ABSTRACT
Chapter 7 focuses on the genre of the film musical. The historical overview starts before cinema, providing the context of a vibrant popular music industry. In the early studio era, the introduction of sound quickly brought about the development of the genre, creating such distinct subgenres as the backstage musical. The importance of the Great Depression and the war years, the “Golden Age” of the MGM musical, and the changes in the genre with the rise of rock ’n’ roll and music videos, are all discussed, along with the conventions and types of musicals. The section on critical issues examines the musical as a utopian vision, but one that, in the classical period, had been almost exclusively white, with the ideology of romance informing the genre. The chapter concludes with a case study that addresses these issues by comparing the two versions of West Side Story (1961, 2021) and their different ways of using the genre in different eras to provide similar antiracist messages.
