The hills are alive… with Fascism, child-rearing and love: explaining the popularity of ‘The Sound of Music’
Critics have long panned 1965’s ‘The Sound of Music’ as a schmaltzy and conservative piece of filmmaking, seemingly untouched by the spirit of the revolutionary decade in which it was made. But London academic Martin Gorsky believes the film actually ‘helped constitute’ an understanding of society.
Gorsky explains that the film’s treatment of two contemporary issues - the importance of play and emotion in childrearing, and post-war perspectives of Fascism – were fundamental to the widespread popularity of the film.
Thus Maria’s energetic and involved parenting is more than just a quirk of the script. The values of the 1960s can also be detected in many of the characters’ relationships with authority figures; the film shows that “social organisation based on fealty to the leader ends only in unhappiness. The antidote, love, can both transform the individual and rearrange the social, replacing obedience with collaboration.”
Gorsky concludes that what made ‘The Sound of Music’ so popular with contemporary audiences was the simple statement about love and peace at its core: “and what would be a more characteristically ‘Sixties’ message than that?”
* Read the full article online:http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17541328.2014.886425#.U38gmfldUnU
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* Read the full article online:http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17541328.2014.886425#.U38gmfldUnU
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