Rock And Roll Analysis

The rise of rock n’ roll in the 1950’s and beyond makes it no surprise that its elements were soon incorporated into the movie musical. Rock n’ roll created a sense of youth and community that made it the perfect specimen of American folk art, something that the movie musicals thrived to interpret. And, in some ways, they did this very well; their popularity was immense for their appeal to younger audiences. However, filmmakers did pay a price in sacrificing some technical elements in favor of easy songs and communal dance numbers. Whether or not this was a change for the better can be debated, but it is no question that this change is very present in the four clips that I had watched. The songs themselves were melodically unchallenging and undeniably catchy, and really did not do anything to advance the plot of the films. They were more used as “fluff” and aimed to be

The focus was on the entire chorus for these dance numbers, and rarely was anyone individually featured for more than 10 seconds at a time. The dancing itself was not nearly as challenging as classical movie musical dances were; compare the “Untamed Youth” dance to Astaire and Rogers’ “Swing Time” and you will see why their level of difficulty was not imitated in the “Untamed Youth” dance. The dances themselves clearly sent a message to young people: if all of the actors in the film can dance to these songs, so can you! Many people in the “Footloose” final number were pretty awful dancers, but still got praise from their surrounding peers. In “Footloose,” at times the camera angles were directed towards the feet of the dancers (like in many movie musicals), but they were simply stepping in time, not doing any fancy footwork like Astaire would have been. However, I think that these angles were used purposefully to showcase the simplicity of these dance