This course is designed as an
introduction to a unique and polymorph genre, the musical. We will first focus
on the transatlantic roots of the genre (operettas, music-hall and variety,
revues, American vaudeville…) and the cross-fertilizing process at work in the
early development of musical comedy. We will then tackle a series of issues at
stake in canonical stage and screen works from the 1920s to the early 21st century, such as the
musical’s formal hybridity and the ambiguous politics collective production
often induced, the tensions between standardization and creativity,
particularly in the age of powerful cultural industries (from the Studio era to
present-day entertainment conglomerates), intermedial practices and transfers
(adaptations and rewritings), and the role of musicals, or popular culture and
mass media in general in shaping, spreading, and/or questioning national myths
and traditional discourses.
- Enseignant.e: Anne Martina