Avnish Mehra

Intro to Film and Media Studies

Prof Robert King

November 13, 2017

La La Land in Relation to Genre Theory

Within the first few minutes of Damien Chazelles 2016 romantic dramedy La La

Land, two things become immediately apparent: first, through an elaborate song and dance

sequence that spontaneously erupts from a Los Angeles traffic jam, we know we are

watching a musical film, but second, through clever camera work and contemporary dance

routines, we know we arent just watching any musical film. This is a distinctly twenty-first

century musical. It speaks to a larger trend in recent times of pastiche and postmodernism,

or as literary critic Frederic Jameson describes it, when stylistic innovation is no longer

possible, all that is left is to imitate dead styles.1 La La Land therefore is a film that

manages to balance typical musical conventions, while also subverting traditional genre

norms to create a work of art that feels fresh, innovative, and relatable to modern

audiences. Chazelle himself said in an interview, The whole story genesis for me was,

essentially, can we go all the way, so to speak, with the musical but still keep it feeling

grounded in a real city with real people.2 In this paper, I discuss the ways in which La La

Land is able to tread this fine line, solidifying its place in American cinematic history.

1
Robert King. Hollywood Genres: Myths of Resolution? Lecture at Columbia University, New York, NY,
October 10, 2017.
2
Joe McGovern. Ryan Gosling & Emma Stone, La La Land costars, discussed by director. In Entertainment
Weekly. Last Modified August 30, 2016. http://ew.com/article/2016/08/30/ryan-gosling-emma-stone-la-
la-land-2/

1
 In Jane Feuers essay on the Self-Reflexive Musical and the Myth of Entertainment,

she identifies three myths of the modern musical. Feuer makes the distinction here that, to

say that entertainment is mythified is to institute a triple play upon conventional meanings

of the word myth. Most simply, it means that entertainment is shown as having greater

value than it actually does.3

The first myth Feuer discusses is the myth of spontaneity. She writes, perhaps the

primary positive quality associated with musical performance is its spontaneous emergence

out of a joyous and responsive attitude towards life."4 In musicals, a song and dance

sequence can erupt out of any random moment, and it appears to be simultaneously both

planned and unplanned. Take for instance the opening sequence mentioned earlier, that

takes place on a highway in Los Angeles. Ordinary people in the midst of a traffic jam, burst

into song and dance, weaving in and out and over cars in what is made to look like a five-

minute-long single shot. This sequence also speaks to how the musical, while technically

the most complex type of film produced in Hollywood, paradoxically has always been the

genre that attempts to give the greatest illusion of spontaneity.5 The shot was difficult to

choreograph, both in terms of dancing and camera work. The scene utilizes a camera on a

crane on the back of a truck that moves back and forth throughout the scene. While it

appears to unfold as a one-shot, there are at least three hidden cuts.

Another scene in La La Land which speaks to the myth of spontaneity follows Ryan

Gosling and Emma Stones characters leaving a party together at the end of a night. After

seeing the beautiful Los Angeles sunset, Gosling begins to sing a song about how theres

3
Jane Feuer. The Self-Reflexive Musical and the Myth of Entertainment. In Film genre reader II, ed. by Barry
Keith Grant (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), 443.
4
Ibid., 443
5
Ibid., 447

2
nothing there between them, and then hangs on to the lamppost in a direct callback to

Gene Kellys similar act in Singin in the Rain (1952). It appears to be a spontaneous

response to the romantic feelings evoked by an ordinary night, a classic boy teases girl

moment.

The sequence continues with Gosling and Stone eventually sitting down on a bench.

She pulls out tap dancing shoes from her bag and at this point the audience realizes that

Gosling already had his own pair on this entire time. It speaks to what Feuer terms a type

of bricolage6, where the actors make use of props they have on hand. This moment is

particularly striking however as though it appears to erupt spontaneously, the actors were

oddly prepared for the ensuing tap-dancing sequence. One does not ordinarily carry tap-

dancing shoes around in their bag, let alone break out into a choreographed dance number

on the streets, yet its a completely acceptable and plausible sequence in the musical genre.

Of this Feuer says, The myth of spontaneity operates to make musical performance, which

is actually part of culture, appear to be part of nature.7

The second myth Feuer describes is the myth of integration. Successful

performances are intimately bound up with success in love, with the integration of the

individual into a community or a group, and even with the merger of high art with popular

art.8 This idea is no more evident than in Goslings characters attempt to integrate Stones

character into his own world of Jazz. Its a move to not only take a mainstream girl into the

world of a dying art, but to build their relationship, incorporate her into his community, and

thus fall deeper in love.

6
Feuer, The Self-Reflexive Musical and the Myth of Entertainment, 444.
7
Ibid., 447.
8
Ibid., 447.

3
 In a montage sequence about halfway through the film, Gosling takes Stone to a jazz

club where she breaks out into a dance amidst other jazz aficionados. The audience gives a

standing ovation to not only applaud the now integrated Stone, but to bring the actual film

watching audience into the experience, which brings me to the third and final myth: the

myth of the audience.

Feuer writes, Successful performances will be those in which the performer is

sensitive to the needs of the audience and which give the audience a sense of participation

in the performance,9 and the use of theatrical audiences in the films provides a point of

identification for audiences of the film. In the second half of La La Land, Goslings character

joins John Legends character in his pursuit of a new kind of jazz: mainstream jazz. The idea

is to take a dying genre and reintroduce it to modern audiences with flashy dance numbers

and electronic beats. Its a direct metaphor for the film itself, in its attempt to take the dying

musical genre and reinvent it for todays cinema goers.

The audiences for the new age jazz performances are markedly different from the

audiences Gosling had played for earlier. The audiences now are younger, energetic

millennials, who you would rarely find in a stuffy jazz club. The viewing audience of La La

Land itself can feel the difference, and although we are tapping our feet to the gaudy

number, we know that Goslings characters heart is not in the performance. We are

brought into their world yet the film makes us feel guilty for enjoying it.

La La Land also shows its self-reflexivity by harking back to other musical films from

the past, as many MGM musicals of the late 1940s and early 1950s did so arftully well. The

references are too many to name for the purposes of this paper, but La La Land relied

9
Feuer, The Self-Reflexive Musical and the Myth of Entertainment, 449.

4
notably on the work of Hollywood musical legend, Fred Astaire, and his belief of how

musicals should be shot and edited. Astaire made the camera an involved but unobtrusive

spectator at his dances, comfortably distant enough to show the dancers fully from head to

toe.10 Furthermore Astaire once observed, Either the camera will dance, or I will.11 In La

La Land, Chazelle is careful to stay true to the head to toe shots, but he uses the camera in

creative ways, for modern audiences. As Director of Photography Linus Sandgren puts it, A

lot of the older musicals were often just panning and or tracking sideways, but we were

more physically involved, in the depth, vertical and circling around, I think. 12

Through iconography, La La Land further solidifies itself as a classic Hollywood

musical. Professor Thomas Schatz writes in his book Hollywood Genres, iconography

involves the process of narrative and visual coding that results from the repetition of a

popular film story.13 Of course, La La Land has the tap-dancing shoes, lampposts and

gorgeous moonlight streets, but the filmmakers take it even one step further than that.

Chazelle purposely chose to shoot the film on film in cinemascope. As Sandgren tells it, La

La Land is a contemporary story about dreamers, but Damien wanted to tell it in the vein of

an older Hollywood musical, inspired by old Hollywood filmmaking. He continued, I

proposed we should go for Cinemascope 2.55 like Cukors A Star is Born from 1954 and

other films of that era, when anamorphic cinematography was introduced. 14 Through bold,

vibrant colors, Sandgren and Chazelle utilize the cinemascope and film stock to its full

10
John Mueller, Astaire Dancing (New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 2015), 26.
11
Ibid., 26.
12
Kodak Blog. Shot in CinemaScope, La La Land vibrantly romances the olden days of Hollywood. Last
Modified January 10, 2017.
https://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/blog/blog_post/?contentid=4295000679
13
Thomas Schatz, Film Genre and The Genre Film. In Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and The
Studio System, (Boston: McGraw Hill, 1991), 22.
14
Kodak Blog.

5
advantage, in turn creating a nostalgic look that feels immediately like an old Hollywood

musical.

It is in this way that La La Land proves that a film genre is both a static and dynamic

system.15 Schatz draws up another metaphor in order to drive this point, in his comparison

of the study of language to the study of genres. Through the circuit of exchange involving

box-office feedback, the studios and the mass audience hold a virtual conversation

whereby they gradually refine the grammar of cinematic discourse.16 At the end of La La

Land, we expect the traditional Hollywood ending, where the boy gets the girl, but it

doesnt happen. Instead, we see the harsh realities of modern love where they dont always

end up together, which reflects changing cultural attitudes.

For a genre film to work efficiently, it is key that viewers should find the plot

structures and conflicts that they would ordinarily expect from said genre. For the musical

film, its the notion of artists trying to keep a dying high art alive, or the idea of two star-

crossed lovers trying to win each others affection. La La Land was successful because not

only did it have both, the filmmakers effectively took those ideas and played with them.

15
Schatz, Film Genre and The Genre Film, 16.
16
Ibid., 19.

6
 Bibliography

Feuer, Jane. The Self-Reflexive Musical and the Myth of Entertainment. In Film genre
reader II, edited by Barry Keith Grant, 441-455. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995.

King, Robert. Hollywood Genres: Myths of Resolution? Lecture at Columbia University,

New York, NY, October 10, 2017.

Kodak Blog. Shot in CinemaScope, La La Land vibrantly romances the olden days of
Hollywood. Last Modified January 10, 2017.
https://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/blog/blog_post/?contentid=4295000679

McGovern, Joe. Ryan Gosling & Emma Stone, La La Land costars, discussed by director. In
Entertainment Weekly. Last Modified August 30, 2016.
http://ew.com/article/2016/08/30/ryan-gosling-emma-stone-la-la-land-2/

Mueller, John. Astaire Dancing. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., 1985.

Schatz, Thomas. Film Genre and The Genre Film. In Hollywood Genres: Formulas,
Filmmaking, and The Studio System, 15-34. Boston: McGraw Hill, 1991.