Musicals : A Utopia Of Wealth And Happiness Essay

While most films offer a sort of distraction from reality, musicals are often a utopia of wealth and happiness (Belton, 2009). Through dazzling song and dance, they make routine look like pageantry and loneliness feel like individuality. Even the most conservative of musicals transform the everyday into a spectacle, transitioning dramatic tensions into a melodic fanfare. Singing liberates the characters to express themselves in a way that mere words never could, giving them a freedom from the doldrums of reality that moviegoers long for. The difficulties of society seem much more manageable when crooned about, and while we know we cannot actually sing our problems away, musicals can provide a temporary escape.
It is not completely clear what draws people to musicals. As early as the 1500s, theater used a mixture of dialogue and song for entertainment (Greenwood, 2015). While the style does not appeal to everyone nowadays, many still find stories much more interesting when sung about. One presumption is that people’s first theatrical memories stem from childhood, listening to church choirs or participating in school musicals (Greenwood, 2015). Music allows the characters to express themselves in a way they could not through just spoken word. It can distinguish angry yelling from boisterous cheering through melody. Musicals are all about the fantasy, and the right song can transport the audience through to the happy ending. One such popular film is 2002’s Chicago, starring…