Unstaged Grief by Jake Johnson - 9780252046339

Unstaged GriefMusicals and Mourning in Midcentury America\nAuthor(s): Jake Johnson\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: University of Illinois Press, United States\nImprint: University of Illinois Press\nISBN-13: 9780252046339, 978-0252046339\nSynopsis\nOften dismissed as escapism, screen musicals of the 1960s in fact tapped into unspoken sadness about an America that was slipping away. Jake Johnson delves into film and television musicals of the era to examine their place in networks of grieving in America, for America, and about America.\n\n The Golden Age of musical theater ended just as Elisabeth Kbler-Rosss On Death and Dying debuted, and Johnson uses Kbler-Rosss five stages to frame the intertwining of musicals and grief. He analyzes films like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and State Fair alongside paintings, poetry, and other images and texts to reveal how the musical theater engine built in the first half of the century broke down just as a new language emerged to describe the mel.