What Makes a Musical a Musical?
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If you happen to listen to the Awards Circuit Power Hour or read that site, you know there’s been quite a discussion regarding determining what a musical is. I attempted to comment on the podcast and I just want to make sure that I could have my ideas somewhere they could be read in full (read: they kept interrupting me when I wanted to make my points so you’re getting them in one place).
It’s no secret that I am a fan of musicals and as such can be very protective of them. It’s the only genre, other than horror, I feel like people are allowed to go in hating because of certain reasons, and I will take up the mantle to protect the genre. Aside from this, some of the greatest movies ever made are musicals and what would our childhoods be without Disney’s movie musicals?
Now to the nitty gritty and the reason you are reading this. I have two basic rules for determining what a musical is:
1. The movie’s songs MUST move the story and the characters forward and comment on the themes.
2. There must be at least one song performed outside the performative setting of the story
My colleague Mark Johnson brought up another great rule, that characters burst into song when they would normally speak, but I think it’s a little bit more than that. Musicals aren’t so much about just characters choosing to sing instead of speak, its much more about the how and the when. Think about how in Pitch Perfect those characters burst into song several times, but it has nothing to do with commenting on the narrative and therefore not a musical. A musical film maybe, but not a musical (note the distinction).
But Terence do the characters have to burst out into song in (movie) real life? Not necessarily. Look at films like Dancer in the Dark or Chicago or Nine and you can see that songs don’t need to be confined to a real life setting in order to work. Those numbers do have narrative significance however. Look at “My Husband Makes Movies” from Nine and compare that to these other line straddler movies. Musicals have to move beyond the stage and into the narrative and the setting of the world. Look at the 1-2 punch in Dreamgirls of “It’s Not Over” and “And I Am Telling You” to see that these numbers take place entirely out of a performance and even though they are set quite literally on the stage, these numbers comment on the breaking of the group, Effie’s mental state, and the turmoil.
The issue with what’s a musical tends to get the most muddled is with regards to movies about musicians, which contain plenty of songs that pop up throughout the narrative. That certainly is a great breeding ground for a musical given that the characters are already in song. But if all the movie does is have the songs pop up because the characters are doing their jobs then that’s not a musical. That’s a drama with music and songs. You take the songs out of West Side Story and what do you have? A New York version of Romeo and Juliet. Same type of thing with Little Shop of Horrors (Faust), Hairspray (you’d get the John Waters version), etc.
Now let’s analyze Ray and Walk the Line. Could you tell a story about a musician without having the songs in the film? Yes. Does just having songs in a movie make it a musical? No. In fact, let’s look a different profession. Imagine a film about Walt Disney and there’s sequences of animation, does that make it an animated film if it’s live action? This is much the same way as musicals, just because you use pieces from a genre does not make you part of that genre or a sub genre. Yes, there should be room for expansion of a genre. I say this as someone who is writing a horror short film for the fall that if you asked me to quantify it I’d say (at least in the last draft) that it was a relationship drama with horror elements. Genres have to adapt in order to stay relevant (which is why I love Once so much). There’s nothing adaptive about considering Walk the Line and Ray musicals, however, that’s just people wanting to define it as more than a drama because it has songs in it. Movies like All That Jazz show how musicals can combine both songs in performative spaces and songs that are used to move the story forward.
If you are concerned that because of what I laid out up above would automatically banish any movie staring a musician from being a musical, have no fear! It is indeed possible. Funny Girl is a movie about a performer, with numbers that are set both on a stage and off, that is the epitome of a musical. In the movie we get songs like “My Man” and “Don’t Rain on My Parade” in equal measure. I’d also submit to you Yankee Doodle Dandy, which manages to walk the same line.
Finally, let’s look at how films like these are categorized. So many people will tell you that because the Golden Globes categorize the likes of Ray, Walk the Line and Inside Llewyn Davis as musicals that by gosh they’re musicals! Um, did we forget this is the same awards body that said Her, My Week with Marilyn and The Tourist were comedies? IMDB might have the key to unlocking this debate. If you look at the genres listed for Walk the Line and Ray you’ll notice that the genres listed are: Biography, Drama, Music, as opposed to Funny Girl which has Biography, Drama, Comedy, Musical, and Romance.
So by now, I think I’ve laid pretty clear the delineation between a movie with musical numbers and a musical. What do you think?
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