What Laws Apply In The Land Of Musicals?

[katiuska]

Originally Posted by POS Industries

Did you somehow watch a production of it that didn't have Lieutenant Brannigan spending the entire play trying to bust them for it? Or the entire point of the story where the gambling ring set up in the back of the mission while everyone was out because they thought the cops would never look there?

I mean the entire point was that the laws very much applied and they were criminals.

Yeah, I was tempted to get into this in detail, but I think I lost interest.

Originally Posted by Meister

I think you might be taking the commonly accepted conventions of musical theater quite too literally. I'm not an expert by any means but I'm pretty sure the idea is just telling a story with songs rather than depict a world where society has developed such that singing and dancing is the natural way to communicate.

This. Songs are a mode by which characters can express themselves and negotiate interactions. By default, they are not literally singing any more than an anime character literally acquires massive physical deformity for the duration of a super-deformed shot. It's an abstraction that reflects in the inner state of a character.

Comments on the singing become a sort of 4th wall joke. I can see why inconsistency might get someone, but it doesn't bother me if different songs exist in different "states." Like, Adelaide is a showgirl, so when she performs, Adelaide is really singing. When she goes back to her medical textbook afterward, following a disappointing conversation with Nathan, the song she sings is just the musical's way of conveying her problem to the audience. I'm fine with that.

Though I do believe that life would be improved immensely if people really did spontaneously burst into song and dance numbers. As a corollary, a lot of fictional works would be infinitely better if they were also musicals.