"The Spectacle has, indeed, an emotional attraction of its own, but, of all the parts, it is the least artistic, and connected least with the art of poetry. For the power of Tragedy, we may be sure, is felt even apart from representation and actors. Besides, the production of spectacular effects depends more on the art of the stage machinist than on that of the poet."
--Aristotle
I wish the song weren't so insensitive. I absolutely love the melody and the "I'll just send for Tiger Lily..." part. Hopefully the new "Blood Brothers" in the live broadcast will finally succeed in making this great number acceptable.
Quite a few things lovebwy. For one, they cast a bunch of white actors to play natives. That wouldn't be so bad if they then didn't give them red leggings and tops, paint their faces red (to make them redskins), cover them in war paint, and dress them like stock Native American characters in a western. Ugg-a-wugg and the other nonsense language is the lyrical equivalent of writing a show with Chinese characters and having them sing ching-chong over and over. The choreography is very well executed, but also plays to the stereotypical movement of Native American people.
Essentially, it's stacks of stereotypes and arguably racist imagery used as the only character development for half the cast of the show. That's pretty darn offensive.
Yeah. It's not even what's known as doubletalk- a fluid imitation of the actual sounds of a language, which may be gibberish but is designed to NOT sound like gibberish. It's a mixture of caveman grunts and funny sounding words. "Ugga wugga meatball" doesn't sound like any native dialect, or even recall traditional depictions of Native American pidgin English. It's just "they can't talk good."
The leggings and body stockings weren't actually part of the show costume - those were added for the parade because of the cold outside temperatures.
Jerome Robbin's original concept for the Indians in PETER PAN was that they were a 'play' on children dressing up as Indians (playing cowboys and Indians was a hugely popular children's entertainment in the 1950s). Sondra Lee, with her white blond locks was obviously no real American Indian, and the whole thing was rather innocent and naive.
The Rob Isacove revival (seen here) was the first that began to put a 'realistic' spin on the Indians as Native Americans, and in that context the material began to seem a little inappropriate.
By the time the tour of this production went out a couple of years after this parade performance, steps had already been made to make the number and depictions less cartoonish - an actress of color was cast as Tiger Lily and the foppish makeup seen here was abandoned.
I'm happy for the telecast, they've explored ways to keep the song with lyrics that better serve a modern perspective on the characters.
I think its interesting that the new PAN film takes a completely different approach on the "Natives" -- reinventing them as their own story land tribe and removing them completely from the context of "American Indian" -- which is perhaps the smartest way to approach the characters in the 21st century.