As I outlined at the beginning of the semester, my goal in exploring the film musical is to understand the genre conventions and how these fit together. This week a particular focus in class was in the different genres that musicals can inhabit which leads me to believe the idea of the film musical is more complex than the taxonomy of Hollywood marketing would suggest as the musical seems to be able to serve multiple styles and stories. In class we watched the Australian film musical, One Night the Moon and scenes from both Les Miserables and Rent. Lastly listening to a rap battle from the new American musical, Hamilton. It becomes incredibly obvious how different an Australian dramatic short musical is from the UK produced sung-through integrated musical. Yet the contrast is highlighted even further by the gritty, very broadway Rent and Hamilton.

These are all, not only different styles of musical but also different iconic locations. Les Mis is most certainly a West End production in it’s original form and the film version has a very European style (as well as it’s inherant French setting) which contrasts with Rent which is as Broadway as they come. Somehow all these musicals end up in Hollywood and these places find themselves encoded into the art. By including Hamilton in the mix, the discourse opens up to even the idea that stage musicals and film musicals tell stories in very similar ways. This would suggest that the musical is less of a film genre and more of an all-encompassing storytelling art form.