5 Reasons Why Dancer in the Dark is Postmodern

1. Breaks reality by placing the audience in Selma’s musical day dreams - in her reality. Selma’s daydream reality is heavily contrasted with her actual reality, she thrives on singing and dancing however in reality she is loosing her sight and this forces her to quit her role as Maria in a theatre production of The Sound of Music.
2. Deconstructs our expectations for a musical genre, Selma acknowledges musical are happy and upbeat yet her story and all these upbeat songs are put in the wrong place; a utopia in a dystopia.
3. Songs from The Sound of Music are appropriated, Selma sings My Favourite Things to cheer herself up about her soon approaching execution where as the original song was contextualised as cheering up children who were afraid of thunder and lightning.
4. It is self reflexive, it acknowledges the music is artificial and doesn’t belong in the typical musical film, the songs/her hyper reality are used as a retreat for Selma to restore her optimism and positivity to carry her throughout her toughest times.
5. The audience are denied the cinematic experience they expect when seeing a musical, typically we expect a story with a happy ending or upbeat emotion throughout and as a omniscient presence we usually know where a musical story is heading, the entire time we hope Selma gets the justice and freedom she deserves and we expect that of a musical genre but are denied and again like funny games we and our expectations are being deconstructed.