On the Town as a Modern Festival

The Hollywood musical is, as Richard Dyer argues in his essay ‘Entertainment and Utopia’ a form of pure entertainment which provides an escapist alternative to the harsh realities of a capitalist society. Yet in the way that it seems to promote the virtues of capitalism as solutions to capitalist problems, the genre reinforces the status quo, and works more as a pressure valve through which to release societal tensions. In this manner the musical, and by Dyer’s argument, modern capitalist entertainment as a whole, functions in much the same manner as the religious festivals of the Middle Ages. It is perhaps a modern manifestation of an inherent societal tool which functions in response to the needs of the day.

In the feudal, highly religious European society of the Middle Ages, the year was populated by regular and widely celebrated festivals. Many of these have receded in popularity, but some such as Christmas and Easter still remain. Though these were festivities, there was a pointed undercurrent, an almost manic release of pressure, accompanying the festivities. This was their role in society, to provide release which helped to maintain the status quo.

The feudalist system of the period created a society that was entirely structured upon hierarchies. Classes were immobile, as the rulers controlled the apparatus of literacy. That is to say that the church, the power at the top of the hierarchy, owned all the books. The only way to ascend from serfdom was to learn Latin, and the only way to learn Latin was through the church.

This is largely irrelevant to the role of the musical, but it is important to illustrate the intensity of the frustrations and tensions which may arise from such a system. Many of the religious festivals of the year featured ritual reversal of conventions, such as the Festival of Fools, wherein donkeys would be brought into the church, nonsense sermons would be delivered, and dung would be featured in ceremonies. Objectively this seems like an almost desperate deviation from the norms of the highly ritualistic and formal Christian traditions, and it served to release the subliminal tensions that were symptoms of the feudalist hierarchy.

The musical achieves the same thing through a utopian representation of the world, creating a reality for the audience wherein the strife and angst of everyday life is non-existent. ‘Entertainment does not, however, present models of utopian worlds… Rather the utopianism is contained in the feelings it embodies. It presents, head-on as it were, what utopia would feel like rather than how it would be organized.’ (Dyer) Without presenting any reasoned solution to the audience’s troubles, the utopia sweeps them up in an illusion of utopia, just as the Christian festival creates a temporary reprieve from hierarchy rather than a legitimate restructuring of society.

There is an identical clause that exists in both the musical and the medieval festival however. There is a seriousness which plays opposite the frivolity in the religious festival. The proximity of carnival and lent demonstrates this, that while on the one hand there is a chance for people to be merry and equal, on the other there is a reaffirmation of the religious solemnity which guides society.

The same can be said of the musical, as Dyer points out:

‘However, there is one further turn of the screw, and that is that, with the exception perhaps of community (the most directly working class in source), the ideals of entertainment imply wants that capitalism itself promises to meet. Thus abundance becomes consumerism, energy and intensity personal freedom and individualism, and transparency freedom of speech…At our worse sense of it, entertainment provides alternatives to capitalism which will be provided by capitalism.’

The musical reaffirms the guiding principles of the capitalist society, by demonstrating its ideal utopian manifestation.

While the intense religious feudalism of the Middle Ages has disappeared, it has been replaced by a more subtle mimic. In a capitalist society, classes go unnamed, the disparity between them not formally enforced, and thus ignored. This has resulted in a new kind of festival, one which is not named as such, nor plotted on the calendar as such, but which exists in the same function. The musical and, as Dyer would argue, all of the entertainment media of such a society, function identically to, and in place of, the formal safety valves of medieval society.