Destabilizing the Hollywood Musical Music, Masculinity and Mayhem [Hardcover]

A critical survey of Hollywood film musicals from the 1960s to the present. This book examines how, in the post-studio system era, cultural, industrial and stylistic circumstances transformed this once happy-go-lucky genre into one both fluid and cynical enough to embrace the likes of Rocky Horror and pave the way for Cannibal! and Moulin Rouge!.Acknowledgements Introduction: The Musical and Masculinity Take a Turn for the Ambivalent Nothing is Comin' Up Roses: The Desertion of Narrative Utopia On a Clear Day you Can See the Cracks in the Scenery: Visual Reflexivity and Realism Trump Nostalgic Idealism Wanna Sing and Dance? These New Guys are Ambivalent About It The New Guard's Musical Masculinity Epilogue: I Could Go On Singing Notes Appendix Bibliography Index

'Through her focus on a specific subset of musicals - integrated musicals from 1966-1983 - and shifting representations of masculinity within these films, Kessler provides readers with an engaging and accessible snapshot of the ways in which cultural conditions and anxieties find expression onscreen, often altering the very medium with which they engage.' -Scope

KELLY KESSLER is Assistant Professor of Media and Cinema Studies in the College of Communication at DePaul University, Chicago, USA. Her work on gender, genre, and sexuality has appeared in publications such as Film Quarterly, Televising Queer Women, American Masculinities, and The New Queer Aesthetic on Television.