I alway hated musicals when I was a kid. I didn’t understand the concept of a song breaking out in the middle of what had been a sober sort of scene up until then. It was traditional for the Sound of Music to be played on television yearly –Easter, I think — and I always rooted for the Nazis, hoping to stop the singing.
You have to cultivate a taste for many sophisticated things. Civilization is not foregone conclusion. There are a great many cultural references that go into anything but the most basic of entertainments, for instance.
They were always showing us the wrong sorts of entertainments, anyway, if they wanted to get us interested. It’s fine to be suave and debonair, but you can just as easily have plenty of power displayed. And the yoking of power to finesse is the hallmark of a robust civilization, isn’t it? Too much finesse, and you get the Von Trapps. Too much power, and you get people in arm bands watching The Ring cycle.
I understand opera now. Musical theater holds no terrors for me. I’m down to hating just dancing now. I wouldn’t, if it was like this more often:
America in 1941. Hellzapoppin’ indeed. Now, as if this film didn’t have enough charms in it already, according to imdb, Shemp Howard is in it. Case closed.
America the way I like it. Light on its feet. Lots of fun. Strong as whiskey. Tough as nails.
5 Responses
I alway hated musicals when I was a kid.
I still hate them! But I’m a former theater major, so it may be something like the reaction ex-smokers have to smokers.
Wow. That’s pretty amazing. Where do you find this stuff?
And no doubt there’s a New Orleans connection to that film. The music sure sounds like it came from NYC by way of NO.
I don’t know why I know about that movie.
Those performers are all from New York City, I think. The bass player is a famous guy you never heard of. Slam Stewart. The bit with the bow was a clue that’s him.
What crabs my soup is when people who go berserk about how ‘unrealistic’ musicals are, go on and on about the minutae of the science fiction series they like! A friend of mine gave me a tip about watching musicals: no one lies in song. What ever they’re singin’ about is what they feel, even if the character is unaware of that about themselves just yet. I don’t know if I believe that just yet, but it’s a hook that I now watch for.
Here ya go: a Nicolas Bros video just to deal with that anti-dancing tendency.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=zBb9hTyLjfM
ron- that’s fantastic