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Showing posts from January, 2020

Moulin Rouge!: Musicals Chasing Authenticity

             In 2009, SNL premiered a comedy skit “ High School Musical 4 ” as an imagined follow-up to the Disney Channel musical movie franchise. This skit imagines Troy Bolton, the singing basketball star of the movies, returning for the ceremony for the next graduating class of East High. The students enthusiastically welcome Troy with an impromptu musical number, one which he quickly dismisses--he has important things to say: “No one sings at college. And from what I can tell, this is America’s only singing high school."           The graduating class is aghast, but there's more. Not only does nobody sing in the real world, but also his East High education has left him entirely unprepared for life after high school. Sure he knows to "accept himself," but the real world expects him to know things like the capital of Texas. "I'm a year out of high school and my life's over," he laments. The skit ends with a thawed ...