ABSTRACT
The Sound of Music (1959) manifests a special relationship between musicals and childhood. A standard work of musical theater that is largely about children and music, it affirms a cultural belief in children’s natural affinity for musical expression. In the musical, the playfulness of music acculturates the von Trapp children into a model of childhood leading to normative adulthood. Simultaneously, the musical subverts this model of childhood through the disruptive and queer potentialities of childhood and musical theater, destabilizing age boundaries and blurring distinctions between adults’ and children’s musicals.
