thecraptacular.com: Welp, internet. I’ve hit my limit. It’s finally happened.
After five years running The Craptacular, and more years loving theater than I can accurately tally, I just cannot take another minute of Broadway’s sexist, misogynistic bullshit and stay silent. Just cannot be done.
Because guess what? Women make up close to 70% of your audience. Theater as a commercial enterprise literally doesn’t exist without women. And yet, every time I turn around, it seems like Broadway is going out of it’s way to make us feel unwelcome. To tell us we’re worthy of little more than the opportunity to fork over our hard-earned cash to buy your tickets.
5 comments:
Inititally, I was a little put off by the tone of this article. She's very...impassioned. The harsh language makes her seem a little more aggressive than rational, which makes me want to discount her argument altogether.
However...she's saying very real things. The statement that caught my attention the most was definitely when she asked us to put "gay" in instead of "female." She's right, there would be an uproar if we were producing plays that bashed gay people or other minorities. Instead, we are continuing the sexist tradition of weakening and often embarrassing the female population through shows with old values and little respect for today's women. Don't get me wrong- I know these shows, I love these shows. Because they are tradition. But I'm afraid our author is right- we might be spending a little too much money on degrading material.
This article aggressively points out a glaring issue that exists in our current live entertainment structure that I hadn’t really taken much attention to previously. I thin that issue lies within the fact that mass entertainment (ex. Broadway) tries so hard to appeal to a mass audience that often it can fall back on archaic social stereotypes which just end up promoting them all over again. This reminds me of an article posted a couple months ago that described the issues that exist in casting notices, because of the way they bring to light the way which we view certain sexes/cultures in the most general of manners. The thing that resonated the most with me personally was the idea of the “cookie cutter” girls that are desperately trying to look like that ideal female leading role. I think another huge part of the issue, that the article failed to point out, that the issue lies beyond just the casts and the directors, but its the fact that empowering female roles are not being written nearly as often as the leading male roles are. How can we expect the faces of the casts on Broadway to change if we don’t see roles being written for other body types/sexes/cultural backgrounds?
I too was very surprised with how impassioned the writer of this article is, but the more I read, the more it made sense. The part that stood out the most to me and made me actually shutter at the bigotry of it was the quote “Female empowerment is fine for daytime television, but it’s flesh-crawling in a musical.” How can that actually be a thing that someone has thought. Despite the differences in medium, television and musicals are exactly the same in that they tell a story. Why should one have female empowerment and the other not? I especially liked the part where she suggested you put “gay” instead of “female” in these situations. I just commented on an article that was posted after this one about how a college cancelled the production of “Vagina Molologues” because it doesn't talk about trans women who don't have vaginas. If we take that same reasoning about women in general in musicals, so many of them would be cancelled. But of course, not we are talking about female empowerment in general and not the many kinds of sexualities in today’s society.
The tone of this article was initially offsetting. Being a wanna-be Broadway technician I was disheartened by the negative words that the author of this article wrote. However, as I kept reading, I started to realize more and more how much what she was saying made sense. Feminism is one thing, but the need to have every girl basically be a cardboard cut out is a little hard of hearing. This new idea of the perfect body is unsettling and is really difficult, especially for the average actress, as they already have some level of self-consciousness despite what many might see. However, apart from the body image issues going on in this article, I do not necessarily agree with the fact that she believes the only reason that females are not getting attention is because they don’t have penises and that the audience members are mostly women. There are plenty female actresses receive the same amount of attention.
You know, we could talk about the tone of this article and whether her use of foul language is off-putting, for lack of a better word. However, when I finished reading this article, the author has every right to be mad. As a female entering into a male-dominated field, the prospect is unnerving. As hard as shops try, women will always be looked over. One thing that really struck me in this article was when the author talked about the literal filth that are casting offices. Casting a convicted pedophile to play the Phantom? Are you serious?! Was this actor sincerely the best choice for the role? There was literally NO ONE ELSE auditioning? What he did was disgusting, yet he gets to star in a high-profile show. I really do not care whether he's 'paid his dues' or not. He made his bed.
On a different point, I totally agree with the author on her anger towards the portrayal of women in musical, especially with respects to marriage. I am so tired of seeing 'the nagging wife' stereotype. This is 2015. Can we please get some new material? Also, let's get more women in musicals. Please. I'm begging you. No just white women, but women of color as well. Getting me to watch something that only have one women in it is so hard. That was my one qualm about Pacific Rim (no a musical, but still). Odds are, if there's one woman, she's going to be stereotypically annoying. If I'm going to pay $150 for a Broadway ticket, I better get some good women characters. Or else I'm not going.
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