A Star Re-Born: Genre, Gender and Nostalgia in the 21st Century American Musical

(1)

A Star Re-Born:

Genre, Gender and Nostalgia in the 21st Century American Musical

Hannah Gatward Student ID: 12333379

MA Media Studies (Film Studies) University of Amsterdam

28 June 2019

Supervisor: Abe Geil

(2)

1 INTRODUCTION

Reflecting recently on the significance of Moulin Rouge! (2001) and its key role in beginning the slow process of popularising the cinematic musical once again, and for a 21st Century audience, Baz Luhrmann said:

I must have heard ‘The musical can never work again’ so many times… [Now] there’s no longer a question in anyone’s mind about ‘should they bother to do a musical?’…we kicked the door in… (K.Erbland, indiewire.com, 2019)

Released to divisive reviews, Moulin Rouge! quickly gained cult status and has since become part of the canon of modern musicals, with a recent stage production opening in Boston in 2018. The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning two (for best art direction and costume design); it was the first musical to be nominated for an Oscar in over a decade after Disney’s animated Beauty and the Beast (1991). Although successful, Moulin Rouge!’s risqué edge and melodramatic camp still divided audiences. However, the following year’s Chicago (2002) became the first film musical to win a best picture Oscar since Oliver! in 1968 and cemented a refreshed and

revitalised return to screen for the genre that had for so long been exiled from Hollywood’s executive tables. In 2018 The Greatest Showman, a musical bio-pic of P.T. Barnum starring Hugh Jackman, became the third highest grossing musical ever in America and, at the time of writing, there are over 90 musicals in development or pre-production (according to the IMDB), including adaptations of hit Broadway stage shows such as Cats, Gypsy and Follies, remakes of classical Hollywood films like West Side Story (in pre-production, to be directed by Steven Spielberg) and South Pacific, as well as big budget event television like Fosse/Verdon which tells the story of Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon and their influential creative musical partnership.

Between 1974 (when US Box Office website boxofficemojo.com begin their data) and 2001 (the year of Moulin Rouge!’s release) only five live-action musical films reached the top 20 in the US box office (estimated ticket sales, adjusted for inflation). 1_This

low number over such a long time period, compared with the eleven to have reached the top 20 between 2002 and 2018, suggests a major shift in audience interest, which

(4)

has arguably permeated into the rest of popular culture. Discussing the rise of musical theatre in pop culture since the television hit Glee which aired from 2009 to 2015, journalist Paul Flynn says that “musical theatre has become the dominant musical force.” (2019) Here he sites global pop stars and their participation in new film

musicals where “Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Jennifer Hudson and Donald Glover [will] pivot their professional axis toward the hungry musical theatre market.” (2019)

1.1 Give ‘em the old razzle dazzle: Film Musicals in the 21st Century

If we are to agree with Rick Altman that “to understand the musical is to understand the overall cultural system in which it develops and makes its meaning” (1987, p.1) then in terms of examining the genre from a 21st Century perspective, it is useful to divide the first two (almost) decades of the 21st century into two distinct political eras of American cultural significance. The first, obvious, point pertains to the period after the terrorist attack on America in 2001, a time that changed the western world forever with Bush’s ‘War on Terror’, paranoia, accelerated neoliberalism, aggressive foreign policy, Islamophobia, gung-ho jingoism and the financial crash. The second era following this could then be defined as the current ‘Trumpian’ one. This era covers the period since Donald Trump’s election in 2016: a politically tumultuous time of ‘fake news’, scapegoating, protectionism, polarisation, nationalism and populism. If cinema broadly mirrors society, and Hollywood does this more narrowly with Western pop culture, then perhaps the uncertainty of these times could be read as a catalyst for the gradual resurgence the musical genre has made since the beginning of this century, especially given the fact, as Jane Feuer states, the musical is “always reflecting back on itself” (1993, p.2). Why have audiences slowly been returning to song and dance spectacles on the big screen? And if the nature of the musical is indeed fundamentally conservative, what does this mean for contemporary America and its values?

I argue that the duality between the nuances and contradictions of the musical genre’s conservatism and progressiveness, is linked or often defined by its nostalgic tendency to look to the past whilst often aesthetically, thematically and emotionally moving forwards. Therefore there is a certain degree of authenticity of emotion found within the artificiality of spectacle. Whilst musicals and nostalgia should not be seen as merely conservative, the nuances surrounding them are an interesting complication for a 21st century context.

(5)

Now, with its biggest popular resurgence since Julie Andrews ran through the Austrian Alps in The Sound of Music (1965), it is important to examine the socio-political

connotations of why and how one of cinema’s most significant genres has fluctuated in appeal so wildly across Hollywood’s history. This must be done first by briefly

assessing the genre’s own historical and theoretical past, whilst acknowledging that “the musical has always been, despite its accessible and effortless image,

multifaceted, hybrid, and complex” (citing Collins, 1988, Neale, 2000, p.105). There are numerous, debatable ways to pinpoint the origins of the American film musical, but most would agree that, as Susan Smith states, “it was born out of the arrival of sound movies” (2005, p1) in the late 1920s and influenced by everything from music hall and Viennese operettas to vaudeville and the Broadway stage. With its hey-day occurring from the mid 1930s to the late 1950s — the golden era of Hollywood’s studio system — the American film musical has been in and out of popular and critical favour for almost a century. In her work on the “integrated

musicals”2_{of the 1960s to the 1980s Kelly Kessler asserts that up until the 1950s “the}

Hollywood movie musical often served a dual role: profiting for the studios and

reaffirming traditional American values” (2010, p1). Some of the most notable films of the ‘Golden era’ of the Hollywood musical include Top Hat (1935), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Meet Me in St Louis (1944), On the Town (1949), An American in Paris (1951) and Singin’ in the Rain (1952), all of which featured the biggest film stars of the time: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, who, along with the studios who owned them (or at least their contactual rights), helped to define the American film musical genre itself with their distinct star personas and performance styles. With its Hollywood premiere in February 1929, Steve Cohan notes that “MGM’s

Broadway Melody… was ‘the first true musical film’. In fact, it was advertised with the famous slogan that came to exemplify the genre's appeal, ‘ALL TALKING, ALL

SINGING, ALL DANCING’” (citing Barrios 1995, 2002, p.4).

This emphatic description of the musical genre’s crucial spectacle element and the nature of this as entertainment was examined by Richard Dyer in his seminal 1977 article, which describes the musical as “professional entertainment” (Cohan, 2002,

(6)

p.19) and a form of “utopia” (Cohan, 2002, p.20). Dyer highlights the contradiction between the fact that, although this kind of “show biz” (Cohan, 2002, p.19)

entertainment “has been by and large conservative in this [20th] century” (Cohan, 2002, p.20),it should not dismiss the “implicit struggle within it” (ibid). The question of this variety of pop culture often creating an escapist form of entertainment is examined by Dyer, who identifies the utopian qualities found in musicals to be

“energy, abundance, intensity, transparency and community” (Cohan, 2002, p.24/25), and then goes on to locate the corresponding absence of qualities in everyday life, namely “scarcity, exhaustion, dreariness, manipulation and fragmentation” (Cohan, 2002, p.26). Rather than film and cinema visuals depicting to an audience what a utopian world may envision, Dyer argues that the “utopianism is contained in the feelings it embodies” (Cohan, 2002, p.20) for both characters and audience. This is also discussed in relation to the politics of utopian ideals on film by Mike Wayne, in which he reflects that Dyer’s specification of "the socially generated needs to which entertainment responds and which it mediates” (Wayne, 2002) is a useful expansion on the work of Frederic Jameson. Commenting specifically on Jameson’s work on Capitalism, the social order and utopian hopes, Wayne notes that Jameson does not in fact formulate an idea “in any detail of what ‘the fundamental hopes of the collectivity’ might be” (Wayne, 2002). Furthermore, Alan O’Shea notes that through the

identification of these needs “Dyer is probing the ways the cinema recognises the frustrations and inhibitions embodied in contemporary institutions and offers glimpses of transformed social relationships” (O’Shea, 2013). This fundamental notion of

escaping from and escaping to a better world, a better self or a better system, is linked to O’Shea’s remarks on the idea that the popularity of these films is due to the fact that “they celebrate instances of intense involvement which we only rarely

experience in ‘real life’ but desire more of” (O’Shea, 2013). This question of emotion and intensity is also, arguably, one of the reasons that genre cinema, and especially the musical – perhaps due to its gendered, feminine connotations – has more

frequently been dismissed as a lesser ‘low art’ form. This is also significant when examining notions of authenticity, as the duality between truthful emotions and intensity of feelings against the artificiality of a utopian fantasy is consistently produced within the musical genre.

Though Dyer’s work has been hugely influential, one of the most prominent theorists on the study of genre, particularly the musical, remains Rick Altman. Altman’s

(7)

(1987, p.14) the study of which therefore influences and “informs the society of which it is a part“ (1987, p.15). His response to genre theory’s lack of “methodological self-consciousness” (1987, p.15) and the fact that it had within film studies remained “complacently untheoretical” (1987, p.15) was his book The American Film Musical, a “treatise on how to study genre” (1987, p.15) in which he not only traces the

debatable histories of the musical but also conducts a detailed examination of what a musical is and how to define it. He does this first of all by proclaiming the importance of genre itself and then by meticulously laying out the structural significance of the musical film, whilst also bringing to bear other significant factors such as industry, audience and criticism. Thus, any work on film genre, especially the musical, is still heavily influenced by Altman’s work, as well as stressing the importance of a more contemporary theoretical climate, such as questions of affect and intersectionality, which are lacking from Altman’s original work.

As previously noted, it is important to turn towards Broadway for a moment as a discussion on the musical’s resurgent popularity in the 21st century would be remiss if one were to ignore the huge cultural and critical impact that Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton: An American Musical has had on the musical form in recent popular culture. The record-breaking, Pulitzer prizewinning stage-show about The Founding Fathers of the United States, blends traditional musical theatre such as Gilbert and Sullivan, with contemporary hip-hop and became a global cultural phenomenon after it debuted in 2015. The show, which celebrated immigrants and their contribution to American society, was a project born of the Obama era, with the cast performing early versions of the songs at the White House, but continued its success into the age of Trump; in 2016 the cast famously addressed the Vice-President elect Mike Pence on their concerns regarding the lack of protection of diverse Americans from the incoming administration. The overt political message of the show struck a chord with a new politicised generation, not only encouraging and attracting new audiences to the musical genre on stage, but the success of Miranda himself inevitably brought his talents and audiences back to the big screen. With studios attracted by his global fame, he was cast in a starring role in Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns (2019) and wrote the songbook for Moana as well as a forthcoming adaptation of his previous Broadway show In the Heights (due for release in 2020), with a film adaptation of Hamilton itself also in development at the time of writing.

(8)

1.2 Genre and Subgenres

Altman’s methodological approach to the study of the musical extends to his emphasis on the importance and categorisation of subgenres, whereby he states that:

By insisting on treating the genre as a whole, we may gain a sense of certain general patterns, but more often than not we lose the important ability to distinguish between those periods when the genre does in fact evolve as a single signifying system and those more frequent periods when there is a major divergence among…the methods of signification employed by differing subgenres (Altman, 1987, p.122)

Just as he does when he defines the musical itself, he identifies subgenres not with the “accepted notion and corpus of the musical” (1987, p.124) but instead based on “the elaboration of a common signifying system” (1987, p.124). Applying his central concept of the musical genre as based around the relationship between the “love plot and the cultural plot which it supports” (1987, p.126), Altman disregards recognising categories related to studios, performers and location, for example. Instead he

identifies three approaches to the “couple/culture relationship” (ibid). (See chart below.)

The Fairy Tale Musical The Show Musical The Folk Musical

“Restoring order to the couple accompanies and

parallels…restoration of order to an imaginary kingdom, suggesting the metaphor ‘to marry is to govern’” (1987, p.126)

“Creating the couple is associated with the creation of a work of art…reacalling the traditional metaphor according to which ‘to marry is to create’” (1987, p.126)

“Integrating two disparate individuals into a single couple heralds the entire group’s communion with each other and with the land which sustains them,

suggesting…’marriage is community’” (1987, p.126)

There are many other subgenres and theoretical categories for the musical in addition to those in Altman’s work, such as the jukebox musical, an increasingly successful subgenre in recent years, which uses popular music and retroactively fits them into some form of narrative, an example of this being the ABBA musical Mamma

Mia!(2008). However, the focus of this thesis will be on case studies which come under the ‘show musical’ heading although there are, arguably, ways of categorising them within the other two of Altman’s subgenres.

(9)

Altman defines the ‘show musical’ as films which “construct their plot around the creation of a show, with the making of a romantic couple both symbolically and casually related to the success of the show.” (1987, p.200) This particular subgenere has been a consistent thread throughout the history of the American musical, from The Broadway Melody (1929), Babes in Arms (1939) and The Band Wagon (1953) to Cabaret (1972), Fame (1980) and Dreamgirls (2006). When discussing the ‘show musical’ it is important to note the importance of the relationship between the film musical and its Broadway, theatrical roots: a significance or at least relevance which has often been debated amongst theorists. Steve Cohan notes that when musicals first gained popularity “the studios transferred Broadway musical comedies and operettas to the screen, more or less as filmed stage plays” (2002, p.5), which the audiences then quickly lost interest indue to their lack of originality. However, “studio as well as audience interest in the genre was…renewed in 1933” (Cohan, 2002, p.5) with Warners’ ‘show musical’ 42nd Street, thus sustaining interest until the mid

1950s. Altman’s emphasis on structure and subgenres also stresses the importance of distinguishing between Hollywood and Broadway and he notes that the “show musical regularly borrows the material conditions of Broadway theatre as its subject

matter…but…borrows little directly from the texts of Broadway musicals.” (1987, p.130) The ‘show musical’ is most often referred to as the 'backstage musical’ which is, as Altman points out, “the best known and the most often commented upon” (1987, p.200) partly due to its responsibility for reviving the genre during the 1930s. Although Altman’s 1980s work on the musical touches on films after the genre’s 1950s peak, he does not explore in as much detail the ensuing decades and the musical’s tumultuous period. However, feminist film theorists such as Kelly Kessler and Jane Feuer have since developed Altman's genre theory to explore the musical genre in the later parts of the 20th century, especially highlighting theoretical

readings of representation and identity. Identifying an absence in theoretical studies of the later 20th century film musical, Kessler’s work focuses on masculine gender roles in cinema and the social changes that moved musicals between the mid 1960s to the early 1980s away from the “traditional American values” (Kessler, 2010) that they once so frequently reaffirmed. Kessler acknowledges the period she focusses on was not a highpoint in terms of musical cinema’s popularity, suggesting a decline in part due to the early 1960s “emergent influence of the French New Wave and American

(10)

the 1950s as “star contracts disappeared, budgets dropped, and the musical waned…” (2010, p.1). Although there were some stand out success stories for the American musical that gave studios and fans hope for the genre’s resurgence during this period, such as Robert Wise’s The Sound of Music (1965), she notes that the subsequent prominent releases, Doctor Dolittle (1967) and Hello Dolly! (1969), were merely “big-budget musical bombs” (2010, p.2). Yet Kessler pinpoints in the musicals of this era a “wide scale shift in generic form, recurrent reflection of social unrest, and an overall expression of a conflicted sense of community…and construction of gender.” (2010, p.3). Kessler’s examination of “how social change both drives and finds itself

represented in the shifting product” (ibid) highlights the changing role that masculinity and gender played during the time of her focus, and notes the “ultimate instability of genre” (2010, p.4) by referring to how the shift in “gendered tastes” (2010, p.2) and “cinematic norms” (2010, p.2) meant a shift in casting and performance. Thus the earlier stars that represented a more “idealistic Americana” (ibid) such as Howard Keele, Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, were replaced by edgier, more conflicted performers including Keith Moon, Clint Eastwood and Steve Martin.

Jane Feuer’s work on the Hollywood film musical during the 1980s and 90s discusses “the emergence of the teen musical as a ‘post-modern’ genre“ (1993, p.123) citing the popularity of films such as Flashdance (1983) and Dirty Dancing (1987), which have continued to connect with audiences in popular culture from Save The Last Dance (2001), Step Up (2006) and Pitch Perfect (2012) to the High School Musical (2006-2008) series and musical episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (2001). In her discussion of this “re-construction of the genre” (1993, p.123) she notes the

importance of looking back at the history of musical film’s reception, the change in audience mood and the “shift in the audience for musicals from a mass audience to specialised ‘cult’ audiences” (1993, p.123). At the time of her writing in the early 1990s she argues that “the only form of musical that retains widespread popularity is the teen musical” (1993, p.123).

Noting the difficulty in defining ‘cult’ audiences, Feuer rightly identifies the “gay male urban subculture” (1993, p.123) which she notes brings into question Altman’s

readings of the musical as structured by heteronormative ideology. Since the 1970s, 80s and 90s there have been countless theoretical and academic studies on the film musical from a queer studies perspective and, undoubtably, musicals both on and off the screen have been a hugely significant part of LGBTQ+ culture for as long as it has

(11)

existed. However, although I will touch on this throughout this thesis especially when looking at gender and performance, I will not be using queer theory as the basis of my theoretical approach.

As I have already mentioned, the definition of what constitutes a musical film has been and still is disputed: for the purposes of keeping this thesis within a manageable scope, I will, for the most part, not be focussing on musical bio-pics or animated films, despite the fact that they do come under the broader umbrella of the genre. Therefore the significance of Disney’s animation output will not be addressed in full, whilst I do acknowledge that any musical success in the 1990s was mostly due to the likes of Beauty and The Beast (1991), Aladdin (1993) and The Lion King (1994) (“in terms of estimated attendance, it's easily the biggest animated movie of the past 50 years.” (Box office Mojo, 2011) However, I would also argue that the rising popularity of film musicals this decade has contributed to the, some might say, cynical remaking of all of these into live action features – a corporate ploy to capitalise on the nostalgia of the adults who came of age in the 1990’s. As stated in an article about the rise of musical popularity on both Broadway and film:

Richard Kraft, the creative director and producer of Disney’s La La Land in Concert at the Hollywood Bowl, believes the pop culture climate has warmed to musicals at just the right moment. “We have an entire generation that grew up watching Disney animated musicals,” he said. “They have no problem with the notion that a character breaks into song to express their feelings…” (J. Nevins, The Guardian, 2017)

Nostalgia is significant here, for just as the 1970s audience lapped up the reminiscent MGM anthologies of the bygone era in the That’s Entertainment series – a showcase collection of the studio’s greatest hits – Noughties audiences are continuing to indulge in the Walt Disney product they loved as children.

The tagline for the first That’s Entertainment, was ‘Boy do we need it now’. Released in 1974, it was the year before the end of the Vietnam War and the same year as President Nixon resigned as a culmination of the Watergate scandal, which caused political paranoia and distrust across the nation. It was a prescient, overt tagline and, as Cohan states:

(12)

historical distance of recent audiences from the genre’s once important cultural function as the epitome of mass-produced, mass-consumed entertainment. (2002, p.1)

From a 21st century socio-political viewpoint, this “nostalgic gloss”, this act of looking towards the past, has been re-worked into a product of regressive conservatism. Whether in Trump’s “Make America Great Again” or the “Take Back Control” of Britain’s Brexit campaign, the nostalgia here has produced a commodity of an

inauthentic, idealism for a time that never was. However, the self reflective nature of utilising the collective memory of western cultural history has also produced a new kind of cinema in the contemporary musical: one which borrows, bends and

transforms this genre of entertainment and spectacle into a new commodity of

authentic emotion and, in many cases, a progressive ideology that looks towards the future and moves away from the past.

I will argue that the nature of authenticity is a key element of the musical genre’s contemporary resurgence and throughout its history, with the artificial nature of its aesthetic being at its core, from the sound stages to the spontaneous act of bursting into song or performing a perfectly choreographed dance. There is a lack of realism inherent in the musical with the fantastical nature of romantic unions and coincidental meetings, yet now the progression of contemporary gender and race politics,

emotional integrity and production values, all of which have progressed in various degrees and forms in the 21st century are reflected back into the genre, bringing it forward whilst remaining in the mythical past.

In order to examine the American musical’s contemporary resurgence I will be

analysing three films as case studies. All released in the 21st century, these films are musicals which, in various ways, arguably reflect modern ideology whilst utilising the classical, conservative tropes of the ‘Golden Age’ American film musical. They are also all, in some form, backstage musicals, which as Feuer notes are “the most persistent subgenre” (1995, p.441) of the film musical, and all three examine what goes on behind the scenes of either the production or stage, on screen or within Hollywood itself. This revelation behind the metaphorical curtain functions to give pleasure to the audience by, as Feuer argues, “demystify[ing] the production of entertainment”

(1995, p.442). The films also all feature heteronormative romantic plot-lines and within the narrative structure of the backstage musical “the creation of the show [is] parallel with the “maturation of the off-stage love affair” (1995, p.441). Feuer’s

(13)

discussion of the "oscillation between demystification and remythicization” (1995, p.443) involved in what she describes as the “myth of entertainment” is key in terms of the way authenticity and realism go alongside the production of a stylised

artificiality often present in film musicals. The enjoyment or pleasure involved in seeing this genre concurrently deconstructed and reconstructed for a new century is what I shall examine in terms of the 21st century musicals and in relation to the canonised musicals of the genre’s golden era.

Chapter two examines Baz Lurhmann’s Moulin Rouge!, the first big budget, successful musical to be released in the 21st Century, beginning a new kind of popularity for the film musical and bringing the discourse of postmodernism and pastiche to the genre with its self referential nature, MTV-music video aesthetics and borrowing of songs, styles and star personas.

Fifteen years later, Damian Chazelle’s La La Land (2016), which I shall focus on in Chapter three, takes the pastiche further with an overtly nostalgic yet contemporary set homage to musicals of the past. With an original screenplay and songs, the film gives stylistic homage to classical era films such Shall We Dance (1937) and An American in Paris (1951) whilst producing an authenticity of emotion and 21st Century themes through its performances, relationships and ideology.

Both Moulin Rouge! and La La Land gaze backwards onto the history of the American musical whilst redrawing the genre for a modern audience, with gender and sexuality brought to the fore and nostalgic aesthetics that produce questions of authenticity that also look towards the future, they are films which circle around the musical genre, constantly reflecting and re-examining its themes and concerns.

Finally and more narrowly, the fourth chapter will look at Bradley Cooper’s A Star is Born (2018) which readdresses the backstage musical in the form of the remake with its fourth incarnation not only scrutinising the nature of authenticity but also inwardly examining itself as a musical which has consistently reshaped itself, producing a new, revised version for each era of its release.

(14)

2 MOULIN ROUGE! AND THE POSTMODERN MUSICAL

A self declared story of “Truth, Beauty, Freedom and above all…Love”, Baz

Luhrmann’s extravagant Moulin Rouge! kicked off the first wave of Hollywood’s 21st century musical resurgence in 2001. The visually spectacular melodrama musical places its operatic, burlesque and music hall influences firmly to the fore as well as using cinematic and pop music references to bring turn of the 20th century Paris straight to contemporary audiences at the turn of the 21st.3

The last film of Luhrmann’s theatrical Red Curtain Trilogy4_{divided critics at the time of}

its release and continues to do so today. The story of a penniless writer (Ewan McGregor) who falls in love with a beautiful, consumptive courtesan (Nicole Kidman) at the titular bordello is told through an eclectic use of rock and pop songs from artists such as Nirvana, Elton John and David Bowie – or what Marsha Kinder describes as “humorous audio pastiche: a promiscuous poaching of familiar…songs from different decades that acquire new meaning within this new narrative context.” (2002)

Combined with the frantically fast cuts displayed in MTV music videos – “the epitome of a postmodern editing style” (Booker, 2007, p.7) – and the extreme, hyper-real, oversaturated aesthetics, this borrowing and fusion of styles, themes and motifs means that the “new meaning” discussed by Kinder derives from the pastiche itself and contributes to the fact that Moulin Rouge! has been consistently linked with postmodernism – specifically Frederic Jameson’s version of postmodernism – which, specifically in his discussion of the “nostalgia film’, argues for “the end of

individualism” (1982).

Pastiche here is referred to as the borrowing of other artistic styles that, in Jameson’s view, creates a world in which “stylistic innovation is no longer possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles… this means that contemporary or postmodernist art is going

3_{Ann van der Merwe notes Lurhman’s acknowledgement “that his process of song selection is}

largely indebted to the work of his predecessors. The use of anachronistic musical style, for

example, is "a very old idea in musicals,” he says, "like when Judy Garland sings 'Clang clang clang went the trolley,' in Meet Me in St. Louis… set in 1900. She is singing big band music from the 1940s, the music of her time, to let you into the characters of another time and another place.”” (2010, p.31)

4

After Strictly Ballroom (1992) and Romeo + Juliet (1996). “The term ‘Red Curtain’ is attributed to Luhrmann himself, who defines it in his DVD commentaries and press interviews as a theatricalized cinematic style that draws upon familiar stories and myths set in heightened created worlds and that demands audience participation through the storytelling devices of dance, Shakespearean prose or popular song.” (Hopgood.F, Screen, 2011)

(15)

to be about art itself in a new kind of way” (1982). Jameson specifies the use of pastiche in the nostalgia film as a sign that we “have become incapable of achieving aesthetic representations of our own current experience” (1982) and his version of postmodern art argues that the mimicry found in pastiche means that there is nothing individual, or unique about what is produced. This self-reflective “new way” of art now looking at itself is interesting not only in terms of its contradictory nature but also in its authentic validity, especially for the musical genre, one which is consistently in conflict with its overt artificiality and the authenticity of the heightened emotions produced both on screen and for a partaking audience.

Ann van der Merwe argues that Moulin Rouge! defies Jameson’s “end of individualism” with its unique originality, where she states that “for someone who relies so

extensively on preexisting material, Luhrmann has left an unusually distinctive mark on the film” (2010, p.31). Citing Luhrmann’s choice of score and song choices she says that:

The relationship his audience has with these songs is unusually specific. They are not recognisable simply as the romantic ballad or the up-tempo comedy number but as unique entities, songs belonging not only to another time and place but to another performer. (Van Der Merwe, 2010, p.31)

This bringing together of time, place and performer is a crucial element of how

Luhrmann consistently plays with the audience’s collective nostalgia to bring about an emotional reaction. From visual and audio aesthetics that recall musicals of the past to the pastiching and referencing of iconic performers such as Marilyn Monroe and Madonna, there is a confidence in the spectator’s knowledge of pop cultural and filmic history that both creates a playful sense of recognition and a new kind of cinematic musical experience. There is also an experiential, playful element in terms of the way Moulin Rouge! was promoted. The film’s pop music soundtrack released the cover version of the song “Lady Marmalade” as its first single, performed by highly successful pop stars of the early Noughties: Christina Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mýa, and Pink. The song and the video, which recreated the Moulin Rouge! set and used a similar aesthetic, were huge international hits and brought the MTV music video phenomenon that is so overt in the aesthetic of Moulin Rouge! into the marketing and branding of the film.

(16)

Whether Luhrmann’s deliberate use of cultural, collective nostalgia and pop culture play to encourage the audience to participate is cynical, vapid and manipulative or artistically creative, exciting and intriguing has been debated for almost twenty years, and as Der Merwe observes, “if it is not a postmodern Hollywood musical, then it is at least indebted to both postmodernism and the film musical and is important to the history of each” (2010, p.37).

The film’s production of nostalgia is visible and audible from its opening shots, where the sound of the audience mingling turns to applause as the theatrical red curtains open, and, as Kinder describes in discussing the impact of the soundtrack, “the 20th Century-Fox jingle is more recognisable than its vintage visual logo, and the silhouette of the orchestra conductor in the movie palace reminds us that music was a key

component of cinema from its inception” (2002, p.53). This “reflexive opening” (Kinder, 2002, p.53) does not only play on the audiences association of the Fox logo and jingle, a symbol of old Hollywood and classic cinema, but also the deliberate experiential use of sound and placing of the setting is intended to return audiences to the time of early cinema, emphasised by the flickering of the title cards. Furthermore, the orchestra’s opening medley which segues in from the Fox jingle, begins with the opening bars of The Sound of Music (1965), which are instantly recognisable to a Western audience, and which therefore serve as a major signifier that what we are about to witness is a return to cinematic musical form: a nostalgic reflection of the heady Alpine heights of the genre’s past.

(17)

In his work on performance and gender in the musical, Michael Charlton suggests that the possible recovery of and revived interest in the contemporary American musical is linked to “the question of nostalgia in the postmodern musical” (2012, p.1/2) and considers Jameson’s postmodernism in terms of the “loss of authentic emotion in the de-centred audience” (2012, p.1/2); it is not a lack of emotion, rather that the

audience now connects to an emotion that is “free floating and impersonal” (2012, p.2). The link between nostalgia and authenticity is crucial here, for this nostalgic turn with its tendency to recreate or recall memories, eras, times or places that perhaps do not always convey the absolute truth, or where at least there is often an aura of artificiality, has frequently been debated amongst theorist in terms of its value and contribution towards the changing nature of contemporary society and culture. Susannah Radstone’s work on the subject cites Fred Davis as an early commentator who she states “described nostalgia as ‘one of the… more readily accessible

psychological lenses’ employed in the construction and reconstruction of identity in changing times…” (2007, p. 113, Citing Davis, 1977). She goes on to say that “an overarching theme of this contemporary nostalgia criticism associates nostalgia with representations of the past and a culture of spectacle” (2007, p.131) and argues there has been a distinct lack of studies around comparing form, genre and medium with regards to contemporary nostalgia which has so often been criticised for

“commercializing the past” (2007, p.114). This is significant when retuning to Charlston’s discussion of Jameson’s “loss of authentic emotion” as the question of what is real, in terms of the collective memory of an audience and emotional affect, is so often communicated by the postmodernism tendency to be self reflective.

Furthermore, Radstone debates this notion of the authenticity of memory, in a discussion of David Lowenthall who states that it “‘is wrong to imagine that there exists some non-nostalgic reading of the past that is by contrast “honest” or

authentically “true”” (2007, p.115, citing Lowenthal, 1989), thereby questioning not just the notion of an authentic past but also raising the question of authentic memory of that particular past.

With regards to the musical, Radstone’s “culture of spectacle” and the common discourse around nostalgia and authenticity is hugely significant in terms of the

(18)

artificiality, style and the shattering of narrative structure in the place of spectacle.” (2012, p.4) However, if any musical could be said to have taken this artificiality further into the 21st century Moulin Rouge! would be it.

Much has been said about Moulin Rouge!’s multitude of cultural references from Opera to Bollywood but it is Luhrmann’s consistent engagement with the audiences collective memory and cultural nostalgia that defines it so prominently and that has been the cause of so much derision56_{. For example, Ilana Snyder uses Jameson to critique}

Luhrmann’s nostalgic turn, arguing that his use of pastiche is an indication of a lack of "unique and personal style” (2002, p.176) and that his recalling of past forms and ideas shows that he is “unwilling to fashion a representation of current experiences” (2002, p.176).

Snyder’s assertion that “Moulin Rouge! illuminates several characteristics of the material and cultural conditions that shape our lives…: fragmentation, superficiality and a failure to engage with the past” (2002, p.176) is interesting in relation to

Svetlana Boym’s seminal work on nostalgia where she dismisses much of the criticism of the phenomenon she defines as “a sentiment of loss and displacement, but…also a romance with one’s own phantasy” (2007). Her appreciation and examination of nostalgia’s societal and political value and understanding of it as a “symptom of our age” (2001, p.xvi) brings about further questions of what Moulin Rouge! signifies in terms of its place in cinematic musical history, a genre so often wrapped up in nostalgic clothing, as well as the meaning it conveys through its narrative and thematic reading as a postmodern, self referential, parodic text.

Returning to the interrogation of both Luhrmann’s authorship and Moulin Rouge’s narrative and aesthetic ingenuity, M. Keith Booker confirms that the film’s

“fragmented and frenetic MTV-style editing contribute[s] to the production of a self-consciously dazzling postmodern spectacle” (2007, p.7) but questions not just its conceptual originality but its artistic authenticity, arguing that Moulin Rouge! is “all flash: its narrative is not just conventional but utterly banal…little more than a

5_{See for example:}

Hudson, E. (2011) Moulin Rouge! and the Boundaries of Opera. The Opera Quarterly, 27(2), pp.256–282

Larson, K. (2009) Silly Love Songs: The Impact of Puccini's "La Bohème" on the Intertextual Strategies of "Moulin Rouge!". Journal of Popular Culture, 42(6), pp.1040–1052.

6_{See for example:}

Gopal, Sangita & Moorti, Sujata, (2011) Bollywood in Drag: Moulin Rouge! and the Aesthetics of Global Cinema.

(19)

collection of sentimental bourgeois cliche’s” (2007, p.7). Yet the sentiment and romantic plotting of Moulin Rouge! is not only where the audience’s purportedly bourgeois pleasure is derived from, but it is also the structural foundation of the musical genre and opera before that. For as Rick Atman says, “in the musical the couple is the plot.” (1987, p.35) and the use of these narrative romantic conventions and heightened sensations is where other critics argue this as a successful production of emotional affect. In Moulin Rouge!, postmodern pastiche is at the core of the

setting and nostalgic aesthetic, but the central couple, Satine and Christian, are the plot and the heart of the film. Thus, whether or not the audience invests in and

believes the authenticity of their romance is the driving force behind the film, and the longevity of its popularity is therefore, arguably, not born of its experimental use of pop music or self-reflexive knowingness but its production of an authentic love. This is also reflected in the genre itself and Kinder sees Moulin Rouge! “as a brilliant celebratory pastiche of the movie musical that highlights defining characteristics of the genre” (2002, p.52) where there is a tension between the “sentimentalizing romantic love that always pushes toward melodrama” (2002, p.52) and the “edgy reflexive irony…that always keeps the genre wavering on the verge of comedy, parody and satire” (2002, p.52). Furthermore, she points out the contrast between the fact that the exaggeration of the film’s emphasis on love “suggests that this blatantly artificial genre may be the only realm where such love can still be found, let alone flourish” (2002, p.52). Therefore, there is an authenticity of emotion evoked in Moulin Rouge! where the nature of this emotion is not only part of its generic heritage but derives from its overt thematic and narrative fixation on authentic love itself.

McGregor’s Christian so often uses well known lyrics to assert the fact that he believes in love (“Love is a many splendour thing…all you need is love”) which, in his

knowingly comic and expressly ironic performance style at first creates a distancing from the meaning, in other words, we don’t initially believe in Christian’s assertions. However, these proclamations of love gain credibility as the film progresses.

The emphasis on the narrative and emotional significance of the film’s romantic

authenticity is most evident when we arrive at the point of Christian’s composition and singing of “Come What May”, the duet he writes “as a testament to the abiding but forbidden love he shares with Satine…the movie's only original song” (Kehler, 2005). Altman asserts that “in music as in iconography, the duet is the musical’s centre of

(20)

p.37). Here, the structure of both the film and the couple’s relationship is both visually and thematically foregrounded; with the tonal shift from the heightened, bold reds and blues of their first meeting and falling in love, the palette is now more muted and naturalistic, and the fact that this is the only original song in the film serves to

emphasise the authenticity and true nature of their love at this moment and throughout the narrative, both for the audience and for each-other.

2.1 The Spontaneity of Spectacle

The musical genre’s consistent contradictions between artificiality and spectacle, and realism and authenticity are touched upon in Jane Feuer’s discussion on the various “myth[s] of entertainment” (1995, p.441) and the ways in which “the self-reflexive musical” (1995, p.441) continues to perpetuate them. One of these myths is “the myth of spontaneity” (1995, p.443) which describes the use of “bricolage” (1995, p.444) in classical backstage Hollywood musicals such as Vincente Minelli’s The Band Wagon (1953) and Stanley Donnen and Gene Kelly’s seminal Singin’ in the Rain where the performers use the props and objects on set to “create the imaginary world of musical performance” (1995, p.444). Here the backstage element of Moulin Rouge! continues the “spontaneous realism…achieved through simulation” (1995, p.444) in the “Spectacular, Spectacular” sequence. Where, in Singin in the Rain’s “Good

Morning”, the three leads stay up all night trying to save the show by turning the film-within-a-film The Dueling Cavalier into The Dancing Cavalier; i.e they save the show

(21)

by turning it into a musical, the Bohemians of Moulin Rouge! save their

musical-within-a-musical by using the props of Satine’s Elephant boudoir to produce an off the cuff musical spectacular to convince the villain, The Duke (Richard Roxburgh), to fund the show. Furthermore, in true self-reflective form, the characters also draw upon the love triangle narrative that has just been set up by the film itself between Christian, Satine and The Duke, once again reaffirming the centrality of the romance narrative whilst emphasising the authenticity of the spontaneity of musical entertainment.

2.2 The Sparkling Diamond? Nostalgic Reflections on Sexuality and Gender The “Come What May” sequence not only cements the true, authentic love between the central couple, but also add to the production of authenticity of identity, especially in terms of performance and sexuality. Arguably, this is the first time the audience has seen Kidman’s Satine at her most authentic, her most vulnerable. In Christian’s bedroom, she is away from the confines of her extravagant prison where she must perform both sexual acts and dance numbers for money whilst wearing constricting, revealing outfits. Here she wears a loose fitting robe, there is no need to perform and she can be herself in Christian’s presence.

The discussion of sexual politics around Satine’s positioning is further drawn upon by Kehler in terms of the narrative, which she states:

Raises questions of gender performance, as when Satine deliberates a strategy to seduce the Duke. "What's his type," she asks Zidler: "wilting flower, bright and bubbly,

Image 4: Spontaneity in “Spectacular, Spectacular” - Moulin Rouge! (2001)

Google images Image 3: Spontaneity in “Good Morning” - Singin’

in the Rain (1952)

(22)

Here Satine acts out each of these gender stereotypes to Jim Broadbent’s Master of Ceremonies/Pimp Harold Zidler in a deliberate commodification of her sexuality. Yet arguably this scene is performed for humour, and the positioning of the camera does not objectify or leer over the body of Kidman/Satine, staying in close up on her expressive face. Furthermore Kehler notes that despite it’s brothel setting, many critics complained of the films chasteness and lack of sex but argues that it “refuses to naturalize the misogynistic gaze popularized by classic Hollywood cinema, a gaze that reproduces the inequities of the social hierarchy by positioning women as mere erotic objects” (2005, citing Mulvey 21, 25).

Examining the role of the postmodern musical in constructing gender and sexual identities and citing the importance of the star performer, Charlton argues that “the spectacular musical number is accepted as a medium through which the star

performer asserts his or her persona through song” (2012, p.4). Within this context, this scene is discussed by him in relation to the star quality of Marilyn Monroe. Taking place straight after Satine’s performance of Monroe’s iconic “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” (from the Howard Hawks musical Gentleman Prefer Blondes (1953)), he recognises that this is “the film’s own commentary on its invocation of Monroe and other star personae” (2012, p.9). Referring to Kidman’s performance and Satine’s acting out each of these stereotypes, he argues that “Monroe’s breathy voice and sometimes exaggerated body language are evoked” (2012, p.3) and “Kidman becomes nothing more than a screen on which to project a nostalgic/ironic ode to Monroe that simultaneously celebrates and mocks her exaggerated sexuality” (2012, p.3). Here, notions of gender, sexuality and performance return to the question of nostalgia, for these songs are “full of connotations related to their original

performance contexts” (van der Mer, 2010, p.31), yet just as Altman’s structuralism centres the classical Hollywood musical around “the male-female duality” (1987, p.32), the core of postmodern musical is centred around the duality of nostalgia; the enjoyment of and partaking in a collective remembering that is concurrently culturally void and emotionally authentic. As Kehler argues, “the artificial and recycled

simultaneously express the passions we believe to be neither empty nor exclusively physical,” (2005) and therefore there is emotional substance, or authentic validity produced even from an at first seemingly artificial surface. Thus sexuality and gender also become a site of authenticity for the audience.

(23)

In evoking such famous musical numbers as "Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend”, along with the epitome of the Hollywood star in Monroe, Moulin Rouge! does not merely “celebrate and mock” Monroe’s star persona as a symbol of sexuality, but it also lifts the genre itself up into a triumphant spotlight of historical, reflective applause;

returning to the structures, themes and icons that the genre had for so long produced and reflecting the ever turning mirrorball back into a 21st century audience.

The notion of emotional authenticity produced in both the spectator and the

characters on screen returns to another of Feuer’s myths, the “myth of the audience” (1995, p.449). Feuer again discusses this in reference to Singin’ in the Rain which ends with a scene set in a packed film auditorium on the opening night of The Dancing Cavalier. She asserts that “the use of theatrical audiences in the films provides a point of identification for audiences of the film” (1995, p. 451) and I would argue that this identification within the place of spectatorship thus leads to another site of

authenticity. If they, as on screen audiences, and we, as off-screen audiences, can identify with the emotional responses of the leading protagonists, then the reality of our emotional enjoyment of the film will be cemented.

The interrogation of sexuality and gender in Moulin Rouge! becomes a scene of

authenticity through both the central relationship of Christian and Satine, and through the audience response. Just as there is a contrasting duality in the regressive and progressive nature of nostalgia, so there is with the sexual and gender dynamics of these main protagonists.

Image 6: Nicole Kidman sings “Diamond are a Girls Best Friend” in Moulin Rouge! (2001)

Google images Image 5: Marilyn Monroe sings “Diamond are

a Girls Best Friend” in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

(24)

The final scene of Moulin Rouge! once again recalls nostalgic memories of Singin' in the Rain, as the conclusion to the on-screen “shows”, and to the romantic couplings, both take place in the opening night auditoriums with a watching audience. However there is a noticeable difference in sexual politics portrayed in each. In Singin’ in the Rain, Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) runs away from the stage after her humiliation, where it has been revealed that she is singing behind the curtain for Jean Hagen’s Lina Lamont. It is her lover Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) who holds the authority and power here, both visually (he is looking down at her from the height of the stage), and narratively. He is the Hollywood star who can either make or break Kathy’s career by choosing to announce to the audience that she has all the talent; reinforcing the patriarchal norms of the American film industry and its decision makers as well as the common Hollywood narrative consisting of a female who lacks agency being rescued or saved by a male.

However, in Moulin Rouge!, the scene is more complicated. It is Christian who, rejected and hurt, walks away from Satine after throwing money at her on the stage and spitting the lines “I’ve paid my whore.” He walks through the enraptured

audience as Satine stands watching down from the stage and both characters are humiliated, but Satine has the visual upper hand from high up on the stage as well as the power to reunite them with a reprise of “Come What May”, the song that signifies the authenticity and reality of their love. Satine and Christian are fragile, broken and hurt but they must play out their pain in front of a watching audience who believe this is part of the show; they are partaking in the drama of the relationship, along with us as spectators of the film.

Furthermore, in Moulin Rouge! the on-screen audience for Satine’s projection of sexuality transforms throughout the film, from her first, introductory scene with “Diamonds Are A Girls Best Friend” with the already discussed connotations of her as a commodity for the audience, to the final scene on stage where she has moved from the dance hall to the theatre and is now performing as an actress to entertain as opposed to a dancer and prostitute to seduce. This reinforces not only the authentic development of Satine’s character and agency but the change of setting and place also serves to emphasise the significance of Moulin Rouge! as an authentic production of entertainment, as the success of the backstage musical within the film encourages applaud for the film itself.

(25)

In terms of the “myth of the audience” the curtain in both Singin’ in the Rain and Moulin Rouge! plays a significant role in these two final scenes. For if the curtain represents the barrier between the audience and the truth of what goes on behind it, then it also represents the line between the myth and demystification of

entertainment. In Singin’ in the Rain, Kathy and her superior voice are obscured from and then revealed to the audience within the film. However, in Moulin Rouge! the on screen audience sees the final romantic reunion between Christian and Satine but it is not until the curtain falls that Satine dies in Christian’s arms, the audience still

applauding a successful show and obscured from the vision of the reality of death, still entertained. Therefore the spectators of the musical films Moulin Rouge! and Singin’ in the Rain themselves are given the ability to be entertained in front of the curtain and to identify with the authenticity of deception or lies behind it.

Altman’s affirmation that “genres are social as well as aesthetic categories” (Altman, 1987, p.14) is relevant in terms of looking at the social constructs of this most aesthetically produced works of generic combinations. Reflecting on Altman’s discussion on the production of meaning, Yang states that mixing the conventional

Image 7: Kathy and Christian leave the stage in Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and Moulin Rouge! (2001)

(26)

divergent meanings” (2008, p.270) and that in the case of Moulin Rouge! it

“simultaneously recuperates and destabilises the film musical’s ideological constructs that cluster around notions of entertainment, community and romantic love (2008, p.270). Therefore Moulin Rouge’s deliberate merging of “pre-existing genres…to conflate past and present ways of ordering experience” (Yang, 2008, p.270) not only reaffirms the conventions, pleasures and spectacle of the traditional Hollywood

musical, but whilst borrowing and evoking songs, stars and musicals themselves from the past, these reflective tropes of nostalgia also produce a brand new genre of

postmodernism for the future, whilst continuing to highlight the ongoing questions of authenticity, gender, sexuality and performance that have been so fundamental to the genre’s own historical past.

(27)

3 LA LA LAND AND THE PASTICHING OF HOLLYWOOD

When Warren Beaty and Faye Dunaway announced Damian Chazelle’s La La Land (2016) as the best picture winner at the 2017 Academy Awards, only to be shortly corrected minutes later and pushed aside for the actual best film winner Moonlight (2016), it caused a wave of debate amongst critics and theorists about the political and social ideology projected in La La Land and the current status of American culture in general. Amongst the socio-political discourse, criticism of its overt nostalgia for a lost Hollywood drew comparisons to Donald Trump’s regressive “Make America Great Again” slogans, with arguments that perhaps this film was as conservative as the new American President. The question also arose of what it meant that this arguably

conservative, heteronormative, Hollywood musical had, in the end, lost out to a quietly lyrical portrait of a gay black man. Was this the signal that Hollywood was changing with the times? For like the musical itself, the Academy Awards are, and always have been, about Hollywood holding a mirror onto itself. Was Hollywood rejecting its past glories? Or was it merely an attempt to rectify the #OscarsSoWhite moment that began in 2015 in protest at the consistent lack of diversity amongst the nominations? Nevertheless, La La Land achieved six Oscar wins and despite the divisive, yet inevitable backlash that ensued, the commercial success of the film

began the second resurgence for the 21st century American film musical, proving that audiences were still keen to see song and dance spectacles on the big screen.

La La Land is part of the long tradition of Hollywood films that depict the business of Hollywood movie making, from Sunset Boulevard (1950) and A Star is Born (1954) to Mulholland Drive (2001) and Hail, Caesar! (2016). Yet perhaps the most well known of these, is also one of the most important musicals of Hollywood's history, Singin’ in the Rain (1952). Like Singin’ in the Rain, La La Land tells the story of a young, hopeful actress, Mia (Emma Stone) trying to make it big in Hollywood. Yet unlike Singin’ in the Rain its setting is contemporary, for where the 1952 film placed itself in the 1920s at the end of the silent film era to satirise how Hollywood coped with the coming of ‘talkies', La La Land is set firmly in the 21st Century. However, its cinematic heart appears to be in the past and it is a film which declares its nostalgic sentiment for both the musical genre and the Los Angeles movie business with obvious gratification – as when Ryan Gosling’s Sebastian hangs Gene Kelly-like from a lamp post. It is the pleasure derived from knowledge of the genre’s past that the film attempts to evoke,

(28)

original models” (2017, p.126). Still, Pam Cook asserts that ”nostalgia can form part of a transition to progress and modernity” (2004, p.4), so whilst I would argue that the film's celebratory pastiching of classical Hollywood is what defines it and what ultimately made it so popular on its release, there are also ways in which it pushes the genre forward technically, aesthetically and thematically.

Sebastian declares “That’s LA, they worship everything and they value nothing” for just as Singin’ in the Rain both satirised and celebrated Hollywood and the early years of cinema, La La Land does not merely glorify the cinema of the past in empty

romanticism. In its portrait of demoralising auditions with casting directors eating and taking phone calls, constant rejection and the vapid small talk at pool parties it also conveys the vacuous nature of the LA movie business.

Like Moulin Rouge! (2001), La La Land is an original musical, written for the screen and not based on a previous Broadway show, however unlike Luhrmann’s creation, the songs were written directly for the film and thus unknown to its contemporary audience. So where in Moulin Rouge! pleasure and gratification come from hearing well known songs performed in a new setting, or playing on the nostalgic memories of the original performers (i.e The Sound of Music and Marilyn Monroe), La La Land’s sentimental cues derive from visual pastiche, narrative devices and the nostalgic notes of musical jazz influences from composers such as George Gershwin and Irving Berlin. Where Moulin Rouge! lends itself to an obvious reading of postmodernism with its fast cut editing and borrowing of songs and styles, the postmodern nature of La La Land’s is not as immediately apparent with its more classical form. However the film’s self-referential nature as it homages the Hollywood musical genre, and its overt use of

Image 8: Seb and Don hang from a lamppost in La La Land (2016) and Singin’ in the Rain (1952) Google images

(29)

pastiche within the aesthetics is still nonetheless a continuation of what in 2001, made Moulin Rouge! so distinct. With exactly fifteen years between them, they are still in dialogue with each other, both of them utilising motifs and visual cues from the classic musicals of the past in order to produce news musical experiences for the future. In various ways, La La Land’s production of ideological concepts is more conservative than Moulin Rouge!, whilst its originality and progressive nature is still apparent, even in terms of its release at a time when original musical films were rare to non-existent in the mainstream Hollywood arena.

The concept of pastiching or imitating from within the cultural field has been debated in terms of its artistic value and this has served La La Land with both positive and negative criticism. Ingeborg Hoesterey argues that cinematic pastiche “goes beyond mere quotation to comprise a complex medley and layering of different styles and motifs” (2001, p.46), which contradicts Frederic Jameson’s interpretation of pastiche, that the “borrowing” and “mimicry” of these past elements is without “satiric impulse, devoid of laughter” (1991, p.17) and is therefore “blank parody” (1991, p.17). It is clear that various elements of La La Land’s pastiching of its Hollywood past can be read as both complex and layered and also empty and “blank”. Yet, as with Moulin Rouge! it is this balance between the sometimes-regressive nature of nostalgia

against the complexity of emotions and styles this brings, that produces the authentic nature of this recreated version of the musical for the 21st Century.

3.1 Nostalgic Aesthetics and Glorifying the Golden Age

La La Land (again just as with Moulin Rouge!) reveals its nostalgic core with the opening title card, as the words ‘Presented in CinemaScope’ appear, recalling the Golden Age musicals of the 1950s – such as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and The King and I (1956) – an instant signal to the audiences collective memory that they will be encouraged to reflect on the genre’s past.

(30)

A significantly reflective set piece comes in the first act with the song “A Lovely Night”, when Mia and aspiring Jazz musician Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) walk home from an industry party. Amongst the backdrop of a colourful dusky skyline, they sit on a bench and perform a quarrelling duet which turns into what Altman describes as a “challenge dance” (1987, p.163), as was common in the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers RKO musicals of the 1930s. This scene overtly pastiches these iconic films such as Shall we Dance (1937) and even has a similar title to the “Isn’t this a Lovely Day” scene from Top Hat (1935). From the back and forth half spoken singing to the casual ease of the tap dancing, framed with the actors’ full bodies in shot — which as Neher points out is “revolutionary…after decades of movie musicals where slash-cutting and close-ups of legs and arms…” (2017, p.128) — the evocation of and homage to Fred and Ginger’s romantic chemistry evokes an instantaneous connection with these contemporary characters.

But this obvious quotation of the Hollywood musical’s past glories is not merely “blank parody”; not only is the classical framing style somewhat adventurous in

contemporary filmmaking terms, but there are also suggestions of progressive satire. For example, before she begins to dance, Mia sings the line “maybe this appeals, to someone not in heels…” and takes off her high heeled shoes and changes into tap shoes. This is a move that Ginger Rogers would never had done for comfort, for as is so often quoted “she did everything [Astaire] did…backwards and in heels.”7_{This is an}

amusingly pithy remark embodying so much of what the current 21st century gender debate entails in terms of the feminist movement and struggle against a patriarchal society and its demands, from gender pay gaps to body image expectations. Here, the

7_{There is much debate about where this quote originated though it is said to be from a 1982 cartoon by Bob} Thaves and not said by Rogers herself.

Image 9: La La Land (2016)

(31)

discomfort of high heels symbolises a particular type of pain and effort that women endure in order to appear beautiful, and the fact that Mia takes them off as part of a romantic courtship sequence arguably conveys a more progressive ideology than first appears.

3.2 Authentic emotions and real relationships

Anthony Carew’s claim that “critical acclaim for La La Land centred on how it both paid tribute to the musical's past and pushed the genre forward” (2018) is interesting to examine in terms of the overall notion of the contemporary musical and its pastiching of what has already gone before. If this new version of the musical genre were only to recycle the more successful versions of its previous incarnations it would be entirely regressive, however I argue that the overriding theme of authenticity throughout the narrative and within the texts of these films, and indeed La La Land, is where the film and entire genre achieves this move forward; for a film so heavily laden with the artificiality of the past, authenticity is in fact what drives it towards the future.

The film’s aesthetics overtly pastiche Hollywood and its history as the characters and narrative consistently gaze backwards with uncertainty, questioning the authenticity of their own ideals. Mia works in a cafe on a Hollywood studio lot, and in an early scene, she walks around the lot with Sebastian and tells him about her love of the film industry. As she reminisces about watching old films with her aunt, Mia points out “the

Image 10: Seb and Mia in La La Land (2016) and Fred and Ginger in Shall We Dance (1937) and Top Hat (1935)

Google images and personal image

G o o g l e i m a g e s

(32)

raising the subjects of one of Hollywood’s most well-known love stories, she establishes herself not just as a character obsessed with the romance of old Hollywood but with romance itself. Her career and her hopes are built on the

artificiality of dreams and of the Hollywood 'Dream Factory’. Later, when Mia writes a one woman play and performs it for Sebastian she says:

Mia: “It feels too nostalgic to me” Seb: “That’s the point.”

Mia: “…do you think people will like it?” Seb: “Fuck em”

This exchange serves as a reminder to the audience that the film knows that its overt nostalgia may easily be dismissed or disregarded, but its own confidence in itself – as with Sebastian’s confidence in Mia – serves to enforce another kind of authenticity, a real belief in the cultural values it wholeheartedly champions.

Sebastian’s own personal nostalgia and obsession with the past is manifested in his passion for jazz as he mourns the loss of what he deems to be real jazz, real clubs, real music. He says that authentic jazz is “dying…” and if we are to read Sebastian as perhaps a version of the director, Chazelle, this could be seen as an obvious

comparison between the musical genre of jazz and the cinematic genre of the musical, where in both of these cases Chazelle/Sebastian are on a mission to “save” them. However, there is a sense of stilted stagnation in this, and as Sebastian’s friend and bandmate Keith (played by singer John Legend) says to Sebastian, “How are you gonna be a revolutionary if you’re such a traditionalist?” Taking place within the narrative of a film so grounded in the traditions and form of the musical genre whilst attempting to produce new audiences, ideals and spectacle, this question is pointed as it highlights the fact that these genres are not just reliant on the past but must be able to evolve and transform in order to survive and move forward. From a socio-political standpoint, Sebastian’s obsession with “saving jazz” has been questioned in terms of its racial ideology and the reading of him as a ‘White Saviour’ character. As critic Noah Gittell says in his discussion of the La La Land backlash “it’s impossible to separate jazz from black history, and it’s downright foolish to do so in a film by, for and largely about white people” (2017). This element of the film therefore also brings