The Hidden Grief of American Musicals

American musicals from the forties and fifties gave us bright songs, dance numbers, and happy endings. But according to musicology professor Jake Johnson—writing in JSTOR Daily—there was something darker lurking beneath. Johnson argues that these beloved shows were actually how postwar America processed its grief and anxiety. The social upheaval, the uncertainty, the losses of those years—all of it channeled through tap shoes and orchestration. Those glittering shows, in other words, were the nation's way of turning trauma into entertainment.

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