I so loved reading Marthat Shearer´s New York City and the Hollywood Musical: Dancing in the Streets that I wanted to talk to its author to find out some more about it whilst hopefully also drawing attention to the work. The result is the podcast below:

In the podcast Martha and I talk about the origins of the work in an earlier study of Gene Kelly, Irishness and Urban Space; how the choice of New York seems self-evident considering the preponderance of its presence in the American Musical. I was delighted at how the book takes on figures and aspects normally marginalised in traditional studies (Bing Crosby, Mae West, the Fox musical). We discuss the influence of Richard Dyer´s ‘Entertainment and Utopia’, how in the musical places are made to feel intense and joyful, so how does that fit into the cities themselves? The book brings genre studies into dialogue with urban studies, geography and the history of how those concrete material places are being transformed. It correlates the history of those material transformations to a history of their representation.

We talk about the concept of nostalgia and its relation to time and place. the influence of the work of David Harvey and Fredric Jameson to the methodology of the study and the significance of the choices that structure the study (Urban Space and the Origins of the Musical, The Neighbourhood Musical, The Nostalgia Musical, Broadway and Times Square etc.) Finally, we end with a discussion of Martin Scorsese´s New York, New York; how the conflict between the leads are also conflicts between different forms of entertainment: De Niro, Art; Minnelli, showbiz. Jazz is pure, masculine, art. She´s pop culture. Those two positions, the forms of urbanism associated with those kinds of styles becoming irreconcilable.

An interesting and wide-ranging talk which I hope will whet your appetite for the book.

José Arroyo