Sondheim's fag" lyric- Page 3

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 6:22pm

You assumed that Joe wrote the word 'n*' just to be shocking. I don't think he was at all. He was asking a serious question...one I always have when discussing what some people call 'the N word' or 'the F word'. It makes no sense to me that if we are discussing actual lyrics from shows, why should we censor the lyrics?

And yes...Hammerstein may have written somewhat simplistic versions of racial types. But that kind of engagement with racial matters in a time when such things weren't done in a musical has lead directly to the extraordinary works like Dreamgirls, Ragtime, Caroline, or Change, In the Heights, and on and on and on.

[hottieho13]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 6:27pm

i mean, have a use and meaning to say the word "n*". is it something that a person in the play would use?i feel conflicted about this word.one part of me just gets pissed when someone says it(be it rappers,wanna be gangsters or text books)but on the other hand if i'm watching a movie about the south in the 50's or a show set back in that time period or even the gangs of new york movie and they use "colored folk" and so forth it feels cheap to me,like it's not real,why don't they just say n*?.i don't know if that makes since but that's how i feel at times.like we were doing Venus by suzanne -lori parks and i don't remember the word n* being in it at all.(i need to check it's been a year.)but it felt wired to me like we were talking about race but we wern't really.

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 6:30pm

I think that's actually the point I'm trying to make. When discussing the word in the context of a book, play, song, whatever, we should be able to say (or type) the word. Otherwise, it feels like we're talking about something else. Or that we're dancing around the issue and trying to soften it.

[hottieho13]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 6:33pm

"You assumed that Joe wrote the word 'n*' just to be shocking. I don't think he was at all. He was asking a serious question...one I always have when discussing what some people call 'the N word' or 'the F word'. It makes no sense to me that if we are discussing actual lyrics from shows, why should we censor the lyrics?"

sorry it's a gut reaction.it hurts.people say the n word all the time.it's not like people have stopped saying,so yes people still do say it just like they say the f word it just turns my stomach and my gut reaction was to say that.

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 6:44pm

PeeJoey! I will hold you, I will! Just give me a minute.

Oh, whatever, and I mean: Come ON. Is there anything more profoundly and fundamentally racist and heteronormative than American musical theater? There is not. And it got way MORE racist after the 1920s, after Rodgers and Hammerstein in particular did a little ethnic cleansing and washed away the African American traditions that had been very much a part of musical theater throughout the first 40 years of the century. Hammerstein was obsessed with a Norman Rockwelly countryside-bucolic all-white reality - Sondheim talks about Hammerstein's pastoral imagery - and he was one of the primary artistic and cultural architects of the post-WWII American fantasy/delusion of itself as cozily suburban/pastoral. If he threw a couple of half-bred children into a musical, and if he wrote a song that said Don't make fun of folks with big noses, well: Was he complaining about anti-black or anti-Asian racism, or was he having a delayed response to European anti-semitism? Hammerstein wanted NOTHING TO DO WITH the modern world, as "Cockeyed Optimist" attests: You look at the sky and see nuclear clouds, the song says, but I look at the sky and see sunshine and lollipops and hear the chirping of little birds. Hammerstein was a romantic, idealist, isolationist, elite.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 6:49pm

I can't even read your posts anymore.

I see those long paragraphs and my screen automatically scrolls down to the next post. Okay, I'm done with you.

[hottieho13]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 6:59pm

"Sondheim's work suffers in particular, I think, from its complete inability to acknowledge that black people exist, and from its internalized homophobia."

oh hell to the not chekkyjr! are you trying to now call Sondheim a Racist now!?what is wrong with you?????? he knows black people exist!he loved Porgey and Bess for chrsitsake!!

[hottieho13]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 7:03pm

"And it got way MORE racist after the 1920s, after Rodgers and Hammerstein in particular did a little ethnic cleansing and washed away the African American traditions that had been very much a part of musical theater throughout the first 40 years of the century."

What African -American traditions of the first 40 years of the century?shucking and jiving and playing the fool?thank god for that loss!

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 7:05pm

PJ! I didn't mean to hurt your feelings! Your were huffy and condescending with me, but that didn't stop me from loving you!

Hottie, are you being ironic? I can't tell.

Speaking of irony, Sondheim says that Hal Prince was the ironic one, not Sondheim. Sondheim calls himself a romantic, and he says the coldness of which he was accused, starting with COMPANY, was in fact Prince's coldness.

What do we think of that?

[hottieho13]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 7:20pm

"PJ! I didn't mean to hurt your feelings! Your were huffy and condescending with me, but that didn't stop me from loving you!

Hottie, are you being ironic? I can't tell.

Speaking of irony, Sondheim says that Hal Prince was the ironic one, not Sondheim. Sondheim calls himself a romantic, and he says the coldness of which he was accused, starting with COMPANY, was in fact Prince's coldness.

What do we think of that?"

i would say i'm a little of both.lronic and literal.seriouly.what did blacks do in musical theatre before showboat?
now do elaborate about this "Sondheim's complete inability to acknowledge that black people exist"i'm playing devil's advocate here.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 7:30pm

Hottieho, while you're waiting for a response, why don't you make a list of all of Sondheim's black characters?

Then you'll have a basis for your discussion with chekky.

[Andy Hickes]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 7:33pm

c******s? S******m?
I w***d l**e t* t***k e******e f*r h*****g a****r m* q******n. H***y N*w Y**r
H**e t* g* n*w. A****t c*****n t**e!

A**y

[hottieho13]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 7:34pm

"Hottieho, while you're waiting for a response, why don't you make a list of all of Sondheim's black characters?

Then you'll have a basis for your discussion with chekky."

ok you have a point there but i will die if the man is a racist(ok probably won't but it would be like a gunshot to the gut.")that can't possibly make him a racist.plus the characters in in the woods,company,merrily we roll along and so forth can technically be played by any race of actors

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 7:35pm

hoho! I mean are there any black characters in any of SS's musicals? Am I wrong that the first time a black actor - original cast or replacement - even *appeared* in one of SS's Bway productions was Phylicia Rashad, replacing Bernadette Peters in INTO THE WOODS? And then of course Vanessa Williams did the witch in the revival. I guess that's Sondheim's "black" part, by default. Okay, and LaChanze in the revival of COMPANY - an awful revival, by the way. Where else do we find blacks in SS's work? And none of those are black characters. And if we're talking about SS and "race relations," well, we have this fine lyric from WSS:

Puerto Rico
You ugly island
Island of tropic diseases
Always the hurricanes blowing
Always the population growing
And the money owing
And the babies crying
And the bullets flying

And so forth.

Okay, whatever, there's PACIFIC OVERTURES, but: What are we to make of the weird ending - "Next" - where I think the point is that Japan's tragedy is that it stopped being all quaintsy kabuki and actually dealt itself into the 20th century world economy? Is the point that it's too bad Japan didn't stay stuck in the past? That the "Oriental" world should remain a theme park for us westerners to visit, and how sad that they're now making cars? Is that the point? Is PACIFIC OVERTURES a giant case of imperialist nostalgia? Westerners longing for the cultures we ruined?

I merely ask. . .

[hottieho13]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 7:39pm

"Where else do we find blacks in SS's work? And none of those are black characters."

what is a black character?do you mean like stereotypically black or what?

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 7:40pm

Well, hoho, surely you've seen a play by August Wilson. I mean are you being deliberately naive?

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 7:42pm

Hottie, I'm not saying I agree with his premise (silence = prejudice).

But I gathered that was his point.

[hottieho13]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 7:43pm

hoho! I mean are there any black characters in any of SS's musicals? Am I wrong that the first time a black actor - original cast or replacement - even *appeared* in one of SS's Bway productions was Phylicia Rashad, replacing Bernadette Peters in INTO THE WOODS? And then of course Vanessa Williams did the witch in the revival. I guess that's Sondheim's "black" part, by default. Okay, and LaChanze in the revival of COMPANY - an awful revival, by the way. Where else do we find blacks in SS's work? And none of those are black characters. And if we're talking about SS and "race relations," well, we have this fine lyric from WSS:

Puerto Rico
You ugly island
Island of tropic diseases
Always the hurricanes blowing
Always the population growing
And the money owing
And the babies crying
And the bullets flying

And so forth.

Okay, whatever, there's PACIFIC OVERTURES, but: What are we to make of the weird ending - "Next" - where I think the point is that Japan's tragedy is that it stopped being all quaintsy kabuki and actually dealt itself into the 20th century world economy? Is the point that it's too bad Japan didn't stay stuck in the past? That the "Oriental" world should remain a theme park for us westerners to visit, and how sad that they're now making cars? Is that the point? Is PACIFIC OVERTURES a giant case of imperialist nostalgia? Westerners longing for the cultures we ruined?

I merely ask. . ."

I mean,none of the white characters in his plays constanly talk about being white so why should the black characters or asian or latino characters have too?

[hottieho13]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 7:50pm

"Well, hoho, surely you've seen a play by August Wilson. I mean are you being deliberately naive?"

but black people don't act or speak like that nowadays.(ok maybe some do)but black people don't CONSTANTLY talk about being black. we have lives that don't revolve around that topic all the time i mean yes race does come up but not like every minute of the day.

"Hottie, I'm not saying I agree with his premise (silence = prejudice).

But I gathered that was his point."

that sucks.i was a really huge fan of his and to think that he feels that way hurts my heart.

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 7:55pm

>> Well, I think we can of course say that Sondheim suffers from homo-self-loathing, can we not?

Uh, no, we cannot. Unless any of you know him personally, I think that might be assuming far too much.

And this thread is becoming increasingly incoherent. Thanks, all of you, for playing.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 8:05pm

No, thank you.

[ljay889]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 10:02pm

This thread is F*CKing annoying.

[Kevn520]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 10:07pm

I love Dorothy Loudon's lyric change from fag to drag.

[bk]

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

"I'd rather the writers left their once-upon-a-time racism or homophobia fully on display."

The inanity on display here is mind-boggling. Mr. Hammerstein and Mr. Sondheim (and others maligned) were writing SHOWS with PLOTS and CHARACTERS. You may not like the plot or the show or the character and you know what - tough. In the case of Showboat, blame the times, blame Edna Ferber's source material, blame it on Rio, blame it on the bossa nova, put the blame on Mame, but the one place you CANNOT put the blame is on Oscar Hammerstein - who was adapting material from another medium and staying true to its intention. If this is hard for you to understand, no one can help you.

Mr. Sondheim was writing a SHOW with CHARACTERS and a PLOT. The lyric as written for the three girls makes sense for THOSE CHARACTERS. It has nothing to do with Sondheim as a person. There's a reason he says he doesn't write pop songs - he writes SHOW songs for characters. If this is hard for you to understand, no one can help you.

To expect or demand these be changed because they reflect the show and the plot and the characters is, for me at least, nonsense. Don't like it? Don't listen, don't see the show. History is history - it's not pretty sometimes but to whitewash it is ridiculous.

[chewy5000]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 11:22pm

Cease this madness