Gender in the Musical Genre - Dissertation Example

the 1970s era was also considered the Golden Age for musicals and thrived with bold and fresh energy in the movies. There mark two different timelines for musicals and how dramatically the approach of the films changed and how the audiences perceived it. Harold Clurman, group theater co-founder once about films in 1935 that “Not only because its language of ecstatic slogans was colorful and new, but because its fervent cry for social amelioration seemed justified to practically everybody.”(Keller, 1997:70). About a piano play, Fred Kaz, it is said that “A piano player accompanies an occasional comic ditty, and provides mood and interlude music.” (Wilmeth, 1996:344). About the difference in genders, Nick Lacey believes that “Although clearly, many do not agree with the way genders are conventionally represented, the predominance of such patriarchal representations are a powerful socializing agent.” (Lacey, 1998:113).

During the 1930s, Hollywood suffered mildly due to the great depression in comparison to the rest of America or even the rest of the world. However, the success of Hollywood rested in its ability in creating fantasy realms of songs and dance. This influences the audiences as they could escape into it and imagine the songs and the dances as part of their own reality. As Hollywood studios could produce fanciful productions which included talented stars that were admired by people, the audiences who were suffering from depression continued to spend money in order to escape the reality of the world around them. When we discuss the representation of violent women in the 1930s, people might think about the smoldering temptresses of the silver screen or the gliding goddesses of the film industry. However, it is not as simple as it looks. The films of Hollywood in the early 1930s at times turned the Horatio Alger myth on its head. The film Wild Boys on the Road (1933) followed the youth in Depression era as the story of the film focused on them looking for work instead of success. They usually had dashed images of hope, poverty, crime, rape, and also accidental amputation. The heroines of that time no longer got ahead by being good girls that usually married a rich husbands. In the film Red Headed Woman (1932) and Baby Face (1933), the women were shown the role of selling their bodies to the highest bidder of the time or using their wiles to trade from a mailroom clerk in order to become head of the company. Buhler believes that “the Operetta-style topic also represents the musical place in the film where both characters can exist happily together.” (Buhler, 2000:197). On the other hand, the heroes of the films did show dogged determination on their way to success, but some of them did give up on trying to find their desired success through legitimate means and were usually outside the law in order to achieve their goal. The gangster films that were made were Little Caeser (1931), Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932). Some other films that were made during that period implied a critique of the capitalist system that was there in some of the countries. This system showed the depicting people struggling every day against the establishment institutions which were the government and other big businesses.