Tag: Women and Gender in Musicals

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: The Roundup

Even though its finest moments all boil down to well-intentioned, high energy karaoke numbers, and its script (co-written by Justin Theroux) left more cheese in the recipe than what was called for, Rock of Ages is still great fun. Really, it’s like a longer, louder version of Glee or American Idol, but with actors who can’t sing rather than singers who can’t act. Plus, it rocks you like a hurricane.

The Funny Face Always Gets the Big Number: on Funny Girl by Jessica Freeman-Slade

I imagine that at least once a day somewhere in America, some little Jewish girl (or girls with big noses, close-set eyes, skinny legs, and less than model looks) has a benevolent mother, sister, or aunt who pops in a DVD and tells her to sit down. She squirms a bit, but her mom says “Just trust me.” And then up on the screen pops a wildly unself-conscious, funny, brazenly self-confident woman with a voice to stop traffic. Even though she’s seen Glee and watched Lea Michele emote her way through many of these songs, nothing compares to this other creature, the one and only Barbra Streisand, in her debut film, the incomparable Funny Girl.

Mulan: The Twinkie Defense by Karina Wilson

Mulan is peppered with crass jokes about Chinese food orders (because that’s what Americans can relate to about Chinese culture, right?), disrespectful references to ancestor worship, superficial homage to Buddhist practice and some kung-fu styling, of the Carradine kind.  Given that Wu Xia is a rich, diverse, centuries old storytelling tradition, it also seems a shame that the writers didn’t draw more deeply on those perspectives.  Instead, they send Mulan on a tired, Western Hero’s Journey, plugging her variables into the 12-step formula tried and tested by countless Hollywood protagonists. 

The Lion King: Just Good, or Feminist Good? by FeministDisney

When it comes to Nala, her role has always frustrated me a lot. Ignoring that it might not work with the plot already in place, it was quite disappointing that Nala did not take over partially or fully in Simba’s absence. She is always shown, especially early on in the film, to be Simba’s equal, and she is perhaps even more intelligent, or at least a more naturally sound leader throughout the film, while Simba tends to be comparatively a bit more immature and in need of multiple characters propelling him into responsible/rightful action. This isn’t a critique of Simba’s likeability or abilities, but merely to say that in all aspects, Nala would have made at least a decent fill-in.

The Reception of Corpse Bride by Myrna Waldron

The film is fairly feminist for a horror-comedy, but it’s not perfect. There are at least two fat jokes in the story – a mean-spirited form of discrimination that needs to just end already. I was particularly annoyed that Mrs. Van Dort is portrayed as not being aware just how fat she is. Let’s set the record straight – if someone’s fat, they KNOW, thank you. There are also no people of colour in the cast at all. I suppose this is partly justified in that it takes place in Victorian Eastern Europe, and the aesthetic of the living village is severe whites, blacks, and greys, but there’s no reason there couldn’t have been minorities in the underworld village.

Bros Before Hoes, or How Kidnapping Makes for Great Dance Numbers: on Seven Brides for Seven Brothers by Jessica Freeman-Slade

The enlivening force of Seven Brides is male longing, and it makes for great theater. The Pontipee brothers have lived hard, but falling in love is what softens and civilizes them. But all that civilization is for nothing when Adam, modern man that he is, devises a brilliant scheme, pulled straight out of Millie’s copy of Plutarch’s Lives. Why not do like the Romans did with the Sabine women?

And then comes the merriest song about rape ever.

Chicago by Clint Waters

Not that female murders are anything new, but I enjoy that Chicago features nothing but. While we’re on the subject, there are exceedingly few main male characters in the film (one being Roxie’s dope of a husband and the other being a smarmy lawyer out for money), which is awesome and doesn’t happen all that often in movies dealing with murder. Let alone a musical movie dealing with murder. However, where I believe the film falls short is the fact that none of these characters has redeeming qualities.

Accidental Feminism in Mary Poppins by Megan Kearns

Interestingly, this bastion of film feminism occurred accidentally. Glynis Johns thought she was the one getting the role of Mary Poppins, not Julie Andrews. In order to assuage her potential furor over this fuck-up, Walt Disney told Johns that she had a phenomenal solo. To cover his ass, Disney called up songwriters Robert B. and Richard M. Sherman and said (while Johns was in earshot) that she couldn’t wait to hear the song. The Sherman Brothers quickly researched women’s movements in 1910 England, and wrote “Sister Suffragette” so Johns could hear the song after her lunch with Disney. 

The Princess and the Frog by Janyce Denise Glasper

When compared to the other Disney princesses, Tiana’s story is a bunch of BS. She didn’t have an evil stepfamily, eat a poisoned apple, have graceful legs instead of fins, receive many hours of beauty rest, or become a madmen’s “love” slave.
Does that make her luckier? I think not.
None of those women would wish to be a frog with long, batty eyelashes.
Nope. Not one.

The Nightmare Before Christmas by Jessica Critcher

According to Wikipedia, the two witches aren’t given names in the film, only later in a video game. But even without the name part, they only talk to and about Jack. This sends the message to boys and girls alike that female characters do not have anything substantial to contribute to the dialogue or the plot of the film. Girls and women do not, apparently, have anything interesting or relevant to say to one another, and children internalize that very deeply. While this was probably unintentional, the effect is still the same.

The Little Mermaid by Ana Mardoll

I like The Little Mermaid. I like a lot of things that are problematic, and I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with liking problematic things as long as a certain awareness is maintained that Problems Abound Therein. Art is complicated like that. But I like The Little Mermaid and I think it’s compatible with valuable feminist messages. Certainly, it was my first introduction into a feminist narrative and I have always considered the problematic romance storyline to be camouflage for the real story. But we’ll see whether or not you agree.

Singin’ In the Rain by Deirdre Crimmins

While the genre can whisk you away to foreign lands, and domestic bliss, it is also historically problematic when it comes it its representations of women, and gender in general. Though the men are singing and dancing, they are always men’s men, expressing their gender through ruggedness and emotional unavailability. The women are often window dressing, and pawns in the plot, rather than autonomous people who have actual emotions and ambitions. Singin’ In The Rain suffers from some of the same issues that many musicals have with their treatment of genders, but it does have a surprisingly progressive character as well. 

The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the Pitchfork of Puritanism by Leigh Kolb

Of course, we aren’t supposed to walk away from a midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show feeling utterly meaningless. O’Brien himself self-identifies as transgender, and has been outspoken about how society should not “dictate” gender roles. He said in a recent interview, “If society allowed you to grow up feeling it was normal to be what you are, there wouldn’t be a problem. I don’t think the term ‘transvestite’ or ‘transsexual’ would exist: you’d just be another human being.” 

Female Friendship, Madonna/Whore Stereotypes and Rape Culture in West Side Story by Megan Kearns

It’s interesting how other characters treat women in the film. In “America,” the Sharks sing about the xenophobia and racism they experience while the women sing about their aspirations and the promise of a  better life in NYC. One of the Jets exasperatedly wonders why they’re fooling around with “dumb broads.” To which Graziella retorts, “Velma and I ain’t dumb.” Anybodys is the tomboy who desperately longs to be in the Jets. She hangs around the guys, spits on the ground and insults women, and sees the male gender as far more desirable. But rather than depicting gender variance or even a trans character, the Jets view Anybodys as a defective female. Some of the Jets taunt her that no one would want to sleep with her. Because apparently to them (and patriarchal society at large), a woman’s status resides only in her beauty, sexuality and desirability. 

James and the Giant Peach by Libby White

The Aunts are horrific caretakers; starving, beating, and emotionally abusing James relentlessly. Mind you, this is a movie for children. And like in most children’s movies, the Aunts’ outward appearance reflects their inner evil. Both women are made to look terrifyingly cruel and yet simultaneously clown-like, dressed in orange-red wigs and slathered on make-up. During their first 20 minutes on screen, the two women participate in dozens of morally reprehensible practices, everything from shameless vanity to verbally attacking a woman and her children.

Cinderella by Olivia Bernal

Watching Cinderella again for the first time since I was a child, it was amazing to me that time and again Disney portrays women as either bitches or victims. Ursula, Maleficent, Snow White’s Queen, the Queen of Hearts and of course Cinderella’s stepmother Lady Tremaine are all evil women, jealous of the beauty and innocence of their younger counterparts. One by one they seek to quell romance, passion, and everything else good from the lives of the eventual princesses by seeking power, wealth, and beauty of their own. Only a man can save these women from their pitiful disputes, damaging though they are. Perhaps the notion of a man wielding this type of power over a young, beautiful woman was a little too akin to rape for Disney’s taste. Either way, the Disney-fication of evil into an older, vindictive woman promotes an attitude that women are either a victim or seeking to be a victim; a mentality that when unleashed in the real world leads to horrific statements like, “She was asking for it.”

Phantom of the Opera: Great Music, Terrible Feminism by Myrna Waldron

Emmy Rossum’s Christine Daae is a lovely young woman with a pretty (if not exactly operatic) voice, and possibly the most spineless personality I’ve ever seen from a female protagonist. The love triangle between herself, the Phantom and Raoul is the central conflict of the story. Her preference for Raoul, her childhood sweetheart, is one of only two personal choices she makes throughout the entire story.  Neither The Phantom nor Raoul ever seem to take Christine’s wants into account. I know I’m supposed to root for her to end up with at least one of the suitors, (the 26-year shipping wars notwithstanding) but honestly? Run away, Christine. RUN AWAY.

Jesus Christ Superstar: Feminism and Crosscasting by Barrett Vann

Though this is intended to examine the show through a feminist lens, intersectionality is key, and so mention must be given to race. Though the practise of colourblind casting has been open to some debate as to whether or not it’s actually a good thing (allowing, for instance, such un-self-aware gaffes as all-white productions of The Wiz with the argument that they’re being colourblind, they’re being progressive), in the 1973 film of JCS, it’s practised about as truly as I have ever seen. The ensemble of disciples is about as diverse racially as they are among gender lines, and of what one might term the ‘main’ cast, Judas and Simon Zealotes are played by black men, Mary Magdalene a woman of mixed Irish, Chinese, and Japanese descent, and the actor who plays Herod is Jewish. Somewhat ironically, come to that. Actors of colour are not relegated to unimportant side characters; they can be anyone.

The Surprising Feminism of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Myrna Waldron

Yes, the film is flawed, especially if taken at its apparently anti-feminist face value. But contextually, I feel that this film’s depiction of women is quite fair for its day. Yes, it would be nice if the girls weren’t stereotypes and Lorelei wasn’t a blatant golddigger, but then, where would the plot be? Not only are its stars, Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell, important landmarks in feminist history, but their characters are too. Their friendship is absolutely ironclad – they put each other first, even though both are looking for love in different ways. Their confidence in their intelligence, lifestyle, and sexuality is incredibly liberated for what was supposedly a time of suffocatingly patriarchal morality.

“I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar … ish” by Lady T

Mostly, though, I’m curious about the reasons behind writing these “Hear Me Roar…ish” songs, especially the two numbers from the Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals. If the women are just going to end up with the men they’re declaring independence from, what’s the point of these songs at all? Did Rodgers and Hammerstein realize in both cases that they didn’t have a big musical number for all of the women in the show, and write these songs to give their female chorus members something to do? Did they decide that three solo songs and two duets for Mary Martin were not enough, and want to give her yet another number? (If that’s the case, I really can’t blame them for that, because Mary Martin is made of magic.) 

Tangled by Whitney Mollenhauer

In the end, I think it makes a good case for women’s “proper place” NOT being just in the home, but out in the world/public sphere!  I’m not sure how you could get any other moral out of it.  Even in Mulan, after she saves China, she ends up returning home, and (we suspect) marrying the army captain guy, instead of taking a job with the emperor.  In Tangled, the movie’s premise is centered around the idea that it’s wrong and horrible to expect a woman to spend her whole life at home.

Aladdin by Lia Gallitano

Essentially, all of the women are defined by their attractiveness to men. “Ugly” women, then, are used as comic relief. In one of the first scenes, when a woman opens the door and says of Aladdin, “Still I think he’s rather tasty!”, everybody in the audience is supposed to laugh. Aladdin looks at the woman (who is quite large) and jumps in surprise and disgust. Oh, silly fat woman, you can’t have feelings because you’re ugly! We’re supposed to laugh at how ridiculous her thinking Aladdin is “tasty” is—because fat women and ugly women are not supposed to have sexual desires. Only when the sexy women do this is it okay—nobody is laughing at Jasmine’s proclamations of love for Aladdin, because it doesn’t seem ridiculous now. Aladdin is attractive, she is attractive, so they can be in love. 

Glee! by Cali Loria

Having a character on TV who does not fit into the mold of being a perfect Westernized ideal of beauty would, in someone else’s hands, be refreshing. Glee, however, focuses on the extremes of women, enjoying the overt and campy hyperbolization of its characters which, in essence, detracts from actual storylines and only serves to render the women flat and one-dimensional: Jewish starlet, slut, dumb blonde, conniving cheerleader, sassy black woman, an Asian, and, now, a full-fleshed female. Glee has a recipe with every ingredient, but stirred together it’s one big lump of heterogeneous stereotypes.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by Rebecca Cohen

At every turn, Snow White embodies old-fashioned, small town American ideals. She helps a baby bird not just back to its nest, but back to its “momma and poppa” (because every creature should properly be part of a traditional nuclear family, of course). When she arrives at the dwarfs’ cottage in the woods, her first instinct is to clean up. She assumes, in keeping with traditional gender roles, that the children who live there must not have a mother. That’s the only possible way to explain how their house could be so dirty. Not only does she clean up the place, she enlists the help of the woodland fauna. Indeed, Snow White domesticates everyone and everything around her, spreading the conservative ideals of cleanliness, hard work, and unquestioning acceptance of the status quo even to the animals. She civilizes the dwarfs as well, refusing to feed them until they’ve washed up. 

Despite an Intelligent Heroine, Beauty Obsession, Sexism & Stockholm Syndrome Taint Disney’s Beauty and the Beast by Megan Kearns

The only other female characters in the movie are Mrs. Potts (I heart Angela Lansbury!), the wardrobe (who has no personality) and the French maid feather duster. A grandmotherly type and a sexpot. Of course Disney does their notorious matricide in the form of the protagonist’s mother either dead or non-existent. They demonize stepmothers and solely focus on both daughters’ and sons’ relationships with their fathers. Seriously, Disney, what the hell have you got against mothers?? And yep, I’m aware Mrs. Potts is Chips’s mother. Doesn’t count. Not only is she not Belle’s mother, she’s a fucking teapot for most of the film. Belle has no female friends, no mother, no sister, no female role model. The importance of female camaraderie and sisterly bonding remain absent from the film. 

My Top 6 Favorite Female Empowerment Songs in Musicals by Megan Kearns

As much as I adore musicals, most songs are about men, either men singing them or women singing about men — men they desire or men who have done them wrong. Where are the songs belted out by the ladies for the ladies?? After perusing my DVD collection, Broadway ticket stubs and good ole’ google, I’ve compiled a list. In no particular order, here are my favorite powerful women anthems in musical film.

That Glee Photo Shoot by Fannie

I could also talk about how annoyingly predictable it is that, of all of Glee’s diverse cast members, it is the two women who most conform to conventional Hollywood beauty standards who have been granted the empowerful privilege of being sexified for a men’s mag. For, despite Glee’s idealistic and uplifting message that It’s What’s On the Inside That Counts, the show’s resident Fat Black Girl With A Soulful Voice is noticeably absent from the shoot.

Carousel: A Fairytale Screen Adaptation of the 2012 Republican Anti-Woman Agenda by Stephanie Rogers

Re-watching it this week—for the purpose of writing about how much I admired the way it handled domestic violence issues (in 1956, no less)—I realized my 13-year-old self understood jack shit about misogyny in film, and she certainly didn’t understand what constitutes successfully raising awareness about violence against women.

The only thing I can think to say about Carousel now, as a 34-year-old woman who’s been both a witness to and a victim of physical abuse at the hands of men, isn’t just that I’m appalled by its sexism or the blasé nature in which it deals with physical abuse (I am), but that I’m seriously freaked out by how a movie musical from sixty years ago manages to feel like a fairytale screen adaptation of the 2012 Republican anti-woman agenda.

 

‘Carousel’: A Fairytale Screen Adaptation of the 2012 Republican Anti-Woman Agenda

Movie poster for Carousel

I loved this film. When I was 13 or so.

Re-watching it this week—for the purpose of writing about how much I admired the way it handled domestic violence issues (in 1956, no less)—I realized my 13-year-old self understood jack shit about misogyny in film, and she certainly didn’t understand what constitutes successfully raising awareness about violence against women.
The only thing I can think to say about Carousel now, as a 34-year-old woman who’s been both a witness to and a victim of physical abuse at the hands of men, isn’t just that I’m appalled by its sexism or the blasé nature in which it deals with physical abuse (I am), but that I’m seriously freaked out by how a movie musical from sixty years ago manages to feel like a fairytale screen adaptation of the 2012 Republican anti-woman agenda.

A film written, directed, and produced in 1956 will obviously echo the cultural climate of the 1950s, and during that time, rigid gender roles permeated; primarily, men were the breadwinners, and women were the homemakers. And advertisements like this existed:

Women can work outside the home now without the universe exploding (thanks, bros!), but that doesn’t mean we don’t still regularly deal with nonsense I mean gang rape fantasy advertisements like this: 

We’ve come a long way, baby? I don’t fucking think so. But I’ll get back to that. 
First of all, the plot: Billy Bigelow is a barker (a person who tries to attract patrons) at a carousel, and all the ladies love him, including Mrs. Mullin, the carousel owner. Billy catches the eye of the young, pretty Julie Jordan and helps her onto the carousel like she’s a child, and then stands next to her the whole time, staring at her like a fucking serial killer. The jealous Mrs. Mullin kicks out Julie and her friend Carrie, and when Julie argues about being treated unfairly, Mrs. Mullin slut-shames her for a supposed indiscretion with Billy. The indiscretion? Julie let Billy put his arm around her waist. Floozy! 

Billy and Julie in Carousel
Billy appears out of nowhere to defend Julie, and as a result, Mrs. Mullin fires him. In one of the most offensive moments in the film, Billy smacks Mrs. Mullin on the ass and says, “Go on, then, git,” as if she were an animal.

Carrie decides to go home (they have a curfew because apparently being a woman and being a child are the same thing in 1956), but Julie refuses—even though she knows it’ll mean getting fired from her job as a mill worker—because she wants to spend time with this older man whom she knows nothing about, except that he wants to bum money from her; that he’s a womanizer; and that he keeps asking “aren’t you scared of me?” like he’s offended that she isn’t. (Man up, Bigelow!)

This is a movie musical, though, so within the next five seconds Julie and Billy sing a song about love. I’m not going to pretend I don’t love this song.



They get married. Billy can’t (or won’t) find work, so they live off Julie’s aunt. Billy—because he’s so distraught and self-loathing about his inability to find employment—physically abuses Julie (off-screen), but he admits he did it because “we would argue, and she’d be right.” Well then!

Billy basically ignores her for the entire rest of the film in favor of hanging out with his criminal friend Jigger (WTF) until Julie tells Billy she’s pregnant, at which point he caresses her arms and stomach as he helps her walk up like five steps because oh my god delicate flower carrying his spawn.

I laughed in horror at the spawn-song soliloquy that follows; it perfectly encapsulates the creepy gender constraints of 2012 I mean 1956:


“His mother can teach him the way to behave, but she won’t make a sissy out of him. Not him! Not my boy! Not Bill! Bill … my boy Bill; I will see that he’s named after me, I will. My boy, Bill! He’ll be tall and tough as a tree, will Bill!”
The song continues in the same ridiculous fashion, with Billy listing off all the shit His Boy Bill might do when he gets older (e.g. hammering spikes, ferrying a boat, hauling a scow along a canal, becoming a heavyweight champ, or, if that doesn’t work out, maybe becoming the President of the United States, duh). But then, Billy’s all—“Wait a minute! Could it be? What the hell! What if he is a girl?” Actual lyrics.

Let the horror get more horrifying.

Listen. “You can have fun with a son, but you gotta be a father to a girl.” Got it? And this girl, she’ll have ribbons in her hair, and she’ll be pink and white as peaches and cream! We don’t experience the pleasure of hearing about what Peaches and Cream Girl will do with her life, but we definitely get an earful about 1) her looks and 2) all the things Daddy needs to do before her arrival. Suddenly—at the mere prospect of raising a girl child instead of a boy child—Daddy goes all Male Provider on our asses.


Let me not forget to mention this end of the song creep-out moment: “Dozens of boys pursue her. Many a likely lad does what he can to woo her from her faithful dad. She has a few pink and white young fellers of two or three, but my little girl gets hungry every night, and she comes home to me!” What is this—a song from one of those 100% unacceptable for obvious reasons father-daughter purity balls? (That lovely little tradition started as recently as 1998, by the way.)


In the end, Billy dies by falling on his own knife (seriously, fail) when he and Jigger try to steal money from a rich dude. After his death, he passes on to some makeshift Heaven-type situation where he polishes fake plastic stars for all of eternity, and for some reason, the owners of Heaven allow him to return to Earth for a day in order to help Julie and his daughter feel less horrible about him having been an overall shitty husband and criminal. Yay.


By this point, his daughter Louise is fifteen years old. Upon his return to Earth, Billy finds Louise dancing on the beach and, after he realizes everyone keeps making fun of her because of his robbery attempt, he tries to cheer her up—by giving her one of the fake plastic stars he stole (ha ha ha theft again) from Heaven.


But Louise refuses to take it! Because who the fuck is this dude!


And what does she get for refusing a gift from a random man who showed up out of nowhere? A slap on the hand. Literally. The same man who physically abused his wife when he was alive somehow walks out of Heaven and slaps the shit out of his daughter within the first ten minutes of meeting her for the first time. That isn’t even the worst of it.


The worst of it?

She runs inside to tell her mother that a strange man on the beach slapped her—but—but—it didn’t feel like a slap, she says; it felt like a kiss.

Awwwww, that’s sweet, right? Nope! Not for a fucking second. Let me tell you why.


I started this piece by talking about how my thirteen-year-old girl self remembered Carousel as a happy musical that shed light on a bad man who hit his wife. I remembered, too, that he died, but I remembered it as a punishment of sorts, a repercussion caused by living life as an abusive dickface who treated women like absolute shit. I didn’t care about his death. His death felt like a consequence of bad behavior to me, and in a way, it is—stealing money from someone at knifepoint is probably wrong, for the most part, heh. But the ultimate message of Carousel (that I somehow glommed onto as a teenager) isn’t saying to men: “Don’t abuse women, or else.” It’s saying something closer to: “SEE WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DON’T MAN UP AND SUPPORT YOUR WOMEN, YOU LAZY BUMS?”


It’s a cautionary tale about the dangers of “failing” as a man. It’s oh-so-1956. It’s oh-so-2012.

We’re living in an age in which women’s basic rights—specifically the right to bodily autonomy, including safe and legal access to abortion—keep coming under fire by conservative Republicans and unfortunately aren’t more than half-assedly defended by supposed “progressive” Democrats, either. Further, the arguments against abortion and reproductive rights center around this lie that it’s all about Stopping the Murder of Innocent, Yet-To-Be Born Infants.

Bullshit.

The abortion debate (and now the access to birth control debate—for fuck’s sake!) exists because we live in a culture that time warped to, or possibly never actually left, 1956. Women are still fighting for basic human rights—in 2012—because power-hungry, neo-conservative bullies can’t stop jerking off to the fantasy of living out the rest of their lives in Carousel-Land.

That’s why re-watching this harmless little musical made me absolutely cringe.

It’s a film with dizzying dance sequences and well-known musical numbers to be sure, but it’s also a film in which women are valued and treated with respect only while pregnant, and who are otherwise disregarded, objectified, slut-shamed, abused, or infantilized, and who are expected to accept the actions of the men around them without judgment, regardless of the harm those actions may cause. And there you have it, readers: the 2012 G.O.P. Platform. 

Now let’s all cry together:

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: That ‘Glee’ Photo Shoot

This piece by Fannie previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on October 27, 2010.

No
So, there is this. View the slideshow (warning: might not be safe for some workplaces).

I love Glee. I sometimes am annoyed by it, but generally, I appreciate its ode to geekiness. I also do sometimes like looking at photos of attractive women (and men), if the photos are tastefully done and don’t seem like they’re completely exploiting the person. And subtlety is good. Subtext, to me, is often sexier than in-your-face displays of sexual availability.

Those disclaimers aside, I could now go on about how these photos at once infantilize adult women by portraying female actresses as sexy schoolgirls while also inappropriately sexualizing these characters, who are supposed to be under the age of 18.

I could also talk about how annoyingly predictable it is that, of all of Glee’s diverse cast members, it is the two women who most conform to conventional Hollywood beauty standards who have been granted the empowerful privilege of being sexified for a men’s mag. For, despite Glee’s idealistic and uplifting message that It’s What’s On the Inside That Counts, the show’s resident Fat Black Girl With A Soulful Voice is noticeably absent from the shoot.

And then there’s the fact that it’s titled Glee Gone Wild! a not-so-subtle allusion to that paragon of klassy art that made Joe Francis a pimp wealthy man. Yeah, I could talk about how that’s not my favorite.

We could also explore how the photos are clearly intended for the heterosexual male gaze (or, say, the gaze of a sexually abusive photographer who talks about how his “boner” compels him to want to “dominate” girls) and his sexual fantasies.

And I will talk about that for a minute, actually.

GQ is a men’s magazine, so while some lesbians and bisexual women might be titillated by such images, they should not be so naive as to think it is they who are the intended recipients of these images. Finn, the football player, is perhaps the one dude on the show who Average Joes most identify with. In GQ’s slideshow, he is almost fully clothed in regular streetwear throughout and often adorned with the Ultimate Straight Male Fantasy of not one, but two, hot chicks who might first make out with each other and then subsequently have sex with him.

As for the women depicted, the images predominately feature the two actors wearing the sexy-lady Halloween costume known as Sexually Available Schoolgirl, thus letting gay men know that this photo shoot about characters in a musical TV show is not intended for them, either.

Which brings me to the self-indulgent, possibly shallow, item I really want to talk about.

See, well, Glee used to be our thing.

The geeks, the losers, the queers, the disabled, the atheists, the dudely jock who likes to sing and dance, the pregnant girl, the teen diva, and the male Asian actor who is supposed to be geeky-cool but who never gets a speaking part in Glee solo. The popularity of Glee has been Revenge of the Nerds all the way and for that reason it has been pretty, dare I say, special to a lot of marginalized people and teenagers in all its campy dorkwad glory.

But now, the GQ photo shoot has subverted geekiness to give heterosexual men yet another thing in this world that can be, erm, special to them. And what’s supposed to special about Quinn and Rachel in these photos is not their voices, their struggles, their dorkiness, their self-centeredness, their insecurities, or their dreams, but rather, the never-been-done-before message that it’s women! Who are hot! And young! And thin! Who men want to fuck!

GQ, on behalf of its straight male readership, flaunts Rachel and Quinn in these photos like Sue Sylvester boastingly displays her ginormous cheerleading trophies as yet another reminder to the geeks that “not everyone can be champions” because some people are meant to dominate and others to be dominated. The photos are the equivalent of a major studio finally producing a Xena movie, writing in that long-awaited for Xena/Gabby actual make-out scene, and then having the two main characters end up married. To men, that is. Because what heterosexual men would like to see happen to two female characters is, let’s face it, always what is most important when it comes to TV and film and to hell with any other major fan base.

Glee should know better.

Trying to be popular by catering to the “I only watch shows with multiple major female characters if they’re hot” crowd might make a couple of dorks cool for a while, but it’s also why the rest us can’t have nice things.

———-


Fannie, author of Fannie’s Room, who, when not hanging out at her blog, can probably be found planning the homosexual agenda, twirling her mustache, plotting a leftist feminist takeover of the universe, and coordinating the recruitment effort of the lesbian branch of the Gay Mafia. Her days are busy.



Women and Gender in Musicals Week: That Glee Photo Shoot

This piece by Fannie previously appeared at Bitch Flicks on October 27, 2010.

No
So, there is this. View the slideshow (warning: might not be safe for some workplaces).

I love Glee. I sometimes am annoyed by it, but generally, I appreciate its ode to geekiness. I also do sometimes like looking at photos of attractive women (and men), if the photos are tastefully done and don’t seem like they’re completely exploiting the person. And subtlety is good. Subtext, to me, is often sexier than in-your-face displays of sexual availability.

Those disclaimers aside, I could now go on about how these photos at once infantilize adult women by portraying female actresses as sexy schoolgirls while also inappropriately sexualizing these characters, who are supposed to be under the age of 18.

I could also talk about how annoyingly predictable it is that, of all of Glee’s diverse cast members, it is the two women who most conform to conventional Hollywood beauty standards who have been granted the empowerful privilege of being sexified for a men’s mag. For, despite Glee’s idealistic and uplifting message that It’s What’s On the Inside That Counts, the show’s resident Fat Black Girl With A Soulful Voice is noticeably absent from the shoot.

And then there’s the fact that it’s titled Glee Gone Wild! a not-so-subtle allusion to that paragon of klassy art that made Joe Francis a pimp wealthy man. Yeah, I could talk about how that’s not my favorite.

We could also explore how the photos are clearly intended for the heterosexual male gaze (or, say, the gaze of a sexually abusive photographer who talks about how his “boner” compels him to want to “dominate” girls) and his sexual fantasies.

And I will talk about that for a minute, actually.

GQ is a men’s magazine, so while some lesbians and bisexual women might be titillated by such images, they should not be so naive as to think it is they who are the intended recipients of these images. Finn, the football player, is perhaps the one dude on the show who Average Joes most identify with. In GQ’s slideshow, he is almost fully clothed in regular streetwear throughout and often adorned with the Ultimate Straight Male Fantasy of not one, but two, hot chicks who might first make out with each other and then subsequently have sex with him.

As for the women depicted, the images predominately feature the two actors wearing the sexy-lady Halloween costume known as Sexually Available Schoolgirl, thus letting gay men know that this photo shoot about characters in a musical TV show is not intended for them, either.

Which brings me to the self-indulgent, possibly shallow, item I really want to talk about.

See, well, Glee used to be our thing.

The geeks, the losers, the queers, the disabled, the atheists, the dudely jock who likes to sing and dance, the pregnant girl, the teen diva, and the male Asian actor who is supposed to be geeky-cool but who never gets a speaking part in Glee solo. The popularity of Glee has been Revenge of the Nerds all the way and for that reason it has been pretty, dare I say, special to a lot of marginalized people and teenagers in all its campy dorkwad glory.

But now, the GQ photo shoot has subverted geekiness to give heterosexual men yet another thing in this world that can be, erm, special to them. And what’s supposed to special about Quinn and Rachel in these photos is not their voices, their struggles, their dorkiness, their self-centeredness, their insecurities, or their dreams, but rather, the never-been-done-before message that it’s women! Who are hot! And young! And thin! Who men want to fuck!

GQ, on behalf of its straight male readership, flaunts Rachel and Quinn in these photos like Sue Sylvester boastingly displays her ginormous cheerleading trophies as yet another reminder to the geeks that “not everyone can be champions” because some people are meant to dominate and others to be dominated. The photos are the equivalent of a major studio finally producing a Xena movie, writing in that long-awaited for Xena/Gabby actual make-out scene, and then having the two main characters end up married. To men, that is. Because what heterosexual men would like to see happen to two female characters is, let’s face it, always what is most important when it comes to TV and film and to hell with any other major fan base.

Glee should know better.

Trying to be popular by catering to the “I only watch shows with multiple major female characters if they’re hot” crowd might make a couple of dorks cool for a while, but it’s also why the rest us can’t have nice things.

———-


Fannie, author of Fannie’s Room, who, when not hanging out at her blog, can probably be found planning the homosexual agenda, twirling her mustache, plotting a leftist feminist takeover of the universe, and coordinating the recruitment effort of the lesbian branch of the Gay Mafia. Her days are busy.



Women and Gender in Musicals Week: My Top 6 Favorite Female Empowerment Songs in Musicals

After reading Lady T’s fabulous post on “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar…ish,” aka songs that appear to empower women but really just signal faux feminism, I started thinking about actual feminist songs of female empowerment. Let me tell ya, there’s not a whole hell of a lot out there.

As much as I adore musicals, most songs are about men, either men singing them or women singing about men — men they desire or men who have done them wrong. Where are the songs belted out by the ladies for the ladies?? After perusing my DVD collection, Broadway ticket stubs and good ole’ google, I’ve compiled a list. In no particular order, here are my favorite powerful women anthems in musical film.


1. “Defying Gravity” — Wicked 

Something has changed within me
Something is not the same 
I’m through with playing by the rules 
Of someone else’s game 
Too late for second-guessing
Too late to go back to sleep 
It’s time to trust my instincts 
Close my eyes: and leap! 

[…]

And nobody in all of Oz
No wizard that there is or was
Is ever gonna bring me down.

Okay, so right off the bat, I’m breaking my own rules. Wicked isn’t a movie…yet. But it has been performed at the Tonys, on Glee and the theatre version was written by Winne Holzman, a TV screenwriter. So there you go.
Based on the best-selling Gregory Maguire novel which tells the story of The Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the Wicked Witch of the West, it’s a stellar Broadway musical (read the novel and watch the play if you can; both different, both amazing). Wicked revolves around Elphaba, who becomes the Wicked Witch of the West — intelligent, studious, defiant, strong and outspoken, in short, one of my favorite female protagonists — and Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. It explores prejudice and the notion of good and evil (and who determines those labels). But at its core, the play is about embracing your unique individuality and the power of female friendship. 
In “Defying Gravity,” Elphaba (sung by the stunningly talented Idina Menzel in the role she originated) sings about trusting her instincts, her desire to be free and realizing she possesses all the power she needs inside herself. She refuses to compromise her beliefs and won’t let society define her identity.
I love this story so much, as do countless others. So why haven’t we seen it on-screen?? Why are we getting stuck with the male-centric Oz: The Great and Powerful before Wicked?? It’s a travesty. But it is in pre-production. So hopefully, we’ll see a film version on-screen soon. Until then, I’ll keep pressing the replay button on this video…


2. “I’m Here” — The Color Purple


I believe I have inside of me
Everything that I need to live a bountiful life
With all the love alive in me
I’ll stand as tall as the tallest tree 

[…]

But most of  all 
I’m thankful for 
Loving who I really am.
I’m beautiful. 
Yes, I’m beautiful,
And I’m here.

So, I tried to stick to musical film. But this song is just too damn good not to include on this list. I love the film version of The Color Purple. But I was blown away when I saw it on stage and heard the powerful lyrics. It’s a female-centric musical about Celie, an African American woman in the early 1900s South who faces sexism, abuse, racism and poverty. But through it all, she finds female friendship and a strength she never knew she had. 
There aren’t enough musicals featuring women of color. And there aren’t nearly enough female empowerment songs. That’s what makes the song “I’m Here” so fantastic. Not only is it a beautiful, powerfully stirring song. But it’s sung by a black woman finally realizing her own inner power and self-worth. Celie is a strong survivor proudly declaring herself to the world.
At the end of this video, you can see Fantasia Barrino (who played Celie on Broadway) tearing up, emotionally spent from her wrenching performance, giving it everything she’s got and leaving it all on the floor. More of us need to emulate Celie and say, “Hey world, I’m here. Deal with it.”

3. “Don’t Rain On My Parade” — Funny Girl 

Don’t tell me not to live, just sit and putter 
Life’s candy and the sun’s a ball of butter 
Don’t bring around a cloud to rain on my parade 
Don’t tell me not to fly, I’ve simply got to 
If someone takes a spill, it’s me and not you 
Who told you you’re allowed to rain on my parade 

I’ll march my band out, I’ll beat my drum…

“Hello, gorgeous.” Confession time! I’m kind of obsessed with Babs. Love, love, love her! So yes, she’s here on this list, not once but twice. Uh oh, spoiler alert!

In Funny Girl, Barbra Streisand’s first film, she plays comedian and stage and screen actor Fanny Brice, a role Streisand originated on Broadway. Fast-talking Fanny is convinced she’s going to be a huge star. In her signature song “Don’t Rain On My Parade,” she belts out how she’s not going to let anyone bring down her happiness. Now technically, Fanny is singing about a man. She quits the Ziegfeld Follies to follow her love Nick Arnstein. Yet I still always saw this song as one of female empowerment. Fanny’s going to live her life how she sees fit and she’ll be damned if she’s going to let anyone tell her what to do.

In the end of the play, the tone of which drastically differs from the film, she sings a reprise of “Don’t Rain On My Parade” about picking up the pieces of her life and not only surviving but thriving, holding her head high.

4. “La Vie Boheme” — Rent 

To being an ‘us’ for once 
Instead of a ‘them’ 
La vie boheme 
La vie boheme

Okay, so this isn’t quite a female empowerment song. It’s sung by dudes too. So call it a gender empowerment song instead. Funny, bittersweet and tragic, Rent embraces diversity and the merit of creating your own family and community. A defense of “bohemian” living in the Lower East Side in the 80s, the song sung by the cast of Rent — characters who are straight, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, Latina, and African American — references female artists like Maya Angelou, Gertrude Stein and Susan Sontag. “La Vie Boheme,” and the entire play, openly talk about choice, poverty, HIV/AIDS, homosexuality and bisexuality. And of course I love any song that mentions vegetarian food. No joke.

5. “Sister Suffragette” — Mary Poppins 



We’re clearly soldiers in petticoats, 
Dauntless crusaders for women’s votes! 
Though we adore men individually, 
We agree that as a group they’re rather stupid. 
Cast off the shackles of yesterday! 
Shoulder to shoulder into the fray! 
Our daughters’ daughters will adore us 
And they’ll sing in grateful chorus, 
“Well done, Sister Suffragette!” 
I’ve already written about my unabashed love for Mary Poppins and its accidental feminism. I absolutely adore watching and listening to Glynis Johns as Mrs. Winifred Banks, a mother fighting for women’s right to vote, belting out “Sister Suffragette.” How many other musicals contain overtly feminist songs advocating gender equality and sisterly solidarity? In this age of attacks on women’s rights and reproductive justice, I’m clearly a sucker for a song calling, “Womankind arise!”

6. “A Piece of Sky” — Yentl 

What’s wrong with wanting more?
If you can fly – then soar! 
With all there is 
Why settle for just 
A piece of sky 

One of my absolute favorite films, Yentl is an unusual musical in that all the singing is done by one person, the incomparable powerhouse Babs. (I told you there was another Babs song on the list!) It’s also one of the most feminist films I’ve ever watched.
Barbra Streisand directed, produced, wrote the screenplay and stars as an intelligent and inquisitive woman living in early 19th century Poland disguising herself as a man in order to study Talmudic Law, which women were forbidden from doing at the time. The film showcases female friendship and a female protagonist whose life — even though she idolizes her father and falls in love with a man — surprisingly doesn’t revolve around a man. It questions traditional gender roles, sexuality, patriarchy and ultimately advocates for gender equity.
The song “A Piece of Sky” sums up Yentl’s views, that she wants — no demands — more out of life. That she’s not going to settle for anything less than what she yearns for and she’s going to boldly follow her dreams. Despite the obstacles and constraints of societal conventions, Yentl remains rebellious, assertive and defiant throughout, choosing her own path.
If that’s not female empowerment, I don’t know what is.

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: Despite an Intelligent Heroine, Sexism Taints Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’

This review by Megan Kearns previously appeared at Bitch Flicks as part of our series on Animated Children’s Films.

An intelligent, strong-willed, female protagonist. Who reads books. And seeks adventure. With a heroine like Belle, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, must be a feminist-minded film. Right?? At first, I thought so too. But appearances can be deceiving…

Hailed by critics as a touching romance and one of the greatest animated films ever made, Beauty and the Beast became the first animated movie to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar. When I watched it in the theatre years ago, I too fell under its spell, seduced by its lush animation, whimsical tunes and of course Belle.

It felt refreshing to see an intelligent, outspoken, animated heroine who loved to read. Outspoken and loved books? I was outspoken and loved books! I saw myself in Belle. She was a misunderstood misfit, wanting “more than this provincial life” to which she had been born. I too felt like an outcast, yearning for adventure and freedom. We were kindred spirits.

But it wasn’t until years later that I saw the crack in the veneer. As I got older and embraced myself as a feminist, I began to question things more diligently. Once you start to see sexism, you can’t NOT see it. Sadly, it’s everywhere, including children’s films. Actually it’s possibly most prevalent in children’s films, which often reinforce tired and oppressive gender roles and stereotypes. 

Yes, Belle is intelligent, courageous, curious, opinionated…all the things I admire in female protagonists. Disney was painfully aware of the criticism against The Little Mermaid’s Ariel giving up her family, her life, hell even her voice all for a stupid prince. Linda Woolverton, Beauty and the Beast’s screenwriter, drew inspiration for Belle from tomboyish, book-loving, outspoken Jo in Little Women. Belle’s feisty independence heralded a new kind of Disney heroine, paving the way for Jasmine, Pocahontas and Mulan. And yes, we often see the world from her vantage point, another plus. Although the film begins and ends with the Beast, who also happens to go through the biggest transformation (literally and figuratively) in the film. Despite her awesomeness, there’s still a huge problem with Belle.

Even though Belle possesses admirable traits, her merit still comes down to her looks. The Beast, Gaston, the villagers and the enchanted servants all exclaim she’s beautiful, gorgeous, pretty and “her looks have no parallel.” Girls and women should be valued for their intellect, skills and kindness. But no one in the movie is raving about Belle’s inner beauty. Not only is Belle stunning, which of course all Disney “princesses” must be, and white and thin (god we need some diversity in films). It’s her name. Her fucking name is “BELLE,” which in French means “beautiful!” Despite her intelligence and bibliophile ways, even her fucking name revolves around her looks. Once again, women are subjugated and reduced to their appearances. Disney says sure, it’s okay to be smart, bookish, even a weird outcast…as long as you’re pretty. Ugh. 

In fact, the whole goddamn movie revolves around beauty. Symbols of beauty (mirrors and roses), permeate the film. Ironic since the intended moral of the fairy tale is looking past appearances to seek true inner beauty. But here’s the kicker. Beauty and the Beast would never have been made with a woman as a beast. Again reinforcing that yep, beauty is only skin deep…if you’re a dude. If you’re a woman, you’d best be gorgeous.

The only other female characters in the movie are Mrs. Potts (I heart Angela Lansbury!), the wardrobe (who has no personality) and the French maid feather duster. A grandmotherly type and a sexpot. Of course Disney does their notorious matricide in the form of the protagonist’s mother either dead or non-existent. They demonize stepmothers and solely focus on both daughters’ and sons’ relationships with their fathers. Seriously, Disney, what the hell have you got against mothers?? And yep, I’m aware Mrs. Potts is Chips’s mother. Doesn’t count. Not only is she not Belle’s mother, she’s a fucking teapot for most of the film. Belle has no female friends, no mother, no sister, no female role model. The importance of female camaraderie and sisterly bonding remain absent from the film.

Unlike many female characters in animated films (or annoying rom-coms for that matter), Belle isn’t looking to be rescued or waiting around for her prince. Two reasons that make Belle a feminist in Woolverton’s eyes. Belle rejects the sexist chauvinist Gaston and his numerous marriage proposals, finding him “boorish” and “brainless.” She wants more out of life than shining that jerk’s boots and popping out his babies. But Belle rebuffs one dysfunctional suitor for another.

A cursed spoiled prince, the Beast imprisons Belle’s father, Maurice, for trespassing. When Belle comes to his rescue, she sacrifices her cherished freedom, for his release. As a “guest” prisoner in the castle, the Beast demands Belle attend dinner with him and forbids her from the West Wing. He screams and throws things at her, his selfish temper raging out of control. Oh, I forgot…the Beast is a romanticized tortured soul. So it’s okay if he’s an abrasive douchebag!

Sure, the sympathetic Beast eventually becomes nicer, giving Belle access to his library and letting birds treat him like a bird feeder. And I do like that Belle and the Beast become friends first before falling in love, which rarely happens in fairy tales. Except for one teeny tiny thing. He’s her captor. Falling in love with the guy who imprisons you, holds you hostage, tells you when to eat, where to go and doesn’t let you see your family?! That’s not love. That’s Stockholm Syndrome, sweetie. 

 
Poisonous messages about love and relationships plague Beauty and the Beast. Don’t worry, ladies…if you suffer and stick by him long enough, your man will change. Just be patient with a guy who’s controlling or abusive. In her lifetime, 1 in 4 women will suffer domestic violence. More and more teenage girls contend with dating violence. Love should not hurt. Ever. But this movie (and sooooo many others) insidiously tells girls that when they grow up, they should stand by their man. Even if he treats you like shit.

I’ll admit Belle as a female character is a step in the right direction. She’s smart, stubborn, kind and ambitious. But Belle gives up her entire life to live forever in a castle with an asshat prince. What about her goals? Her dreams?? Oh that’s right. She becomes a princess! Yet another princess in the pantheon of princesses clogging up girlie-girl media.

Films and books reinforce gender roles and with a lack of female characters, imply that girls and women don’t count. Out of Disney’s 51 theatrically-released animated movies, only 13 feature a female character as a protagonist (16 if you count co-protagonists), most of them princesses. Princesses only care about their clothes and hair. Their looks matter more than their personalities. It seems society would rather teach girls to obsess over their appearance and how to snag a man.

Couldn’t Belle have opened up a bookshop/café or started a book drive or something?? When Belle sang about wanting “more than this provincial life,” I simply refuse to believe twirling around a ballroom in a pretty gown is what she had in mind.

People might think I’m being silly or overreacting about a Disney movie. Fair enough. But I call bullshit. Listen, when we’re young, books, music, movies, TV shows, advertisements and even toys teach us gender roles and identity. Little boys pretend they’re kings or aspire to be president while little girls yearn not to lead like queens, but to be passive princesses. One film probably won’t have much impact. But when the same sexist messages repeat over and over and over and over…well, then it seeps in.

I’m not going to lie. I still watch Beauty and the Beast, singing along to the songs. When I discovered Disney World was building a Beauty and the Beast themed restaurant and attraction, I admit I felt giddy with excitement. But look beyond the gorgeous animation, catchy show tunes and unique heroine.

Sadly, you’ll see yet another fabulous film tainted by sexism, spreading toxic messages that reinforce damaging beauty norms, violence against women and suffocating gender stereotypes.

Not all that glitters is gold. Unwrapping the beautiful package can sometimes yield an ugly core. 

———-
Megan Kearns is a Bitch Flicks Staff Writer and Editor. She’s a feminist vegan blogger and freelance writer living in Boston. Megan blogs at The Opinioness of the World, a feminist vegan site she founded in 2010 which focuses on gender equality and living cruelty-free. She writes about gender and media as a Regular Blogger at Fem2pt0, a site uniting social issues with women’s voices. She’s also a podcast contributor to Feminist Magazine on KPFK radio, a weekly radio show, where she writes and performs her monthly Feminist Films segment. Megan’s work has also appeared at Arts & Opinion, Feministing’s Community Blog, Italianieuropei, Open Letters Monthly, A Safe World for Women and Women and Hollywood. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology and Sociology from UMass Amherst and a Graduate Certificate in Women and Politics and Public Policy from UMass Boston. You can follow all of Megan’s unapologetically opinionated thoughts — such as Leslie Knope’s awesomeness, the idiocy of anti-choice legislation, and where to find the best vegan doughnuts — on Twitter at @OpinionessWorld.

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs

This review by Rebecca Cohen previously appeared at Bitch Flicks as part of our series on Animated Children’s Films.

At first blush, a feminist reading of Disney’s 1937 classic Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs seems almost too obvious to bother with. Nearing its 75th birthday, the film naturally reflects the antiquated gender politics of its era. So we should expect nothing less than a passive female protagonist, completely helpless until she is rescued and married. It makes as much sense to criticize these outdated ideals as it does to abuse your 75-year-old grandmother when she wonders if you’ll ever be happy without a husband and children. Sometimes you just have to move on, right?
Well, yes and no. Snow White is still of interest to feminist media critics for several reasons, not the least of which is the continued prominence of the main character in contemporary popular culture. In fact, Snow White’s image is almost as iconic as that of the Mouse himself in identifying the Disney brand. She is commonly featured in the hugely popular Disney Princess line of products aimed at young girls. There is no question that little girls today are still feeling the influence of Walt’s 1937 vision of feminine purity.

And the film has exercised a less overt influence as well. As the first feature-length animated feature to come out of the Disney studio, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs established a formula for the Disney “princess movie,” as well as template for Disney storytelling which persisted for decades, and from which in many ways the studio is still trying to break free.

At the core of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs are deeply conservative, specifically American values. Although “Snow White” is a German tale, and the setting of the movie is a vaguely medieval, vaguely European fantasy world, the heroine herself is decidedly American. The Wicked Queen isn’t exactly English, but her pronunciation is nevertheless distinctly aristocratic (Mid-Atlantic, perhaps?). Yet the sweet little princess sounds fresh out of Iowa – if a voice can possibly sound corn-fed, hers does.

At every turn, Snow White embodies old-fashioned, small town American ideals. She helps a baby bird not just back to its nest, but back to its “momma and poppa” (because every creature should properly be part of a traditional nuclear family, of course). When she arrives at the dwarfs’ cottage in the woods, her first instinct is to clean up. She assumes, in keeping with traditional gender roles, that the children who live there must not have a mother. That’s the only possible way to explain how their house could be so dirty. Not only does she clean up the place, she enlists the help of the woodland fauna. Indeed, Snow White domesticates everyone and everything around her, spreading the conservative ideals of cleanliness, hard work, and unquestioning acceptance of the status quo even to the animals. She civilizes the dwarfs as well, refusing to feed them until they’ve washed up.

Snow White quickly takes on all the tasks of a wife/mother, cooking and cleaning, staying home and baking pies (as all-American as you can get!), while the little men go off to work during the day. She transforms their cottage in the woods into an idealized suburban American household.

Although Snow White is happy to civilize and suburbanize the dwarfs, it’s clear that she longs for a stable heterosexual union with one man. Yet she remains perpetually passive and never takes steps to achieve that. She expresses what she wants through the song “Some Day My Prince Will Come,” but of course even that is phrased passively; he will come to her, someday. She’ll just have to wait. Although, as princess, she has a rightful claim to the throne, she betrays no shred of ambition in that direction. In fact, the only active step she ever takes in trying to bring about her own happy ending is to make a wish upon the Witch’s “wishing apple.” And look where that gets her!

Standing in contrast to Snow herself is her nemesis, the formidable Wicked Queen. The Queen embodies all the problems supposedly inherent when women occupy positions of power. She is vain and jealous, prioritizing insecurity about her looks above all other concerns. Surely she has a kingdom to run? Yet we never see her do anything except plot to kill her stepdaughter. The Queen’s imposing beauty is directly contrasted to Snow White’s childish innocence. The Queen is commanding, sophisticated, worldly – in short, dangerous.

The Queen is even something of an intellectual. When she disguises herself as a crone, she does so in a laboratory-like dungeon replete with test tubes, flasks and burners, not to mention shelves lined with books. She’s certainly the only character in the film ever seen reading a book. And her final attempt to kill the dwarfs involves use of a lever device, with which she tries to dislodge a boulder and crush them. But her resourcefulness and application of basic physics are to no avail. It’s no coincidence that her cleverness is foiled by a lightning bolt, a stroke of random luck. This anti-intellectualism is of a piece with the conservative American values suffused throughout the film.

Although Snow White’s passivity is evident, it’s notable that the only really effectual character, the Prince, is barely a character at all. He appears in two scenes and has maybe three speaking lines. In truth, he barely participates in the story, except to sweep in at the very end and wake the princess, after all the story action has already transpired. The movie isn’t at all about him or his ability to affect events. The dwarfs play a more prominent role and are constantly active, but they are essentially children – well meaning but utterly ineffective. It’s neither their agency nor their competence that wins the day. Rather it’s their essential goodness and perhaps more important, simplicity.

In the end, neither Snow White nor the Dwarfs ever question the feudalistic system that could allow an evil and dangerously shallow monarch to wield so much power over their lives. They simply live their lives by traditional values, and providence rids them of the unnaturally empowered female, replacing her with a wholesome heterosexual couple. This outcome is where Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is at its most fundamentally conservative. Through kindness, humility and the observance of traditional gender roles, our heroes ultimately triumph over evil, without ever having to question the system that let evil get the upper hand in the first place.

———-
Rebecca Cohen is the creator of the webcomic “The Adventures of Gyno-Star,” the world’s first (and possibly only) explicitly feminist superhero comic. 


Women and Gender in Musicals Week: ‘Glee!’

This review by Cali Loria previously appeared at Bitch Flicks as part of our Emmy Week 2011 series.
Not since E! has any one thing on television been so damn exclamatory. Glee! celebrated its everyman song-and-dance style before its slushy flying face-offs ever aired. After a Journey-style breakthrough and myriad episodes featuring pop music gone oh so right, the show ended its first Emmy award-winning season and began a second. Can the plotlines featuring teen pregnancy, teen love, and a bitter gym teacher make it with a little Britney Spears mixed in? The answer is: yes. However, following the line of Britney logic, all its women have had to suffer in the meantime: bitches be crazy (e.g. writing underdeveloped characters who become caricatures of themselves, ending in a mockery of those whose very geekiness Glee attempted to celebrate).

In the beginning Glee made a brand out of celebrating the insecurities, joy, and passions of a group of social outcasts. Quickly, however, Glee called into question its treatment of women, prompting the New York Post to ask “Does Glee! Hate women?” In season one alone a woman is shown to be conniving enough to fake a pregnancy to “keep her man” and another, this time a teenager, grappled with pregnancy until, poof, the storyline magically disappeared. Luckily Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach” was able to get into the mix first, or I would have been pissed.

Besides the stereotypical portrayals of women-as-girls-as-GQ-cover-models-being-schoolgirls that this show offers, Glee goes further by, perhaps unintentionally, mocking its characters. Vitriolic gym teacher Sue Sylvester (who eerily resembles my elementary school gym teacher) relies on her bitter use of the pretty girls and exploitation of the token special needs child as a means to succeed to her ultimate end. As their most fully fleshed-out character (and perhaps most accomplished actor) Jane Lynch does a great job being angry but does nothing for the stereotype of the angry lesbian gym teacher taunting kids to make herself feel better. Coach Beiset’s introduction furthered this by presenting this gem of a storyline: no man wanted to kiss her so what was a woman to do but become an angry, middle-aged football coach: the better to scream at you, my dears.

Mixed in with the older women who suffer to fall in and keep love and affection, the teens of Glee keep the teenage dreams coming faster than Katy Perry’s hits. Puck, the number one misogynist/baby daddy/Neil Diamond Crooner and the show’s resident sometimes Gothic sometimes snarky, always shown eating or wrestling, Lauren, are just one of many unconventional couples Glee has drummed up. Lauren’s morbid obesity might once have proven to be a means for character slander, as Puck himself proclaimed when he said to then pregnant Quinn “I’m not breaking up with you. I’m just saying please stop super-sizing because I don’t dig on fat chicks.” Now, however, it is the stuff of fetishistic pop preening. First, Puck serenades his new love interest with a rendition of “Fat Bottom Girls” and, shock, she finds it offensive. To make it better he sings the original number “Big Ass Heart” because it is okay for the organ that pumps our blood and, symbolically, falls us in love to have a “big ass” even though a heart has never won a pie eating contest or needed two seats in an airplane. We get it–there’s a size difference here.

Having a character on TV who does not fit into the mold of being a perfect Westernized ideal of beauty would, in someone else’s hands, be refreshing. Glee, however, focuses on the extremes of women, enjoying the overt and campy hyperbolization of its characters which, in essence, detracts from actual storylines and only serves to render the women flat and one-dimensional: Jewish starlet, slut, dumb blonde, conniving cheerleader, sassy black woman, an Asian, and, now, a full-fleshed female. Glee has a recipe with every ingredient, but stirred together it’s one big lump of heterogeneous stereotypes. I’m not saying this couple should not exist; I am simply implying that it may have been beneficial to give her a love interest that does not appear to be ten seconds from dumping pigs blood over her head at prom.

Two other prominent female characters central to Glee’s narrative arc are slutty Santana and dumb blonde Britney. These two rarely have lines, and, when they do, it is solely to enforce these two personas. What they do have, however, is a girl on girl on glee make out session. Of course Glee would need to have two of its beautiful, popular women fall in love and make out, why not? Glee loves Katy Perry and she kissed a girl and, damn it, she liked it. The issue is not girls kissing girls; it is the exploration of lesbianism in a trite and frivolous manner.

The trials and tribulations girls in high school are facing today are by no means easy. From eating disorders to bullying, the very struggle of learning who you are as a woman, inside, out, sexually, emotionally, is a process. Women today are barraged with images of who they should be, how they should act, and whom they should kiss. Glee, in an attempt to make it okay to be whomever you are, has simply created an hour of sing-along to the pain and pleasure of all the versions of themselves  that girls see when they look in the mirror. We are all sexy and scared, stupid and skinny, fat and fabulous–but fleshing out these various facets to frivolous plotlines and self-mocking monologues is akin to giving every girl a Barbie with adjective occupations. Women deserve more than this style of characterization. 

 
———-
Cali Loria is a thug with unbelievable scrabble skills. She is mother to a King and a lover of film, food, and feminism. 
 
 

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: Glee!

This review by Cali Loria previously appeared at Bitch Flicks as part of our Emmy Week 2011 series.
Not since E! has any one thing on television been so damn exclamatory. Glee! celebrated its everyman song-and-dance style before its slushy flying face-offs ever aired. After a Journey-style breakthrough and myriad episodes featuring pop music gone oh so right, the show ended its first Emmy award-winning season and began a second. Can the plotlines featuring teen pregnancy, teen love, and a bitter gym teacher make it with a little Britney Spears mixed in? The answer is: yes. However, following the line of Britney logic, all its women have had to suffer in the meantime: bitches be crazy (e.g. writing underdeveloped characters who become caricatures of themselves, ending in a mockery of those whose very geekiness Glee attempted to celebrate).

In the beginning Glee made a brand out of celebrating the insecurities, joy, and passions of a group of social outcasts. Quickly, however, Glee called into question its treatment of women, prompting the New York Post to ask “Does Glee! Hate women?” In season one alone a woman is shown to be conniving enough to fake a pregnancy to “keep her man” and another, this time a teenager, grappled with pregnancy until, poof, the storyline magically disappeared. Luckily Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach” was able to get into the mix first, or I would have been pissed.

Besides the stereotypical portrayals of women-as-girls-as-GQ-cover-models-being-schoolgirls that this show offers, Glee goes further by, perhaps unintentionally, mocking its characters. Vitriolic gym teacher Sue Sylvester (who eerily resembles my elementary school gym teacher) relies on her bitter use of the pretty girls and exploitation of the token special needs child as a means to succeed to her ultimate end. As their most fully fleshed-out character (and perhaps most accomplished actor) Jane Lynch does a great job being angry but does nothing for the stereotype of the angry lesbian gym teacher taunting kids to make herself feel better. Coach Beiset’s introduction furthered this by presenting this gem of a storyline: no man wanted to kiss her so what was a woman to do but become an angry, middle-aged football coach: the better to scream at you, my dears.

Mixed in with the older women who suffer to fall in and keep love and affection, the teens of Glee keep the teenage dreams coming faster than Katy Perry’s hits. Puck, the number one misogynist/baby daddy/Neil Diamond Crooner and the show’s resident sometimes Gothic sometimes snarky, always shown eating or wrestling, Lauren, are just one of many unconventional couples Glee has drummed up. Lauren’s morbid obesity might once have proven to be a means for character slander, as Puck himself proclaimed when he said to then pregnant Quinn “I’m not breaking up with you. I’m just saying please stop super-sizing because I don’t dig on fat chicks.” Now, however, it is the stuff of fetishistic pop preening. First, Puck serenades his new love interest with a rendition of “Fat Bottom Girls” and, shock, she finds it offensive. To make it better he sings the original number “Big Ass Heart” because it is okay for the organ that pumps our blood and, symbolically, falls us in love to have a “big ass” even though a heart has never won a pie eating contest or needed two seats in an airplane. We get it–there’s a size difference here.

Having a character on TV who does not fit into the mold of being a perfect Westernized ideal of beauty would, in someone else’s hands, be refreshing. Glee, however, focuses on the extremes of women, enjoying the overt and campy hyperbolization of its characters which, in essence, detracts from actual storylines and only serves to render the women flat and one-dimensional: Jewish starlet, slut, dumb blonde, conniving cheerleader, sassy black woman, an Asian, and, now, a full-fleshed female. Glee has a recipe with every ingredient, but stirred together it’s one big lump of heterogeneous stereotypes. I’m not saying this couple should not exist; I am simply implying that it may have been beneficial to give her a love interest that does not appear to be ten seconds from dumping pigs blood over her head at prom.

Two other prominent female characters central to Glee’s narrative arc are slutty Santana and dumb blonde Britney. These two rarely have lines, and, when they do, it is solely to enforce these two personas. What they do have, however, is a girl on girl on glee make out session. Of course Glee would need to have two of its beautiful, popular women fall in love and make out, why not? Glee loves Katy Perry and she kissed a girl and, damn it, she liked it. The issue is not girls kissing girls; it is the exploration of lesbianism in a trite and frivolous manner.

The trials and tribulations girls in high school are facing today are by no means easy. From eating disorders to bullying, the very struggle of learning who you are as a woman, inside, out, sexually, emotionally, is a process. Women today are barraged with images of who they should be, how they should act, and whom they should kiss. Glee, in an attempt to make it okay to be whomever you are, has simply created an hour of sing-along to the pain and pleasure of all the versions of themselves  that girls see when they look in the mirror. We are all sexy and scared, stupid and skinny, fat and fabulous–but fleshing out these various facets to frivolous plotlines and self-mocking monologues is akin to giving every girl a Barbie with adjective occupations. Women deserve more than this style of characterization. 

 
———-
Cali Loria is a thug with unbelievable scrabble skills. She is mother to a King and a lover of film, food, and feminism. 
 
 

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: Aladdin

This review previously appeared at Bitch Flicks as part of our series on Animated Children’s Films.
This movie is about a princess and a “street rat” who fall in love and must overcome the evil Jafar to get married. This movie is also about generalizing non-Western cultures (mainly Middle Eastern cultures) and perpetuating cartoonish stereotypes of Arabic peoples. As an added bonus, this movie masquerades as a girl power film when in fact, it enforces the traditional gender role of men as active/women as passive.
The first time I saw this children’s movie was over this past summer, when I was the assistant director of a summer production of the musical Disney’s Aladdin. I was the only person involved in the production that had not seen Aladdin when I was a child. Every single one of the children (almost entirely girls, ages 9-12 with one 7 year old) came in with ideas of what the show would look like, because they had all seen the movie and they knew every single song. Because they knew the music, we had more time to work on choreography. For a marketplace scene, I asked the kids to strike a pose to freeze in during dialogue. I was looking for marketplace-y poses: two people talking, maybe gesturing to another person, walking poses, etc. They immediately put their arms up with their palms together so that their arms framed their face and their necks were moved to one side (a pose associated with “Arabia” in pop-culture). They all wanted to do their hair in the “I Dream of Jeannie” hairdo, because it was “so Arabian”. I wondered, where did they get such a stereotypical view of the Middle East? And then I saw the movie and all of those questions were answered.

 

My director thought that this was a girl power movie. Look! At the end, the Sultan declares that Jasmine can marry whomever she chooses, when she chooses! And she rejects all of those suitors because she’s “not a prize to be won”! Girl power yeah! No. This movie is producing yet another hetero-romantic story where women sit there and men pursue them. She was naïve before Aladdin shows her a “whole new world”—she is the passive learner while he is the active teacher. How does she help with the defeat of Jafar? She kisses him—using her body to be attractive to men—the rest of the time she just kind of stands there while Aladdin fights Jafar. Again, she stands there lookin’ sexy and being passive, he fights actively. Even their body stance around each other assumes a dominant/submissive look—Aladdin’s body is tall and upright, Jasmine is leaning into him or sitting behind him or being held in his arms. He is also physically larger, aside from her hair (her ponytail is thicker than her waist), she is extremely thin and takes up very little space when compared to Aladdin’s broad shoulders and muscular body. And of course, what other characters in this movie are women? Oh that’s right, they are all men. Because women can only be in stories to be the object of men’s affections, not to fill other roles. There are some background women in the dance scenes, but those are the “harem girls” and other sexualized women (because foreign=exotic and sexy!)
Essentially, all of the women are defined by their attractiveness to men. “Ugly” women, then, are used as comic relief. In one of the first scenes, when a woman opens the door and says of Aladdin, “Still I think he’s rather tasty!”, everybody in the audience is supposed to laugh. Aladdin looks at the woman (who is quite large) and jumps in surprise and disgust. Oh, silly fat woman, you can’t have feelings because you’re ugly! We’re supposed to laugh at how ridiculous her thinking Aladdin is “tasty” is—because fat women and ugly women are not supposed to have sexual desires. Only when the sexy women do this is it okay—nobody is laughing at Jasmine’s proclamations of love for Aladdin, because it doesn’t seem ridiculous now. Aladdin is attractive, she is attractive, so they can be in love.

 

So doing this story where every single role had to be filled by a girl made this an interesting production. Some girls told us they didn’t want to be a male character. Some girls who were cast into men’s roles started acting like men—they lowered their voices and changed their body language to reflect a stereotypical man. Some girls who were cast into men’s roles adopted them to be women’s roles—the girl playing Jafar, for example, had no issue with being a female Jafar. The girl who played Aladdin, the title character, made it clear that she was acting like a man—I, personally, thought that it would have been fine for her to be a female Aladdin (but the lesbian love story was not an idea that they particularly were comfortable with, which is interesting given how comfortable they were with heterosexual love stories).
In fact, I think it would have made the movie better if Aladdin was a girl (and if all the racism was taken out). Suddenly, “A Whole New World” takes on a whole new meaning—but these movies with antiquated gender roles would not have been as widely accepted into culture if the relationship it portrayed was queer.
When watching this movie, it’s hard to not get depressed about the fact that this is what little girls are told to aspire to. Watch something else instead.

This is an anonymous review.

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: Tangled

This review by Whitney Mollenhauer previously appeared at Bitch Flicks as part of our series on Animated Children’s Films.

Last Friday, I saw Disney’s Tangled with my husband.  I thought it was a pretty good feminist-y movie, especially considering that it was a Disney princess-type movie. Because I am lazy, I have written my review in bullet-point form:
  • Rapunzel’s father (the king) cries on Rapunzel’s birthday as he remembers his kidnapped daughter.  It seems like usually in these kind of movies, you see the mom crying and the dad consoling her; but here, it’s the other way around.  Win!  Men can express emotion, too!
  • Rapunzel sews and bakes, but she also reads, does astronomy, and paints like no other.
  • She is so awesome with her hair!  She ties the male protagonist up, lets herself down from the tower, and climbs everywhere.  Seriously, it’s very impressive.  She can do just about anything with that hair–it’s not just for show. 
  • Rapunzel ends up with short hair!  Okay, that’s just a little thing, but have you ever seen a Disney princess with a pixie cut before?  Even Mulan had longer hair!
  • So yeah, the mom is the bad guy because she’s vain/wants to be young forever, blah blah blah.  But I don’t know how they could have had a male villain or some other way for the mom to be the villain without straying too far from the original.  But at least she gets some jokes.
  • The frying pan proves to be a superior weapon compared to the sword!  This might be getting a little too psychoanalytic, but I saw the frying pan as symbolizing a kind of feminine/transgressive power, while the sword represents traditional masculine power.  I just thought it was neat.  You don’t have to be a swashbuckling dude to kick butt.
  • Her story and her adventure starts not because the guy “whisks her away” or something; but rather, she plans and schemes: she catches him breaking into her tower, and strategically decides to use him to reach her goal of seeing the flying lanterns on her birthday.
  • Spoiler alert: in the end, she’s not “saved” because of her compassion, but in spite of it–her compassion might actually have been her downfall.  Unlike other movies/fairy tales where a woman’s only redeeming quality is self-sacrifice, this ending suggests that self-sacrifice isn’t always such a good thing–or at least that it’s not solely the domain of women.  Men can be self-sacrificing too!  (Didn’t want to reveal too much here.  Go see the movie if you want to figure out what on earth I’m talking about.)
  • I liked the ambivalent nature of how it shows her mom’s and her relationship when Rapunzel leaves the tower for the first time.  She feels guilty, but MAN is she happy and excited and brave!
  • She doesn’t get married at age 18!!!!
  • In my opinion, the relationship was not even really a central feature of the story, but rather a sub-plot.  The main plot was getting away from her mother, figuring out her actual identity, getting to the flying lanterns she wanted to see.
  • I felt like it was good and feminist because it was a major improvement from how Disney usually is.  Also, overt sexism did NOT distract me from what was otherwise a visually appealing, witty movie (as it usually does).  And that is really saying something.
  • Even the rich, hypermasculine stereotype is challenged–the male protagonist reveals his true name/identity, as an orphan, and she says she likes him better than the fictional (hypermasculine) character that he aspires to be like.  
  • In the end, I think it makes a good case for women’s “proper place” NOT being just in the home, but out in the world/public sphere!  I’m not sure how you could get any other moral out of it.  Even in Mulan, after she saves China, she ends up returning home, and (we suspect) marrying the army captain guy, instead of taking a job with the emperor.  In Tangled, the movie’s premise is centered around the idea that it’s wrong and horrible to expect a woman to spend her whole life at home.
  • When the male protagonist breaks into her tower, she kicks his butt; she stands up for herself in the bar; and she stands up to her mother in the end (about having been kidnapped).
  • At the end of the movie, SHE dips HIM and kisses him.  (I always hated it when guys would dip me.  If I want to kiss you, I am going to kiss you, so just let me stay on my own two feet.)
  • Body image stuff:   Okay, so Disney’s not breaking down any boundaries here.  Also, infantilization much?  Rapunzel’s face is that of a two-year-old.  
  • So, I’m not very good at remembering specifics, but I DO remember not getting angry at seeing her needing rescuing again and again and again.  It seemed like mostly she was able to save herself, and the guy didn’t save her a whole lot.
  • In the bar, Rapunzel and the guy (Flynn) meet a whole bunch of rough guys.  They sing a song about how everyone’s got a dream: the one tough guy says to Flynn, “Your dream stinks,” referring to his dream of getting rich.  The other tough guys have dreams of becoming mimes, finding love, being a pianist, becoming a baker–and one made little tiny unicorns.  Even tough guys have nuance and feminine qualities!
  • Rapunzel’s animal companion is Pascal the chameleon.  Pascal is super cute, and is possibly named after Blaise Pascal the mathematician (suggesting that Rapunzel is a math nerd like me, though that could just be me reading too much into it).  Pascal can’t talk, and I felt like that was a good thing (feminist-wise), so he couldn’t show her up and become the hero (remember Mushu the dragon in Mulan?) 
My points are random and some are not very significant. But still, small wins!  And when it comes to Disney princess movies, any hint at feminist ideology is a HUGE win. And if nothing else, it at least passes the Bechdel Test:

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Whitney Mollenhauer is a graduate student in California where she studies sociology. She has an awesome husband who doesn’t mind her running feminist commentary when they watch movies together. And, she loves cereal. 

Women and Gender in Musicals Week: "I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar…ish"

“Why should a woman who is healthy and strong/blubber like a baby if her man goes away/weepin’ and a-wailin’ how he’s done her wrong/that’s one thing you’ll never hear me say.”
These are strong words from Laurey Williams in Oklahoma!, a young woman who’s just overheard that her romantic sparring partner, Curly McLain, is attending the box social dance with someone else. She declares, “What do I care about that?” and then launches into “Many a New Day,” leading all of the other women in an ode to independence from those heartbreakers who aren’t worth their time. 
The song is catchy, spirited, inspiring – and total bullshit. For it’s not long until Laurey is right back to crying over Curly, flirting with Curly, and eventually marrying him. 

Hey, Laurey, how’s that “new day” working out for you?

“Many a New Day” falls under the category of songs I like to call “Hear Me Roar…Sort Of” numbers. These songs are obligatory feminist-ish productions where female characters pay lip service to the idea of being independent and strong, but it’s not long before they’re running back into the arms of the men they previously decided weren’t good enough for them.

Nellie Forbush has one of these numbers in South Pacific, the irrepressibly catchy “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair.” (Skip to the 2:40 mark in this video): 


Nellie is declaring her intention not to have anything more to do with Emile de Becque. Her willpower lasts right until Emile comes back and woos her some more. Then she launches into “A Wonderful Guy” with twice as much enthusiasm and fervor as she did the previous song.


Eliza Doolittle also has a “Hear Me Roar…ish” song in My Fair Lady, tearing down Professor Higgins with some bitingly witty put-downs in “Without You.”


Of course, the ending has her returning to Professor Higgins and seeming to want to reconnect with him. The ending is more ambiguous than the conclusions of Oklahoma! and South Pacific, but one gets the sense that those two crazy kids are going to make it work.

Now, not all of these “Hear Me Roar…ish” songs are presented in the same context. No one is disappointed when Nellie Forbush decides not to want to wash that man right out of her hair, because Emile de Becque is a catch and a half. Besides, all throughout “I’m Gonna Wash That Man,” she sounds like she’s trying to conform to her friends’ opinions and convince herself of something she doesn’t really want to do in the first place, and it’s not until “A Wonderful Guy” that she follows what’s true to her heart. In that case, Nellie going back on her big independence number doesn’t feel like a betrayal of character at all.

Laurey Williams, on the other hand, makes me shake my head in dismay. I’m so proud of her when she decides to forget about Curly, and so disappointed when she runs crying into his arms half an hour later. I’m mostly disappointed because Curly is one of the worst human beings in all of musical theater, who tries to convince his romantic “rival” through song to kill himself, who has a duet with a would-be rapist and still comes off as the creepier of the two characters.

Mostly, though, I’m curious about the reasons behind writing these “Hear Me Roar…ish” songs, especially the two numbers from the Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals. If the women are just going to end up with the men they’re declaring independence from, what’s the point of these songs at all? Did Rodgers and Hammerstein realize in both cases that they didn’t have a big musical number for all of the women in the show, and write these songs to give their female chorus members something to do? Did they decide that three solo songs and two duets for Mary Martin were not enough, and want to give her yet another number? (If that’s the case, I really can’t blame them for that, because Mary Martin is made of magic.) 

Or is there something else at work here? Is it possible that these songwriters felt an internal struggle between some feminist instincts and typical musical theater conventions? The “Hear Me Roar-ish” numbers are so catchy and irresistible, it’s almost like the composers and lyricists knew that women of the future would belt them in the shower after a bad breakup. 

I wonder if we hear the “I am independent woman!” songs, followed immediately by the “Just kidding, let’s get married!”, because of internal conflicts on the part of the songwriters. Maybe they like feisty, independent women who voice their opinions, but they like conventional happy endings just as much, and that’s why Laurey and Nellie change their minds so quickly.