BLOODY, BLOODY HOMO SCRATCHIN' (His Head)
Betrayal, I’m sure you would agree, is a hard thing for all of us. Betrayal from a family member is probably the most painful. The theatre has been my home and construct for family for most of my adult life. It’s where I feel loved, respected, seen and heard without having to work so fuckin’ hard at it. So when I feel betrayed by my family – my fellow artists -- I think . . . I think I want to strangle someone. And I would if I weren’t a rational man.
If you’ve been around theatre for as long as I have, you see stories/shows that are burned in your memory for a lifetime because they’re just so magnificently realized. Conversely, you see shows that you forget as you’re getting up out of your seat after the final curtain. Regardless, in any production – good or bad -- there’s always something interesting to see. And sometimes there’s more than you want to see. Bloody, Bloody, Andrew Jackson is a good case in point.
Let me state for the record: I love good satire. I love to laugh. I can laugh at myself or at you with equal measure. I love to poke good-fun at sacred cows. I love grand theatricalism, biting political commentary, thoughtful parallel associations between the old and the new and bawdy jokes. I also love great music, clever lyrics, complicated orchestrations or simple melodies. Bloody, Bloody… has all this and more.
It’s the “more” part that’s making me a little crazy today. With all that this production had going for it, and with the clever parody and satire all over the stage, did the creatives really, REALLY have to resort to gay stereotypes to get a laugh? For God’s sake, how many more times do I have to experience raucous laughter when an audience sees a limp, dangling wrist, or an exaggerated lisp, a walk Liberace could call his own, exaggerated sexual prowess, gay butt jokes, gay cock jokes, gay fucking jokes and on and on. Now, admittedly Bloody, Bloody didn’t have all of this (but a good part of it). Still, when one image rolls through, the others come flooding back from decades of thoughtless stereotyping.
You could make an argument that the creatives stereotyped a lot of different kinds of people in the production -- for example, Native Americans. True. Absolutely true. But the portrayal of Native Americans walks a very fine line between what we think we know about the early Indians versus what we actually know. However, in my homo experience, the creatives took a US President (Van Buren), and as far as I can tell, colored him with the homo affect as a superfluously applied character construct based on nothing but the knowledge that it’s a sure-fire way to get a laugh. And was it my imagination (or my over-sensitivity) that the homo affect appeared to show up in other ruffled-collared men on stage?
I’m left to concluse they did it for a laugh. And believe me, I love to laugh and not take things too seriously. But this makes me sad. Very sad. And more than a little angry.
Really? REALLY? In 2010?
Let me state for the record: I love good satire. I love to laugh. I can laugh at myself or at you with equal measure. I love to poke good-fun at sacred cows. I love grand theatricalism, biting political commentary, thoughtful parallel associations between the old and the new and bawdy jokes. I also love great music, clever lyrics, complicated orchestrations or simple melodies. Bloody, Bloody… has all this and more.
It’s the “more” part that’s making me a little crazy today. With all that this production had going for it, and with the clever parody and satire all over the stage, did the creatives really, REALLY have to resort to gay stereotypes to get a laugh? For God’s sake, how many more times do I have to experience raucous laughter when an audience sees a limp, dangling wrist, or an exaggerated lisp, a walk Liberace could call his own, exaggerated sexual prowess, gay butt jokes, gay cock jokes, gay fucking jokes and on and on. Now, admittedly Bloody, Bloody didn’t have all of this (but a good part of it). Still, when one image rolls through, the others come flooding back from decades of thoughtless stereotyping.
You could make an argument that the creatives stereotyped a lot of different kinds of people in the production -- for example, Native Americans. True. Absolutely true. But the portrayal of Native Americans walks a very fine line between what we think we know about the early Indians versus what we actually know. However, in my homo experience, the creatives took a US President (Van Buren), and as far as I can tell, colored him with the homo affect as a superfluously applied character construct based on nothing but the knowledge that it’s a sure-fire way to get a laugh. And was it my imagination (or my over-sensitivity) that the homo affect appeared to show up in other ruffled-collared men on stage?
I’m left to concluse they did it for a laugh. And believe me, I love to laugh and not take things too seriously. But this makes me sad. Very sad. And more than a little angry.
Really? REALLY? In 2010?
