Motifs

Unit 1 serves as an introduction to the course’s themes and methods, with a focus on the United States’ foundational ‘myths’ and the various ‘motifs’ commonly found in stage musicals.

During each session, the class will critically examine a historical moment, considering how popular narratives of the country’s past serve to reinforce a specific version of the nation’s origin story. Additional case studies will consider how these collective myths continue to impact contemporary discourses and community experiences through broadly accepted stereotypes and social values.

Exploration: The Myth of Migrant Discovery

A superficial reading of US school textbooks suggests that Turtle Island – today called ‘North America’ – was ‘discovered’ by European travellers and settler colonists. In truth, local communities had been living on the American continents for nearly 30,000 years, and Christopher Columbus wasn’t even the first European to make contact with the Americas.

Multiple Broadway shows buy into – and sell – the story of 1492 as the ‘beginning’ of American history. Many more replicate harmful stereotypes of Indigenous Americans as ‘savage’ while valorising white men’s exploration.

Anthem Analysis #1

Expansion: The Myth of Manifest Destiny

The initial American colonial project relied on marketing the ‘New World’ to European powers. To maintain prominence and support resource acquisition, a young US Government portrayed Westward expansion as a God-given right and people’s patriotic duty, strengthening public support for growth – and laying further groundwork for state-centrism.

Romanticised depictions of the American West were popular settings for musicals in the mid-1900s; revivals of classics such as Oklahoma! continue to shape specific states’ identities even as other shows reproduce assumptions of the ‘backwards rural’.

Anthem Analysis #2

Exclusion: The Myth of the Melting Pot

America’s approach to unifying diverse immigrant populations through cultural assimilation was referred to as a ‘melting pot’ as early as the mid-1800s. Ideas of ‘Americans’ as a race unto themselves, something different than and set apart from their original European nations, required newcomers to (at least publicly) give up many of their traditional customs.

Stephen Sondheim’s beloved West Side Story is one of many musicals highlighting the tensions that resulted from immigration policies and unequal experiences with attempted cultural homogeneity.

Anthem Analysis #3

Google Sites

Report abuse