The Afterlife as Emotional Utopia in Coco

This article situates the Pixar computer animation Coco (dir. Lee Unkrich and Adrian Molina, 2017) within a recent selection of afterlife fictions and questions why such narratives might appeal to our contemporary moment. The author’s response is structured around the idea of utopia. In Coco, he identifies several conceptions of utopic space and ideals. The afterlife fiction places characters and viewers in a reflexive location which affords them the opportunity to examine their lives as lived (rather than in death). Transplanting Richard Dyer’s work on classic Hollywood musicals as entertainment utopia to a contemporary animated musical, the article proposes that such a film can be seen as adhering to a kind of ‘new cinematic sincerity’. Coco’s particular depiction of The Day of the Dead fiesta and the Land of the Dead has its roots in the Mexican writer Octavio Paz’s poetic and romantic treatise The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950). A comparison between these two texts suggests that willing encounters with death can be connected to an openness to transitional states of being. Through close readings of key musical sequences in Coco, the author demonstrates how the properties of the musical are combined with animation aesthetics (baby schemata, virtual camera) to lead viewers into their own utopian space of heightened emotions and transition.

OK for Sound? The Reception of the Talkies in Britain, 1928–32

The arrival of the talkies in Britain evoked mixed responses. While popular audiences enthusiastically embraced Hollywood musicals like the Al Jolson hit The Singing Fool (1928), the literati were often scathing of ‘mechanical’ music and dialogue. Hollywood dictated the speed of change and economics and public demand soon forced the British film industry to convert to sound, but critics, intellectuals, educators, artists, literary figures and musicians were openly hostile to the new art form, opening a chasm between popular taste and intellectual response. The cacophony of dissenting voices was joined by various official reports from bodies like the Trades Union Congress and the Federation of British Industries who predicted the deleterious effect of the talkies on everything from British jobs in manufacturing to diminishing Britain's influence across its colonies and dominions. This article will map these discourses and examine attitudes to the introduction of the talkies in Britain between 1929 and 1932 as the new technology gathered momentum across the UK and film criticism developed as a distinct discipline.

Musiikki ja kerronnan tasot Kirill Serebrennikovin elokuvassa Kesä

Venäläisen ohjaajan Kirill Serebrennikovin elokuva Kesä (Leto, Venäjä 2018) on tositapahtumiin perustuva, mutta silti voimakkaan fiktiivinen kuvaus Neuvostoliiton underground-rockin noususta valtavirtaan 1980-luvun alkupuolella, päähenkilöinä kaksi neuvostorockin tosielämän suurnimeä Majk Naumenko (1955–1991) ja Viktor Tsoi (1962–1990). Elokuvassa kuullaan luonnollisesti paljon musiikkia: venäläisiä ja länsimaisia 1980-luvun alun rock-hittejä sekä alkuperäisinä että uusina tulkintoina, mutta myös elokuvaa varten sävellettyä originaalimusiikkia. Kesä voitti parhaan soundtrackin palkinnon Cannesissa 2018, mutta sai Venäjällä ristiriitaisen vastaanoton.Artikkelissa keskitytään tarkastelemaan Kesän musiikinkäyttöä formalistisen lähiluvun ja rakenneanalyysin keinoin. Tarkastelun keskiössä on erityisesti elokuvamusiikin narratologia ja Claudia Gorbmanin (1987), Rick Altmanin (1987) ja Guido Heldtin (2013) määritelmät diegeettisyydestä, ei-diegeettisyydestä, supradiegeettisyydestä sekä ekstrafiktiivisyydestä. Tutkimuskysymyksenä on se, miten Kesä-elokuva käyttää neuvostoajan rockia elokuvamusiikkina ja miten tämä musiikinkäyttö ankkuroituu neuvostoelokuvien rock-musiikkikonventioihin.Kesän musiikkistrategiassa muodostuu selkeä vastakkainasettelu kotimaisen ja ulkomaisen, elävän ja nauhoitetun, sekä alkuperäisen ja uudelleentulkitun musiikin välille. Eri musiikkityylien ja kerronnan tasojen välille muodostuu elokuvassa tietynlainen säännönmukaisuus ja tehtävänjako. Se miltä kerronnan tasolta musiikin katsotaan milloinkin tulevan vaikuttaa vahvasti siihen, miten realistisena minkäkin kohtauksen voi lukea, ja tämä puolestaan sitoo elokuvan eri genreperinteisiin: realistisempi, diegeettinen musiikkiesitys ankkuroi elokuvan elämäkertaelokuvien genreen, kun taas täysin epärealistiset, supradiegeettiset musiikkiesitykset viittaavat enemmän musikaaliperinteeseen. Music and Levels of Narration in Kirill Serebrennikov’s film LetoRussian director Kirill Serebrennikov’s Leto is a film about the rise of the underground rock scene into the mainstream in early 1980s Soviet Union. The film is based on a true story and the lives of two rock legends Majk Naumenko (1955–1991) and Viktor Tsoi (1962–1990), even though it also contains plenty of highly fictitious elements. The music track features Russian and Western rock songs of the era both as original performances as well as cover versions, additionally there are also excerpts of original score. Leto won the best soundtrack award in Cannes in 2018, but it received mixed reviews in Russia.This article analyses the use of music in Leto through formalist close reading and structural analysis. The analysis relies heavily on film music narratology and in particular on Claudia Gorbman’s (1987), Rick Altman’s (1987), and Guido Heldt’s (2013) definitions of diegeticity, non-diegeticity, supradiegeticity, and extrafictivity. The research question concerns how is Soviet era rock used as film music in Leto, and how does this use relate to the rock music conventions in Soviet cinema.In the musical strategy of Leto, there arises a juxtaposition between domestic and foreign music, as well as live and recorded, and original and re-interpreted music. Furthermore, there is a structure and logic in the way the different types of music relate to the levels of narration throughout the film. The narrative level that the music is anchored to has an effect on the interpretation of individual scenes and events as realistic or unrealistic. This also anchors the film in different film genres or traditions: a more realistic, diegetic music performance is connected with traditional biopic dramas, whereas the unrealistic, supradiegetic musical performances are more closely connected with the tradition of Hollywood musicals.

Bursting into Song in the Hollywood Musical

Chapter 11 examines the aesthetic value of novelty in a genre’s evolution by tracing the history of the convention that characters in Hollywood musicals spontaneously burst into song without realistic motivation. The convention emerged in 1929 and largely vanished by the end of the 1950s. The chapter studies how studio-era filmmakers developed novel conventions that exploited the aesthetic possibilities of song in cinema. The eventual loss of the convention created new constraints on the uses of song, but it also enabled new aesthetic possibilities. Post-studio-era filmmakers transformed the convention, exposed it, and reclaimed it in ways that added novelty to spectators’ aesthetic experience.

‘We’re Only Kids Now, But Someday …’: Hollywood Musicals and the Great Depression ‘Youth Crisis’

A number of Hollywood social dramas had documented the ‘youth crisis’ of the Depression era – limited employment prospects, vagrancy, delinquency, deprival of normal childhood. MGM’s Babes in Arms (1939), made when the worst of the economic crisis seemed over, was the first to do so in musical form. It confronted audiences not only with visions of an angry army of youth, but with young Americans facing impoverishment, crumbling parental authority, the threat of being taken into care, and incipient delinquency. Its commercial success spawned three other musicals – Strike Up the Band (1940), Babes on Broadway (1941) and Girl Crazy (1943), each of which raised the spectre of the ‘youth crisis’ that perplexed politicians, educators and sociologists. All of them had a happy ending, however, through the utopian instrument of kds putting on a musical show that demonstrated their capacity for collective action in a good cause, for still having wholesome fun, and for demonstrating patriotism.