Prof. Isabel Capeloa Gil, associate professor at the Catholic University\nof Portugal (UPC), gave a talk on \u201cEntertainment and Financial Narratives in\nBusby Berkeley’s \u2018Gold diggers\u2019 of 1933 and Michael Jackson’s \u2018This is It\u2019\u201d at\nthe University of Macau (UM) on 20 March.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Based on Aristotle\u2019s points of view on change, complexity and cycle, as\nwell as Kracauer\u2019s study of the Tiller Girls, Prof. Gil noted that any change,\nincluding boom and bust, is crucial for world-making and for the marking of\nmodernity in economic, social and cultural ways, and also represents the\nregularity in capitalism. Prof. Gil\nextended the idea of cycle, saying that popular entertainment such as dance\ncould be a meaningful metaphor to reflect the economic state of a given period,\nespecially during a financial crackdown.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Referring to Busby Berkeley\u2019s 1930s musicals \u201cGold diggers\u201d and Michael\nJackson\u2019s 2009 \u201cThis is It\u201d London concert rehearsal clips, Prof. Gil said that\nboth works mirror the economic crisis and social upheavals through its dance,\nperformance and settings. While the previous one addresses the paradoxical\nrelationship between the masses\u2019 desire to be wealthy and the machine-like\nfactory work and the relationship between desexualized and sexualized art forms\nshown in the body movements; the latter represents the crush of capitalism in\n2008, which is set in a sad and phantom-like lonely mood. These two works\nperfectly depict the irony of hegemonic capitalism. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
These two examples aroused great\ninterest in gender issue and subjectivity among the audience, and they asked a\nlot of questions during the Q&A session. Dang Hao, a student of\nCommunication and New Media, said that he was amazed by the dance metaphor for\nsocial cohesion and the economic recession in the 1930s, particularly by how the\nsynchronized indissoluble movement corresponds with the de-individualized\nfactory work, and how the surface-level expressions demonstrate the unique\nidentity of the masses rather than the individual. He said that the talk helped\nhim to gain a new understanding of the world-famous \u201cThis is it\u201d concert.<\/p>\n\n\n\nProf. Isabel Capeloa Gil is an associate professor of german and comparative\nliterature and vice-rector for research at UPC. Her research interests include intermedia\nstudies, performance studies, gender studies as well as representations of war\nand conflict. She is also a director of the Lisbon Consortium and a visiting\nprofessor at the St. Joseph University in Macao.
Prof. Isabel Capeloa Gil, associate professor at the Catholic University of Portugal (UPC), gave a talk on \u201cEntertainment and Financial Narratives in Busby Berkeley’s \u2018Gold diggers\u2019 of 1933 and Michael…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":113492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-149349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n