#1
Posted: 10/13/09 at 8:28pm
For a 'historical' piece, doesn't this play seem to get history wrong, or just ignore it? For heaven's sakes, it's a show about the start of rock & roll, about white people coopting the 'black' sound, and it's set in the 1950s South -- and it NEVER mentions either Martin Luther King or Elvis Presley? WTF?!
Also, a TV show with a black cast airs in the South but they want to change to an all-white cast to take it national???? (In real life, didn't some Southern stations refuse to carry Nat King Cole's nationwide show?)
And since when did mainstream music producers in the early days of rock & roll seek out black women to promote? They sought out white people -- usually men -- who sang black-influenced music. Women rockers didn't start breaking thru until the '70s, around when Janis Joplin hit it big; before then, it was girl groups (white) or Motown (black). It's just so stupid that the music exec picks a black woman to cash in on the new rock & roll craze.
Even the obligatory redneck attack scene: generally, the KKK types who went around beating people up went after blacks, not whites they disagreed with. And they would have done far worse to her than what happens in the play.
This is the worst thing in the show -- well, the book in general. But specifically, that it's a show about a very particular moment/place in time that doesn't depict that era accurately.
Also, a TV show with a black cast airs in the South but they want to change to an all-white cast to take it national???? (In real life, didn't some Southern stations refuse to carry Nat King Cole's nationwide show?)
And since when did mainstream music producers in the early days of rock & roll seek out black women to promote? They sought out white people -- usually men -- who sang black-influenced music. Women rockers didn't start breaking thru until the '70s, around when Janis Joplin hit it big; before then, it was girl groups (white) or Motown (black). It's just so stupid that the music exec picks a black woman to cash in on the new rock & roll craze.
Even the obligatory redneck attack scene: generally, the KKK types who went around beating people up went after blacks, not whites they disagreed with. And they would have done far worse to her than what happens in the play.
This is the worst thing in the show -- well, the book in general. But specifically, that it's a show about a very particular moment/place in time that doesn't depict that era accurately.
