Anais Mitchell blames the patriarchy for people wanting perfect rhymes in theatre songs. Seriously. — Page 2

GavestonPS said: "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. "

First of all, I read every word you wrote (as I usually do). I was not referencing anything you said by swiping "amok"; I just liked the expression. But now that you bring it up, your penultimate paragraph is purely about "right and wrong" whether you invoke the words or not. That purpose is something your ears (and you are by no means alone) have been conditioned to think serves a purpose (which is fine) but it is not "right" in some objective way. And last of all, we agree about the other silliness.

Sondheim believes perfect rhymes to be important in writing musical theatre lyrics because of their ability to help audiences understand what's being sung to them. Hearing "weather" at the end of a line anticipates a word such as "together". A word like "forever", however, is not quite the same sound, and consequently, there may be a delay in the listener's comprehension of the lyric. This is not such an issue with popular music as the listener can playback and/or pause the recorded music. Obviously this is not the case with live theatre.

Of course, he acknowledges this tradition originated in the age before amplification when audiences had to focus more to understand the words. The current ability to mic actors coupled with the fact that nearly every generation alive today has been raised on imperfect rhymes in music probably allows more lyricists to get away with not using perfect ones. It's not as important a feature as it once was.

Updated On: 12/10/19 at 02:06 AM

bk said: "Who is this nincompoop and why does anyone care what this nincompoop says on Twitter? Discuss."

Anais Mitchell won the 2019 Tony Award for Best Score for HADESTOWN. The show won Best Musical.

For more information https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaïs_Mitchell

BK what have you done and why should anyone care? Discuss!

qolbinau said: "Because no matter how ridiculous the claim all anyone has to do these days is claim men are the scum of the earth and a bunch of followers will applause and chant YASSSS QUEEN."

Pray tell, how do you feel about Islam and Muslims today? Any new ridiculous claims!

Jordan Catalano said: "BUT SONDHEIM HAS A PENIS SO DOWN WITH HIM AND HIS PATRIARCHAL LYRICS!"

How dare you assume Sondheim has a penis.

A Director said: "qolbinau said: "Because no matter how ridiculous the claim all anyone has to do these days is claim men are the scum of the earth and a bunch of followers will applause and chant YASSSS QUEEN."

Pray tell, how do you feel about Islam and Muslims today? Any new ridiculous claims!"

I suppose her claim has a lot in common with Christian, Islamic and Jewish beliefs: fiction.

Hogan, you are absolutely right. We agree here, we're just clarifying our thoughts, pun intended.

Two things we haven't mentioned:

Perfect rhymes got a bad rap (back in the 1950s and 1960s) because the rigid pursuit of them resulted in so many banal, moon-June-spoon lyrics. Songwriters like Bob Dylan thought it more important to have something to say with each line than to make perfect rhymes.

And sometimes a perfect rhyme knocks you out of the moment because it foreshadows too clearly what is coming. When, in WORKING, the truck driver sings a line that ends with "brother trucker", even on first listen you already know the next rhyme coming will be "motherf----r"! What else could it be?

Can't believe I missed a conversation about Paglia, a cultural hero of mine. Indeed she would be livid at the idea that her thinking is similar to such nonsense as "perfect rhymes are a product of patriarchy." She'd be livid because it's a nonsense argument, not because she sees patriarchy as evil. Paglia championed male contributions, such as constructing cities and creating technological advances that allowed women to leave housework and even childbirth aside, that provided women the freedom to claim equal status with men in society.

Updated On: 12/11/19 at 08:44 AM

Sorry to butt in, and a bit off topic, but I would like to give those suffering from the patriarchy some hope.

Starting back about two decades now, women are simply taking over higher education. Don't hold me to the exact statistics, which most would not agree on anyway. But for the last ten years approximately Ten to eleven percent more women than men are enrolling in four year colleges upon graduation from high school. And I believe that this means three million more women than men each year are attending four year colleges. On top of that, only about sixty percent of the enrolled men get that degree compared to women students.

This is applicable about evenly to whites and blacks. It does not apply to Asians and Hispanics.

Over the course of a decade, this amounts to perhaps 30 million less men getting that bachelor's degree, which is still the first necessary credential for having a successful career in the United States. The media has been very slow in reporting this story. Perhaps many think that it is a good thing for women to run over men in law and medicine. Women in charge may do better at running the world than men. They couldn't do much worse.

Another reason for underreporting this story may be that it has received so little attention politically. There are no special interests behind it and no lobbying funds available. No constituents are complaining.

The Atlantic was one of the first to call attention to this phenomenon with two articles in 2017.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/11/gender-education-gap/546677/

And a very recent Washington Post story highlighted the trend.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/the-degrees-of-separation-between-the-genders-in-college-keeps-growing/2019/10/25/8b2e5094-f2ab-11e9-89eb-ec56cd414732_story.html

The problem with this scenario playing out is that it results in a very large number of undereducated young men who are unemployed or underemployed. In the past this has been a very dangerous demographic to democracies. The men are envious and resentful and angry that they have been left behind. They vote for Trump. They are even at risk into turning into Brown Shirts, with a large assortment of guns and other lethal weapons readily available.

But the patriarchy may be on the way out.

^^^ I have three different recordings of that "sh***y" musical, so I trust it's obvious I don't agree. Instead, I think the lesson here is that writers don't necessarily make cogent critics.