Musical Theater and Social Protest

Feminism and Racism According to Broadway

My Thesis… Since musical theater is a social document,

sexism and racism can be examined in musicals in the context of their times – from the era of Rodgers and Hammerstein to the popular, more contemporary Wicked. Exploring how sexism and racism are exposed, perpetuated, and protested illuminates how theater is a vehicle not just to reflect, but also to transform, society.

“Our Musicals, Ourselves”When I began writing for musical theatre, I firmly believed

that what I chose to put onstage had the potential of changing people’s lives. I wrote from the belief that plays and musicals can foster in their audiences a feeling of shared community, thereby combating personal isolation and fear. In theatrical settings, people become receptive, and important lessons about life can be genially imparted from the stage (Jones 1)”

Musicals help us understand the context of our time and our history They are deliberately made to

appeal to the broadest possible

segment of the population SO

they tell us a lot about ourselves

and our culture

BUT…What about musicals that only entertain/

amuse patrons?EVEN they reveal a social/political slice of lifeALL contain assumptions, biases, aspirations, and

racial/sexual attitudes when first written and staged

Musicals are…Social documents that reveal deeply-held cultural

attitudes and beliefsTheatrical vehicles to TRANSFORM (not just report)

the times

Who’s the Broadway Audience?

Generally white/middle class

20th century – not yet extremely affluent

After WWII – Skyrocketing ticket prices = Broadway as elitist

Who’s Broadway For?Result of rising ticket prices?

“Audiences have become wealthier and older. With fewer young people exposed to musicals, the potential audience for musical theatre has begun to shrink. Furthermore, African Americans only comprise a significant portion of Broadway musical audiences for black-oriented shows, whether by black, white, or mixed-race creative teams” (Jones 3).

SO…Socially relevant shows mirrored concerns and

lifestyles of middle-class white Americans (the primary audience)

WHY?

Even if the show is brilliant, if it doesn’t entertain its audience it won’t survive to make back its investment

ExamplesRodgers and Hammerstein’s:

South Pacific Annie Get Your Gun

West Side Story

The Wiz

Wicked

RevisionismNew York Times article, in response to “Annie

Get Your Gun” revision… “When today’s audiences pay to gaze at the past,

they want a lot more than golden memories; they want to feel as if a tried-and-true form speaks to the contemporary world”

“Musicals – perhaps because they are essentially period pieces tied more closely to the pop music and cultural and commercial trends of a given moment – usually do not prove as elastic”

1999 Revised “Annie Get Your Gun”

From New York Times … How much can you alter “Annie Get Your Gun” before it is

no longer “Annie Get Your Gun”? Does a politically corrected Indian character make it a better musical, or simply more palatable to a wider audience? Is the process of reconfiguration a refinement or a whitewash?

“Revision craze” = “purging of material involving racial and sexual stereotypes, an ethnic cleansing of an earlier era’s biases

Both “Peter Pan” and “Annie Get Your Gun” revivals got rid of nonsensical Indian dialogues

All dependent on time – “What one generation views as cutting edge becomes the next generation’s tired convention.” And many revised shows will become revised.

“Annie Get Your Gun” Music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzrOMXOJwjE

(I’m an Indian, Too”)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B_SxndVzyw

(The Girl That I Marry)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGB7yTZEZE4

(You Can’t Get a Man With a Gun)

South Pacific “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” – not written as a

message song BUT most explicit statement of concern about learned biases

ALSO the potential interracial marriage could not be completed because the male died at the end – did he die only to satisfy censors?

According to John Bush Jones “In 1949 it was one thing for a Broadway show to

advocate in theory for interracial harmony and even relationships, but it would have been quite another to let the latter actually happen” (152)

WAS the integrity of his vision compromised for the sake of commercial success?

Usually an antagonist is person – BUT was no longer an actual person, but rather ingrained prejudice and racial bias within characters

South Pacific Music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgzvTHsOxSQ

(There Ain’t Nothing Like a Dame)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zzu8ZxBHMWk

(Gonna Wash that Man Right Out of My Hair)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAZ8yOFFbAc

(You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZSt1pgjQdk

Barbara Streisand – You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught AND Children Will Listen (1:16)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwn1QOWWCtg

Westboro Baptist Church example

West Side Story (1957)

“West Side Story” is important since it achieves relevant statements through “Musical’s dramatic action and an occasional line or two of lyrics or dialogue, with no overt preaching”First musical to seriously question universality of

the American Dream (claimed for BOTH sides it was more of a nightmare)

AND showed the prejudice/acceptance motif

BUT…in West Side Story…Early stage versions and film have mainly non-Latino

actors in Hispanic roles

Updated versions have all-Latino actors and songs sung in Spanish

According to NPR, original stage director Jerry Robbins:

Brought Method-acting technique to the show“Deliberately tried to foment animosity, antagonism,

between the two opposing gangs, both on stage and off stage. They weren’t allowed to eat together. They weren’t supposed to socialize”

West Side Story’s Importance

As mainstream pop culture, the show brought awareness, to “huge movement of social change”

At first no one would back it since it was:Too depressingToo advancedToo many tritonesToo many words in the lyrics

Musically, it is this “tritone” quality that indicates indicates instability, restlessness, and tension

West Side Story Musichttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhSKk-cvblc

(America – film version)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oxfOncYiag

(A Boy Like That – film version)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BQMgCy-n6U

(Somewhere)

Civil Rights Era on Broadway

At first Civil Rights were absent from Broadway…

BUT in the early ‘70s there were primarily black shows

The Wiz Completely black mainstream musical in the 1970s Reinventing “The Wizard of Oz” to access the popularity of “Motown, Soul

Train, Afrocentric fashion, and black urban movies”

At first…mostly white audience critical/apathetic

BUT bypassed traditional press campaign to TV commercial getting black children to ask parents to “ease on down the road” called Broadway

SO word of mouth got the black community there and “The Wiz” ran 1,672 performances and then a national tour

NOW there was a black audience for Broadway shows that before had not been present

The Wiz’s ImpactThe Wiz motivated the formation and enactment

of a community of black theatergoers and critics who defied the hegemony of white critics and whose resistance underlined the white perspective of mainstream papers and negated the presumption that a white perspective is objective or universal” (Wolf, 115)

The Wiz Musichttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUrsfrBTbZc

Original “Follow the Yellow Brick Road”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFwAqYBDr2A

(Ease on Down the Road)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVIHBdTuVGc

(The Wiz Live trailer)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAx-y__4n7w

(Can’t You Feel the Brand New Day – political)

Wicked…Subversive?Can shows as popular as “Wicked” also be

considered “protest” while still appealing to such a wide variety of people

OzWomen as rulers of

good AND bad societiesWomen chose political

activism over love/getting the guy/romantic plot

Wicked

Wizard – where I’m from, we believe all sorts of things that aren’t true. We call it…history.

(One of the comments was – you could call that politics)

A man’s called a traitor or a liberator

A rich man’s a thief or philanthropist

Is one a crusader or ruthless invader?

Wicked Music“Popular” – social commentary on how to

behave so others like you

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4rpG-dipYA

“Wonderful” – commentary on what “history” says

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_c4JuzT_X5E

“Defying Gravity” – feminist anthem

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g4ekwTd6Ig

Works Cited John Bush Jones, Our musicals, ourselves : a social history of the American musical

theater

 

Wolf, Stacy “Changed For Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical”

 

“You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught”: Reflections on War, Imperialism, and Patriotism in America’s South Pacific

http://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4811&context=etd

 

“Civil Rights Era on Broadway”

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/broadway/essays/civil-rights-era-on-broadway/

 

New York Times – “Theater; Rewrite a Classic Musical? Whatever Works, Goes”

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/24/theater/theater-rewrite-a-classic-musical-whatever-works-goes.html?pagewanted=all

QuestionsCan music be a form of social protest/social

commentary?

If Broadway shows are trying to make money and appeal to a wide variety of audiences, can shows ever truly push the boundaries of social convention?

Can a musical’s songs have life outside the context of the show itself?