LNH: Legion of Net.Heroes Vol.2 #23

[Tarq]

Just to throw in some two cents here, but I wouldn't actually say that
'musical' was a genre -- rather a mixing of two or three media (music,
dance and theatre/film, depending on the case). While many musicals
are comedic ('Crazy for You'), others are really rather tragic ('West
Side Story'), and others still are open to interpretation; 'Someone's
Son' would be my preferred example, though 'The Sound of Music' is
probably better known.

'Musical' isn't really any more of a genre than 'novel' or 'movie',
though most people do tend to ignore the fact that musicals are
capable of presenting multiple genres much the same way that people
tend to associate video games with violence. (Damn it, Reader Rabbit,
why do you teach our children to kill??) Both are perfectly able to
present comedies, fantasies, dramas, and whatever else would float
your boat.

Having said that, however, perhaps media could be looked at in a
similar 'emotion-inspired' argument; there are exceptionally few
action musicals since people who enjoy large explosives rarely also
enjoy singing and dancing, no matter what they're singing and dancing
about. Bookshops have entire walls full of fantasy novels, though my
local video store has less than half a shelf. It would be interesting
to conduct a survey and have people mark what media and what genres
they're interested in; romantic video games would be far less common
than comedic movies, I should think (pornographic games would probably
stand a depressingly higher chance).

Sorry to disrupt the flow of conversation there, but I found the
continuous referral to musicals as a genre to be a bit unsettling. =)

~Mitchell.