Sorry, I'm pressing the 'Angst' button again
So you know that feeling when you realize something you're participating in is problematic, but you're not exactly responsible for the content or able to stop participating for professional reasons? That's been happening a lot to me recently. Like this weekend, when I sort of emergency-took-over a gig from a trumpet friend of mine. It was a musical theatre revue of Disney mashups, so I wasn't expecting a world-changing or progressive anything. And the first two times I played through the show, I was mostly focusing on the insane mute and horn changes written in, and trying to catch the head-bob cues the pianist did in the dim theatre lighting. By the second day of perfomances (one matinee and one evening show), I was comfortable enough with the material to pay attention to the actual subject matter happening onstage. Since this was a black-box thing, it was very easy to hear/see minor details. Barely any curtains, whatever. What I was seeing really, really, really fucking pissed me off.Â
So this show, "Off the record," is what is called a "song cycle," where basically a bunch of songs with seemingly no connection happen in an order that creates a pseudo-story based off similar themes. Sometimes it's done well, like this original musical that happened at my school, produced and written by one student, about being lost in your twenties. It was powerful and beautiful. This one, unsurprisingly, was about Princess finding Prince. Or, two princesses finding two princes and swooning and whatever while a quartet of other people provided commentary and chorus line and random overtures into Disney songs that would otherwise have actually no relation to the rest of the show.Â
As it was Disney, I expected the disgustingly prevalent and slightly forced heteronormativity. I expected dramatic Big Damn Kisses and people singing about how one person is totally their Dream and destiny and whatever. What I wasn't expecting was casual racism played for laughs. Like, it made me already uncomfortable that an able-bodied dude was singing from Hunchback of Notre Dame, or that a white woman was singing from Pocahontas, or how everybody involved in the entire production was pretty much white, upper-middle-class conservatory rabble ... but there was this gimmick in the show where various people sang various parts of "Be Our Guest" in different languages. Sure, vaguely impressive. however, when the language of the hour was Japanese, the choreography, style of music, and anything else I could gather from my limited viewpoint pointed to a huge case of blatant racism -- The females from the Quartet appeared to be parodying geishas and Japanese advertisements all at once in a move that felt like the Asian version of blackface. But it wasn't my job or duty or privilege or right to do anything but play the notes written for my trumpet at the time and style dictated, so I couldn't really do anything but seethe quietly.
Of course there were other problems going on -- "When Somebody Loved Me" was sung by a man to a woman, which in itself is fine, but it's always been so important to me, from the moment I first heard that song, that there could be such a poignant sense of loss and longing in a relationship that went beyond romantic -- I had a persistent nagging headache throughout the entire weekend while playing, I caught a cold, I aggravated my tendonitis by biking with too much shit on my back for four days because I haven't bought a new bungee for my bike rack since some jackoff stole mine... but the racial issues with the song cycle (Which, by the way, was written in 2004 when they should have fucking known better) and the audience's reactions to the racial issues, were the parts I had the most trouble with. That, and how I was expecting to be paid and I still haven't figured out who I talk to to get that payment.
TL;DR: Shitty all round. Grandparents and friends shouldn't have laughed at racial stereotyping but what can you do you're just a musician.
The other fun thing has been ongoing all semester but slowly getting worse throughout. Some of you may know I'm in a class where I'm writing a screenplay for a film musical. Mine has always felt pretty great and I'm stoked I got to work with the people I got to work with. Our class's final performance was tonight, which is probably why some of the feelings I've been having boiled over to the point of me needing to rage about them.Â
One of the other screenplays, ironically(?) one of the two I had to pitch for at the beginning of class, is about an incredibly feminine woman who's dangerously co-dependent getting dumped by her boyfriend and 'finding herself' in a drag king troupe. Now, normally I'm all about gender-non-conforming people, especially ladies. Normally, I'm all about people finding an identity in strange places and belonging somewhere for the first time in their life. That involves, of course, the subject material being handled correctly and respectfully, and and the story having an actually compelling plot.Â
Now I'm aware that some of my harsh feelings come from my lived experience as a member of the LGBTQ+ community, and the fact that I was playing one of the drag kings. But the whole screenplay read as a sort of black-and-white, binary, short-sighted smackdown of anyone who is traditionally feminine. Like, when Harmony (the main character) is at the start of the play, she's some kind of ĂĽber-clingy, ĂĽber-domestic, can't-think-twice-about-anything parody of a real person. Honestly, al characters felt like caricatures of stereotypes of what used to be a real person.Â
I was playing a King stage-named Stevie Dicks (haha), and I still, after our final show, had no idea about the substance of my character. I brought it up once in a moment of stress and exhaustion surpassing my usual reservations toward asking creators harsh questions about their work, and I recieved a 'backstory' for Stevie:
Apparently pansexual and married to a drag queen
Apparently went to an all-girls' boarding school
Apparently got into drama and played dude parts because not traditionally pretty
Apparently anxious and self-conscious
Apparently calmed down by twerking and other dirty dances
Apparently only has confidence when packing a ridiculously large strap-on (because everyone needs The Penis in some way, shape or form)
Oh, and apparently everything about my character on-stage is about sex. So like I said, caricature of a stereotype of what used to be a person. Or at least that's how it felt to me. But the problem lay with pretty much every character in the story, with every horribly contrived plot device... It was obvious that the main screenwriter on this project was a) much too in love with her own idea to make meaningful changes and b) a straight, cis-gendered lady who occasionally cross-dresses and has weird ideas of how to write people. So yeah, not my favorite moment.
Also I think I lost any progress sleeping and cuddling in piles of blankets yesterday did for me not getting sick today, because Boston decided to be a huge asshole today and rain so much it soaked through my trenchcoat, canvas hat, sweater, and boots and water-logged two different pairs of pants throughout the afternoon, and I'm losing my voice for a second time and I'm positive the ginger tea with honey I'm quaffing right about now isn't gonna be enough. Anyways, that's most of my feelings and this is a long and vaguely out-of-control post.Â
