SC Talk: Joel Faflak, Department of English, University of Western Ontario, “Get Happy! Learning to Love Musicals”
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March 23, 2022 @ 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Speaker: Joel Faflak, Department of English, University of Western Ontario
Introducer: Deanne Bogdan
Zoom Host: Linda Hutcheon
Title: “Get Happy! Learning to Love Musicals”
Abstract: People either love or hate musicals; there is rarely an in-between response. But why? Something about the affective pull of musicals answers this question, which orients us toward how film at once engages, inspires, and manipulates our sensoria. For instance, cinema itself emerges from a post-Enlightenment obsession with the visual as a sign of wonder that also manipulates how we see things. In his 1832 Letters on Natural Magic David Brewster aligns the visual with the “supernatural” force of imagination mediated by our ocular power to capture the world through our senses, a fascination with images that both mobilizes and suspends judgement. One result of this fascination is the film musical, emerging with the invention of sound, but especially during the Depression, with films like 42nd Street (1933), whose ‘show within a show’ narrative stereotypes film musicals as social metacommentary. As wholly fabricated events, film musicals, especially because of their tension between non-musical narrative and musical numbers, are designed to suspend our disbelief about transforming the world. But as simulations they just as easily bypass our defenses to do a kind of con job on our cognitive wiring. One example of this might be Bill Condon’s 2006 film of Michael Bennett’s 1981 stage musical Dreamgirls, whose numbers work to enchant us, but toward political ends, especially on the topic of racism. Poised on the razor’s edge of our fascination with and by the visual, the film offers an allegory for the politics of our present moment, a telling example of where our minds and hearts are at when we give ourselves over to the power of music to transform our ideas about the world – for worse and for better. An even more recent example would be La La Land (2016), released on the eve of Trump’s election, a technicolour extravaganza that at once manically whisks us toward the dream of a transformed world and returns us to the depressive reality of this dream’s failure.
Bio: JOEL FAFLAK is Professor in the Department of English and Writing Studies at Western University, where he was inaugural Director of the School for Advanced Studies in the Arts and Humanities (2012-17), and Visiting Professor at Victoria College, University of Toronto. He is author of Romantic Psychoanalysis, co-author of Revelation and Knowledge, editor of De Quincey’s Confessions of An English Opium-Eater, co-editor of Palgrave Studies in Affect Theory and Literary Criticism, and editor of twelve essay collections. He is the recipient of a Faculty Scholar Award, the John Charles Polanyi Prize for Literature, the Edward G. Pleva Award for Excellence in Teaching, and the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations Teaching Award. He has served on the Board of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, was twice Chair of the Literature panel for the Undergraduate Awards, and has been both a keynote speaker and seminar leader at the UA Global Summit in Dublin.
The link to register is https://forms.office.com/r/uKe39NASKL
The Zoom link will be sent to registrants only.
The speaker will be at the Faculty Club for lunch and the talk. This will be a hybrid event. You may choose to eat lunch at the Faculty Club with other Fellows, enjoy the talk from the Faculty Club, or register for Zoom only. The deadline to register is 3 PM on the preceding Monday.
Everyone who enters the Faculty Club must provide proof of full vaccination and identification to verify. Once in the building, please wear a mask until seated but you may remove it when eating or drinking. The mask must be put on if moving about the building. If you have questions about coming to the Faculty Club, contact Daphne Maurer, daphne@maurer.ca.
If you have any questions regarding registration, please contact the organizer Linda Hutcheon at l.hutcheon@utoronto.ca.
