Young Millie Dilmount arrives in New York City during the jazz age, shingles her hair and looks for a job with a rich, handsome boss she can marry. The musical-film Thoroughly Modern Millie (dir. George Roy Hill, Universal, 1967) may have been a spoof of the 1920s but various twists and turns in its plot nonetheless reveal its middlebrow scaffolding. Social aspiration is written into the plot, as is the ambiguity of its signifiers: although Millie (Julie Andrews) falls for the penniless Jimmy Smith (James Fox), she sets her sights on the seemingly more appropriate Trevor Graydon (John Gavin) only to discover that, of course, Jimmy was a millionaire all along. This is a narrative as much about cultural and social as financial capital. Through its ‘second-order parody’ of racial, ethnic and gender stereotypes, Angelo Pao argues, Thoroughly Modern Millie – along with other American musicals – ‘has played a significant role in the formation of a national persona’. The middlebrow, though, is not necessarily about identity politics, storylines or style; it is also closely bound with modes of dissemination and their relative costs and, because of that, with questions of class. Indeed, the Broadway musical was (and continues to be) a mainly middle-class affair, from its makers to its consumers, who David Savran points out have long needed ‘a good deal of disposable income’, given that ticket prices have always outstripped cinema, spoken theatre – and, on occasion, opera.

中文翻译：

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彻底现代的中产阶级

年轻的米莉·迪尔蒙特在爵士乐时代来到纽约市，她梳着头发，找了一份工作，找了一份她可以嫁给有钱、英俊的老板的工作。音乐电影彻底现代的米莉（导演乔治·罗伊·希尔，环球影业，1967 年）可能是对 1920 年代的恶搞，但其情节中的各种曲折仍然揭示了它的中庸之道。社会愿望被写入情节，其能指的模糊性也是如此：虽然米莉（朱莉安德鲁斯）爱上了身无分文的吉米史密斯（詹姆斯福克斯），但她将目光投向了看似更合适的特雷弗格雷登（约翰加文），只是为了发现，当然，吉米一直都是百万富翁。这是一个关于文化和社会以及金融资本的叙述。Angelo Pao 认为，通过对种族、民族和性别刻板印象的“二级模仿”，彻底现代的米莉——与其他美国音乐剧一样——“在国家形象的形成中发挥了重要作用”。不过，中庸之道不一定与身份政治、故事情节或风格有关。它还与传播方式及其相对成本密切相关，因此也与阶级问题密切相关。事实上，百老汇音乐剧曾经（并将继续是）主要是中产阶级的活动，从制作者到消费者，大卫萨夫兰指出，鉴于票价总是超过电影院、口语戏剧——有时还有歌剧。