Incongruous Entertainment: Camp, Cultural Value, and the MGM Musical [Paperback]

In addition to examining the spectatorship of the mgm musical, Cohan investigates the genre’s production and marketing, paying particular attention to the studio’s employment of a largely gay workforce of artists and craftspeople. He reflects on the role of the female stars—including Judy Garland, Debbie Reynolds, Esther Williams, and Lena Horne—and he explores the complex relationship between Gene Kelley’s dancing and his masculine persona. Cohan looks at how, in the decades since the 1950s, the marketing and reception of the mgm musical have negotiated the more publicly recognized camp value attached to the films. He considers the status ofSingin’ in the Rainas perhaps the first film to be widely embraced as camp; the repackaging of the musicals as nostalgia and camp in theThat’s Entertainment!series as well as on home video and cable; and the debates about Garland’s legendary gay appeal among her fans on the Internet. By establishing camp as central to the genre,Incongruous Entertainmentprovides a new way of looking at the musical.

Steven Cohan is Professor of English at Syracuse University. He is the author ofMasked Men: Masculinity and the Movies in the Fifties; the editor ofHollywood Musicals: The Film Reader; and a coeditor ofThe Road Movie BookandSlÓU