“LA LA LA AMERICA”: A MULTIMODAL ANALYSIS OF SELECT SONG IN THE HOLLYWOOD MUSICAL WEST SIDE STORY (1961)

Abstract

Though the Hollywood Film Musical is conventionally centred on a heterosexual couple with antithetical attributes and attitudes, they are very often surrounded by supporting actors who join the singing and dancing almost spontaneously. Group singing and dancing had been a structural requirement in the case of backstage musicals that flourished in profusion in the genre’s infancy. This article examines a group song from a popular Hollywood Film Musical – West Side Story (1961) – to analyse how group songs impinge on the society’s dominant ideologies of the times in which they were made. Most of these group songs in conventional Hollywood Musicals are not performed with any overt agitational, mobilization, or political intent in the diegesis, but even then, on the surface level, they seem to challenge the social conventions vis-à-vis class, gender, race, and ethnicity. The article explores how the song “America” repudiates or reinforces stereotypes and stimulates a fresh debate on the social commitment of an artistic medium, through multiple modes of filmic communication.