Anais Mitchell blames the patriarchy for people wanting perfect rhymes in theatre songs. Seriously.

https://twitter.com/anaismitchell/status/1202255123243819009?s=20

"Possible that the theater world’s obsession w perfect end rhymes is a residue of patriarchal obsession w male orgasm, ignorant of the mystical complexity of the feminine? #discuss"

whatever2 said: "I wouldn't rule it out ... the patriarchy's caused a lot of sh*t."

say it Louder

I blame the patriarchy for Digital Filmmaking.

I'm as intrigued as i am admittedly skeptical.

What do end rhymes have to do with male orgasm and how do they ignore female orgasm?
And what about internal rhymes? Is that a repetition of spikes more like female multiple orgasm? Are internal rhymes matriarchal?
Whereas male multiple orgasm requires a longer recovery time so one has to wait all the way to the end of the line?
Or is it that an internal rhyme would suggest a male premature ejaculation?
What about unrhymed verse or prose? Is it anorgasmic? Egalitarian? Pre-agrarian?

Seriously, I have no clue what her point is. But I'd love to hear her argument.

JBC3 said: "An end rhyme could be viewed as a clear finish/end ... much like the male orgasm."

Or like tying the bow on a present, or crossing Ts and dotting Is, or any other neat, satisfying finish. I find perfect end rhymes delightful, regardless of how anyone orgasms.

Updated On: 12/7/19 at 11:52 AM

Perfect rhymes help the listener hear and understand the lyric. If that's patriarchal oppression, so be it.

Mitchell sounds like Camille Paglia run amok. (I apology for the redundancy.)

I admit I haven't kept up on Ms. Paglia's work of late. But she was always conservative, at least relative to certain academic trends. (I'm not saying she votes GOP, though nothing she does for attention would surprise me.)

I can read Nietzsche for myself. I never needed her to paraphrase him for me.

(None of the above is intended to suggest she should lose her job.)

TotallyEffed said: "She is certainly a character."

Indeed. I didn't mean to suggest she made no contribution. I did read all of SEXUAL PERSONAE and I share her refusal to condescend to popular culture. But compared to someone like Elaine Showalter, Paglia is rather superficial and repetitive.

I didn't know she was identifying as transgender, but when I read it in your post, I thought, "Of course, she does!"

Updated On: 12/7/19 at 03:22 PM

I think HADESTOWN is one of the most beautiful evenings of musical theater to come around in a long time. But my enjoyment would have been exponentially increased had Mitchell succumbed to the patriarchy and provided us with proper true rhymes to end her lines. I ascribe her refusal to do so more to a lack of professionalism than to any moral paradigm she's fighting. Each time her lines ended in a true rhyme, my heart smiled a little.

You are totally correct. My point is that I ENJOY perfect rhymes a million per cent more than false rhymes.

If I want to hear maybe-but-not-quite rhymes, I'll just listen to most current pop music. But if I'm going to see a first-class Broadway production, I want to feel the lyricist cares as much about doing his/her job that I'm awestruck at how words can be manipulated.

Yes, I know, even Sondheim slides a bit... but damn rarely. He works those words to not only rhyme but tell a story and make an impact. Many of his rhyme schemes are brilliantly subtle, so much so that you're not even aware of how the rhymes have been built because you're more in awe at what he's conveying with them

Yes, I know, not everyone can be a Sondheim. But that doesnt excuse lazy lyrics. The jukies are giving us that in spades.

HogansHero said: "The only thing I see that has run amok is this thread LOL.

There is a broader point, that does not rely on the patriarchy theory, which is, at best, debatable. I would think we can all agree that there are demographics in which perfection and, for lack of a better term, completion, are of elevated importance. And others in which they are not. And those broader characteristics can correlate to how one views perfect rhymes. As with so much else we talk about here, it is about resonance, not intelligence, and about intention, not ability. At the end of the day, it's art, and we denigrate art when we pretend that there is right art and wrong art."

Since you reference a previous post of mine, I wish you had read it. I never said anything about "right" or "wrong" art. I just voted in an online poll for HADESTOWN as best OBCR of 2019.

What I actually said was that perfect rhymes serve a specific purpose in the theater, where lyrics must compete with a lot of other elements.

I used the word "amok" to refer to a silly theory equating perfect rhymes with male orgasms. Try telling that theory to Dorothy Fields, Lynn Ahrens, Betty Comden, Carolyn Leigh, et al., any of whom could have written a rhyming dictionary. (I realize many of the ladies I invoke are dead; you can find them in musical-comedy heaven.)