Description
Book SynopsisAlberto Mira offers a new account of how pop music revolutionized the Hollywood musical. He shows that while the Hollywood system ceased producing large-scale traditional musicals, different pop strains—disco, rock ’n’ roll, doo-wop, glam, and hip-hop—renewed the genre, giving it a new life.
Trade ReviewAlberto Mira’s timely volume superbly fills a gap in writing on the musical, focusing with originality, flair and thorough scholarship on a significant variant of the genre. He demonstrates how the Pop musical has taken the genre into new directions, for instance making it even more socially aware, revising its folk discourse, and exploring questions of sexual identity. In his analysis of the star qualities of Ann-Margret, the changing impact of Elvis Presley, re-appraisal of films like
Bye Bye Birdie and
The Rocky Horror Picture Show or, more generally, the way Pop musicals draw on and diversify the traditions of the classical musical, Mira ensures that this exciting volume will be essential reading for devotees as well as for scholars of the film musical, and the aesthetics, cultural and socio-political contexts of popular cinema. -- Peter William Evans, Queen Mary University of London
While much has been written on the change in the musical's cinematic language in the postclassical period, the “pop musical” itself has not been sufficiently identified, theorized, or historicized. In
The Pop Musical, Alberto Mira addresses this gap, insisting that the genre’s unique relationship with pop music plays a determining role in how these films make meaning. -- Desirée Garcia, author of
The Movie MusicalTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: The Hollywood Musical Is Dead. Long Live the Hollywood Musical!
1. Hollywood and the Rise of Pop Music: The Age of Elvis
2. Embracing Pop: Integrating the Pop Musical
3. Looking Back: The Pop Musical and the Past
Conclusion: Qualified Joys
Notes
Bibliography
Index
