Musical Theatre Anthems of Unity and The Performance of National Identity
Osborne, Elizabeth A.
The Florida State University
2019
178
Ph.D.
The Florida State University
2019
Musical theatre scholars agree that as popular culture, musical theatre has had a profound effect on the development of national identity in the United States. In particular, the genre reaches audiences both inside and outside the theatre through the dissemination of cast recordings, sheet music, and other media. In early incarnations of musical theatre such as the works of George Gershwin and George M. Cohan, musicals typically included overt nationalist anthems designed to inspire and unite the audience in the name of America. With "Oklahoma," the title song of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (1943), and the subsequent Golden Age of musical theatre, the convention of the anthem shifted to express nationalism through the lens of a community within the fictional world of the musical. These anthems serve as models for patriotic unity. In the decades following the Golden Age, some works of musical theatre challenged nationalism, and the anthems in these pieces reflect that sense of questioning. This project considers anthems of unity in musical theatre and the way they formulate identity through musical structures and conventions. I investigate four musical theatre anthems: "Oklahoma" from Oklahoma! (1943), "My Texas" from Giant (2012), "Southern Days" from The Scottsboro Boys (2010), and "Another National Anthem" from Assassins (1991). By analyzing the way that each anthem constructs group identity, I consider the way these constructions speak to national identity within both the musical and the historical context of the original production. Each anthem approaches national identity and nationalism in a different way by using and/or distorting musical conventions that hold cultural meaning in specific time periods. Additionally, I consider the way the anthem functions in conversation with the way the musical constructs history and popular memory, and how these formulations work together to create communities of insiders and outsiders through national identity and nationalism. I argue that each anthem operates dramaturgically, musically, and within a specific historical moment to address and reify or subvert constructions of mainstream national identity. This dissertation asks: what is the role of anthem-singing in US national identity? How does national identity create constructions of belonging and otherness? And how might we reconsider the way musical theatre as a genre is particularly effective site for conversations about the ramifications of othering.