Dear Evan Hansen issue... — Page 5

The social media world also loves to pick things apart. Remember Ken Bone? In the span of like, a day, he went from funny meme to people finding out he was kind of a weirdo. Particularly on sites like Reddit, that kind of sleuthing happens all the time- and yet not a single person looks at this story and figures out that it doesn't add up? I don't buy that.

Interesting reading through this thread. While I like Dear Evan Hansen, I do think that the marketing of #YouWillBeFound is strange. The reason You Will Be Found is such a great Act 1 finale is that it shows both the "good" Evan's lie is doing (reconciling the Murphy parents and inspiring people on the internet) with the creepiness of it. The act ends with him getting together with Zoe, which to me is the major misstep of the show, as they try to play it as a cute relationship when the audience knows it was built on lies about her DEAD BROTHER.

As another member of these boards who struggles with social anxiety and depression, while I sympathize with Evan's plight, he is clearly a much more morally complex character than most audiences realize, and to me his actions post-Disappear cross a line. I don't know what I would have had at the end, but the Murphys being better off after his lies seems unrealistic. Admittedly he is called out for his actions in-show, but I do wonder how the role would play if there was a less sympathetic actor than Ben Platt in the role.

phan24 said: "This production has been marketed as a suicide prevention champion and in February its social media presence did some Random Acts of Kindness tasks (by delivering baskets of apples to all the Broadway companies, which smells like sneaky Tony Campaigning more than anything else).

It all feels fake and forced, as the show itself does NOTHING to express this message. As it's been discussed #YouWillBeFound is literally an insult to the situation.



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Updated On: 4/28/17 at 03:06 PM

akmiller_98 said: "So true. Wouldn't we find it insulting if the Cabaret revival started a #TomorrowBelongstoUS campaign?

Yes. Because that is a Nazi anthem. But I woudn't be insulted if #Lifeisacabaret was the campaign even though that song is devastating and ironic.



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Of course not. I didn't mean to imply (apologies if I did) that the two are compatible - one is obviously worse than the other. But I was using it as an example of serious subject matter being used in a cynical way to sell tickets.

I just removed my comment because, in hindsight, it seems rather needlessly offensive. I apologize- as someone who has dealt with severe depression and social anxiety, this issue just really means a lot to me.

3NU said: "Honestly, I think a lot of the issues mentioned above could have been resolved if the script never had Zoe say that Evan's actions brought the family closer together. That plot contrivance is not only unfounded and unearned, but it's also incredibly insulting to what the Murphy family just went through as characters (it undermines their pain and the consequences of Evan's actions). I personally reconciled this issue by assuming Zoe meant that the Murphy family forgave Evan in spite of the awful things he did because they saw a bit of what Connor went through in Evan. If that sentiment had been made explicit in the script, I feel some who are currently uncomfortable with the show may find it more digestible.

I still contend, however, that the biggest problem in DEH (as others have brought up here) is the promotion of #YouWillBeFound. If #YouWillBeFound is truly the message of the show, then no wonder some see DEH as promoting the fact that Evan's lie is justifiable (particularly given what Zoe says at the end). I find "Disappear" and "You Will Be Found" to be the most disturbing songs in the show, not on the basis of the songs' content itself but rather on the fact that they've become fodder for people to claim that what's being promoted in those songs are what we're supposed to take away from DEH. In the context of show's narrative, those songs are intimately intertwined with the lie Evan created for himself (i.e., despite the positive messages being portrayed in the songs themselves, the character's intent behind putting forth such messages is really twisted, to say the least); so is #YouWillBeFound really the most appropriate message to be taking away from the show?

What we are supposed to take away from DEH, I argue, is the fact that Evan learns how "stepping into the sun" means facing the worst in oneself rather than creating the "perfect" life through a lie (given, ironically, that creating the "perfect" life revealed the worst in Evan, as was beautifully stated in "Words Fail" ). Yet that message gets completely lost in the mess of #YouWillBeFound and what the book writer has Zoe say at the end.

I have such mixed feelings about this show, and you've covered a lot of what bothered me. Some of the problems are in the book and lyrics. The rest of it stems from the promotion and audience reaction, which is in part a response to the promotion of the musical as an "important" show that isn't a dark, wicked satire but is instead an earnest attempt to address issues such as teenage mental illness and the impact of social media.

My first reaction, after seeing the show, was to ask my wife and teenage daughter whether Evan earned his happy ending. My daughter's reaction was telling. She said that it almost had to end on a hopeful note, that it would have been crushing to the audience otherwise. It certainly was a savvy marketing decision, including the unironic #youwillbefound hastag, but renders the show toothless or worse as a work of art.

As I watched the show, I could see the problem even in the first act, that Steven Levenson was writing himself into a corner. Evan isn't presented as an antihero. He's supposed to be a damaged guy we're rooting for, but by the second act, it's impossible to root for him because he's gone too far. His manipulation of Zoe is really twisted and wrong.

Now, it's possible to reconcile all of this, and certainly the one-two punch of "Words Fail" and "So Big/So Small" work effectively in the theatre, especially as delivered by Ben Platt and Rachel Bay Jones.

The writers shy away from the tragic ending the show seems to warrant. Instead, everything is basically fine, better than before for all the living characters (the Murphys' son is still dead, so his parents are presumably sad about that, but the real Connor is actually forgotten). Evan certainly seems better, as his verbal tics are gone and he is able to carry on a difficult conversation. Zoe is forgiving, and credits Evan with bringing his parents together. There are ways to retcon all of this, to say his parents came together in spite of Evan's actions, but I can't ignore what Zoe actually said on the stage. That was an unforced error.

And while I can believe that all of the characters got better, after a year's time, as Kad says, all that healing and improvement happened offstage. We don't see any of it. Shoot, the Murphys come off as a little cynical, as if they let the lies stand - and allowed themselves to be attacked online for however long - so they can get money for the orchard and nice memories of Connor.

So how could this have been fixed? I don't really think I needed a moralistic ending that leaves Evan worse off than before. But I found the actual ending to a cheap way to allow the audience to leave the theatre content. It's too bad, because there is a lot I admired about the show. It is eerily realistic, moving, and resonant along the way, and the show - set in the here and now with almost no set - doesn't hide behind costumes, irony, or a long-ago setting that allows the audience to see it from a safe distance.

The cast is also uniformly excellent. I have no problem if Platt or Jones win the Tony awards they are favored to get. But the show itself left a bad taste that has still lingered a few weeks later.

Updated On: 4/30/17 at 09:56 PM

MyLife said: "I find I enjoy listening to the music outside of the scope of the show more than within the scope. You Will Be Found is a great song. But in the show, it's a round piece trying to fit into a square peg. It doesn't fit."

This! I think the OCR is fantastic, and in some ways misleading. If you just listen to the OCR, I can see how people would adore this show. But seeing it in context, I found I was unable to overlook the book's flaws.

icecreambenjamin said: "akmiller_98 said: "My takeaways from DEH were: 1. People can **** up big time, and there is room for forgiveness. 2. Things that feel big now, won't always feel that way. (GOD! That's something I'm constantly working on in therapy.) 3. Treat people kindly. Try to be more inclusive--you never know what they are going through.



"

I agree 100%. This is what the show is really about.

Look, the book really is not that flawed. It's controversial because these ideas are presented in a very unforgiving and cynical way. The book is pretty perfect, actually. You may not agree with some of the choices that the characters make, but that does not make it poorly written. Evan is a completely lost young person who just screws up so bad that he feels like he can't go back on a lie that was just supposed to give a family some sort of closure. Conor was an abusive person who obviously had some sort of untreated mental illness and had very few redeeming qualities and Evan gave his family and the world a perfect image him. Why would the family announce to the public that all the wonderful things about Conor were all lies and reveal him to be a less than wonderful person? Instead, they step out of the spotlight and cut Evan out of their lives. I mean, you have to think about the good that Evan must have done by spreading messages like "You Will Be Found" on social media, even if it was based on a huge lie (with good intentions).

Also, Evan's relationship with Zoe is supposed to be uncomfortable. It pushes Evan even further into his moral dilemma. Evan's character is deeply flawed, but aren't all interesting characters. I mean, Marvin leaves his family, has an angry attitude a huge portion of the first act, and slaps his wife in Falsettos and yet we still care for him. Billy Bigelow is a straight up abusive husband and yet he's still lovable and Freddy in My Fair Lady is kind of a stalker. Flawed characters are interesting because they are more complicated than a perfect, squeaky clean person.

Also, if you want to see DEH where the liar in this situation owns up publicly about their mistakes, watch World's Greatest Dad and you will see why that doesn't work.





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Not saying I agree with this, but even if I did, then why are the producers pushing #YouWillBeFound in a really cynical way?

The book isn't flawed because Evan is a flawed character. As you say, that's what makes characters interesting. The book is flawed because it comes to unearned conclusions and has the characters act in unrealistic ways. Evan didn't do any good by spreading messages like "You Will Be Found" on social media, and in fact I would argue that he did a great deal of harm. Connor wasn't found, and there is no guarantee that any lost or unstable person in Connor's position will be found. They should be found, but that's a very different message.

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Is "it gets better" a bad message because there are some people for whom it does not get better, or who tragically kill themselves before it gets better? Are you saying that if something isn't true for everybody, it shouldn't be put forth as a possible outcome for anybody?

cam5y said: "MyLife said: "I find I enjoy listening to the music outside of the scope of the show more than within the scope. You Will Be Found is a great song. But in the show, it's a round piece trying to fit into a square peg. It doesn't fit."

This! I think the OCR is fantastic, and in some ways misleading. If you just listen to the OCR, I can see how people would adore this show. But seeing it in context, I found I was unable to overlook the book's flaws.



"

Personally it is the context and subtext of the songs that make it interesting for me. For example, if we look at "For Forever" and "You Will Be Found" they could both stand on their own as beautiful, inspirational songs and be taken at face value. However, in context they definitely have a much darker and more uncomfortable subtext (kind of like "Hope" in Groundhog Day stands alone but has a slightly more complicated and darker meaning in context).

For me, being controversial and uncomfortable doesn't make it flawed. Personally, I think the show does a good job at making sure Evan's behaviour, while sympathetic, was never glorified as being a good thing (even if there were aspects of it that indeed have positive effects, such as his inspirational speech - even if it was based on a complete lie).

I don't follow the marketing campaign of the show but I think because the song and phrase is inspirational they are just using it without much thought (and perhaps some fans also adopt it without thinking too much about it) - it does seem a little bit weird though given the context of the show. It's not like say with n2n where you could throw around #"there will be light" at ease because the song does not have the negative subtext of "you will be found".

There is also a stark difference between "It Get's Better" and "You Will Be Found": "It Gets Better" is based on people's real experiences, spoken by those people as an encouragement to others. "You Will Be Found" is based on Evan's fabrication of Connor's life, a way for Evan to falsely speak for Connor in order to exploit Connor's death. Remember, Evan's subconscious manifestation of Connor tells Evan in "Disappear" that, "...if you can somehow keep them thinking of me / And make me more than an abandoned memory / That means we matter too / It means someone will see that you are there." In other words, Evan is using Connor's death to help people "see" him; to help them see that he "matter[s]". Evan's actions, in no way, helped Connor be found: As cam5y and dramamama611 have noted, Connor was not found, he could not be heard, and there was no justice for Connor. Moreover, Evan learned at the end of the musical that what it means to be noticed/matter (i.e., step into/be in "the sun" ) is to recognize that "you're you — and that's enough" ("For Forever (Reprise)" ). So, you can't really compare "It Gets Better" with "You Will Be Found", given the context of the show, despite the seeming similarities.

Evan is speaking for himself. He was the one who was lying on the ground when he was found by Connor: "the thing is, when I looked up Connor was there. That was the gift he gave me, to show me that I wasn't alone. To show me that I mattered."

The one lingering counter-argument to this is that Evan was, indeed, acting out of good intention (an argument that comes up on this board quite a bit). I don't think I could ever accept that argument. For one, Evan never asked for the attention. Secondly, that attention only motivated him to create a bigger lie as a way to further augment his false sense of self-security. Lastly, while Evan may have acted out of the pretense of "good intentions", it is absolutely dangerous to claim that moral justification of good intentions (i.e., Evan's "helping out the Murphys" argument) is equivalent to genuine good intentions. There are many well-known, extreme examples of justifying good intentions in human history that don't need to be mentioned here.

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You seem to be contradicting yourself by saying that Evan's actions were a "pretense" of good intentions but your first point is that Evan didn't seek attention. If anything, that seems to demonstrate that, at least initially, his intentions were not self-serving. However things turned out later, he wasn't motivated at first by anything other than altruism, however misguided.

clb10162 said: Evan is speaking for himself. He was the one who was lying on the ground when he was found by Connor: "the thing is, when I looked up Connor was there. That was the gift he gave me, to show me that I wasn't alone. To show me that I mattered."


I may be misreading, but I don't quite understand what you mean here. Evan saying he was found on the ground by Connor is a lie. It was an event that never happened. His creation of this story is what #YouWillBeFound grows out of.

bear88 said: "I probably have fewer issues with the show itself than with the promotion/audience response to "You Will Be Found." In the musical, the song felt like a wicked commentary on social media sensations, started by a troubled kid who got caught up in a situation not of his making. Of course, it's ironic. But the song, taken by itself, and the #youwillbefound hastag, pushed by the promoters, strips it of the ambiguity and treats it as the message of the show.

But instead, the message of the show is in its conclusion - if I can choose to ignore Zoe giving Evan credit for the Murphys' improvement - and in Evan's message of self-acceptance. He did plenty of damage along the way, and lost my sympathy, but he did own up to it when trapped."

I agree on the message at the end - but "You Will Be Found", for me, is the precursor to that scene.

It's interesting that so much of this discussion hinges on how you respond to the messages of both "You Will Be Found" and the "Finale". I totally get being dismayed by "Found" being reduced to an inspirational message - which is almost funny because that's what happens in the plot when the video goes viral - everyone in the world mistakes the meaning as something simple and sentimental.

But in watching the show, it is a very different experience. For me "Found" is a pivotal moment in Evan's eventual healing. In the last scene we see a much more confident and less tic-prone Evan who can actually have (and initiate) a difficult conversation with Zoe. How did he get there? It started with "You Will Be Found" and the breakthrough that he accomplished there contrasts remarkably from where he started at the beginning of the show.

First of all, the unambiguous irony of "Found" is that Evan was, in fact, not found. He lay on the ground for hours(? I think) waiting for someone to come help him, but no one came. This song is directly in opposition to his own personal experience. (This is also where I think it relates to those who criticize "It gets better" for being a message that is not true for everyone. More on that later.) If anything, Evan's experience tells him that no one will find you when you are lost and in despair. (Pretty much the theme of "Waving Through a Window".)

When the show begins, Evan's mother and therapist are trying to find a way to get Evan to think about the world differently - to see a world where connection and kindness are possible. Neither they nor Evan are having any success in that area. The thought that people would treat him with grace and generosity was totally foreign to him. He couldn't even imagine such a world in his Dear Evan Hansen letters.

But the uplifting breakthrough in "You Will Be Found" is that he finds that very kindness and possibility in his imagined relationship. A grace he could never imagine for himself, he can imagine with Connor. What he sings to his classmates, is a possibility he is just at that moment discovering for himself. He is singing the song to himself - to Dear Evan Hansen and telling that kid laying on the ground that yes, being found is even possible for you. It's that breakthrough that makes it so heart-rendingly moving to watch. How many times are we willing to extend a measure of mercy to others, that we would never give ourselves?

The kiss with Zoe at the end of the song is only possible because he has opened this new door and seen that good things and happiness are a possibility for himself. And he takes a step through that door toward happiness.

The sad/inspiring thing about both the relationship with Zoe and the imagined relationship with Connor is that while yes, Evan's lies and the Murphey's misunderstandings opened the door, the raw materials of the relationships were always there and waiting to be developed. Zoe even tried to make an initial connection with Evan before the whole suicide thing, but couldn't get through his defenses. And if Evan had self-esteem and persistence, maybe he could have been Connor's friend and had that relationship he imagined. These relationships were blocked in large part because of Evan's inner negative monologue. Being able to crack through that was a major step to becoming the person we see at the end who is more assured of who he is.

Coming back to "It gets better" I think this underlines the point of what that phrase means. That is, unless you can see the world as a place where the possibility of getting better exists, you will lock yourself into a story where nothing can ever get better, and that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. As is "It gets better". The point is, you can largely choose which story you want to be a part of. It's what Evan's therapist was trying to get Evan to understand, but Evan needed to find his own way in to that more positive story. He did it awkwardly and made lame mistakes along the way. But for me, Evan earned the self-confidence he found at the end of the show.

Updated On: 5/1/17 at 02:00 PM