I think musicalman2 and CurtainPullDowner express it perfectly.
I remember there was an initial feeling that the drag aspect would be a "bad" representation of us, because the only representations of our lives in the media in the 1970s had been the extremes: gay psycho killers in Cruising, flamboyant quipsters in Boys in the Band, lisping, mincing hairdressers--that kind of thing. We hated it and we thought La Cage would be more of the same.
We took some comfort from the fact that Harvey's Torch Song Trilogy, which preceded his work on La Cage, took the character of Arnold from drag queen to relationships to surviving gay bashing to winning (or demanding) acceptance from his mother. So there was a sense that Harvey would make it something more than a farcical minstrel show. And Arthur and Jerry Herman seemed determined to make a musical comedy that delivered a "statement." So, their intentions were honorable, but nevertheless, there was much concern.
When it opened, it was better than we had worried, but the material still seemed very superficial. So it was fun--and it was great to hear the stories of heterosexual couples (mostly middle-aged suburban women) experiencing the love of Albin and Georges as romantically as any heterosexual love story. And it was fun to know that people couldn't pick out which of the Cagelles was the single biological woman.
But something else was happening in 1983 that ended up making La Cage seem much deeper than anyone had ever anticipated: gay men were not just becoming liberated, they were also falling prey to a disease that was taking them fast and hard--with horrible lesions on the face and arms and legs and a terrible form of pneumonia that left them on their death beds emaciated and skeletal, like concentration-camp victims.
Moreover, in 1983, the disease was still being ignored by the media, by the government, by everyone it seemed. The government and the media united to take care of something called Legionnaire's Disease, which affected a comparatively smaller number of people, but it ignored the insistent arguments of self-taught lesbian and gay science geeks and activists that what was happening was not a "gay disease" but an immune disorder that, left unchecked, would turn into a worldwide pandemic. They didn't listen, until it did.
AIDS, first identified in 1981 was beginning to devastate the theater, especially the musical theater. Dancers, designers, actors, singers, even world-class directors and choreographers were quietly getting sick and dying quickly--there were no real drugs until 1994, just highly toxic drugs during the 80s and early 90s that only delayed the inevitable horrific death.
That's when red ribbons and such started appearing...and lesbians and gay men started coming out in larger numbers to their families, their friends and their co-workers--and the media, because with so many people dying in their 20s and 30s, it seemed more and more essential that we come out NOW, not when we were sick.
In shows like La Cage, what happened was some Cagelles started getting sick. And then their friends started getting sick and dying quickly, shunned and made to feel ashamed of their lesions and their inability to breathe by their families and by their religious leaders. We were all in our 20s and 30s and and going to memorial services sometimes once a week--if not a friend's, then a friend of a friend's. It seemed like non-stop grief. You went to mourn. You went to lend support. You went to get support. You went because it could be you next--arranging the memorial...or being memorialized.
And so the words "I am what I am" and the collective "We are what we are" stopped being the words of a superficial musical comedy and became a defiant anthem of self-identification. WE ARE WHAT WE ARE. They embodied the notion of pride: So WHAT if the churches and the media wanted to portray AIDS as a punishment for our "lifestyle"...WE ARE WHAT WE ARE. It even became a Gloria Gaynor disco anthem, so we could all put our arms up in the air and twirl around and dance and sing "You think it's noise? I THINK IT'S PRETTY"
And the somewhat conventional drinking song in the second act became something else for the devastated people of the theater: It became a hymn: Even though our friends were dying, even though we were dying ourselves, even though we were reviled, even though life was harder than it ought to be for people so young, the song maintained that the best of times was NOW. We put our arms around each other, we drank, we hugged, we cried. Boy, did we cry. But the song maintained, despite our tears, that the best of times always was--and always would be--right now, right here, with the people we love, with those of us who are lucky enough to be alive today, for one more day.
And as for tomorrow, well, who knows, who knows, who knows...?
Updated On: 4/8/10 at 08:19 AM
