Broadway in the Box

Abstract

Abstract Broadway in the Box shines a television-centric light on the cross-industry presence of a seminal American art form. Over seven chapters, it works to unearth, explore, and analyze pockets of over seventy years of television programming that have embraced, nodded toward, and satirized the American musical in its various forms. This concentrated exploration of the genre across American television allows for an explication of America’s shifting and at times wavering feelings toward the musical, its songs, and its stars. Further, examining these texts alongside constantly changing and at times intersecting entertainment industries uncovers forms of symbiosis and synergy that linked the cultural and economic futures of the musical across platforms. In the end, Mitzi Gaynor titillating America in a revealing and bejeweled Bob Mackie dress was not just the seventies being the seventies, but a single event reflecting a larger confluence of Broadway, film, Vegas, ratings, genre, and programming trends within a specific television model. Perhaps in a style similar to various Broadway and film retrospectives, Broadway in the Box takes individual events and brings them together to craft a larger commentary on American entertainments, economics, and industries. Broadway has always been in the box; someone just needed to plug it in to see what was on.

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