Prima donna in pigtails’: how Julie Andrews the child star embodied the hopes of post-war Britain
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/486420/original/file-20220926-57491-hqtm9e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C10%2C3463%2C2539&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In June, the American Film Institute presented its 48th Life Achievement Award, the highest honour in American cinema, to the beloved stage-and-screen star <a href="https://www.afi.com/laa/julie-andrews/">Julie Andrews</a>. </p>
<p>On conferring the award, the AFI praised Andrews as “a legendary actress” who “has enchanted and delighted audiences around the world with her uplifting and inspiring body of work”.</p>
<p>As anyone who has seen Mary Poppins (1964) or The Sound of Music (1965) can attest, “uplift” is central to the <a href="https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/female-glamour-and-star-power/andrews/">Julie Andrews screen persona</a>. </p>
<p>It is a sweetness-and-light image that is easy to lampoon. <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BZtTQSbl-nw/?hl=en">Andrews herself</a> is alleged to have quipped “sometimes I’m so sweet even I can’t stand it”. But it’s an element of feel-good edification that fuels much of the star’s iconic appeal. </p>
<p>The idea of Julie Andrews as a figure of uplift has a long history. </p>
<p>Decades before she attained global film stardom in Hollywood, Andrews enjoyed an early career as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19392397.2022.2109303">a child performer</a>. </p>
<p>Billed as “Britain’s youngest singing star”, she performed widely on the postwar concert and variety circuit with forays into radio, gramophone recording and even early television. </p>
<p>Possessing a precociously mature soprano voice, Andrews was widely promoted in the era as a <a href="https://paralleljulieverse.tumblr.com/post/63601790519/julies-status-as-a-juvenile-prodigy-possessed">child prodigy</a>. A 1945 BBC talent report filed when the young singer was just nine years old enthused over “this wonderful child discovery” whose “breath control, diction, and range is quite extraordinary for so young a child”. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-austrians-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-sound-of-music-38137">How Austrians learned to stop worrying and love The Sound of Music</a>
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<h2>‘Infant prodigy of trills’</h2>
<p>Andrews made her professional West End debut in 1947 where she dazzled audiences with a coloratura performance of the Polonaise from Mignon. Newspapers were ablaze with stories about the “12-year-old singing prodigy with the phenomenal voice”. </p>
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<p>Reports claimed the pint-sized singer had a vocal range of over four octaves, a fully formed adult larynx and an upper <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whistle_register">whistle register</a> so high dogs would be beckoned whenever she sang. </p>
<p>On the back of such stories, Andrews was given a slew of lionising monikers: “prima donna in pigtails”, “infant prodigy of trills”, “the miracle voice” and “Britain’s juvenile coloratura”.</p>
<p>While much of it was PR hype, the representation of Andrews as an extraordinary musical prodigy resonated deeply with postwar British audiences. The devastation of the war cast <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK436946/">a long shadow</a>, and there was a keen sense a collective social rejuvenation was needed to reestablish national wellbeing. </p>
<p>The figure of the child was pivotal to the rhetoric of postwar British reconstruction. From political calls for <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0363199020945746">expanded child welfare</a> to the era’s booming <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/30036327">family-oriented consumerism</a>, images of children saturated the cultural landscape, serving as a lightning rod for both <a href="https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/growing-up-in-the-second-world-war">social anxieties and hopes</a>. </p>
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<p>In her status as “Britain’s youngest singing star”, Andrews chimed with these postwar discourses of child-oriented renewal. </p>
<p>A popular myth even traced her prodigious talent to the very heart of the Blitz. Like a scene from a morale-boosting melodrama, the story claimed the young Andrews was huddled one night with family and friends in a Beckenham air raid shelter. In the middle of a communal singalong, a powerful voice suddenly materialised out of her tiny frame, astonishing all into silent delight.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/child-stars-the-power-and-the-price-of-cuteness-189444">Child stars: The power and the price of cuteness</a>
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<h2>‘Our Julie’</h2>
<p>One of the most pointed alignments of Andrews’ juvenile stardom with a discourse of postwar British nationalism came with her appearance at the <a href="https://www.royalvarietycharity.org/royal-variety-performance/archive/detail/1948-london-palladium-">1948 Royal Command Variety Performance</a>. </p>
<p>Appearing just two weeks after her 13th birthday, Andrews was the youngest artist ever to participate in the annual event. It generated considerable media coverage and yet another grand nickname: “command singer in pigtails”. </p>
<p>Andrews performed a solo set at the event, and was also charged with leading the national anthem at the close.</p>
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<p>Ideals of restorative nationalism shaped Andrews’ child stardom in other ways. </p>
<p>Much of her early repertoire was markedly British, drawn from the English classical canon and rounded out by traditional folk songs. </p>
<p>Press reports emphasised, for all her remarkable talent, “our Julie” was still a typical English girl thoroughly unspoiled by fame. In accompanying images she would appear in idyllic scenarios of classic English childhood: playing with dolls, riding her bicycle, doing her homework.</p>
<p>Elsewhere, commentary was rife with speculations about Andrews’ prospects as “the next <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelina_Patti">Adelina Patti</a>” or “future <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lily_Pons">Lily Pons</a>”. The mix of nostalgia and hope helped make the young Andrews a reassuring figure in the anxious landscape of postwar Britain. </p>
<h2>All grown up</h2>
<p>Little prodigies can’t remain little forever. There lies the troubled rub for many child stars, doomed by biology to lose their principal claim to fame. </p>
<p>In Andrews’ case, she was able to make the successful transition to adult stardom – and even greater fame – by moving country and professional register into the American stage and screen musical. </p>
<p>Still, the themes of therapeutic uplift that defined her early child stardom would follow Julie Andrews as she graduated to become the world’s favourite singing nanny.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188363/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brett Farmer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Today she is most recognised for roles in Mary Poppins or The Sound of Music, but Julie Andrews made her professional West End debut at the age of 12.
Brett Farmer, Lecturer in Film, Media and Communication, Deakin University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/181481
2022-06-07T19:01:35Z
2022-06-07T19:01:35Z
Judy Garland at 100: more than just a star, Garland shaped the modern movie musical
<p>There are many angles from which we can celebrate Judy Garland’s 100th birthday on June 10.</p>
<p>We can see her as iconic interpreter of the Great American Songbook, mother of a showbiz dynasty, gay icon, a sad symbol of the excesses of Hollywood control or a classic movie star.</p>
<p>But one of the most interesting things about her is not her place as the star of individual movies, or as a persona, but as a co-creator of a specific style of movie musical.</p>
<p>When looking at Garland’s varied filmography, I am struck by how many “integrated” musicals she starred in. These are movies where the songs contribute to telling the story as opposed to being simply attractive diversions: the songs are integrated into the plot. </p>
<p>Somewhere Over the Rainbow is specific to the plot of The Wizard of Oz (1939). No other character could sing it, and Dorothy could only sing it when she does, early in the film before her journey to Oz. </p>
<p>Similarly, The Boy Next Door in Meet Me In St Louis (1944) only fits where it is in the film: an expression of the wonder of a new crush.</p>
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<h2>Music for music’s sake</h2>
<p>The earliest movie musicals of the late 1920s were either adaptations of preexisting stage shows, or backstage dramas about the staging of musicals replete with elaborate production numbers that have nothing to do with the plot. </p>
<p>The most famous among these were from Warner Bros with numbers staged by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2017/mar/23/busby-berkeley-dance-42nd-street-choreography-film-musicals">Busby Berkeley</a>.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/unpacking-in-the-heights-choreographic-film-references-from-busby-berkeley-to-west-side-story-163420">Unpacking In The Heights' choreographic film references, from Busby Berkeley to West Side Story</a>
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<p>As the genre developed in the 1930s, there was usually a mix of plot numbers and pure spectacle, such as in the <a href="https://www.filmcomment.com/blog/deep-focus-fred-astaire-ginger-rogers/">Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers</a> musicals made by RKO. </p>
<p>A few of Garland’s musicals fit this style, but most of the best known ones are strikingly void of musical numbers that exist purely for their own sake.</p>
<p>The makers of films like The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St Louis and The Pirate (1948) seem to have responded to Garland’s particular acting talents, writing stories and music that suited her storytelling style. </p>
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<p>In this, she had an influence on both the form and the content of the film musical genre.</p>
<p>Even in her backstage musicals – where songs usually happen as performance, as opposed to being in musically-enhanced reality mode – Garland’s songs have double meanings as both performances and as character milestones. </p>
<p>The most famous example from Garland’s later career is undoubtedly The Man That Got Away from A Star is Born (1954). </p>
<p>In the film, Garland’s character Esther is rehearsing with her band, but it is clear the character is feeling the specific meaning of the song composed by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin for Garland to sing in this film.</p>
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<h2>A fully rounded character</h2>
<p>Take one of Garland’s less familiar films, 1943’s Girl Crazy. </p>
<p>This is not a great film by any means, but it has a stack of classic Gershwin songs and the most interesting plot of Garland’s pre-Meet Me In St Louis films (other than The Wizard of Oz, of course). </p>
<p>Garland plays the postmistress of a small college town somewhere in the American West, to which Mickey Rooney’s character has been banished for having too much non-academic fun at Yale.</p>
<p>Each of Garland’s numbers shows off a different side of her talent while still allowing her to stay entirely in character. </p>
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<p>Her comedy duet with Rooney, Could You Use Me?, is a masterclass in under-acting. Even though Rooney is hamming it up at his usual 110%, Garland gives hyperactive Rooney a run for his money by keeping quite still. Focus remains on her even during Rooney’s verses.</p>
<p>In Embraceable You, Garland has fun charming the entire student body of the men’s college where her grandfather is dean. She also shows off her dancing talents in the number.</p>
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<p>The melancholic ballad But Not For Me is Garland in her miserable mode, but numbers like this (there is one in almost every Garland musical) never come across as cloying or full of self-pity. </p>
<p>Instead, the subtlety of her portrayal of heartbreak means the audience’s hearts break right along with hers.</p>
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<p>Finally, I Got Rhythm shows how powerful she was as an anchor for a huge production number, here a five-minute extravaganza complete with singers, dancers and Tommy Dorsey’s big band, brought to the college to celebrate the fact that it is staying open (and will now be coeducational!). </p>
<p>Unlike many such production numbers, which exist only to show off the performers, this serves as a fitting climax to the film: Garland has found her man, and who indeed could ask for anything more?</p>
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<p>That even a relatively minor movie such as Girl Crazy lets Garland play a fully rounded character through her singing demonstrates her influence as a singing actress. </p>
<p>Her considerable talents pushed her collaborators to give her their best work, integrating song and story and pushing the movie musical genre to greater sophistication.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-dorothys-red-shoes-deserve-their-status-as-gay-icons-even-in-changing-times-110187">Why Dorothy's red shoes deserve their status as gay icons, even in changing times</a>
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<p><em>Correction: an earlier version of this story misnamed the lyricist for A Star Is Born. The writer was Ira Gershwin.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181481/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gregory Camp does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Most of Garland’s films are strikingly void of musical numbers that exist purely for their own sake. Her talents as an actor and singer would shape the movie musical for decades.
Gregory Camp, Senior Lecturer, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/180628
2022-04-11T19:06:05Z
2022-04-11T19:06:05Z
Best Easter pageant ever? Half a century of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457224/original/file-20220410-69681-vtn8z2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C6%2C1004%2C676&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The musical 'Jesus Christ Superstar' has always had ardent fans and fierce critics.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/jesus-christ-superstar-in-z%C3%BCrich-1992-news-photo/1173983488?adppopup=true">Blick/RDB/ullstein bild via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the days leading up to Easter Sunday, Christians around the world will participate in retellings of the story of the last days of Jesus’ life, from his entry into Jerusalem to the Last Supper and to his trial, crucifixion and resurrection. They may walk the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Stations-of-the-Cross">Stations of the Cross</a> – a processional ritual marking key points in the biblical narrative – attend a pageant or simply gather in church for religious services.</p>
<p>And some people will view or listen to “Jesus Christ Superstar,” the 1971 rock musical by <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-andrew-lloyd-webber-launches-a-youtube-channel-heres-how-he-revived-the-musical-135980">Andrew Lloyd Webber</a> and Tim Rice. NBC’s “<a href="https://www.nbc.com/events-and-specials/video/reasons-why-you-should-watch-jesus-christ-superstar-live-in-concert/4148346">Jesus Christ Superstar: Live in Concert</a>,” featuring R&B star John Legend in the title role, was first broadcast on Easter Sunday 2018 and re-aired for Easter 2020, and the <a href="https://ustour.jesuschristsuperstar.com/tickets/">touring production</a> keeps touring. </p>
<p>As I detail in my book “<a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/7427158/playing_god">Playing God: The Bible on the Broadway Stage</a>,” “Superstar” is the most commercially successful adaptation of a biblical story in Broadway history, with well over 1,000 performances spanning multiple productions. In some ways, this is unsurprising. Church reenactments of biblical scenes <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/662153/pdf">were foundational</a> for the development of Western theater, especially the “<a href="http://faculty.goucher.edu/eng211/quem_quaeritis_trope.htm">quem quaeritis trope</a>,” a 10th-century dialogue that reenacts the moment when Jesus’ body is supposedly discovered missing from the tomb. Put another way, Christians have seen drama as an appropriate way to communicate the story of Jesus’ passion and resurrection for more than a millennium.</p>
<p>Yet something about “Superstar” has always seemed a bit improbable, and its depiction of Holy Week set off controversy from the start. Composer Lloyd Webber <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cI1XEE9De8">has recounted how</a> London producers initially regarded the project as “<a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/culture/jesus-christ-superstar-controversial-musical-phenomenon-turns-50">the worst idea in history</a>.” Many religious audiences viewed the play with <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/culture/jesus-christ-superstar-controversial-musical-phenomenon-turns-50">deep suspicion</a> for what they considered an irreverent approach, questionable theology and its rock ‘n’ roll-influenced score.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two men stand on either side of a woman holding a sign that says 'Jesus Christ Superstar.'" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457226/original/file-20220410-96568-87lzt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457226/original/file-20220410-96568-87lzt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457226/original/file-20220410-96568-87lzt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457226/original/file-20220410-96568-87lzt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457226/original/file-20220410-96568-87lzt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457226/original/file-20220410-96568-87lzt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457226/original/file-20220410-96568-87lzt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Andrew Lloyd Webber, Yvonne Elliman and Tim Rice promoting the musical ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ in London in 1970.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/andrew-lloyd-webber-yvonne-elliman-and-tim-rice-promoting-news-photo/1198415102?adppopup=true">Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As <a href="https://theatredance.ku.edu/henry-bial#link1">a theater professor</a>, I see “Superstar” as an important step in the evolution of the Broadway musical, a groundbreaking <a href="https://www.press.umich.edu/1875086/theater_will_rock">rock opera</a> that paved the way for contemporary hits like “Mamma Mia!” and “Hamilton.” But the musical’s now-canonical status was anything but inevitable. </p>
<h2>‘Jesus is cool’</h2>
<p>The show’s irreverent attitude is encapsulated in its <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX9fLQjqIZA">title song</a>, which combines a soaring choral hook (“Jesus Christ, Superstar, Do you think you’re what they say you are?”) with a series of pointed and ironic questions via rock melody – “Why’d you choose such a backward time and such a strange land?”</p>
<p>Though set in the Jerusalem of 2,000 years ago, the play uses modern language – “Jesus is cool” – and imagery, such as paparazzi following Jesus through the streets. By representing Jesus as a charismatic celebrity <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/apr/26/jesus-christ-superstar-40-celebrity">whose fame spirals out of control</a>, “Superstar” offers audiences a contemporary framework for understanding the ancient biblical narrative. This is underlined by self-aware lyrics that offer commentary on how the Passion story would go on to be told. During the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxd0RBEXGWg">Last Supper scene</a>, for example, Jesus’ disciples sing:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Always hoped that I’d be an apostle<br>
Knew that I would make it if I tried<br>
Then when we retire, we can write the gospels<br>
So they’ll still talk about us when we’ve died.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>For conservative Christians, such lighthearted paraphrasing of Scripture may have been offensive. More troubling, in the eyes of many religious leaders, was the musical’s theology. “Superstar” is structured similarly to a traditional Christian Passion play, depicting Jesus’ final days. But it abruptly ends with the crucifixion, omitting the resurrection that is <a href="https://www.christianity.com/wiki/holidays/true-meaning-of-easter-why-is-it-celebrated.html">at the heart of the Easter story</a> – and Christianity itself. What’s more, the play hints at a romantic relationship between Jesus and his supporter <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/who-was-mary-magdalene-119565482/">Mary Magdalene</a>, and gives a prominent role <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Judas-Iscariot">to Judas</a>, the disciple whom the Gospels say betrayed Jesus – in fact, Judas is arguably the show’s leading man.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Two Catholic nuns wearing head coverings pass out brochures." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457225/original/file-20220410-42486-kn5lhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457225/original/file-20220410-42486-kn5lhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457225/original/file-20220410-42486-kn5lhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457225/original/file-20220410-42486-kn5lhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457225/original/file-20220410-42486-kn5lhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457225/original/file-20220410-42486-kn5lhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457225/original/file-20220410-42486-kn5lhv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nuns protest the musical ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ in 1992.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/nuns-demonstrate-because-of-the-musical-jesus-christ-news-photo/1173897240?adppopup=true">Blick/RDB/ullstein bild via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>All this caused many Christian leaders to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1971/10/14/archives/superstar-the-cheers-and-jeers-build.html">dismiss the show</a> as blasphemous. Others argued that, while well-meaning, “Superstar” was overly focused on Christ’s humanity, to the exclusion of his divinity.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Jewish organizations <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1973/08/08/archives/superstar-film-renews-disputesjewish-groups-say-opening-could-stir.html">expressed concern</a> that the play would inspire antisemitism by perpetuating the idea that Jews bear responsibility for the death of Christ. A trio of Jewish priests sings “This Jesus Must Die,” and later pressures a reluctant Pontius Pilate to have Jesus crucified.</p>
<p>In 1971, this was a particularly sore spot for Jewish-Christian relations. The idea that the Jewish people bore collective guilt for killing Jesus had long been part of antisemitic rhetoric from Catholic leaders like the Rev. <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/charles-e-coughlin">Charles E. Coughlin</a>. In fact, it wasn’t until 1965 that the <a href="https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html">Vatican officially declared</a>, “what happened in [Christ’s] passion cannot be charged against all the Jews, without distinction, then alive, nor against the Jews of today.”</p>
<h2>Rock ‘n’ rebels</h2>
<p>Still, most early objections to “Superstar” were driven less by its content and more by its form. The mere idea of turning the Bible into a loud, flashy, rock ‘n’ roll spectacle was often seen as a kind of sacrilege. As religion scholar <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520242807/authentic-fakes">David Chidester</a> and others have observed, conservative Christian groups have historically complained about the superficial and amoral nature of American popular culture, with particular distaste for its music. In this view, rock lyrics <a href="https://doi.org/10.3138/jrpc.5.1.004">advocate sin</a> while the loud, sensual and unrestrained nature of the music encourages it.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman in a white dress sits behind a lounging man in a white robe on stage." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457227/original/file-20220410-20-rueijd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457227/original/file-20220410-20-rueijd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457227/original/file-20220410-20-rueijd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457227/original/file-20220410-20-rueijd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457227/original/file-20220410-20-rueijd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457227/original/file-20220410-20-rueijd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/457227/original/file-20220410-20-rueijd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Actors Paul Nicholas and Dana Gillespie as Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene in the rock opera ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ in the U.K. in July 1972.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/actors-paul-nicholas-and-dana-gillespie-as-jesus-christ-and-news-photo/1271923146?adppopup=true">D. Morrison/Express/Hulton Archive via Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>For such critics, “Jesus Christ Superstar” seemed to pose a threat simply by juxtaposing the sacred narrative of the Bible with the profane atmosphere of the rock concert.</p>
<p>Yet half a century after its premiere, the musical no longer generates much controversy. The recognition and appreciation of Jesus’ humanity has gradually <a href="https://www.stephenprothero.com/american-jesus">become more acceptable</a> among American Christians, though not to the exclusion of his divinity. Compared with earlier generations, Generation X and millennials are <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/generational-cohort/">less likely to read Scripture</a>, and therefore less likely to be concerned over fine points of theological interpretation. </p>
<p>Rock music, meanwhile, is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2018.01.007">aging along with its fans</a>, while the rise of the American megachurch has <a href="https://doi.org/10.1163/ej.9789004178397.i-240.56">blurred the line</a> between rock concert and church service, between celebrities and spiritual leaders. No longer are electric instruments, flashy costumes, spotlights and microphones seen as disrespectful <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/15348423.2021.1925463">or inconsistent with worship</a>.</p>
<p>Perhaps most significantly, today’s audiences, both religious and not, may simply have a greater regard for so-called superstars. For many people in the 1970s, the musical’s comparison of the deification of Christ and the idolatry of a rock star was inherently derogatory, undercutting Jesus’ spiritual significance. Yet today, in an era when Lady Gaga has <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ladygaga/?hl=en">six times as many Instagram followers</a> as <a href="https://www.instagram.com/franciscus/?hl=en">Pope Francis</a>, arguably the title – and the musical itself – reads as a more sincere form of appreciation. </p>
<p>[<em>The most interesting religion stories from three major news organizations.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/this-week-in-religion-76/?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=religion-best-of-1">Get This Week in Religion.</a>]</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to correct the lyrics to “The Last Supper.”</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180628/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henry Bial does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s famous musical has long inspired controversy for how it depicts the story of Jesus of Nazareth.
Henry Bial, Professor of Theater and Dance, University of Kansas
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/179668
2022-03-28T05:48:10Z
2022-03-28T05:48:10Z
Oscars 2022: 5 experts on the wins, the emotions, the music – and the bold frocks on the runway
<p>It’s rare that an appealingly minor film wins the best picture Oscar – and a remake of a French film at that – but this year, CODA has done it. </p>
<p>Is it the best film from 2021? Absolutely not! But with best picture <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/how-oscar-s-preferential-ballot-works-could-produce-a-best-picture-shocker-1189677/">decided by preferential ballot</a> (unlike the other awards), it makes sense that a sweet and inoffensive movie could sneak through. </p>
<p>One can imagine that CODA would have appeared at the second, third and fourth spot for numerous critics, unlike favourite The Power of the Dog which, as a divisive film, would have ranked last for many (as it was for this critic). </p>
<p>CODA is well made and very easy to watch, with its narrative following teenager Ruby (Emilia Jones) as she tries to develop her skills as a singer while living with Deaf parents and a Deaf older brother, helping run the family fishing business, and attending high school in their fishing community of Gloucester, Massachusetts. </p>
<p>In some respects, it’s nice that a low budget film like CODA won, though its upbeat, formulaic quality as a coming of age film will not appeal to people who like strange, challenging and intense cinema – in other words, works of art. </p>
<p>CODA is comfort cinema, firmly situated in the entertainment camp. But it’s not bad, and in this day and age, that’s pretty good for a best picture winner. </p>
<p><em><strong>–Ari Mattes</strong></em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/from-dune-to-the-power-of-the-dog-our-predictions-for-the-oscars-2022-best-picture-179660">From Dune to The Power of the Dog: our predictions for the Oscars 2022 best picture</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A speech acknowledging the personal heroes</h2>
<p>What people take away from Oscars ceremonies over the last decade is more and more the prepared content, less and less the acceptance speeches.</p>
<p>The award winners have only 45 seconds to speak. They get thrown into a career-defining moment more or less by surprise.</p>
<p>By contrast, the choreographed segments can be arranged so that audiences notice and recall them. This year we had Beyoncé’s all-lime curtain raiser, the minute of silence for #standwithukraine and the hosts’ rapid-fire roasting of celebrities.</p>
<p>There is a broader story about the history of speeches here: they are steadily losing their power as the medium that speaks for a moment.</p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/52tjGGy5iqY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
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<p>The standout exception remains moments where a speech takes us outside the expected norm. Will Smith’s <a href="https://www.usmagazine.com/entertainment/news/oscars-2022-will-smith-cries-apologizes-after-chris-rock-drama/">angry, ugly confrontation</a> with Chris Rock might become the most talked-about moment of the night, but Troy Kotsur’s acceptance speech for best supporting actor for CODA, delivered in American Sign Language – with his interpreter choking back tears as it unfolded – should be a reference point for many in years to come.</p>
<p>Kotsur acknowledged the heroes of signing in his own life, both at home and at work. His speech gave a very public voice to people who communicate visually: to the Deaf community, to the children of Deaf adults who gave his film its name, and to a stage and screen community that has nurtured talent like his for much longer than most people have recognised.</p>
<p><em><strong>–Tom Clark</strong></em></p>
<h2>Jane Campion’s second nomination – and first win</h2>
<p>The Power of the Dog was nominated for an extraordinary 12 Academy Awards this year, with its director Jane Campion making history as the first woman to be nominated for best director more than once. </p>
<p>Despite collecting the most nominations of all the films this year, The Power of the Dog only came away with one win – Campion’s long overdue directing nod. </p>
<p>Her acceptance speech was notably prewritten, perhaps in an effort to avoid a recreation of <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-15/jane-campion-apologises-to-venus-and-serena-williams/100910178">her blunder</a> at the Critics’ Choice Awards earlier this month in which she seemed to compare her struggles in male-dominated Hollywood to the challenges faced by Venus and Serena Williams as black female tennis players. </p>
<p>Campion’s award was The Power of the Dog’s sole win. In stacked technical categories like sound, cinematography and production design, it was outperformed by box office giant Dune. </p>
<p>Given The Power of the Dog’s divisive approach to storytelling (host Wanda Sykes quipped she had watched it three times and was only halfway through), it is perhaps unsurprising that The Power of the Dog was not as well received as its many nominations initially suggested. </p>
<p><em><strong>–Claire Whitley</strong></em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/oscars-2022-best-director-for-jane-campions-slow-burn-approach-in-the-power-of-the-dog-176527">Oscars 2022: ‘Best director’ for Jane Campion's slow-burn approach in ‘The Power of the Dog’</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Very few wins for the musicals</h2>
<p>2021 saw the release of an unusually large number of musicals, some of which were nominated for Oscars. With the most nominations (and the biggest budget) was West Side Story, and we also saw Tick… Tick… Boom! and Encanto on the podium. </p>
<p>CODA, while not a musical per se, puts music at the centre of its story, and Summer of Soul (winner of best documentary) brings an important music historical moment back to our knowledge. In the Heights unfortunately missed out on any nominations even though it deserved some in the technical categories. Dear Evan Hansen seems already to have been justly forgotten.</p>
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<p>The one original musical (as opposed to stage-to-screen adaptations) among the nominations, Encanto (winner of best animated film), had two of its songs performed in the ceremony: the nominated Dos Oruguitas and the year’s biggest hit We Don’t Talk About Bruno. The latter should have provided some well needed relief from music that alternated between dull (the incidental music) and sombre (the other nominated songs), but the performance was let down by a confusing staging and sound mix and unnecessarily rewritten lyrics.</p>
<p>The box office and award disappointment of most of these musicals puts the future of the genre at risk. If a film as good as West Side Story fails to make back <a href="https://variety.com/2021/film/news/west-side-story-box-office-steven-spielberg-1235131598/">even half its budget</a>, whether producers will continue to risk large-scale musicals is brought into question. </p>
<p>For now, it might only be an animated musical that can seem like a sure thing.</p>
<p><em><strong>–Gregory Camp</strong></em></p>
<h2>A disappointing best actor winner…</h2>
<p>Will Smith is a likeable enough film star, and he’s led numerous blockbusters throughout his career, effectively anchoring superb genre films like Independence Day, Enemy of the State, and Bad Boys. </p>
<p>The problem is, like many charismatic entertainers, this year’s winner for best performance by an actor is not a very good actor. He brings absolutely no nuance or originality to any of his “serious” roles. Everything he does is in his face – he tries to convince us with his eyes, with twitches of his cheeks, with stern or soft intonations of the voice, running through the gamut of expected mannerisms.</p>
<p>His Oscar-winning performance in King Richard is no exception. He offers a run-of-the-mill portrayal as the earnest, slightly cracked but sincere hustling father of the Williams sisters. He expresses emotion and intensity where we would expect it: he is sufficiently convincing in an obvious part in a thoroughly banal biopic. </p>
<p>We should not be surprised by any of this. Since excellent actor Denzel Washington won the best actor award for his role as Alonzo <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLKDfyFjQtc">in Training Day</a> (an excellent film, with a solid but very routine characterisation from Washington as the corrupt cop), no one has taken the award very seriously. </p>
<p><em><strong>–Ari Mattes</strong></em></p>
<h2>… but a wonderful choice for actress</h2>
<p>Unlike Smith, winner of the best performance by an actress award Jessica Chastain has acting chops, and her talent is on display in the caricaturish (but very funny) The Eyes of Tammy Faye. </p>
<p>Her embodiment as the real-life televangelist won’t be to everyone’s taste – and neither will the film, as a biopic its scope is already limited by the contours of reality – but Chastain is thoroughly convincing as the deluded but sincere figure who, notably, refuses to ostracise the gay community despite pressure to do so, interviewing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/sep/18/tammy-faye-bakker-film-jessica-chastain">pastor Steve Pieters</a>, an AIDS patient, during the height of the AIDS epidemic. </p>
<p>Graduating from Juilliard in 2003, Chastain has been impressive in numerous films, from her improvised performance in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life to her intense characterisation as Jo in John Michael McDonagh’s The Forgiven. Chastain is a solid actress whose best work, one hopes, is still to come.</p>
<p><em><strong>–Ari Mattes</strong></em></p>
<h2>Where was the music?</h2>
<p>As a musical event, the ceremony itself left much to be desired. The producers made a play for eclecticism by having three different musical sets: the first hour featured DJ D-Nice; a small band led by music director Adam Blackstone played in the second hour; a pit orchestra played for the rest. </p>
<p>We are used to hearing snippets of the film scores play while winners go to the stage, but this was mostly replaced with innocuous background music (even from the orchestra). We only heard the scores during clips of the nominated films and –perversely – the very shortest clips of all were in the nomination announcements for best original score! </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454613/original/file-20220328-19-fcjeil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Billie Eilish performs" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454613/original/file-20220328-19-fcjeil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454613/original/file-20220328-19-fcjeil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454613/original/file-20220328-19-fcjeil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454613/original/file-20220328-19-fcjeil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454613/original/file-20220328-19-fcjeil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454613/original/file-20220328-19-fcjeil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454613/original/file-20220328-19-fcjeil.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=478&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Billie Eilish’s performance was one of the few musical highlights of the night.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/ETIENNE LAURENT</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The chance to introduce millions of viewers to these composers’ work was limited to about two chords per score.</p>
<p>Hans Zimmer’s win for best original score for Dune further cements his place in the film scoring firmament. As expected, Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas won the award for best original song for No Time to Die, which also has a Zimmer connection (he wrote that film’s score). Their performance of the song in the ceremony was one of its few musical highlights, the composers presenting an intensely focused rendition of their work.</p>
<p>Just like a good film score, the musical programme of an awards ceremony should carefully take the audience on a cohesive aural journey. I hope next year’s producers make better musical decisions.</p>
<p><em><strong>–Gregory Camp</strong></em></p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/whoever-wins-this-years-music-oscar-hans-zimmer-remains-the-most-influential-composer-working-in-hollywood-today-177225">Whoever wins this year’s music Oscar, Hans Zimmer remains the most influential composer working in Hollywood today</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>From a sea of pastels to bold sartorial choices</h2>
<p>Seeing the first arrivals, it seemed that the trend for pastels might rule the fashion of the night. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454636/original/file-20220328-17-1hhez36.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454636/original/file-20220328-17-1hhez36.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454636/original/file-20220328-17-1hhez36.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454636/original/file-20220328-17-1hhez36.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454636/original/file-20220328-17-1hhez36.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1340&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454636/original/file-20220328-17-1hhez36.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1340&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454636/original/file-20220328-17-1hhez36.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1340&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The night began in pastels.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP (various photographers)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There was Jessica Chastain in sparkling copper and lavender custom Gucci, Lily James in thigh-revealing pink Versace, Zoë Kravitz in Audrey Hepburn-esque delicate pink Saint Laurent sheath, Kodi Smit-McPhee in powder blue Bottega Veneta and the 15-year-old stars of King Richard, Demi Singleton and Saniyya Sidney in lilac Miu Miu and pale blue and pink Armani Privé, respectively. </p>
<p>But, as the event progressed the colours became brighter, the silhouettes bolder. </p>
<p>Ariana DeBose was glorious in custom tomato-red Valentino crop top and trousers, a long taffeta cape trailing behind her. She and the iconic Rita Moreno, in Carolina Herrera gown and black and white feather Adrienne Landau hat, made a delightfully striking pair. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454637/original/file-20220328-19-1nvprtl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454637/original/file-20220328-19-1nvprtl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/454637/original/file-20220328-19-1nvprtl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454637/original/file-20220328-19-1nvprtl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454637/original/file-20220328-19-1nvprtl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454637/original/file-20220328-19-1nvprtl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1340&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454637/original/file-20220328-19-1nvprtl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1340&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/454637/original/file-20220328-19-1nvprtl.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1340&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It was a night of bold silhouettes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP (various photographers)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Bold sartorial choices also came from Kristen Stewart, who opted for Chanel micro-mini shorts (and quickly swapped her stilettos for brogues); Timothée Chalamet, shirtless with his sequined black Louis Vuitton jacket; and the inimitable Zendaya in a custom, midriff-baring Valentino cropped blouse and glittering silver skirt. </p>
<p>Making a political statement in support of Ukraine, Youn Yuh-Jung presented the dapper Troy Kotsur with his award whilst wearing a #withrefugees blue ribbon pinned to her Chanel dress. (Multiple others wore the ribbon or Ukrainian flag pins or pocket squares). </p>
<p>My highlights: Uma Thurman in a chic Bottega Veneta take on her iconic Pulp Fiction dance scene look. Maggie Gyllenhaal in structured Schiaparelli. And the ever-amazing Lupita Nyong’o looking like an Oscar in gold Prada (made perfect with matching gold spectacles) presenting the award to costume designer Jenny Beavan for her incredible work on Cruella. </p>
<p><em><strong>–Harriette Richards</strong></em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/179668/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The Power of the Dog may have lead the pack when it came to nominations, but the big winner of the night was the understated CODA.
Ari Mattes, Lecturer in Communications and Media, University of Notre Dame Australia
Claire Whitley, PhD Candidate, Flinders University
Gregory Camp, Senior Lecturer, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Harriette Richards, Research Associate, Cultural Studies, The University of Melbourne
Tom Clark, Chair of Academic Board, Victoria University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/178644
2022-03-08T19:01:01Z
2022-03-08T19:01:01Z
Revisiting Shane Warne: The Musical – this brilliant show should be considered an Aussie classic
<p>In response to the tragic death of Shane Warne last week, actor and composer Eddie Perfect <a href="https://www.facebook.com/eddieperfectpage/posts/374260711193728">took to Facebook</a> to express his shock and surprise at Warne’s sudden passing. </p>
<p>“I just don’t want to say goodbye – there was so much more life to come,” he wrote.</p>
<p>Before Perfect was the composer for the <a href="https://themusic.com.au/news/australia-s-eddie-perfect-scores-eight-tony-nominations-with-beetlejuice-musical/U2xPR0ZJSEs/01-05-19">Tony award nominated</a> Broadway musical Beetlejuice, his first full-length musical was something much closer to home: Shane Warne: The Musical.</p>
<p>The musical started as a joke. In 2005, Perfect was on tour performing in <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/the-big-con-20050306-gdzq0y.html">The Big Con</a> with Max Gillies and kept seeing Warne’s name all over the newspapers. He made an offhand comment in a phone call to his manager, Michael Lynch, that someone should write a musical about the cricketer. </p>
<p>To his great surprise, Lynch (a great cricket fan) told him to go for it. </p>
<iframe src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Feddieperfectpage%2Fposts%2F374260711193728&show_text=true&width=500" width="100%" height="778" style="border:none;overflow:hidden" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="true" allow="autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; picture-in-picture; web-share"></iframe>
<p>The resulting musical is an overwhelmingly faithful rendering of Warne’s life, staging both his triumphs and his downfalls. </p>
<p>It took Perfect three years to write the show, in which he read every book about Warne he could find (he joked in his Facebook post he has a master’s degree in Warney) before a full production opened in Melbourne’s Athenaeum Theatre in December 2008. </p>
<p>In 2009, it went on tour, playing seasons at the Regal Theatre in Perth and the Enmore Theatre in Sydney. </p>
<p>While it was <a href="https://www.australianstage.com.au/200905222571/reviews/sydney/shane-warne-the-musical.html">critically acclaimed</a>, it did not perform as well as expected at the box office and <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/play-abandoned-warnie-the-musical-in-off-a-short-run-20090521-gdtjla.html">closed early</a>.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ij2lEys6vJQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Five years later, in 2013, the musical was revised and presented in a revamped concert version. This iteration added new material covering Warne’s retirement from international cricket, his dramatic weight loss and his high profile relationship with the actress Elizabeth Hurley. </p>
<p>While the musical may have started as a joke, in style and substance it is anything but. It deserves to be considered an Australian musical theatre classic.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/vale-shane-warne-a-cricketing-genius-who-lived-a-life-of-no-regrets-178603">Vale Shane Warne: a cricketing genius who lived a life of 'no regrets'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>A repertory of our national characters</h2>
<p>Shane Warne: The Musical is about more than just Shane Warne. </p>
<p>It is about Australia, and why we found Warne to be such a captivating figure. </p>
<p>It is about how Warne was, on the one hand, a lionised national sporting hero, and on the other, a disappointingly fallible human being. </p>
<p>It shows how Warne embodied the repertory of our national characters: underdog, everyman, outlaw and tall poppy.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/J1dV6nv3f2k?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The finger snapping <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1dV6nv3f2k">What an SMS I’m In</a>, staged while shopping with then-wife Simone in the supermarket, and in which the lyrics rhyme “Warney” with “horny” is a hilariously comic take on his extramarital indiscretions. </p>
<p>But the musical also treats Warne with great empathy and nuance. Perfect’s moving rendering of Warne’s relationship with the late Terry Jenner is a tender portrayal of the coach-player dynamic. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/pNB6SwBiAw8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Warne’s bowling style has often been compared to fine arts like <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/warnes-world/3515384">poetry or classical music</a>. These sport-as-art metaphors are explored in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIHHS7P8Ypo&list=OLAK5uy_nZjSOOONoh3SKuKgJkbaz8csyQruq9Xz8&index=8">That Ball</a> which centres on the moment Warne bowled the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwVR28XbZx8">ball of the century.</a> </p>
<p>A slow, august ballad in the vein of the late Stephen Sondheim, the song recalls the process by which a situation is transformed into an event of significance: that shot, that race, that ball. </p>
<p>The lyrics describe the feeling of watching history being made: “someone was talking, I said ‘shut up one sec!’ and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.”</p>
<p>Told from the perspective of ordinary spectators, That Ball represents the profound act of such a sporting achievement. What it means for individuals, for a nation, how it lingers in collective memory: “I remember that ball like it was yesterday and never will forget.” </p>
<h2>Celebrating the larrikin</h2>
<p>Warne was initially not sold on the idea of a musical about him, and Perfect tried, through the media, to stress the musical was not going to be a <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/its-warneys-life-in-song-20080320-ge6vcc.html">merciless attack on the cricketer</a>. </p>
<p>Eventually, these arguments cut through. Warne attended the opening night performance and – ever the media personality – came up on stage to bow with the cast after the curtain call. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M5X3PgWn0Qc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>He even published a <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/3699759/Shane-Warne-backs-Musical-based-on-his-life.html">positive review</a> which admitted he had felt nervous sitting in the audience (“More edgy, even, than facing Pakistani quickie Shoaib Akhtar on a green, seaming deck, I reckon”) but the production had won him over by the end:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think Eddie and his team have written the musical in a respectful and sympathetic way, and that they have captured my fun, larrikin side.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In light of Warne’s untimely passing, revisiting Shane Warne: The Musical is a funny, touching, clever, and joyous way to honour his legacy. It is well overdue for another production.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/at-once-an-open-book-and-a-master-of-disguise-shane-warnes-allure-extended-far-beyond-the-cricket-pitch-178613">At once an open book and a master of disguise, Shane Warne's allure extended far beyond the cricket pitch</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/178644/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mara's doctoral work is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Domestic Scholarship.</span></em></p>
First staged in 2008, Shane Warne: The Musical is an overwhelmingly faithful rendering of Warne’s life, staging both his triumphs and his downfalls.
Mara Davis Johnson, PhD candidate, UNSW Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/169946
2021-12-29T21:31:44Z
2021-12-29T21:31:44Z
From Chicago to West Side Story, how to successfully adapt a musical from stage to screen
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437091/original/file-20211213-13-zepvcu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C5184%2C2950&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">20th Century Studios</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The second half of 2021 is proving to be a peak time for movie musical-goers, with the release of critically acclaimed In the Heights, disastrously received Dear Evan Hansen, and Steven Spielberg’s hotly anticipated West Side Story.</p>
<p>These films lead to reflection on one of the stranger sub-genres of film history — the musical stage-to-screen adaptation. To film a stage show (as in the recent professionally shot films of Hamilton and Come from Away), or merely to create bigger stage sets in a studio (there are many examples of this, from Guys and Dolls to The Producers) is not truly to adapt a musical to film. </p>
<p>Instead, adaptors should use the tools unique to film to re-interpret the musical in this different medium.</p>
<p>To help us through the vicissitudes of adaptation, here is an idiosyncratic list of a few DOs and DON’Ts.</p>
<h2>DO use real locations creatively</h2>
<p>Location shooting is a frequent tool used to enhance the realism of film musicals, but placing the un-realism of song and dance in a real place can backfire and create an uncanny valley. Locations are best used in a super-realistic way.</p>
<p>A successful recent example of this is In the Heights. Director Jon Chu and his production team shot much of the film in Washington Heights in Manhattan, but in a way that the neighbourhood seems a natural place for music-making: very careful lighting, colour-timing, and the occasional unobtrusive effects shot lift the story out of the mundane. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437093/original/file-20211213-21-hr5jsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437093/original/file-20211213-21-hr5jsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437093/original/file-20211213-21-hr5jsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437093/original/file-20211213-21-hr5jsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437093/original/file-20211213-21-hr5jsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=356&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437093/original/file-20211213-21-hr5jsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437093/original/file-20211213-21-hr5jsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437093/original/file-20211213-21-hr5jsr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In The Heights (2021) is a love letter to the Washington Heights area of NYC.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the number When the Sun Goes Down, lovers Benny and Nina begin singing naturalistically on a fire escape, but then a set on hydraulics, green screen, and “magic hour” lighting come together to enable a gravity-defying dance across the rooftops and walls of the apartment buildings.</p>
<p>See also: Fiddler on the Roof, Jesus Christ Superstar, On the Town</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-the-heights-celebrates-the-resilience-washington-heights-has-used-to-fight-the-covid-19-pandemic-161469">'In the Heights' celebrates the resilience Washington Heights has used to fight the COVID-19 pandemic</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>DON’T ghettoise all of the musical numbers to a stark dreamland covered in artistic scaffolding</h2>
<p>Counter to the previous guideline about using real locations for musical numbers, some film musicals go too far in the opposite direction.</p>
<p>Two musicals directed by Rob Marshall, Chicago and Nine, puzzlingly use the same solution to try and hedge their bets: the dialogue scenes happen in realistic locations (1920s Chicago and 1960s Rome, respectively) but the musical numbers are relegated to their characters’ internal fantasies, which in both cases means studio-like settings that allow for dancers to be placed in aesthetically pleasing formations. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437098/original/file-20211213-27-qhe4i9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437098/original/file-20211213-27-qhe4i9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437098/original/file-20211213-27-qhe4i9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437098/original/file-20211213-27-qhe4i9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437098/original/file-20211213-27-qhe4i9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437098/original/file-20211213-27-qhe4i9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437098/original/file-20211213-27-qhe4i9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437098/original/file-20211213-27-qhe4i9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chicago (2002), features musical numbers entirely set within the character’s internal fantasies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This strategy gets the filmmakers out of having to bridge the gap between speech time and music time, but the narrative innovations of both shows are smoothed out on screen. That makes for a less interesting filmgoing experience. </p>
<p>The exception that proves the rule here is Cabaret, in which director Bob Fosse removed all of the “book” songs and kept only those performed in the titular cabaret. </p>
<p>Through innovative intercutting and montage the cabaret songs pervade the whole texture of the film, however, resulting in one of the most “musical” of all musicals.</p>
<h2>DO fix problems with the dramatic unfolding of the source material</h2>
<p>Show Boat was the first stage musical to attempt a truly epic form, covering twenty years of story time and locations all along the Mississippi River.</p>
<p>In 1927, stage mechanics had not caught up with librettist Oscar Hammerstein II and composer Jerome Kern’s ambitions, and the musical, brilliant and groundbreaking as it was, suffered from overlength and a dramatically clumsy second act. The production team fixed these issues in the 1936 film version, as the technologies of montage, dissolve, and cross-cutting that were possible on film allowed for a more effective unfolding of time and place.</p>
<p>The 1965 film version of The Sound of Music similarly fixes problems in the stage version; another epic musical, the stage version feels hemmed-in and stifled. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437103/original/file-20211213-21-1maqjdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437103/original/file-20211213-21-1maqjdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437103/original/file-20211213-21-1maqjdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437103/original/file-20211213-21-1maqjdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437103/original/file-20211213-21-1maqjdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=352&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437103/original/file-20211213-21-1maqjdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437103/original/file-20211213-21-1maqjdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437103/original/file-20211213-21-1maqjdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=443&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Sound of Music (1965) uses film techniques and editing to improve on a ‘stifled’ stage musical.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is allowed to breathe on film, and the songs are moved around to better reflect what they are actually about (My Favourite Things on stage is sung by the Mother Abbess to cheer up Maria before she leaves the convent!)</p>
<p>See also: Hair, Hairspray, Tick Tick Boom</p>
<h2>DON’T adapt a musical to film that didn’t work on stage</h2>
<p>Poor Alan Jay Lerner. After the extraordinary success of the film version of My Fair Lady, Lerner attempted film adaptations of three of his other musicals that had been less successful on stage.</p>
<p>Camelot, which had a healthy run on Broadway because of its star actors (Julie Andrews, Richard Burton, and Robert Goulet), its Oliver Smith production designs, and a few excellent songs, rather more than for its unconvincing storyline and structure, was a natural for screen adaptation. But non-singer stars (Richard Harris, Vanessa Redgrave, and Franco Nero), unconvincing plot revisions, and dull direction by Joshua Logan caused it to be an inert behemoth on screen.</p>
<p>Lerner tried again with Paint Your Wagon in 1969, based on a much earlier stage musical that had been only mildly successful with a few hit songs (notably They Call the Wind Maria). But once more, non-singer stars (Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood, and Jean Seberg), unconvincing plot revisions, and dull direction by (again!) Joshua Logan resulted in yet another inert behemoth.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437105/original/file-20211213-27-1dca0r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437105/original/file-20211213-27-1dca0r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/437105/original/file-20211213-27-1dca0r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437105/original/file-20211213-27-1dca0r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437105/original/file-20211213-27-1dca0r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=315&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437105/original/file-20211213-27-1dca0r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437105/original/file-20211213-27-1dca0r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/437105/original/file-20211213-27-1dca0r1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=396&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Paint Your Wagon (1969) is generally acknowledged as a poor example of a film musical, and a stage musical.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Third time was not a charm, with On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. This time the stars were singers: Barbra Streisand and Yves Montand. Unfortunately, their talents were hidden by another poorly revised screenplay and, unlike the other two films, this one could have used more of everything, especially music.</p>
<p>Writing this has made me realise that successful stage-to-screen adaptations are quite rare. For every Cabaret there are two Annies and a Man of La Mancha. Spielberg’s new West Side Story will be the first musical he has directed in his long career, and musical-lovers everywhere are optimistic that he will do this classic musical justice. </p>
<p>I merely hope that the only scaffolding to be found is on the fire escapes of 1950s Manhattan!</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/169946/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gregory Camp does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Adapting a stage musical to the big screen is never simple, and can often go disastrously wrong. Here’s our expert’s opinions on what works and what doesn’t.
Gregory Camp, Senior Lecturer, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/173543
2021-12-09T20:52:28Z
2021-12-09T20:52:28Z
‘West Side Story’ may be timeless – but life in gangs today differs drastically from when the Jets and Sharks ruled the streets
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/436757/original/file-20211209-172173-l3qs80.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=15%2C13%2C949%2C502&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Dancing with danger.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://amblin.com/movie/west-side-story/">West Side Story/Amblin</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The songs are timeless, the casting contemporary and dance routines still daring.</p>
<p>But for <a href="https://www.colorado.edu/sociology/our-people/david-pyrooz">social</a> <a href="https://ccj.asu.edu/content/scott-decker">scientists</a> <a href="https://www.metrostate.edu/about/directory/james-densley">like us</a>, Steven Spielberg’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/08/movies/west-side-story-review.html">remake of the 1961 hit musical “West Side Story”</a> – a film about two rival street gangs – is more than a 21st-century face-lift of a Broadway classic. Released in theaters on Dec. 10, 2021, it is an opportunity to consider societal changes in the six decades since Maria and Tony stole the hearts of audiences across the world – particularly in the world of gangs.</p>
<p>As scholars who have <a href="http://tupress.temple.edu/book/20000000010332">studied gang culture</a>, we find that the soul of the street gang hasn’t changed much since the days of the Jets and the Sharks – but the world around them has. Demographics, economics, technology and public policy have reshaped and reshuffled gang life in America. So dramatic are the changes that the romanticized “West Side Story” characterization of gangs is <a href="http://tupress.temple.edu/book/20000000010332">now a relic of a bygone era</a>.</p>
<h2>Evolving demographics</h2>
<p>Perhaps the biggest shift in gangs is skin-deep – urban white-ethnic neighborhood-based gangs like the Jets <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300453/alt-right-gangs">no longer really exist</a>.</p>
<p>Ethnonational conflict among Italian, Irish, Jewish and Polish youth in cities like Boston, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia culminated with the end of mass migration from Europe in the early to mid-20th century. Many urban white people moved to the suburbs in the 1960s and, generally speaking, <a href="https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498511346/The-History-of-Street-Gangs-in-the-United-States-Their-Origins-and-Transformations">took their gangs</a> with them. Today, when people think of the American street gang, they are more likely to think of Black gangs, like the Bloods and Crips, or Latino gangs, like the Nortenos and Surenos. White street gangs are located outside of urban areas and cast as <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520300453/alt-right-gangs">domestic extremists</a> such as the Proud Boys, Three Percenters and Skinheads.</p>
<h2>The gang as an American enterprise</h2>
<p>The gangs of the “West Side Story” era were often a normal yet fleeting aspect of adolescence, soon to be supplanted by work, marriage and children.</p>
<p>But in the 1970s and 1980s, globalization and industrial restructuring caused the well-paying, stable blue-collar jobs that young men in gangs were qualified for to largely <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Gang_as_an_American_Enterprise/Xgi5BWKFuqoC?hl=en">disappear</a>. Around this same time, gang involvement became more prolonged into <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262522967_From_Your_First_Cigarette_to_Your_Last_Dyin'_Day_The_Patterning_of_Gang_Membership_in_the_Life-Course">adulthood</a> and intergenerational within <a href="https://www.google.com/books/edition/Going_Down_To_The_Barrio/at3ol3zcrsMC?hl=en">families</a>.</p>
<p>This era also coincided with an increase in imported drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine. With the rise of the illicit drug economy, the gang itself became an <a href="https://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittVenkateshAnEconomicAnalysis2000.pdf">institutionalized route</a> to mythologized riches. Gang activity <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles/171153.pdf">expanded</a> throughout the country, emerging in the suburbs and even rural towns, leading to the most recent estimates from the <a href="https://nationalgangcenter.ojp.gov/survey-analysis/measuring-the-extent-of-gang-problems">National Gang Center</a> of 31,000 gangs and 850,000 gang members. </p>
<h2>The West Side goes digital</h2>
<p>Gang life saw more changes with the emergence of the internet. The internet and social media were in the realms of far-fetched fantasy when “West Side Story” was made, but they now provide a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/274265882_Criminal_and_Routine_Activities_in_Online_Settings_Gangs_Offenders_and_the_Internet">repository</a> for gang content, a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317662741_Broadcasting_Badness_Violence_Identity_and_Performance_in_the_Online_Rap_Scene">blueprint</a> for gang activity and a <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332043722_When_Twitter_Fingers_Turn_to_Trigger_Fingers_a_Qualitative_Study_of_Social_Media-Related_Gang_Violence">catalyst</a> for gang conflict. A modern “West Side Story” would entail taunts on Twitter, fights over Facebook, and reliving the rumble on Reddit.</p>
<p>Word always traveled fast on the streets; “West Side Story” shows that well. But social media makes it faster, more public and more permanent. Gossip, taunts and threats are now <a href="https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691194431/ballad-of-the-bullet">broadcast to a much bigger social world</a> – in some cases, with violent consequences.</p>
<h2>Gang violence becomes deadlier</h2>
<p>Contemporary gangs “shoot it out” rather than “slug it out.” In the 1960s, there were <a href="https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/34497NCJRS.pdf">several hundred</a> gang homicides annually; now there are <a href="https://nationalgangcenter.ojp.gov/survey-analysis/measuring-the-extent-of-gang-problems#homicidesnumber">several thousand</a>.</p>
<p>When compared with other homicides, gang-related homicides disproportionately involve the <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354422122_Gang_Homicide_The_Road_so_Far_and_a_Map_for_the_Future">use of firearms</a>. Firearms are far more <a href="https://www.thetrace.org/2021/12/atf-time-to-crime-gun-data-shooting-pandemic/">prevalent and accessible</a> now than when “West Side Story” was conceived. But what original “West Side Story” director and choreographer Jerome Robbins understood back in the 1950s still holds true: When guns and knives are present, pushing and shoving can escalate quickly into stabbing and shooting. The movie’s fateful knife fight dramatically illustrates this.</p>
<h2>Gangs are a criminal justice priority</h2>
<p>As <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-american-street-gang-9780195115734">gangs and violence proliferated</a> in the decades after “West Side Story” first hit screens, the cure for the Jets’ self-diagnosis of “<a href="https://www.westsidestory.com/gee-officer-krupke">sociological sickness</a>” has shifted from social work to suppression. Criminal justice is now the rule of the day. Beat police officers like Officer Krupke and Lt. Shrank have been replaced by <a href="https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/gang-units-large-local-law-enforcement-agencies-2007">gang unit officers and special investigators</a> tasked with gathering intelligence and documenting and collating gang members in <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336810674_The_Matrix_in_Context_Taking_Stock_of_Police_Gang_Databases_in_London_and_Beyond">databases</a>.</p>
<p>States also responded <a href="https://nationalgangcenter.ojp.gov/legislation">legislatively</a> to gangs. California first passed its anti-gang laws in 1988, and 44 states have since followed suit. Gang membership and recruitment have been criminalized, while sentencing enhancements for crimes with a gang nexus have been controversially introduced.</p>
<p>In the days of “West Side Story,” gangs were not a significant issue in prisons. Since the onset of mass incarceration in the 1970s, prisons have become a <a href="https://theconversation.com/we-spoke-to-hundreds-of-prison-gang-members-heres-what-they-said-about-life-behind-bars-132573">vector for gang activity</a> – around 15% of U.S. prisoners today are affiliated with gangs.</p>
<h2>American street gangs in the 21st century</h2>
<p>It is impossible to understand gangs in the 21st century without considering how the world around them has shifted. And while structural shifts in policy, population and technology clearly matter, what is perhaps the starkest change has little to do with the gangs themselves, but the way in which the general public and the legal system <a href="https://nyupress.org/9780814776384/punished/">stigmatize the children</a> within them. The <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/262522967_From_Your_First_Cigarette_to_Your_Last_Dyin'_Day_The_Patterning_of_Gang_Membership_in_the_Life-Course">average age</a> of a gang member is 15 – these are kids who are trying to survive in the worst of circumstances.</p>
<p>If the gang was a rite of passage when Riff and Bernardo roamed the streets of New York City in “West Side Story,” the reality of the contemporary gang has become much bleaker because of worsening violence, mass incarceration and other factors that have operated largely outside of their control.</p>
<p>“West Side Story” harks back to simpler times, with less <a href="https://time.com/2862299/how-the-united-states-is-growing-more-partisan-in-10-charts/">polarization</a> and <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/187592/death-rate-from-homicide-in-the-us-since-1950/">violence</a>. Perhaps it could also assist in revising what we know about gangs and reforming some of our more punitive impulses to respond to them.</p>
<p>[<em>Like what you’ve read? Want more?</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=likethis">Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter</a>.\</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173543/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Pyrooz receives funding from the National Institute of Justice, National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, Charles Koch Foundation, and Laura and John Arnold Foundation</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Densley has received funding from The National Institute of Justice.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott H. Decker has received funding from the National Institute of Justice. </span></em></p>
Gangs have changed in the decades since ‘West Side Story’ first came out – they are deadlier, and their demographics are different – as are the means law enforcement use to control them.
David Pyrooz, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Colorado Boulder
James Densley, Professor of Criminal Justice, Metropolitan State University
Scott H. Decker, Foundation Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/172768
2021-12-01T01:11:44Z
2021-12-01T01:11:44Z
Stephen Sondheim showed me the beauty, terror and exquisite pain of being alive
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434588/original/file-20211130-21-1vai1dt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=12%2C0%2C4212%2C2477&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nick Simpson-Deeks, Vidya Makan and company in the Watch This production of Sunday in the Park With George, 2019.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Watch This/Jodie Hutchinson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>What did Stephen Sondheim mean to me? This is an attempt to bring order to the chaos.</p>
<p>My first encounter with his work is a re-run of the 1962 film adaptation of West Side Story (1957). I am about 7 or 8. It has an immediate effect on me - the lyrics and book especially. The translation of the familial divide in Romeo and Juliet to a story exploring social disadvantage, racial tensions and violence. It is thrilling, young as I am.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434585/original/file-20211129-27-1qguxw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434585/original/file-20211129-27-1qguxw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434585/original/file-20211129-27-1qguxw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434585/original/file-20211129-27-1qguxw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434585/original/file-20211129-27-1qguxw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=896&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434585/original/file-20211129-27-1qguxw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434585/original/file-20211129-27-1qguxw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434585/original/file-20211129-27-1qguxw5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1126&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Stephen Sondheim was a titan of the American musical.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Getty</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At 16, I see a live performance of Into The Woods (1986). I learn theatre can be playful and cerebral and ironic and emotionally compelling all at once. It resonates deeply with me as a passionate and bewildered teenager aching for guidance. Not only does it frame my understanding of theatre, it shapes the way I think about the human condition.</p>
<p>I am 26 and we are performing Merrily We Roll Along (1981) for our final production at drama school. “How will it all unfold for us?”, we can’t help but wonder. </p>
<p>It is a show I revisit over and over as an artist, including with the company I founded, <a href="https://www.watchthis.net.au/">Watch This</a>, in 2017. When a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic has us all locked inside our homes, I play Sondheim’s incredible overture and soundtrack for my kids. We spend mornings dancing around and <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/6oFKPElq4jg7ebjtwHl4Ed?si=1e237e9961614f60">singing along</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Some roads are soft<br>
And some are bumpy<br>
Some roads you really fly<br>
Some rides are rough<br>
And leave you jumpy<br>
Why make it tough<br>
By getting grumpy?<br>
Plenty of roads to try<br></p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sometimes life rolls you into a ditch and you just have to lie there until you can crawl out. I lean on Sondheim’s music and lyrics to convey this difficult truth to my children. </p>
<h2>Realising Sondheim</h2>
<p>In 2011, I embark on the project of establishing a Sondheim repertory company Watch This. It staggered me Australia didn’t have one. </p>
<p>It was a singularly daunting thing to set my cap at realising such a weighty body of work with an independent company and all the constraints that entails. You want to do his work justice.</p>
<p>In inviting an audience to see a Sondheim show, I always try to be clear-eyed about how it speaks to us here and now. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434589/original/file-20211130-14-26p336.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434589/original/file-20211130-14-26p336.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434589/original/file-20211130-14-26p336.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434589/original/file-20211130-14-26p336.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434589/original/file-20211130-14-26p336.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434589/original/file-20211130-14-26p336.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434589/original/file-20211130-14-26p336.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434589/original/file-20211130-14-26p336.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Andrew Kroenert, Noni McCallum, Nick Simpson-Deeks, Elenor Smith-Adams, Leighton Phair and Reece Budin in Pacific Overtures.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Watch This/Jodie Hutchinson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2014, when we produced Pacific Overtures (1975), it was an election year and much of the political rhetoric was about “stopping the boats”. </p>
<p>Pacific Overtures is set in Japan after 200-odd years of deliberate seclusion from the world, at the moment of Western incursion. It was important for us to ensure the Japanese characters were centred in the narrative rather than being exoticised, with our audience positioned squarely as “the foreigners”.</p>
<p>We see the story unfold from a Japanese perspective, via our two heroes who are sent to the water’s edge to quite literally stop the boats and hold back the tide of history.</p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434590/original/file-20211130-25-2uxqab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434590/original/file-20211130-25-2uxqab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434590/original/file-20211130-25-2uxqab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434590/original/file-20211130-25-2uxqab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434590/original/file-20211130-25-2uxqab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=840&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434590/original/file-20211130-25-2uxqab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434590/original/file-20211130-25-2uxqab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434590/original/file-20211130-25-2uxqab.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1056&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Tim Paige and Sonya Suares in Company.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Watch This/Jodie Hutchinson</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>We staged Company (1970), a musical about relationships and intimacy, during the national marriage equality debate. </p>
<p>In a twist of fate, we programmed Into the Woods, a story about a motley collection of characters who must band together to confront an existential crisis, in 2020. </p>
<p>In 2019, I was lucky enough to co-direct Sunday in the Park with George (1983) with Dean Drieberg and an extraordinary team. It was an absolute career highlight.</p>
<p>It’s worth pausing for a moment here.</p>
<p>Often, people approach this musical as if it is all about George, the auteur-artiste. But Dot, his lover and muse, is equally important. She makes a stunningly difficult decision to prioritise a future for their child. Her choice is what propels us into act two.</p>
<p>George chooses a vertical eternity: he dedicates himself to “finishing the hat” so his experimental masterpiece may be suspended forever in a gallery. Dot’s choice extends horizontally across the axis of time: she lives on in the generations that follow her.</p>
<p>It is a show about legacy and mortality. Children and art. </p>
<h2>An industry in mourning</h2>
<p>It is a strange and disorienting thing to grieve for a person you’ve never met. I didn’t expect it to hit me as hard as it has. When you spend a decade inside someone’s works diving deeper and deeper into different worlds and myriad complex ideas, it is an incredibly intimate relationship.</p>
<p>I know I’m not alone in this feeling. Many people all over the world are experiencing a profound sense of loss. The grief within the theatre community is like an electric current. I cried on the phone to a longtime collaborator, because it is hard to explain to anyone outside our community: it feels so unbelievably personal.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/heres-to-the-ladies-who-lunch-one-of-sondheims-greatest-achievements-was-writing-complex-women-172765">Here's to the ladies who lunch: one of Sondheim's greatest achievements was writing complex women</a>
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<p>In a 1988 interview with 60 Minutes, Sondheim was asked if he would have liked to have children. You can see the regret streak across his face. “Yes” he replies, but adds: “<a href="https://www.vulture.com/2013/12/tv-review-six-by-sondheim-hbo.html">art is the other way</a>”.</p>
<p>It is. There are generations of theatre-makers and audiences who have an immensely personal relationship with Sondheim’s work. That is his legacy. His musicals – even those that are 40 or 50 years old – still speak so directly to my own generation and those younger. His works are porous, allowing constant reimagining and immediate, contemporary connections. </p>
<p>Sondheim revolutionised the American musical and changed us along with it. He absolutely changed me. His career is testament to an artist’s need to take risks and transform, to get “through to something new”. And his works refract the beauty and terror and exquisite pain of being alive.</p>
<p>The fact that we reach for his lyrics and music as the very tools for processing his death points to Sondheim’s impact on the world he has departed. It is a giant’s footprint.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172768/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sonya Suares does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In 2011, I established a Sondheim repertory theatre company. I didn’t expect his death to hit me as hard as it has.
Sonya Suares, Guest Lecturer, WAAPA, Edith Cowan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/167695
2021-09-10T05:04:01Z
2021-09-10T05:04:01Z
Round the Twist’s fans grew up – and their love for the show grew with them
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/420418/original/file-20210910-21-wi4asv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=3%2C1%2C1273%2C716&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian Children's Television Foundation</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Australian kids’ TV show Round the Twist gained an international following when it was first broadcast in 1989-1990. Broadcast over four seasons up until 2001, young audiences were thrilled by the supernatural adventures of the lighthouse-dwelling Twist family. </p>
<p>As its original fans have grown up, a veritable cottage industry has emerged around Round the Twist nostalgia. </p>
<p>There is an <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/realthing/what-happened-to-bronson-from-round-the-twist/7772866">ABC podcast</a> devoted to tracking down the child actor who played Bronson in season one. A <a href="https://talesfromthetwists.wordpress.com/">recap podcast</a> covers each episode. Buzzfeed is filled with pieces such as “<a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/caitlinjinks/wtf-moments-from-round-the-twist">21 Of The Most WTF Moments From Round The Twist</a>”. </p>
<p>In 2016, Netflix promoted one of its most successful Original series, Stranger Things, with a trailer <a href="https://www.facebook.com/NetflixANZ/videos/when-stranger-things-happen-are-you-going-round-the-twist/1322548944445647/">in the style of the Round the Twist title sequence</a>, including the iconic theme song. In creating this mash-up trailer, Netflix acknowledged the intergenerational appeal of these two often creepy dark fantasy shows.</p>
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<p>In 2017, the Sydney Story Company <a href="https://www.actf.com.au/news/10401/round-the-twist-s-bronsons-to-be-reunited-for-cinema-screening-in-sydney">staged a special cinema screening</a> of Round the Twist featuring live commentary from two of the three actors who played Bronson. In 2018, the UK’s largest supermarket chain, Sainsbury’s, used the show’s theme song <a href="https://www.tvadmusic.co.uk/2018/10/sainsburys-halloween-2018/">for their Halloween advertisements</a>. The Australian band Tinpan Orange regularly perform a plaintive, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbZKrnXOfGc">haunting version of the song.</a> </p>
<p>Earlier this year, every episode was released on Netflix Australia; and now a stage musical adaptation <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2021/sep/07/round-the-twist-australian-childrens-tv-show-to-become-stage-musical">has been announced</a>.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-when-television-hosts-take-their-shows-home-they-fuel-nostalgia-136240">Friday essay: when television hosts take their shows home they fuel nostalgia</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Horror, but for children</h2>
<p>The production house for Round the Twist, the Australian Children’s Television Foundation, <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/jennaguillaume/the-oral-history-of-round-the-twist">had to fight</a> to find a home for this horror-inflected children’s show. According to ACTF founder and the show’s producer Patricia Edgar, one French company who was in discussions to co-finance the show called it “<a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/jennaguillaume/the-oral-history-of-round-the-twist">disgusting”</a>. </p>
<p>Round the Twist is remembered as a challenging, subversive show: one that combines horror, dark fantasy and the grotesque. Ghosts make frequent spooky appearances, but ultimately turn out to be friendly spirits needing the family’s help to finish their business and move on. </p>
<p>Skeletons come to life; Santa Claus becomes “Santa Claws”; love spells go wrong; and monsters really do live under the bed.</p>
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<p>The show has evidently left a lasting impact on its former child viewers. Horror and dark fantasy for children often leaves an impression: TV tends to be how young viewers first encounter these genres.</p>
<h2>New life through nostalgia</h2>
<p>Round the Twist is what media scholar Kathleen Loock describes as a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1527476417742971">“dormant” TV show</a>: shows that continue to be meaningful to the original audience or find new audiences long after they go off the air. </p>
<p>These dormant shows are a key part of <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-my-end-is-my-beginning-why-tv-streaming-services-love-exploiting-your-nostalgia-50765">Netflix’s business model</a>, and part of <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137375889_1">the contemporary nostalgia wave</a> operating across television and the internet.</p>
<p>Because Netflix is not dependent on high ratings or constricted by limited airtime, they can afford to license long-cancelled series like Round the Twist. Their hope is previous fans will re-watch the show and post about it on social media, attracting more subscribers. </p>
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<p>By hosting these shows, Netflix is able to attract adult viewers who find the nostalgia appealing; but also adults who now have children of their own, and who want to introduce their children to shows they loved as a child. </p>
<p>Round the Twist is joined on the platform by other 1990s shows like Goosebumps and Spellbinder, and other series – like Lost in Space, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and the Baby-Sitters Club – have been rebooted with a 21st century spin, soliciting an <a href="https://cstonline.net/family-watch-together-tv-netflix-and-the-dark-intergenerational-fantasy-by-djoymi-baker-jessica-balanzategui-and-diana-sandars">intergenerational conversation</a> between existing adult and young new fans. </p>
<p>Nostalgia has also proven a potent tool in launching stage musicals. Simon Phillips, who is slated to direct Round the Twist, also directed the stage musical adaptations of Muriel’s Wedding in 2017, and Priscilla Queen of the Desert in 2006.</p>
<p>Just as Round the Twist’s release on Netflix caused a stir, nostalgia will surely draw in the crowds to the musical: the producers already have the advantage of the beloved theme song to entice fans who first watched the show more than 30 years ago - as well as a whole new generation who have discovered it on streaming.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/muriels-wedding-the-musical-is-a-deeply-satisfying-tribute-to-australias-most-loved-dag-87855">Muriel's Wedding: the Musical is a deeply satisfying tribute to Australia's most-loved dag</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<hr>
<p><em>Our research project, Australian Children’s Television Cultures, aims to find out more about the kids’ TV shows we remember. <a href="https://swinuw.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_2nLAOj9X5VUfPvw">Let us know</a> which shows from your childhood have stuck in your mind the most. You can also follow us <a href="https://twitter.com/_actc_">on Twitter</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/167695/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jessica Balanzategui receives funding from the Australian Children's Television Foundation.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Djoymi Baker receives funding from the Australian Children's Television Foundation (ACTF)</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joanna McIntyre receives funding from The Australian Children's Television Foundation (ACTF). </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Liam Burke receives funding from the Australian Children's Television Foundation (ACTF)</span></em></p>
A stage musical adaptation is just the newest addition to the cottage industry which is Round The Twist nostalgia.
Jessica Balanzategui, Senior Lecturer in Cinema and Screen Studies, Swinburne University of Technology
Djoymi Baker, Lecturer in Cinema Studies, RMIT University
Joanna McIntyre, Lecturer in Media Studies, Swinburne University of Technology
Liam Burke, Associate Professor and Cinema and Screen Studies Discipline Leader, Swinburne University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/163420
2021-07-11T20:11:24Z
2021-07-11T20:11:24Z
Unpacking In The Heights’ choreographic film references, from Busby Berkeley to West Side Story
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/409054/original/file-20210630-19-1mkif7u.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C6000%2C3000&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Macall Polay © 2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Part of the joy of a musical is that song and dance can occur anywhere and everywhere. Not just on the stage but in the bedroom, to the Wild West and on the streets of New York. </p>
<p>Classic musicals set in New York often take dancing to the streets.</p>
<p>In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7CIgWZTdgw">On The Town</a> (1949, based on the 1944 stage musical), Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly (who also choreographed the movie) play sailors on shore leave in the big city. In <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxoC5Oyf_ss&ab_channel=DanceOn">West Side Story</a> (1961, based on the 1957 stage show) two rival gangs, the white American Jets and the Peurto-Rican Sharks play out the story of Romeo and Juliet on the Upper West Side, dancing to Jerome Robbins’ choreography. </p>
<p>This is also the case with In The Heights, an adaptation of the 2008 stage show written by Lin-Manuel Miranda (the creator of the Broadway-smash Hamilton) and Quiara Alegría Hudes.</p>
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<p>Set in the largely working class Latinx neighbourhood of Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan, all the characters wish for a better life: Usnavi plans to move to the Dominican Republic to set up his dad’s old beachside bar; Vanessa dreams of becoming a high-end fashion designer downtown; Nina carries the weight of the neighbourhood expectations at Stanford University in California. </p>
<p>And throughout all of this, they dance and sing.</p>
<p>Miranda’s songbook draws on <a href="https://www.vulture.com/2016/01/lin-manuel-miranda-broadway-legend.html">references</a> from Latin, to hip-hop and rap, and Christopher Scott’s choreography also traverses a wide range of styles from breakdancing and popping, to ballet and Jamaican dancehall. </p>
<p>They both extensively reference classical musicals, too.</p>
<h2>Busby Berkeley’s water ballet</h2>
<p>Spontaneous song and dance is the most enjoyable part of many movie musicals, and a defining element of early examples of the genre.</p>
<p>In the classical Hollywood period from the 1930s to the 1950s, the film musical was in its prime. Musicals brought large crowds to the cinema, drawing on stage musicals, vaudeville, cabaret and operettas, melding them together with camerawork and editing to wow audiences. </p>
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<p>The energy of Broadway choreography was enhanced by camerawork that allowed the audience to get up close with the dancers. One of the major choreographers and directors of this era was Busby Berkeley. </p>
<p>Berkeley’s work was designed to be filmed from above, with his dancers creating beautiful kaleidoscopic choreography.</p>
<p>During In The Heights’ number “96,000”, the whole block performs in a water ballet at the local pool, reminiscent of Berkeley’ Million Dollar Mermaid (1952).</p>
<p>“96,000” is quite the technical feat. It <a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/in-the-heights-pool-scene-process.html">took director Jon M. Chu three days to shoot</a> with 700 extras in New York’s public Highbridge Pool. He also had to deal with thunderstorms and New York City restrictions on drone photography which required the use of a crane. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410032/original/file-20210706-23-1frnami.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="In The Heights production shot above a pool" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410032/original/file-20210706-23-1frnami.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/410032/original/file-20210706-23-1frnami.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410032/original/file-20210706-23-1frnami.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410032/original/file-20210706-23-1frnami.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=251&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410032/original/file-20210706-23-1frnami.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410032/original/file-20210706-23-1frnami.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/410032/original/file-20210706-23-1frnami.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The $96,000 mermaid..</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© 2021 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.</span></span>
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<h2>Jerome Robbins’ choreographic storytelling</h2>
<p>West Side Story won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture — the most of any film musical — and was lauded for Robbins’ incredible choreography. </p>
<p>Robbins used dance as an integral part of the storytelling to express the simmering tensions between characters. In In The Heights, choreography is again used to express the excitement of budding romance, frustration and grief. </p>
<p>During “The Club”, Usnavi competes for Vanessa’s attention with male club-goers who all want to dance with her. Scott’s snappy Latin choreography echoes “Dance at the Gym (Mambo)” from West Side Story, where building tension between the two gangs is expressed through their fight over space on the dance floor.</p>
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<h2>Fred Astaire’s defiance of gravity</h2>
<p>Nina and Benny’s final emotional farewell number, “When the Sun Goes Down” takes them up the side of a building in a nod to Astaire dancing on the walls in Royal Wedding (1951). </p>
<p>The couple start on the balcony looking at the George Washington Bridge dominating the skyline. As the song swells, their love for each other helps them defy gravity to spin and twirl up the apartment block to the roof thanks to special effects. </p>
<p>Astaire’s original number, “You’re All the World to Me”, required the set to be built in a revolving barrel with the camera mounted in place. </p>
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<h2>The whole neighbourhood in joy</h2>
<p>There is a sense of spontaneity to the musical numbers in In The Heights. They appear to be immediate, unfiltered outbursts of emotion. </p>
<p>In the opening eight minutes, the sounds of the block — gates closing, Usnavi jangling his keys, a man hosing the streets — is all rhythm and music for the opening number. Even the <em>piragua</em> man selling his shaved ice dessert on the street (played by Miranda himself) joins the chorus. </p>
<p>An entire neighbourhood joining in on a number is a typical gimmick of the film musical. It is such a trope it is often referenced in non-musical films, like when Joseph Gordon Levitt’s good mood inspires a crowded park of people to dance with him through the streets in 500 Days of Summer (2009).</p>
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<p>In In The Heights, during a heat wave at the height of a neighbourhood blackout, Daniela gets the block back up on its feet and celebrating their culture. Everyone joins in on “Carnaval del Barrio”, in joyous community celebration. </p>
<p>The spectacular energy and vibrancy of this number is what musicals ultimately aim for in the audience: to get them up and dancing on the street.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/163420/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Phoebe Macrossan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The new film In The Heights draws on almost 100 years of movie musical choreography. Here are some highlights.
Phoebe Macrossan, Research Associate, Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/160890
2021-05-14T12:15:19Z
2021-05-14T12:15:19Z
The golden ratio: an ancient Greek formula could be responsible for most hit musicals
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400668/original/file-20210513-21-c4p7g9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=120%2C185%2C2854%2C1436&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-england-23rd-december-2017-editorial-783722227">John Gomez/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>“What’s the secret to your success?” A simple question asked frequently of those who have achieved greatness in their field. Sometimes, that secret is so well disguised even the successful individual is unaware of its influence.</p>
<p>When it comes to sung-through musical theatre, it turns out, that is indeed the case. Since 1972, when <a href="https://www.playbill.com/article/look-back-at-the-original-broadway-production-of-jesus-christ-superstar-on-broadway">Jesus Christ Superstar</a> premiered on Broadway, the most popular sung-through musicals have almost unanimously employed a centuries-old formula known as “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/golden-ratio">the golden ratio</a>” – and surprisingly, they appear to have done so completely by accident.</p>
<p>The golden ratio is an <a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/golden-ratio">irrational number</a> approximately equal to 1.618. It exists when a line is divided into two parts, with one part longer than the other. The longer part (a) divided by the smaller part (b) is equal to the sum of (a) + (b) divided by (a), which both equal 1.618.</p>
<p>The ratio is found in nature, such as in the patterns of seeds within a sunflower, the shape of snail shells and, most recently suggested, in the <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6047800/">human genome</a>. Its connection with the aesthetic beauty of nature has attracted creatives throughout history to use the number to create art, music, and design.</p>
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<img alt="Golden ratio against a shell on a beach." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400792/original/file-20210514-17-2sth44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400792/original/file-20210514-17-2sth44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400792/original/file-20210514-17-2sth44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400792/original/file-20210514-17-2sth44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=386&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400792/original/file-20210514-17-2sth44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400792/original/file-20210514-17-2sth44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400792/original/file-20210514-17-2sth44.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=486&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The golden ratio found in a shell.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/beautiful-seashells-on-beach-close-golden-430253152">Africa Studio/Shutterstock</a></span>
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<p>When appropriately applied, the golden ratio is suggested to demonstrate an influence on human awareness of proportion and aesthetic beauty, resulting in artistic masterpieces including Da Vinci’s <a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/mumbai-physicists-uncover-link-between-lord-shiva-mona-lisa/articleshow/53136104.cms">The Mona Lisa</a> (1506), Bartok’s <a href="https://mathcs.holycross.edu/%7Egroberts/Courses/Mont2/2012/Handouts/Lectures/Bartok-web.pdf">Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta</a> (1936) and Le Corbusier’s <a href="https://www.lescouleurs.ch/en/journal/posts/the-modulor-human-closeness-as-a-basic-value/">Unité d’Habitation</a> (1920).</p>
<h2>A surprising discovery</h2>
<p>My area of expertise is musical theatre composition, and for my PhD research, I explored if the golden ratio would be a suitable tool for large musical composition. The 3D nature of musical design (plot, music, visual) allows for interesting elements to be integrated into a musicals structure at golden ratio points along its duration. These elements could include a dramatic moment such as a character death, a musical highlight such as a key change or a visual element such as choreography or a set change. </p>
<p>The crucial factor was to take the most important elements that bring a musical to life and place them at the golden ratio points. In theory, this replicates aesthetically pleasing patterns found in nature but recreated in a musical. The concept of my research was to use the results of analysis of the ten most successful sung-through commercial musicals. </p>
<p>This process helped to formulate a structure encompassing the golden ratio which I used to compose the musical <a href="https://youtu.be/c8IQrWnmoAs">The Green Door</a> (with lyrics by Jane Robertson).</p>
<p>To analyse the musicals, I designed a model that sub-divided the duration of each into 16 golden ratio points. I then could identify if, what and where any interesting elements occurred.</p>
<p>You can imagine my astonishment when, early one morning, my calculations revealed that within Les Miserables, the principal characters of Fantine, Eponine, Gavrosche and Valjean all died on or very close to a golden ratio point. Further analysis revealed that major changes in the story line (matching to within less than 1%) coincided with all 16 golden ratio points. </p>
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<p>The same process was applied to a further nine musicals, including Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Miss Saigon and Aspects of Love. The results displayed similar patterns but interestingly, a difference in accuracy became evident in musicals that had a shorter life-span at the box office. In essence, musicals that had the most box office success and longevity of run showed closer alignment to the golden ratio than those that had a shorter run, and less financial gain.</p>
<h2>Unwitting followers of the ratio</h2>
<p>The research highlighted another interesting phenomenon. There is no documentary evidence from the composers that imply any intention of aligning the musicals with the golden ratio. </p>
<p>Claude Michelle Schoenberg (composer of Les Miserables) kindly agreed to be interviewed concerning his method of composition. It was evident that no mathematical formula was included in that process. The discovered alignments are natural occurrences implemented by composers, writers and producers with years of experience, knowledge and talent in the musical theatre industry. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="Two hands reaching for one another." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400634/original/file-20210513-22-588t3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/400634/original/file-20210513-22-588t3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400634/original/file-20210513-22-588t3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400634/original/file-20210513-22-588t3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400634/original/file-20210513-22-588t3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400634/original/file-20210513-22-588t3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/400634/original/file-20210513-22-588t3b.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The musical was created as a result of the research into the golden ratio.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
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<p>It would be wrong to assume a subconscious usage of the golden ratio is evident in the findings and I make no claim that it’s responsible for the success of the musicals analysed. But like in the works of Debussy, Bartok, Da Vinci and Le Corbusier, the ratio is there. </p>
<p>After seven years of research, I now believe, an aesthetic link to the ratio exists not just in the final work but primarily throughout the process of creation. The nurturing of ideas, the reflective process, the discovery of common elements, experience and self confidence in your own ability and skills combine to create an aesthetic process. This can only benefit the music and is seemingly influenced by that magic golden ratio.</p>
<p>So if you would like to put this to the test, I have created a <a href="https://www.dropbox.com/s/7a59c8zo6tmnxsy/TGMS%20Calculation%20Spreadsheet%20%28Final%29.xlsx?dl=0">spreadsheet</a> that takes into account the theoretical and practical research and, with no guarantees, might help write the next blockbuster musical.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160890/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Langston does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
A formula found often in nature, many artists believe that following the golden ratio leads to the most aesthetically pleasing work. It can also accidentally turn up in musicals.
Stephen Langston, Programme Leader for Performance, University of the West of Scotland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/149783
2020-11-10T16:35:41Z
2020-11-10T16:35:41Z
The Prom: the challenges of adapting the stage to the screen
<p>There is growing excitement for the star-studded release of the Netflix film adaptation of the award-winning musical, <a href="https://theprommusical.com/">The Prom</a>. <a href="https://www.theatermania.com/broadway/reviews/second-chance-teenage-dreams-the-prom-broadway_87058.html">Inspired by a true story</a>, the musical comedy follows a group of out-of-work Broadway actors who fight for lesbian teenager Emma Nolan to bring her closeted girlfriend Alyssa Greene to her high school prom.</p>
<p>From The Jazz Singer (1927) to Kander and Ebb’s Chicago (2002), performers playing performers is a familiar ploy in film musicals. But it’s a formula that doesn’t always work. Marvin Hamlisch’s 1975 backstage musical A Chorus Line was a phenomenal success at the box office, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/30/theater/after-15-years-15-a-chorus-line-ends.html">running for 15 years on Broadway</a> (far surpassing the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1983/09/30/theater/332-dance-on-a-record-3389th-chorus-line.html">record for longest-running Broadway musical</a> previously set by Grease), yet the 1985 film adaptation <a href="https://variety.com/2019/film/box-office/cats-movie-box-office-bomb-tom-hooper-digital-fur-technology-1203450672/">bombed</a>. </p>
<h2>A different beast</h2>
<p>One of the most significant challenges in reimagining a stage musical for film is that of condensing a longer theatre work into the more modest proportions (with no interval) afforded by cinema. This inevitably means sacrificing some of the material of the original for the sake of shape and flow. </p>
<p>Certain songs are streamlined or cut altogether. Often at least one new song is added. More spoken dialogue is incorporated, as well as greater attention given to the show’s visual dimension. Actors, typically lip-synching to a “perfect” studio-recorded track, need only play to the camera right in front of them, not to the extremities of the theatre audience, facilitating more intimate and nuanced performances. </p>
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<p>Film is also much more sensitive than stage musicals to the need for A-list stars. The Prom, which boasts a glittering line-up led by Meryl Streep, James Corden and Nicole Kidman, is certainly no exception. The larger casts and manifold possibilities for expansive on-location filming beyond the “three-sided box” of theatre will also help to bring to life pivotal scenes in Netflix’s musical adaptation, not least that of the titular prom itself. </p>
<h2>A heavy investment</h2>
<p>In recent years, Hollywood has recognised the powerful hit-making potential of major musicals on the big screen. </p>
<p>Some have been adaptations of blockbuster stage shows, including ABBA jukebox musical <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkN-A00WLYE&ab_channel=TrailersPlaygroundHD">Mamma mia!</a> (2008), which was the fifth highest-grossing film that year and was so popular it inspired an original sequel, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nd4cLL_MP7M&ab_channel=UniversalPictures">Mamma mia! Here We Go Again</a> (2018). There have also been financially and critically successful adaptations of Les Misérables (2012) and Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods (2014). </p>
<p>An anomaly here would be the adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtSd844cI7U&ab_channel=UniversalPictures">Cats</a> (2019), which, despite its all-star cast and big budget, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/dec/31/cats-film-box-office-failure-universal">tanked</a>. That said, it is potentially already on its way to becoming a <a href="https://www.syfy.com/syfywire/cats-cult-classic">cult film</a> as it teeters on the line of so bad it’s potentially good.</p>
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<p>Despite the failure of Cats, Hollywood has a series of <a href="https://www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/news/musicals-set-for-movie-film-adaptations_42992.html">film adaptations of stage musicals</a> in the pipeline. Some of these are contemporary musicals, such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpOeZw7xdfI">Everybody’s Talking About Jamie</a> and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights. </p>
<p>There’s also a series of planned remakes of classic film musical adaptations, including <a href="https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/new-guys-dolls-movie-musical-works/">Guys and Dolls</a>, <a href="https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a32758863/fiddler-on-the-roof-movie/">Fiddler on the Roof</a> and <a href="https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/chris-evans-little-shop-horrors-dentist/">Little Shop of Horrors</a>.</p>
<p>The biggest of these, however, is the remake of Leonard Bernstein’s <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/03/a-first-look-at-steven-spielbergs-west-side-story">West Side Story</a> with Steven Spielberg in the director’s chair. This could be considered a particularly brave move since the original is much-loved and netted a total of ten academy awards. To mess with perfection, as many perceive the original, could be dangerous – even 60 years later.</p>
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<p>We’ll have to wait until winter 2021 to see whether it succeeds though, as West Side Story’s debut has been <a href="https://www.whatsonstage.com/london-theatre/news/new-west-side-story-film-pushed-back-to-2021_52454.html">pushed back</a> along with many other films set for December release. </p>
<p>With many cinemas and theatres still closed, The Prom going to straight to Netflix next month will be a welcome addition to festive watching for many. Following the success of Netflix’s <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2020/06/28/netflix-eurovision-is-will-ferrell-most-successful-movie-since-lego-movie/?sh=6f9173fd38f4">Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga</a> earlier this year, as well as the video of the stage version of the critically acclaimed <a href="https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/hamilton-disney-plus-premiere-app-downloads-72-percent-1234698795/">Hamilton on Disney+</a>, there is a certainly a healthy appetite for movie musicals and The Prom is sure to do well for Netflix.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/149783/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christopher Wiley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
There are a host of stage musicals set for film adaptation in the coming year and they are sure to draw big
Christopher Wiley, Senior Lecturer in Music, Department of Music and Media, University of Surrey
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.