Friday, November 30, 2018
“Bathtubs Over Broadway,” Reviewed: Can a Musical Sponsored by a Toilet Manufacturer Be a Work of Art?
The New Yorker: From the title alone, it’s obvious that “Bathtubs Over Broadway,” a new documentary by Dava Whisenant that opens this Friday, will be a delight. Its subject is the industrial musical—plays produced by corporations for their employees to enjoy at nationwide or regional sales meetings and conventions. Steve Young, who was, for more than twenty years, a writer for David Letterman, became obsessed, in the mid-nineties, with these shows—in particular, with LPs of them, which were pressed solely to be distributed to employees as souvenirs.
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4 comments:
I didn’t know about industrial musicals before this article and I find the idea really fascinating. It reminds me of something said in the movie The Social Network where they talk about how their Super Bowl ad could win an Oscar for best short film. And while there is a clear difference between an advertisement where people know that it is an ad, these musicals also reminded me more of native advertising. Since the ads blend into the content the viewer may not know that they are watching or reading an ad. In this case, advertisements are mixed with journalism where as industrial plays are a mix of ads and art. I found really interesting about Industrial plays seem to have died out. It will be interesting to see as companies look for new ways to advertise if Industrial plays will come back or if it takes a new form in online videos, like monetized videos on Youtube.
This article presented an interesting set questions, which I had never considered before. I hadn’t really heard much about industrial musicals, except the few times they come up as research. The history of this type of performance was never something I looked into. But the way this article outlines how and why these types of performances are relevant. I think the conclusion I’ve come to is that everything is art. Some of it is just more relevant in some ways that other. I think it would be irresponsible to dismiss a work entirely just because it was sponsored or created as an advertisement. I think that may be something that should be taken into account, but not the end of the conversation. After all, as the article mentioned, several famous works from history were created as advertisements. And we still laud them as great works of art to this day.
I think that this is an interesting article and discussion point. It's funny because many of the creative fields have similar conversations. in the visual arts world there has always been one level of a debate on what can actually be considered art. During the height of one such debate an modern artist Marcel Duchamp created an exhibit called "Fountain" that was just a urinal he had acquired and signed, claiming that art is about perspective and that anything could be interpreted to be art. I agree with this and believe that it really comes down to the viewer. Some industrial pieces are so well created that many view them as masterful art work while others may not think that they have the same value. To make a blanket statement about what can be art eliminates the intricacies of any artists work, and is detrimental to creativity as a whole.
My initial reaction to reading the title of this article was skepticism- I assumed it was going to describe some kind of glorified advertisement. But reading the article was really interesting. I had never heard of ‘industrial musicals’ but I think they’re a really interesting idea. I can understand why they’ve fallen out of style- they’re described as enormously expensive and a complicated undertaking with the main benefit being increased worker morale, something that the majority of companies tend to disregard. I think these kinds of shows can absolutely be considered art, but I don’t want to see a future in which company-sponsored art is the norm; I feel like that would erode the subversive nature of art and transform the field into just another method of advertisement. However, shows being produced specifically for workers of a company as a way of relating to them and providing entertainment is a very intriguing idea that would be interesting to see spread.
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