| re: What needs to be rewritten? | |
| Posted by: AlanScott 06:17 pm EDT 08/01/24 | |
| In reply to: re: What needs to be rewritten? - AnObserver 08:43 am EDT 08/01/24 | |
|
|
|
| Maybe I'm misreading you, but it sounds like you're using the word woke in a pejorative sense. If so, I will say something that I think I've never said here before, although others have. The term means to be sensitive to and aware of racial injustice. Isn't that a good thing? The politicians who use it in a pejorative sense are people I'm guessing you don't like. Maybe I'm wrong about that. And as singleticket posted below, Mame was pretty woke herself for her time period. I have little doubt she'd be so today, even if she might also be bothered by the excesses of some extremists. I will also say that the things people have generally responded about below as not holding up too well in the musical Mame, specifically things that people used to find funny but a lot of people don't think are so funny today, are things that you don't have to be woke to find unfunny now. I daresay that lots of people on the right don't find alcoholism funny and certainly don't find unmarried pregnant women funny. I mean, wasn't that the point? And I bet Asian people generally, whatever their political leanings, find Ito a bit offensive nowadays (and many of them probably did back in the 1950s), although I do think that can be fixed or least lessened in the playing of the role. And I will add one more thing: The musical worsened some of these things. For one thing, in the play Mame and Vera don't just send Agnes out into the world on her own to get laid. Mame sends her on a date with someone she knows to a dinner party with her publisher. And no one sings that because of Mame the south will rise again, a sentiment that I'm pretty sure Mame would not have found agreeable. Yes, the lyric is satirical and intentionally ridiculous in context, yet at the same time I can't altogether blame people if they're bothered by it. I just find the number itself silly. All these people Mame who don't know Mame singing her praises at such length. The title song in Hello, Dolly! is more justified (even if it would not have been justified at all in the source material where Dolly has never been to the Harmonia Gardens, hence Hal Prince wondering what the hell the song was doing there when he was asked to direct Hello, Dolly!). I am linking an NPR piece on the word woke. |
|
| Link | NPR on woke |
| reply | |
|
|
|
| Previous: | re: What needs to be rewritten? - AnObserver 08:43 am EDT 08/01/24 |
| Next: | re: What needs to be rewritten? - PlayWiz 06:27 pm EDT 08/01/24 |
| Thread: |
|
Time to render: 0.180456 seconds.