Structuralist Analysis of Musical Genre in Animation

Genre in Film Studies is a set of rules and common agreements among three groups of audience, filmmakers and critics to classify types of films. This set of rules and accepted characteristics directly influences film formation. A cursory look at “Musical Animation” genre shows that this type of animation, due to its potential, has gained a huge popularity among cinemagoers. By investigating different theories, the present study tries to identify the main characteristics of this genre and provide an analysis of two chosen films based on these characteristics. Its vision is to cover part of the theoretical shortcomings concerning this genre in Iran. This article aims to prove a hypothesis in which this genre is fully explainable according to five levels of Narrative, Character & Acting, Music, Song and Voice. “Beauty and the Beast” (2017) and “Fantasia” (1940) are two feature animations that are studied considering the above mentioned levels.