Sondheim's fag" lyric

[Andy Hickes]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 8:09am

Does Stephen Sondeim mention anything about the original "fag" lyric from Company in his book or in interviews? I was a scared, naive, totally isolated (I knew no one "gay") (gay) college student when that lyric reached out and slapped me in the face. I love his work. I would like to understand.

[aasjb4ever]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 8:48am

As proven by south park, gay people can say fag and sondheim is gay. So its ok.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 8:58am

On page 177, in the body of the song, he uses the lyric as rewritten for the 1995 revival:

I could understand a person
If he said to go away.
I could understand a person
If he happened to be gay.

Then he explains the original lyric is this footnote:

In 1970, the word "fag" was only faintly demeaning, perfectly appropriate for the girls' annoyance without being offensive to the audience. By 1995, when the show was first revived on Broadway, it sounded not only offensive but old-fashioned, so I changed it.

He's said similar things about this in interviews.

[ClapYo'Hands]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 9:07am

I prefer the original lyric.

[Andy Hickes]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 9:19am

The musical played continuously over the world (in a college where I heard it) throughout those 15 years. He was/is a god in the gay community. Incredible no one ever mentioned it to him during that time?

[THDavis]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 9:20am

I think it's not only very respectable of him, but it shows that he's a true artist to revise his work for that reason.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 9:27am

By 2015 or so, it may be possible to return the original lyric and see it as shedding light on the times and not portraying the three girls as raging homophobes.

It's similar to the situation with Oscar Hammerstein's use of the N-word in Show Boat, in the opening words of "Old Man River," sung by Joe and the black chorus, using the word to comment on white attitudes: "N-----s all work on the Mississippi. / N-----s all work while the white folks play." Within a few years of the original, that word was widely seen as too derogatory to make Hammerstein's social critique work.

In subsequent revivals, it was changed unsuccessfully to "Darkies all work..." and "Colored folk work...." In the 1955 movie, they removed all offense by making it "Here we all work on the Mississippi"--which of course missed the social critique entirely.

The 1993 revival went back to "colored folk."

[Andy Hickes]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 9:38am

Not to play the devil's advocate but wouldn't Richard Rogers have had been black to make it similar? Wouldn't Joe and the chorus have had to be white?

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 9:47am

If Sondheim's excuse for not using "fag" is because in 2010 is sounds out of date, well: He hasn't been to a high school in Utah, lately. Or south California. Or Maine. Or New Jersey. Or anywhere else in America where queer teens are being driven to suicide by classmates who taunt them and call them fags. Maybe affluent Upper East Siders don't say "fag" anymore at cocktail parties, and maybe flight attendants don't say it, but lots of people still say it.

As for Hammerstein: There's no excuse for "N***ers all work on the Mississippi." It was racist then, it's racist now.

On the other hand, I think it's hypocritical to change offensive words in long-ago songs, and I'd rather the writers left their once-upon-a-time racism or homophobia fully on display. It's more honest, and it helps contextualize whatever play or musical, and to remind us of the heritage of violence and "polite racism/homophobia/sexism, etc." that our 21st century USA has inherited.

[Andy Hickes]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 10:40am

I think you are right Chekkyjr.

Who doesn't regret something they may have said 40 years ago, in 1970, but it is disingenuous to say in 2010 you believed calling someone a "fag" was only "faintly" (?) demeaning then.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 10:41am

:::If Sondheim's excuse for not using "fag" is because in 2010 is sounds out of date, well: He hasn't been to a high school in Utah, lately. Or south California. Or Maine. Or New Jersey.:::


Does that fact come as a shock to you?

Posted: 12/27/10 at 11:01am

I think if you are going to change "n*" to "Colored Folks" you might as well not present Showboat as you obviously don't know what the show is about.

And really...you write out FAG and are discreet about "N******"? Updated On: 12/27/10 at 11:01 AM

[Moneyspider]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 11:19am

I think you do have to consider both who is singing/ speaking, and the setting. if your leads sound like Mrs. von Tussle from Hairspray, I can't imagine the audience would respond well to them. Now, as a character flaw (think South Pacific) or a playing of the text in a way the author most likely didn't intend (Merchant of Venice)... I simply think you have to have a good reason other than "that's how it was originally writen/performed" when it's distracting or turns the audience against characters meant to be sympathetic.

[chewy5000]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 11:20am

The preceding line "not a person's bag" had a bit to do with it I believe

[husk_charmer]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 11:27am

Personally, I use fag all the time. I'm honestly not bothered by that word.

But then again, I'm not your average individual.

[TheatreDork3]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 12:32pm

Ahh the Fag of IT!! As a 30-something gay man, I hate the word. However, I think the change from "fag" to "gay" was a cultural one.

According to Gordon (2000) "Stephen Sondheim: A Case book", she wrote "Interestingly, the only lyric change for the 1995 production was to change a reference in 'You Cold Drive a Person Crazy' from 'fag' to 'gay.' This change would not have been necessary for mere updating, and was presumably made to show greater sensitivity to the diversity of theater audiences and society in general."

While I think this response is interesting, I definitely think it reads of heterosexism. As if somehow, during the revival Sondheim suddenly realized that gay people go to the theater.

I think the answer is probably much simpler. I think "fag" was more culturally appropriate when it was written. For the revival, Sondheim realized that the word was no longer appropriate, so he changed it of his own free will.

TD

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 1:57pm

It was appropriate for the characters singing it. Good grief -- there was a rock song from twenty or so decades ago that had the lyric "see the little faggot", making fun of rock performers who lead cushy lives. The gay community went ballistic. What they didnt get is that the song is from the point of view of a couple of dumb-hick warehose workers (which is pretty obvious if one listens a bit).

I would have left it. If anything, it becomes even more of a joke back on the women singing the song.

[AwesomeDanny]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 2:08pm

I think it was changed because the word "fag" reads more homophobic today, and the characters are not homophobes. He wanted the show to still feel contemporary, so a different word was needed to get the right feeling. I think it doesn't make much sense for Marta to call Bobby a fag and then later talk about "gays, blacks, hispanics, all my closest friends!" a few scenes later.

Posted: 12/27/10 at 2:13pm

You think Marta's closes friends really are gays black and Hispanics? Interesting- that possibility never occurred to me.

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 2:14pm

^^ Not so sure. Ever watch SEX AND THE CITY? The word gets bandied about by women who supposedly love their gay friends.

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 2:26pm

COMPANY has a lousy book. And it's a period piece. The music and lyrics are not dated, if you ask me, but the book is horribly dated, and jokes that worked in 1970 were old by 1980. It's one of the first Bway musicals after HAIR that decided that the book musical needed to catch up to the hippie musical, and it is filled with moments where what it thinks of as "middle-aged" characters - people in their mid-to-late 30s! - are making desperate, grasping, comical efforts to catch up with the generation just behind them, the hippies and swingers and pot smokers. It is a show about people trying to be hip, and it is also a show that is itself trying to be hip - again, I'm talking about the book; and maybe also about Michael Bennett's HULLABALOO dance number for Donna McKechnie; and Jonathan Tunick's jazzy jazzy orchestrations - and it's kind of embarrassing to watch.

If it didn't have Sondheim's great score - if it were just a series of one-acts glued together into a full evening, the way George Furth originally wrote it - no one would ever produce it, the same way no one would ever produce, say, THE IMPOSSIBLE YEARS, a play from the '60s co-written by Robert Fisher and Arthur Marx, Groucho's son - a wildly dated play about adults dealing with, and feeling slightly envious of, if exasperated by, "the younger generation."

George Furth's COMPANY would be a cultural artifact right now, a long-forgotten boulevard comedy, without Sondheim's score.

All of which is to say: What? All of which is to say that when Furth did a rewrite and added in a moment about Bobby admitting he had once tried the homosex - was that rewrite done for the London COMPANY, with a black guy playing Bobby? George Furth - I'm assuming - tried to respond - I'm guessing - to people's insistence that Bobby is obviously gay, and he put a moment in at the end where Bobby admits he tried guys once and didn't like it, and. . .

Anyway, so Furth's rewrite grafted an '80s sensibility onto a 1970 play, and: It's false, it's fake, it's a lie, you can't update COMPANY, if you were going to update COMPANY, you'd have to go back and make Bobby gay, because anybody writing a musical like COMPANY today would make Bobby gay.

Wow, I *do* go on.

All of which is to say: I think SS should have kept the "fag."

[noradesmond]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 3:05pm

Wow, chekkyjr, I disagree with everything you just said - except that Sondheim's score is great.

I don't think Bobby is gay. Bobby is unable to commit. I don't think there is any kind of sexual identity issues in that.

Updated On: 12/27/10 at 03:05 PM

Posted: 12/27/10 at 3:21pm

The thing about Bobby is....he's fictional. He can be whatever you want. If you think he's gay, you focus on the clues you find and do the show with that perspective. If you think he's a compulsive womanizer, take that and run with it. Bobby isn't going to turn up and disprove your production.

[chewy5000]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 3:35pm

What is it with theatre people being unable to accept heterosexual relationships?

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 3:52pm

chewy! I'm unable to accept *any* relationships! Straight or gay, legal or taboo, pre-op transsexual M2F + post op F2M: They all give me the willies! Married couples: Ugh! Is what I say.

But come on, admit that Bobby doesn't really make sense, either as a gay guy or a straight guy or a guy who's bi-curious, or whatever. Bobby is a cipher, there's no there there, and not even Raul Esparza - a man who is nothing if not THERE, 150% - could make Bobby's silences and general reluctance to act add up to a believable guy.