It gets clearer all the time that culture warriors are actually making war on culture, not for it.
The latest evidence for this astute observation comes to us from Fulton, MO, where the number of complaints lodged with the school district about the high school’s performance of the musical “Grease” caused the superintendent to preemptively cancel the spring performance of “The Crucible”, owing to the fact that both of these plays are a) plays where b) the women wear longer skirts than is currently fashionable.
Well, my explanation makes about as much sense as the ones that the citizens interviewed can come up with to explain what exactly these two plays have in common that would result in the complaints lodged against one would naturally result in the cancellation of the second.
Each criticized [”Grease”], complaining that scenes of drinking, smoking and a couple kissing went too far, and glorified conduct that the community tries to discourage. One letter, from someone who had not seen the show but only heard about it, criticized “immoral behavior veiled behind the excuse of acting out a play.”
Smoking, drinking, making out–three elements found in lots of plays, but not in “The Crucible”. So why should what’s objectionable in “Grease” have anything to do with “The Crucible”? The answer is: We’re not saying out loud because if we do, there could be a 1st Amendment problem.
In it, Dr. Enderle said he dropped the play after seeing this summary on the Web: “17th century Salem woman accuses an ex-lover’s wife of witchery in an adaptation of the Arthur Miller play.”
Mr. Miller wrote “The Crucible” in the 1950’s, in response to the witch hunt of his own day, when Congress held hearings to purge Hollywood of suspected Communists, pressuring witnesses to expose others to prove their innocence. The affair is not acted out in the play, which focuses on how hysteria and fear devoured Salem, despite the lack of evidence….
Jarryd Lapp, a junior who was a light technician on “Grease,” said he was disappointed that “The Crucible” was canceled. But he had a theory. “The show itself is graphic,” he said. “People get hung; there’s death in it. It’s not appropriate.”
Ms. DeVore believes it was canceled because it portrays the Salem witch trials, “a time in history that makes Christians look bad.”
Ms. DeVore, who’s job is being threatened, is the only person in this story who even comes close to admitting what’s going on–the two plays have nothing in common except they do not have the correct politics. “Grease” is unabashedly pro-slut, with the audience favorite Rizzo singing the only song in the entire show I like called “There Are Worse Things I Could Do” with lyrics like this:
I can stay home every night
Wait around for Mr. Right, take cold showers everyday, and throw my life away, on a dream that won’t come true
This is considered, by the song’s logic, not only worse than going out and having a little horizontal fun with the boys but in fact morally reprehensible–she equates it with stealing and lying. And we all know how this show ends, with the virginal Sandra Dee realizing she’s pissing her life away with her fetishized virginity and she abandons it and lives happily ever after. “Grease” is silly with crappy music, but the reason it raises hackles is because it’s unabashedly pro-sex, showing sex as something women want and the “bad” girls are actually the heroes of the show.
Sex in “The Crucible” fits right into the wingnut worldview–tawdry, shameful, and the cause of much community chaos, but that’s not nearly enough to redeem it politically. Not only is there the blasphemous suggestion that Christians make mistakes, but there’s also the naughty anti-McCarthy themes and even the possibilty that the play could be flexibly interpreted to condemn the practice of witchhunting in and of itself, which could mean that yes, even fine, upstanding, pro-censorship assholes might be implicated in the criticism. That will never do.
I do have an idea, though, in light of recent events. We could probably find a way to get the right wing blogosphere to take up the cause of protecting Fulton’s high school drama department against the Christian censorship calvacade. Let’s start a rumor that it wasn’t Christians at all who were offended by these plays, but in fact it was Muslims, who take “Grease” to be pro-Western propaganda against veiling women and take “The Crucible” to be anti-jihad. Within a week, you’ll have Michelle Malkin blogging hourly about how “The Crucible” must go on or the terrorists have already won.
36 Responses to “There are worse things I could do…..”
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Hrmm.. it occurs to me that anyone who has even HEARD of grease knows that it glorifies smoking, drinking, motorbikes etc. WHY WOULD YOU SEE IT IF YOU DIDNT WANT THESE THINGS SHOWN?
In conclusion, people are idiots.
A better reason not to allow the students to perform “Grease” is that it’s terrible, but that’s neither here nor there.
At my high school in New York, some of the plays the Theater Group put on involved a great deal of alcohol consumption and sexual misconduct, and let me tell you, those kids were not the ones engaging in that kind of behavior. In fact, the ones who were wouldn’t have been caught dead at a school play. So maybe there are bigger problems.
Max — true in my high school, too. The ones who were fucking and drinking up a storm? The children of very strickt religious folks! I love it when that happens.
“Not seen the show but only heard about it”?
I was unaware that you could get past the age of 18 in this country and not have been exposed to Grease in some form. I can’t stand the damn thing, and I think I’ve seen it twice. Didn’t everyone have that friend in high school who absolutly loved it and made you watch the movie and listen to the soundtrack?
I remember seeing Grease in the movie theater when it came out in the 70s. I was in elementary school at the time. I got, in a pre-pubescent way, the implication of the movie, but my mom tried tap-dance around the ending by saying that when Greased Lightening took off to the sky at the end of the movie, Sandy and Danny had gone to heaven, or some such thing indicating that Sandy had saved Danny from his former ways instead of the reverse.
My school’s musical director refused to put on “Grease” in spite of many of the girls in choir wanting to do the musical — partly because of her conservatism, but partly because she, in her way, was a feminist.
She didn’t believe that Sandra Dee should have to change herself for a man to like her, and that her choices should have been motivated by her own happiness more than pleasing or exciting a guy.
I have to say, she does have a point. The story basically requires her to be both Madonna and whore, with absolutely nothing in between. In the end, she doesn’t claim a healthy sexuality because it’s what she wants — it’s because it’s what her crush wants.
when, exactly, is it that we will get to call them “anti choice” instead of “pro life”? It’s not about abortion; it’s about EVERYTHING. Oh, we can have the illusion of choice - General Mills & Palmolive & GM et alia figured out decades ago to repackage their products and stick a different brand name on them. And we may have several thousand TV channels, so long as they are all pretty much the same. But… we can’t even leave it to the good people of Fulton to decide whether or not they want to take grandma or li’l georgie to see Tiffani in the school show?!? Christ, these two are perennials for only two reasons - (1) they have lots of parts in them and (2) even in small town America, there is such a thing as too much Our Town (has there EVER been a good high school performance of Emily?!?).
The Good Feminist in me knows that’s the official line, molly, but I have to point out that Sandra’s decision is made directly after Rizzo sings her slut non-apologia and Sandra’s boyfriend never actually asks her to be different–she decides it on her own. It’s problematic for sure that it’s done to please a man, but the play goes out of its way to present slutdom as its own reward. I’m not really sure how a kicky teenage musical could make an argument for the joys of sluthood, which are immense, without having a romance at the center. It’d be like making a musical out of “The Awakening” or something.
” “Greaseâ€Â? is silly with crappy music”
Jeesh Amanda, you hate just about everything don’t you?
MYOB’
.
My personal favorite verse in that song:
I could flirt with all the guys
Smile at them and bat my eyes
Hold them closer when we dance
Make them think they have a chance
Then refuse to see it through
That’s a thing I’d never do
Again, associating sexual teasing with lying.
Nah, MYOB. I pointed out I like “Bewitched”. That’s enough non-snobbery for the week.
Well, to be fair, Danny did try to be a ‘letterman’ to please Sandy, though it was half-hearted. Coulda had a great O. Henry ending if they kept it that way–Danny goes over the line into squaredom and likes it, Sandra Dee goes over the line into greaser babe and likes it, and they either a) still like each other and become a subject of bemused and sometimes raunchy gossip or b) break up and become a great morality tale for anyone who thought that squares and greasers could ever get along.
As for The Crucible, I’m not a fan, but I don’t have the time to get into why and I doubt you all have the time to read it all. But my feelings have nothing to do with whether the play should be shown or not, and it’s fucking stupid to keep it from being produced.
Crap. I played Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker when I was in high school. I’m sure the good folks of Fulton would get their knickers in a twist over the slapping, pin-stabbing, an allusions to child molestation. Yeesh.
I was in a play called The Diviners–they’d hate that one, since it ends with a bunch of Christians forcibly baptizing a kid and he drowns.
Oh, god, yes, please do. Maybe with Andew Lloyd Webber “Jesus Christ Superstar”-style lyrics.
I was always torn on the ending of Grease, because it does seem more like she turns slut because it would make everyone (not just Danny, but also the other kids, especially the Pink Ladies) like her better than her having a Slut Epiphany. But since there WERE some stabs on Danny’s part to become a dweeb, I don’t think they intended the be-a-hussy-so-boys-like-you message to be the one people take away with them.
Incidently, the “Hooray, Sandy loosened up and now she and Danny will live happily ever after” song in the stage version sucks. Sucks HARD.
You were in The Diviners? Holy shit! I was in that play about 4 years ago at my high school (I was Dewey the farmhand). It’s one of the most gorgeous shows I’ve ever seen, and easily the best one I’ve been in. Interestingly, our theatre director was a conservative Christian, but she saw the beauty in the play and loved it.
*le sigh*
Sorry, what were we talking about here?
Please - please do not think for a minute everyone in Fulton agrees with this.
We were shaking our heads over it today at work - how stupid, when there are so many other things to fight about.
There’s a lot of people in Fulton who don’t understand it, either, and would love to walk around shouting “GET A LIFE!”
*sigh*
- Not a Fulton Native (but here now)
Our director was a devout Christian, too, but he wasn’t a hardline conservative. I really liked him, even though he could be a pill about making us pray before shows, even though we didn’t want to. I played–go figure–the restaurant owner who’s got a not-unnoticeable slutty streak.
And due to the endless rehearsals of gospel music, I still catch myself singing “Shall We Gather at the River” and “Amazing Grace” when I do housework. My atheist ass.
Forget “Grease.” Someone suggest the group produce “1776″ to expose kids to actual words of their founding fathers and watch the terrifying backlash when kids quote Jefferson back to their teachers, sometimes in song.
Hell, it worked for me. Nobody will even see it coming.
Shit-
I went to what must have been the most insular, conservative Catholic school in an isolated part of a tiny state, and we had no problem doing Grease junior year. The only people who objected were my grandparents (actually my grandmother) who always objected to any language stronger than what could be used on the Muppet Show, or maybe Green Acres. We didn’t get any heat at all from the nuns. This came after us doing Up the Down Staircase and Voices from the High School, both of which contain far more in the way of adult themes. We did cut one scene from ‘Voices’ though-the one that was expressly about masturbation, which we didn’t think would fly with the principle et al.
The most agonizing part about Grease was/is that none of us-none at all-could sing. I couldn’t even dance. The music director removed me from several scenes because my out-of-time clapping was screwing up the drummer. However, it was a good excuse to see which make/model of automobile could be lifted up a flight of steps and squeezed through the gym doors to use as our greased lightnin’. As it turns out-the 1972 Honda 600 coupe can do all of this.
I love “Shall We Gather at the River”. That one’s playing at my funeral (assuming I don’t change my mind in the next 60 or so years). Even though I’m not nearly the religious person I was when we did the play (from devout religious conservative but political liberal then to more or less spiritual universalist now), I have a minor love affair with a few of the old hymns–”Be Thou My Vision” is another.
And 2nd Tata. Every child should be required to watch 1776.
You know what they are doing instead? A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Yup.
No pagan donkey sex in that one, no…..just good clean Christian fun.
Someone suggest the group produce “1776″ to expose kids to actual words of their founding fathers and watch the terrifying backlash when kids quote Jefferson back to their teachers, sometimes in song.
Lord YES! best musical ever written.
Alright Gentlemen, let’s get on with it. Which of us will write our Declaration of Independence?
Of course, I do rather enjoy the film version of Guys and Dolls, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and I was quite pleased by The Producers.
but no, 1776 wins.
Thank the invisible cloud being that I grew up in a big city. First of all, Max, the kids in my theatre department were sure to be drinking/drugging/fucking. The closing night parties were the most coveted invitations of the year and were likely as not to end in orgies. We knew how to enjoy high school.
Secondly, we never did Grease, but we did do The Crucible (during the Reagan years), Sweet Charity (about a stripper!!!), A Chorus Line (I played the guy who sang, “I’d be hard!”) and a play called Getting Out, in which the main character was a prostitute trying to straighten out her life (I played her former pimp). In fact, now that I think about it, my high school drama department was probably more adventurous than my college one.
or make a musical out of “Grease” even [/snark]
“VOTE YES!!!”
“SIT DOWN, JOHN!!!”
Forget Grease, how can a school superintendent not know the plot of The Crucible? It’s quite possibly America’s greatest piece of 20th century drama.
And we all know how this show ends, with the virginal Sandra Dee realizing she’s pissing her life away with her fetishized virginity and she abandons it and lives happily ever after.
Hey, I was going to see that! Haven’t you people ever heard of spoiler warnings? Jeez, next you’re going to be telling me how King Kong ends.
Coincidentally, I just recently received an e-mail from my high school college-prep English teacher. He’s still taking his classes through Lord of the Flies as one of the major analytical projects, it was the class where I read my first Vonnegut novel, and the place is a Calvinist Christian school. I mean, good God, why are all these people such bedwetting cowards about the strength of their religious and moral beliefs? (Yeah, I know, “Be a Bedwetting Coward” is replacing “E Pluribus Unum”.)
I somehow got the idea that people were offended that when two actors play characters who kiss, the actors themselves are going to kiss, and kissing is immoral. Are the complaints badly worded or did that actually raise people’s hackles?
Hershele, if we don’t ban under-18s from kissing in public, the fundamentalist terrorists will have won.
The Diviners? I love that play. It was written at first performed at my college when i was attending back in the 1970s. I saw the early versions of it. A very moving play and long one of my favorites…..
and 1776 would be perfect for a High School play, although I can see the objections to the Jefferson’s being horny for each other, and Franklin’s line “I would John but talking makes her nervous.”
At my high school, the number of girls audtioning for the musical vastly outnumbered the boys. A friend suggested, as a joke, that the drama club do “1776″: there are only two female speaking parts.
“But since there WERE some stabs on Danny’s part to become a dweeb, I don’t think they intended the be-a-hussy-so-boys-like-you message to be the one people take away with them.”
Yeah, but as soon as he saw her strut out in her slut-gear he sure threw that damned sweater away pretty quick and reverted to his old personality, didn’t he? I have to agree with Molly regarding the end of this one…Sandy didn’t go slut because she wanted to, she went slut because it was the only way to keep her man. The most striking thing about that outfit to me was listening to Olivia Newton John discussing the effort it took to get her into those pants. She literally had to be sewn into them, and during the course of filming she couldn’t eat or drink a thing because she was screwed if she actually had to take a piss. Talk about a modern day corset. If that isn’t a metaphor for overly restrictive feminine roles, I don’t know what is. It’s totally the Madonna/whore complex set to catchy “fifties”-ish tunes.
We just put on Grease this past weekend. We’re also going to have a firestorm of assholes attacking the production. Should be fun!
Just ventured across your site and I am encouraged. I am a high school director about to lead a cast through The Diviners, and was concerned that it may cause a stir in our town. It is encouraging to read the comments from students in the show. I never imagined conservative Christians producing it, because of the ending. How refreshing to read about open-mindedness here. Your comments have helped my pre-production research immensely. Thanks.
Sorry. I know my post is several months behind your thread. Just wanted to say thanks for your insights… back in February and prior!