39,327
edits
Category:The Musical: Difference between revisions
m
cleanup categories
Looney Toons (talk | contribs) (quote cleanup) |
m (cleanup categories) |
||
Line 4:
"I dunno. I think they probably will."|''[[Phineas and Ferb]]'', "[[Title: the Adaptation|Rollercoaster The Musical]]"}}
A musical is any presentation in which a major part of the exposition and/or action comes through the medium of song (and often, but not necessarily, [[Summon Backup Dancers|dance as well]]). This sounds simple, but it has so many permutations that it is a loaded term for most people. For example, if you were to say that the only real difference between an opera and a musical is in what theaters they're showing it in, expect vehement protests -- and yet, trying to come up with definitions that will perfectly separate one from the other is just about impossible.
By far the most common perception of a musical is properly termed "musical theater", in which a play is performed with several songs interspersed at major plot points in the story. In the United States, these are most often associated with Broadway and Off-Broadway plays, and can be either original material or adapted from any number of sources (though adaptations are far more common than original musicals; see [[All Musicals Are Adaptations]]).
Line 13:
* First, theatre is typically more forgiving of [[Milking the Giant Cow|grand, melodramatic gestures]], such as... well, [[Musicalis Interruptus|bursting into song]] at highly emotional moments... that just look silly on film. Directors often deal with this by adding in some sort of frame story to justify all the singing (as in ''[[Chicago]]'', where the songs are envisioned as taking place [[Musical World Hypotheses|inside Roxie's head]]; the song "Class" had to be cut because there was no way to make it fit that scheme); alternatively, they can just go with the inherent high camp of the genre and hope they get away with it.
* Second, films have bigger budgets than stage plays and often need to have "big names" to make sure of having an audience to justify the budget -- but most Hollywood-standard "big names" can't carry a tune in a bucket. There was a time when the standard solution was to hire a ''real'' singer to [[Dubbing|dub over]] the "name" (as, for instance, with [[Natalie Wood]] being dubbed by Marni Nixon in ''[[West Side Story]]'' -- Nixon also dubbed Deborah Kerr in ''The King and I'' and [[Audrey Hepburn]] in ''My Fair Lady''), but this has fallen out of favour -- with the result that many "musical" films are distinctly ''un''musical. (See ''Camelot'' or ''[[The Phantom of the Opera]]''... actually, don't.) The alternative solution of [[Non-Actor Vehicle|hiring popular singers]] to play the roles brings with it the possibility that they can't act, which can be equally painful to watch.
There's also the problem that film and theater are very different media (as are television and film) and there are important differences that don't always translate well:
Line 19:
* Film can zoom in and pan out to control the audience's focus. Theatre controls this with dialogue and blocking (how actors and props are positioned). No less a luminary than [[Stephen Sondheim]] has said that one reason why it's hard to adapt a stage musical to film is that in film a close-up can tell you everything that a song can -- so why bother with the song?
* Film is image driven, where theater is dialogue driven. Film can have little or no dialogue and tell the story with pictures; theater can have very little physical movement and tell the story with verbal images.
* Theater can be effective with very sparse or abstract sets, movies demand detailed and authentic backgrounds.
However, film and theater have one thing in common: you get 90 minutes of butt time, and if you run longer than that, you'd BETTER be good.
The movie/musical adaptation cycle goes both ways, with many Broadway musicals nowadays being based on films -- the reasoning being that if it's already been a success in one medium, it's less of a risk -- and the musical versions of the films then being adapted and returning to celluloid again (e.g. ''[[The Producers]]'', ''Hairspray'', ''[[Little Shop of Horrors]]'').
There's also a new trend of the [[Jukebox Musical]]; adapting a musical play or film from the existing catalog of a musical artist, when the songs therein might not have anything to do with each other. ''[[Mamma Mia]]'' adapted from [[ABBA]], ''[[Movin' Out]]'' adapted from [[Billy Joel]], and ''[[Across the Universe (film)|Across the Universe]]'' adapted from [[The Beatles (band)|The Beatles]] are just a few examples. ''[[Moulin Rouge]]'', which didn't stick to one artist but repurposed a few decades of pop music, was the likely trend-setter here. Of course, this technique [[Older Than They Think|goes back a ways]]--''[[Singin' in the Rain|Singin in The Rain]]'' reused older songs--and prolific composers would often take songs from their less-successful shows and reuse them in new productions. (For example, [[Gilbert and Sullivan]] took the song "Climbing Over Rocky Mountain" from their early failure ''Thespis'' and dropped it in ''[[The Pirates of Penzance]]''.)
Line 33:
In the Indian Hindi-language film industry known colloquially as [[Bollywood]], musicals are the default genre. Japan has [[Takarazuka]], among other classes of stage theater.
Generally considered to be strongly related to or descended from [[Opera]]. See also its bastard cousin, [[On Ice]].
When this is incorporated into a TV show, see [[Musical Episode]]. A frequent sufferer of [[Title: the Adaptation]], probably because [[All Musicals Are Adaptations]].
Arguably, any non-fantasy musical could be considered an example of [[Magic Realism]].
Line 52:
[[Category:Music Tropes]]
[[Category:The Great Depression]]
| |||