Musical films

[Lorenzo Javier Torres Hortelano]

Hi Roger, 

 

No, it¡¯s the fate of the musical: nobody seems to be interested, although
such interesting directors as Kitano (as you point) or  Lars von Trier in
Europe, make very interesting things with its conventions.

 

As you remark very opportunely, the question focuses in 'couple dancing',
not in the musical as a genre. It has a strong reason: it is in this kind of
dance where the symbolic sexual difference can be stablished (it is more
difficult with the ensemble dancing). 

 

In fact, the dissertation aim was to prove how couple dancing in Hollywood
(with ¡°Top hat¡± as mythical instance)  worked as a corpus where
generations learned how to symbolize the sexual intercourse and the sexual
difference, crystallized in the dancing posture that could be refered to as
¡°sharp fall¡± (¡°ca¨ªda sostenida¡± in Spanish). The disertation goes from
Classical Hollywood era to contemporary cinema, that is to say, from a well
stablished ¡°sharp fall¡± (like in ¡°Top Hat¡±) to, for example,
¡°Chicago¡±, where the male dissapears, and so, the sexual difference
dissapears and, consecuently, the pedagogical function too.

 

Bollywood would be the oriental tradition where you can see both kind of
dancing (couple and ensemble or group), and without the necessity of count
on Western music ¨Cand without self-orientalism... 

 

Good entry on last Aaron¡¯s book. In that sense it is interesting to mark
too how the two sisters, O-Kinu (Yuko Daike) and O-Sei (Daigoro Tachibana)
use their dancing precisely to make appear the sexual desire¡­  

 

I couldn¡¯t see ¡°Sakuran¡± yet, but looks interesting in this way. 

 

Thanks for all your interesting commentations!

 

Lorenzo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

De: owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu
[mailto:owner-KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu] En nombre de Roger Macy
Enviado el: martes, 04 de noviembre de 2008 9:28
Para: KineJapan
Asunto: Re: Musical films

 

Lorenzo,

Didn't anyone give this a twirl?

One or two thoughts to try and get someone else on the floor, in case anyone
feels like dancing in the streets tomorrow -

 

Firstly, wouldn't you need to compare the position with other non-American
cinemas?

For many countries, their tradition of couple dancing a la Hollywood is the
watching of Hollywood films, and you'd need to look at the data on imports.
The absence (if true) of a pre-war tradition in Japan could be explained in
the early thirties by the slowness to install adequate sound equipment in
cinemas and, later on, when the spiritist ideology got going, by simply
being anglo-american.  Any home-made film of extrovert couple-dancing would
need similarly-styled occidental music which simply would not have been
available.

But there certainly developed a strong tradition in Japan for competitive
ballroom dancing, which 'Shall we dansu?' tapped into.  Surely that must
have been started by some Hollywood films?

 

I note your careful delineation of 'couple dancing', but there was usually a
range of numbers in any musical that went from couples to ensembles in the
same movie.  And many of these had an orientalising layer, at least.  Of
course, it's perfectly possible to self-orientalise (as some examples in
Jasper's copiously resourced new book seem to demonstrate).  At least two of
the essays in 'Visions of the East: Orientalism in Film' address dance -
those by Gaylyn Studlar and Adrienne McLean.

 

And there's also Aaron's chapter in his 'Kitano Takeshi' on Zat¨­ichi, where
assorted dance traditions are brought into the cinema. None of them, so far
as I recall, were by couples, although he certainly had his Taisho(?)
villagers stepping out on the boards.

And, come to think about it, doesn't the no-period 'Sakuran'
self-orientalise, particularly during song and dance numbers ?  Given
earlier periods' sensitivity to orientalising (not so called) in some
productions of 'Madame Butterfly' etc. and in film exports, I can't imagine
anything in earlier periods being both commercial and acceptable to
mainstream sensibilities, particularly if there were any risk of it being
exported.

Exiting left,

Roger

 

----- Original Message ----- 

From: Lorenzo Javier Torres Hortelano <mailto:ljth2006 at gmail.com>  

To: KineJapan at lists.acs.ohio-state.edu 

Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2008 5:24 PM

Subject: Musical films

 

These days I belong to a PhD dissertation committee. The dissertation is
about couple dancing in the Classical Hollywood Cinema. One question comes
to my mind: What is the reason Japanese cinema didn¡¯t have a similar
tradition?

 

 

Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano

Profesor Titular

Universidad Rey Juan Carlos

Fac. Ciencias de la Comunicaci¨®n

Camino del Molino s/n

28943 Fuenlabrada (Madrid)

Despacho 244b

914888445

 

 

 

 

 

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