The Imaginary Space of Musicals

As we watched One Night the Moon (2001), my ideologies about musical was a bit challenged considering a typical happy ending, harmonic emotion embodied by the genre. The film musical in the other hand, incorporates a gothic vibe in terms of the use of dangerous Australian landscape as its setting. Let alone an ending that devastates two parents who found their daughter died due to the area’s geography. The reading by Grant (2012) also talks about how only film musicals feature an imaginary space even if it is ostensibly a real location and depicts its space as charmed by the magic of performance. Nevertheless, it does reminded me of the film adaptation Into the Woods (2014) the presents a unique kind of musical in dark fairytale world. I’ve also encountered the difference between film musicals and film that contain lots of musicals. Musical refers to “films that involve the performance of song and/or dance by the characters and also include singing and/or dancing as an important element” (Grant, 2012). Where although a film includes a dominantly music and soundtracks as its subject such as Pitch Perfect (2012 &2015) and The Sapphires (2012), they are not musicals because the characters do not perform for expressing their emotion but rather consciously sing and dance for the purpose of stage performances.

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