Unstaged Grief : Musicals and Mourning in Midcentury America (Music in American Life)

Johnson, Jake

University of Illinois Press（2025/02発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 160 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9780252046339
• DDC分類 791.436578

Full Description

Often dismissed as escapism, screen musicals of the 1960s in fact tapped into unspoken sadness about an America that was slipping away. Jake Johnson delves into film and television musicals of the era to examine their place in networks of grieving in America, for America, and about America.

The Golden Age of musical theater ended just as Elisabeth KÜbler-Ross's On Death and Dying debuted, and Johnson uses KÜbler-Ross's five stages to frame the intertwining of musicals and grief. He analyzes films like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and State Fair alongside paintings, poetry, and other images and texts to reveal how the musical theater engine built in the first half of the century broke down just as a new language emerged to describe the melancholy felt by people facing the end of the world they had known.

Nuanced and original, Unstaged Grief plumbs the grief, loss, and hope behind the Technicolor spectacle and rousing showstoppers.

Contents

How to Process This Book

Introduction--Grief Hides

First Stage: Denial and Isolation

Chapter 1--Frozen Figures

Second Stage: Anger

Chapter 2--Sobbin' Men

Third Stage: Bargaining

Chapter 3--Dead God

Fourth Stage: Depression

Chapter 4--Good Grief

Fifth Stage: Acceptance

Chapter 5--Deus ex machina

Codetta--Hope Shows

Notes

Index