6) It’s probably fair to label them as “feminine” but I’m sorry, that’s a good thing
Look. Women have been essentially asked to appreciate or at least tolerate the ubiquity of hypermasculinity in movies forever. They’ve been super good sports about it, considering how patently absurd and oftentimes excruciating those Fast & Furious and Transformers movies have been. But in the same way those types of movies have their redeeming qualities that keep us coming back to them like Rob Ford to crack, musicals is cinematic crack with an extra spoonful of estrogen. I’m just saying, it’s good to diversify.
Surely you can think of some examples of musicals you’ve liked. Even simple TV shows like Flight of the Conchords can act as a gateway drug to coming to appreciate the way songs can be used in screen-based storytelling. If you can get into the weird humor and frankly incredible songwriting of Bret McKenzie, then maybe you can get into John C. Reilly in Walk Hard, and move on to John C. Reilly’s fantastic turn in Chicago.
I find genre classification to be increasingly meaningless, or at least less rigid, as postmodern sensibilities push movies to be more and more reactive to conventions and mores that have defined these labels for the past century. As much as people say they have an aversion to any horror film, or western, or romcom, or any other arbitrary distinction, there are almost always exceptions to their stated tastes. And if not, all it takes is one expectation-defying movie to open the mind to a genre just a little bit.
To me, that says that it’s more about the talent in front of and behind the camera than the generic tag stamped on a movie’s IMDb page. And therefore, even the most remotely open-minded movie watcher may hate The Music Man or Oklahoma or Rock of Ages but may find that Hairspray, Sweeney Todd or the upcoming Into the Woods taps into a part of them that they didn’t realize was dying to be let out and dance.
