MST 270 Movie Musicals and Cultural Politics

This media studies course is offered as a celebration of the centennial of the movie musical. The genre was born in 1927 with the first feature-length sound film The Jazz Singer, which included six songs and several dance numbers. Over the century, the movie musical has risen and fallen in cultural favor, but never gone away. What is it that the public loves about watching people sing and dance on the silver screen? Despite their association with Americana aesthetics, movie musicals have always been intercultural and marked by global borrowings. To misquote the famous movie musical Mary Poppins, the spoonful of sugar found in song and dance can help the medicine of more serious topics go down. This class examines the cultural politics of movie musicals using theoretical approaches from film and media studies, theatre and performance studies, and communication studies.