Conference Agenda

In the early 1980s, Hollywood’s action films reembraced a conservative vision of masculinity, a change Andrew Britton, Susan Jeffords, and Robin Wood have connected to the rhetoric and imagery circulated by the Reagan Administration (1981–89) and the New Right. Beefy actors like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in films that uncritically celebrated harsh masculinities and unyielding muscular bodies, films that seemed like rebuttals to the rights movements of the 1960s. These ideals were particularly potent in the new “sword-and-sorcery” genre, the most famous example of which is Conan the Barbarian (1982). Sword-and-sorcery films resurrected conventions from earlier “sword-and-sandal” films like Ben-Hur (1959) and Spartacus (1960), but traded the familiar biblical and Roman settings for original fantasy worlds. The genre’s other major intervention is particularly surprising, given the regressive climate of 1980s action cinema: sword-and-sorcery films often feature heroic women.

In this paper, I examine how this apparent contradiction plays out in the genre’s largely unexplored leitmotivic film scores. To gain a fuller understanding of the fraught gender dynamics, I analyze a corpus of sword-and-sorcery film scores, identifying connections between character leitmotifs and gendered musical topics, including primitivist and exoticist topics and 1980s rock and pop styles. My project builds on studies of the sword-and-sorcery genre and related fantasy and epic genres by scholars such as James Deaville, Mark Brill, and Stephen C. Meyer, and it also contributes to larger conversations about genre-specific lexicons of musical topics within and beyond film music. By framing the genre with a wide-angle lens, I aim to bring a larger number of film scores into view, adding to existing scholarship by incorporating films beyond the genre-defining Conan. Ultimately, sword-and-sorcery’s inclusion of heroic women demonstrates how easily the feminist ideal of the independent woman was absorbed into a reactionary cinema fit for the ascendant New Right.

When Evita (1979) premiered on Broadway, it needed more than standard publicity for its success. Besides being panned by male critics, a musical examining the life of Eva Peron—wife of Argentinian Dictator Juan Peron—posed challenging subject matter for tourists seeing their first Broadway musical on an “I Love New York” theater-themed trip. Previously unexplored marketing plans and correspondence in Mary Bryant’s collection at the New York Public Library reveal that Bryant, the musical’s marketer and theatrical press agent, saw the division between critics and audiences as an opportunity. Building on Elizabeth Wollman’s work on the business practices of the theatre industry and Jessica Sternfeld’s examination of the complicated reception history of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musicals, this study of Bryant’s campaign for Evita replaces the composer with the marketer for understanding the intention of a work as she promoted a version of the show to international audiences without regard for critical reception.

To attract a broader market to purchase tickets for Evita, Bryant exchanged the standard practice of quoting critical reviews in print advertisements with glamorous television commercials that strategically showcased song excerpts and dances to celebrate the musical as an exciting event for visitors of the city. Instead of following the creative team’s vision of critiquing the rise of American conservativism, Bryant decided to connect the musical to another contemporary political movement: second-wave feminism. During its run on Broadway, the promotional materials present Eva as the most powerful woman in South America who helped give other women the right to vote. Aligning with the financial goals of the feminist movement and the rise of tourism in New York City, the musical’s marketing subverted the anti-capitalist messages of songs such as “Buenos Aires” or “Rainbow High,” by framing them in commercials to highlight the economic independence that consumerism offered women. Therefore, recognizing Bryant’s marketing strategy further complicates Evita’s reception history as the campaign framed audiences’ expectations beyond the creative team’s vision and the opinions of theatrical critics.

Disney animated films have been widely analyzed as cultural artifacts that shape cultural perceptions of gender and sexuality, reinforcing hegemonic ideals of gender and sexuality, often embodied by the protagonists. These ideals are accentuated by contrast with villains, whose moral deviations are often marked by non-normative that oppose—and threaten—the hero(ine)s’ idealization. While scholars have examined these distinctions in appearance, dialogues, and actions, little attention has been given to this characterization in relation specifically to musical scenes.

In this presentation, I offer a comparative analysis of musical and performative aspects in key musical scenes from The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994). Beyond their commercial success and the crucial role they served in the company’s revitalization in the 90s, these films have been widely recognized as cultural artifacts with significant moral and social influence. Disney’s representation of their heroes, heroines and villains has helped in the consolidation of still-standing popular notions of virtue and evil, a distinction that extends to their musical performances. I argue that in romantic musical scenes, the protagonists’ performative involvement is strategically attenuated through narrative and filmic strategies in a seemingly effort to align them with normative gender and sexual ideals. Conversely, villains’ musical numbers are marked by heightened camp performativity, reinforcing both a sense of faulty morality and the queer-coding frequently associated with Disney antagonists.

This study highlights how performativity and cinematic strategies intersect within a framework of hegemonic heteronormativity during musical scenes. The link between campy performances and villainy, alongside the association of performative modesty with virtue, suggests that certain types of musical performance are deemed more “proper” than others. As a result, musicality becomes a category for moral instruction. These findings contribute to the broader exploration of how music shapes cultural norms of gender and sexuality, providing a lens through which other aspects of musical scenes in animated films can be analyzed to deepen our understanding of the relationship between music and character representation.