Entertainment & Utopia August 19, 2007
Posted by generoscinematograficos in musical.1 comment so far
**Notes on Richard Dyer’s text “Entertainment and Utopia” taken from Steve Cohan’s “Hollywood Musicals; The Film Reader”
As an opening to his text on musicals “Entertainment and Utopia” Dyer states that “Musicals were predominantly conceived, by producers and audiences alike, as “pure entertainment”. By “entertainment” we understand that is something:
- Produced for profit
- Performed before an audience
- Performed by a crowd whose role is to provide pleasure
- Therefore: entertainment = pleasure
- Therefore: entertainment (should) = money
Hollywood musicals are “one of a whole string of forms – that are usually summed by the term ‘Show Biz’.
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