Sondheim's fag" lyric- Page 4

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 11:28pm

>> Mr. Sondheim was writing a SHOW with CHARACTERS and a PLOT. The lyric as written for the three girls makes sense for THOSE CHARACTERS.

Exactly. You'd think a whole fora of theatre people would understand this.

[A Director]

Posted: 12/27/10 at 11:56pm

chekkyjr - Your posts reminded of Graduate School bull**** sessions I took part in many years ago. One of these days you might return to the world.

What you fail to understand or are unable to understand is every writer, composer, lyricist, etc. is part of a particular time period. What they write might be unpleasant or upsetting to future time periods. A person who is interested in a particular author needs to accept or make peace with the authors short comings.

You appear to demand purity from Sondheim and Hammerstein; sorry the world doesn't work that way. Once you understand this, you might become a happier person.

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 1:50am

All you have to do to drive white people crazy is suggest that they are, or one of their heroes/heroines is, racist.

It's all you have to do!

I am not nearly as stupid and single-minded as some of you suggest. Duh, Sondheim is writing for characters, not top-40 pop singers. Oh, wow. Who knew? Now I am going to have to rethink EVERYTHING. Duh, Oscar Hammerstein was born in 1895. Silly me, how could I not have noticed that? Thank gosh I have you all to set me, um, straight.

And what's wrong with having conversations in graduate school? And what's wrong with having grad school conversations in Bway message board threads? Not that I went to grad school - in any case, not the PhD-granting kind of grad school.

I'll try again, as briefly as I can - I admit it is hard for me to be brief:

I think we can say with accuracy and conviction, in words with which only the foolhardy would disagree, that some of Sondheim's lyrics for the original Bway production of WEST SIDE STORY are offensive to Puerto Ricans - deliberately, cruelly belittling, mocking, dismissive, and I dare say, racist. "Oh, come on, it was 1957! Nobody liked spics in 1957!" That is what your objections would appear to be saying. If, however, you met a Puerto Rican in 1957 and sang her/him a few verses from "America," I'm betting you'd have been told, 7 out of 10 times, that they lyrics were offensive. Even by 1960 some of those lyrics were acknowledged as offensive, which - I assume - is why some of them were changed for the film version.

There is an example of a man writing lyrics that were of his time and place, and yet coming up with lyrics that would have been correctly identified by many people of his time and place as offensive and racist.

If you had polled many of the black people who were living not two miles away from where SHOWBOAT premiered in 1927 - the old Ziegfeld, at 6th Ave and 54th Street, demolished in 1966 - I dare say that plenty of residents of Harlem, one of the largest urban black populations in the US at the time, would have found SHOWBOAT racist, and not just because - maybe not even because - of its use of the N-word. They might also been offended by the depiction of black people as preternaturally innocent, complacent, passive, shuffling, naive, relentlessly good-natured, fatalistically resigned to their suffering and their abjection, and delighted by white folks, whom they loved to serve.

Okay, so Hammerstein cast two choruses, one white and one black, with let's say a dozen singers in each chorus - I am sorry not to know the exact number; and, okay, it was the first time in Bway history that black and white actors occupied the same stage at the same time, depending on how you define "Broadway" and "history"; and even though the black and white chorus members were kept carefully segregated from each other while they were onstage, still: It was an innovation, at the time.

Okay, fine.

Nonetheless.

SHOWBOAT is shot through with racism, with racist characterizations of black people, with racist language, etc.

There is no way to say it isn't, unless you are willing to pretend racism was nothing more than a mildly demeaning relationship between black and white people.

"Mildly demeaning" are, by the way, the words Sondheim uses - I think? certainly "demeaning," maybe also "mildly" - to talk about the use of the word "fag" in the original Bway production of COMPANY.

I do not call you idiots.

Why do you find it conducive to lively debate to call me an idiot?

[Disneyland Magic Man]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 2:05am

Tanya Pinkins played news repotter Gwen in the OBC of Merrily We Roll Along.

Black actress.

Also, it's not Sondheims fault that more black people haven't been in his shows. First off, most of them are period pieces... That would make no sense featuring a person of color in many of the rolls. Second, most are adapated works... Sondheim can't make up characters that aren't supposed to be there. And third, he's not writing the books and creating these characters to begin with! If Sondheim was the sole author, maybe one could say he might be racist but if John Weidman starts writing a book about assassins, Sondheim can't step up and say, let's be PC and make up a black one.

The Wiz is one of his favorite musicals BTW. Maybe he's felt that he doesn't know how to write for a black character.

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 2:20am

Magic Man, I forgot about Tonya Pinkins!

And maybe Sondheim hasn't actually ever *met* a black person!

That's the impression his musicals give.

[Andy Hickes]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 4:48am

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


I would like to thank everyone for helping answer my question. Happy New Year.
Have to go now. Almost curtain time

Andy


I learned a lot. really. Thanks especially to checkkyir. He knows of what he speaks and even with all the risks of being misunderstood, is still generous enough to share it. You made my day!

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 6:54am

>> SHOWBOAT is shot through with racism, with racist characterizations of black people, with racist language, etc.

And guess what!

That's what the show is about!

I mean, seriously, have you ever sat through a performance of this work? Do you have any clue what the storylines are?

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 7:41am

It can be about racism and be racist at the same time.

It can decry racism in alas the most racist terms.

Ask Harriet Beecher Stowe how that's done.

[dramarama3]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 8:12am

I think everyone's just gotten all too PC.

The only problem I have with the word is fag is that it just sounds icky. You can try all 'burning of the gays' etymology, but at the end of the day it's silly to get offended by silly little words. Especially when used affectionately (like they are in the song).

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 8:51am

"Affectionately"?

**shakes head in disbelief**

[SeanMartin]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 9:25am

>> It can be about racism and be racist at the same time.

It can decry racism in alas the most racist terms.

Ask Harriet Beecher Stowe how that's done.

:: shaking head in complete bewilderment ::

Fine. Whatever, dude.

But this is all starting to sound like the Victorian versions of Shakespeare's plays. Nevertheless, if it makes you happy, go for it.

[orangeskittles]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 9:32am

Is PACIFIC OVERTURES a giant case of imperialist nostalgia?

No, you're thinking of The King and I.

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 9:46am

orange, you are joking, but you very cleanly delineate the importance difference.

Well played.

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 1:36pm

Oranges! Yes, THE KING & I, imperialist nostalgia! I'm not sure about PACIFIC OVERTURES, seeing as how my only contact with the show is the original bway cast album, which I listened to endlessly in high school. Alas, I never got to see the actual onstage arrival of Boris Aronson's boat, though I think I saw a clip on TV once, and then I saw whatever they did on the Tony Awards, but I don't remember. . . the opening? Maybe? Anyway, so I can't speak with confidence about PO, though I could sing you the cast album from memory. I was kind of tossing out a possibility with the imperialist nostalgia thing.

I'd love to hear what anybody thought about how Sondheim and Weidman and Wheeler and Prince et. al. dealt with what I'd think would be the complicated problem of "representing" Asian characters and music and culture and so forth. "Someone in a Tree" is maybe my favorite Sondheim song. And the lyrics for "Please Hello" are up there with "A Little Priest" in terms of tour-de-force hilarity. "Please Hello" of course counts entirely on nationalist stereotypes in order to land its jokes, but I think it's entirely aware of using those stereotypes - it has a level of self-awareness that the lyrics from WSS lack.

[sabrelady]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 1:44pm

I done even LIKE Ave Q but I'm surprised these lyrics haven't found there way in:
Everyone's a little bit racist
Sometimes.
Doesn't mean we go
Around committing hate crimes.
Look around and you will find
No one's really color blind.
Maybe it's a fact
We all should face
Everyone makes judgments
Based on race.

Everyone's a little bit racist
Today.
So, everyone's a little bit racist
Okay!
Ethinic jokes might be uncouth,
But you laugh because
They're based on truth.
Don't take them as
Personal attacks.
Everyone enjoys them -
So relax!

All right!
Bigotry has never been
Exclusively white
All right!
Bigotry has never been
Exclusively white

Yes, I know.
The Jews have all
The money
And the whites have all
The power.
And I'm always in taxi-cab
With driver who no shower

Everyone's a little bit racist
It's true.
But everyone is just about
As racist as you!
If we all could just admit
That we are racist a little bit,
And everyone stopped being
So PC
Maybe we could live in -
Harmony!

Yea I know and pigs might fly on a frosty friday in JULY! ;d

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 1:55pm

I loathe that song from AVENUE Q, it's smug and it's smarmy and it's over-simplistic, and it gives people an excuse not to think about racism and how it continues to have its affect.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 1:59pm

This thread is a real rabbit hole of crazy, so I'm not even sure it's worth stepping into.

I do think, though, that the comparisons of the use of "fag" in the original Company and "n*" in Hair and Assassins don't quite follow, particularly int he case of Assassins. n* is used by John Wilkes Booth, for god's sake. There's a context there. I've always felt mixed about "Prisoners in n*town" from Hair, but I've never seen a production where the black characters aren't included in singing that song (I didn't see the revival, so I'm not speaking of that specifically).

I think the change from fag to gay is fine, although I've never really like the expression "happens to be gay" when it's used by anyone, but that's another story.

Yes, it can be argued that it's Bobby and not the three girls who are coming up with the word, but it's still out of place in this day and age and I don't see it's exclusion as some great offense to piece. To me, personally, it's much more jarring to hear a causal "fag" in something that it is to hear it used as a direct pejorative.

Also, FWIW, I'm pretty sure in the original script, Marta doesn't claim to have gays among her laundry list of minority friends. I believe that was also an addition for subsequent revivals.
Updated On: 12/28/10 at 01:59 PM

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 2:10pm

To be clear, I never conflated the 'fag' lyric to the use of 'n*' in Assasins or Hair. My post was specifically about the evolution from the protests of the original opening lyrics in Showboat in the early-mid 90's to the fact that, a decade or so later, the use in both Assasins and Hair caused nary a stir. I also never intended to imply that the black actors in Hair didn't sing the words 'Prisoners in n*town' (though, if I remember my recent viewing of the movie correctly, only black actors sing those words in that).

And though I have no problem with the original 'fag' lyric, I don't like the revision as it stands. Only because I think it's sounds clunky. I'd prefer he replaced 'fag' with 'drag' as Ms. Loudon did in the Sondheim concert.

[hottieho13]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 2:13pm

ok checkky, you know the song Bobby,Jackie and Jack by Sondheim? well, i read he wants to write a song sorta like that about the obamas! he doesn't make a charaters! he doesn't write the stories/book! he can't make up characters out of thin air! he's a COMPOSER! not the writer(well he doesn't write the books to musicals)plus,his shows are mostly period peices and during those times in certain locations people of color wern't really around.and what does everyone mean about "writing for black characters"?wouldn't you write them the same way you write about everyone else?i mean,it's not like were aliens living on another planet.I was listening to the sondheim on sondheim cast recording and stephen was saying how he didn't know anything about marriage other than ones he saw so he basically asked all his married friends questions about being married.i mean ,you don't have to go far to meet black people or people of color so that's not an excuse really.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 2:32pm

Gotcha, Robbie. I misread. Mea culpa!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 2:36pm

that song from AVENUE Q, it's smug and it's smarmy and it's over-simplistic

No, the song is none of those things. Your posts are, though.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 2:38pm

Lordy.

[SonofRobbieJ]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 2:43pm

Well...there has been quite a bit to read, darling! Quite. A. Bit.

And you are correct re: Marta not giving a shout-out to the homos in the original Company script. That was a revision, along with the 'gay' rewrite and the Bobby Takes It allusion.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 2:44pm

And, most egregious of all in my opinion, the addition of "Marry Me a Little."

[chekkyjr]

Posted: 12/28/10 at 2:45pm

hoho! I love "Bobby and Jackie and Jack!" "And Oleg Cassini! Well, I think he's really good." And the running joke about Sargent Shriver is corny but it gets me, nonetheless.

I think they should keep the "fag" in COMPANY - and the fag! Sorry, I had to go for the pun. I have never believed Bobby wasn't really gay. I know I'm wrong! I don't know, my mother had a friend like Bobby, he was about Sondheim's age, and they'd been friends since childhood, and he'd come out from the city to the suburbs to visit us once in a while, and there were always women he was "dating," but he never married, and he never "dated" anyone for more than about a month, and years later when I was, um, "adult," I ran into him at A Different Light when it still existed and was still on Hudson Street in the West Village, and he was strolling out of the back-porno section - not a jerk-off parlor, but just the area of the store where they kept all the nudie j/o gay guy magazines - and he had a bundle of BLUEBOYS and MANDATES tucked under his arm, and I was looking at, I don't know, a novel by Christopher Isherwood, or something, and he stopped to talk to me, and we carried on this perfectly ordinary conversation, even though we'd just both been outed to each other, and even though he was grasping a bunch of porn, and I was 21, and my mother had been in love with, well, both of us, I'm guessing. . .

Anyway, THAT guy was Bobby. And for that matter, he's the one who told my parents they had to see COMPANY. He saw it 12 times, or something. And he was exactly the kind of gay man in 1970 who understood that COMPANY was about him: a fag who dated women. And that's why the use of the word "fag" is heartbreaking and accurate, because I suspect that Sondheim would have called himself a "fag," in just the tone the stewardesses use. And I'm guessing that everybody Sondheim knew would have used the word "fag" in the same tone. And no doubt they wouldn't have thought it was especially demeaning. Even though it was ruining their lives - even though the near-century of abuse and oppression that lay behind that word was warping them in profound and tragic ways.