Out-group Characters Depicted in American Musical Films: Take the Film The Greatest Showman as an Example

Abstract

The Greatest Showman, a 2017 film directed by Michael Gracey, focuses on the first circus in history, its founder, and its members under the background of The Great Depression. Therefore, this paper primarily examines the dialogue and lyrics in the film, and how these elements help to portray the out-group characters and describe what they have gone through. The data source of this research is The Greatest Showman (2017), which includes scripts, dialogues, and lyrics from the film soundtrack. Based on the content of the film, the authors carefully read the script credits and the soundtrack, subsequently selecting data relevant to the research topic and consulting secondary sources (research articles and audience reviews). By recording and analyzing relevant data, this paper relates them to the mechanisms of social identity theory. The paper finds that the film uses monologues, dialogues and title tracks to reflect the positions and emotions of out-group individuals, all of whom are discriminated against because of who they are, all of whom have good character traits, and all of whom dare to change the status quo, build shelters for themselves and ultimately take pride in their uniqueness and accept their out-group identity.