A critical survey of Hollywood film musicals from the 1960s to the present. This book examines how, in the post-studio system era, cultural, industrial and stylistic circumstances transformed this once happy-go-lucky genre into one both fluid and cynical enough to embrace the likes of Rocky Horror and pave the way for Cannibal! and Moulin Rouge!.
'Through her focus on a specific subset of musicals - integrated musicals from 1966-1983 - and shifting representations of masculinity within these films, Kessler provides readers with an engaging and accessible snapshot of the ways in which cultural conditions and anxieties find expression onscreen, often altering the very medium with which they engage.' -Scope