Oh Great Cat, I can’t believe the whole controversy over the rape song in “The Fantasticks” is getting dredged up again. I usually just shake my pom-poms at the fine ladies at Feministing, but in this case I have to disagree. I think that taking the song “The Rape Song” out of the play and replacing it with the inferior tune “Abductions” is a really bad idea.
A bit of background here before I explain my reasons: I did a lot of small town theatre stuff when I was in high school and I worked as the director’s assistant when we finally worked up the courage to do “The Fantasticks”. Our director was a feminist-minded woman (her follow-up show to this had a joke in it about consciousness raising and demanding that a husband learn what the clitoris was, which caused some amount of fluttering in the audience) and I think the reason she hesitated to do the show in our conservative small town was because of the rape song, but also because the play has a somewhat subtle and complex theme for a light musical, which is things are not what they seem and that reality is a lot messier than melodrama and other things of that nature.
In all truth, I don’t think it’s that great a play. The theme of unveiled illusions and anti-sentimentality falls apart as the writers tack on a feel-good second half that is, well, kind of sentimental. But the first part of the piece, with the rape song in it, works pretty well. The play opens with a couple of young lovers who meet in secret because their fathers, who are neighbors, hate each other. But you soon find out that the fathers actually are best friends and are only pretending to hate each other to get their kids to rebel and fall in love. They fear the kids aren’t moving fast enough, and the boy needs some more courage to propose so they hire a guy to stage a fake abduction of the girl so the boy can rescue her, and the fathers can pretend to make up and happily ever after. The first indication, though, that they can’t turn real life into a pretty fairy story comes when the guy they hire sings about what he’s selling:
You can get the rape emphatic.
You can get the rape polite.
You can get the rape with Indians:
A very charming sight.
You can get the rape on horseback;
They’ll all say it’s new and gay.
So you see the sort of rape
Depends on what you pay.
It depends on what you
Pay.The kids will love it.
It depends on what you pay!
So why be stingy?
It depends on what you –
The way I always read it was the song was supposed to shock the audience out of their complacency, was supposed to remind people that the melodramatic storylines in so many action movies and shows where the pretty young woman is taken by the creepy older man only to be rescued by the virtuous hero are storylines based around rape. The fathers in the play are initially shocked, of course. They just want his to enact the melodrama, you know, where the guy steals the girl…..oh yeah, to rape her. We ignore that part and focus on the rescue. This play is making a comment on that cliche of how the attempted rape in melodrama is not about rape at all, but an excuse to give the hero a moment to shine.
Jess’s point, that rape has two meanings and can mean “abduction” is the excuse that the hired gun of the play hides behind. But it doesn’t and has never really had two meanings. The hired gun tells the fathers he means a literary rape, but the fact of the matter is the term “literary rape” makes as much sense as “literary murder”. Yes, rape and murder are plots of stories but that’s because they’re drawn from real life. When Hades makes off with Persephone, he’s not stealing her from her mother in order to play checkers with her. But at some point in time, it became taboo to have sex in stories while violence stayed, so the cliched rape in melodrama doesn’t even have a rape in it, but tying the victim to railroad tracks or what have you. In other words, the violence of rape is deemed acceptable, but the sex not, which has the ugly side effect of making the audience minimize the horror of rape—oh, she’s just being kept in the back room until Indiana Jones arrives. Hey, the villian might waggle his tongue at her, but the rape victim never gets raped in stories. It’s probably because people turn so much on rape victims that showing a heroine in actual danger of rape might make the audience unsympathetic.
I think the original point of the song was that it was the first indicator that our belief in romantic stories is dangerous and misguided. Staging a rape is a horrible idea, and sure enough, even though the plan works initially, things begin to fall apart as reality intrudes on the fairy story. Replacing the word “rape” with the word “abductions”, as has been done in this updated version of “The Fantasticks”, removes this element of unease and undermines the theme of the play. After all, if they’re supposed to be telling a story of illusions shattered, then why do they work to preserve the illusion that villians just abduct women to give the hero something to do?
25 Responses to “Shock is indeed a value, since complacency is a vice”
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It’s probably because people turn so much on rape victims that showing a heroine in actual danger of rape might make the audience unsympathetic.
Or because rape is an unfunny, violating horror and would certainly break the framing of any action-type movie where the violence is generally thorough but not particularly deep.
The ’something bad’ is not allowed to be more than a suggestion to the heroine/love interest or else it would be drama, or horror, not Indiana Jones.
Damn. I feel bad for the writers, because I always thought that tying rape to the marriage plot was the whole point of the song. (Yeah, in this case the Girl is nominally in love with the Boy to whom she’s being given in an arranged marriage, but that’s not really relevant for the parents.) Make it “abduction” and the whole thing is diluted. It’s like doing “The Dating of the Sabine Women”.
(Of course the musical that firmly connects rape and marriage for once and all is Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.)
Meanwhile the whole idea of a broadway revival for a show designed into a shoebox basement theater, which terminated its original epic run because of manhattan real estate issues, is probably a metaphor for something terrible about 21st-century culture in general…
I have a fondness for captioned pictures, in which a cartoon or photograph is supplied with a brief bit of story, often quite subversive of the apparent content of the picture (i.e., the provocatively-clad secretary fawning on the boss is declared to be a man forced into drag, or an assassin about to take out a corrupt politician).
In a folder full of pedestrian bondage photos, I found one in which the woman truly looked devastated. Since she had red hair, I decided she was Mary Jane Watson, Spider-Man’s often-”abducted” girlfriend, and gave it a caption something like, “Peter could tell from the look on Mary Jane’s face that this time his dramatic rescue had been simply too damned late.”
While I agree that the rape song is effective for precisely the reasons you state, it’s not at all accurate to say that the word “rape” never had a non-sexual meaning. The Latin verb “rapio” and its classical Greek cognate “αρπαζω” both meant “seize and carry off” as in “theft” (e.g., Lt. “raptor” = Gk. “αρπακτηρ” = Eng. “robber”). The modern sexual definition is a much, much later transferrent meaning, attested only since the 15th century (Late Middle English).
Or perhaps because the heroine must still be “intact” when she and the hero hook up.Dan: And don’t forget rapeseed, either. That comes from OE rapum, a word for “turnip”, so no etymological relationship seems at all likely.
It’s like doing “The Dating of the Sabine Women�.
Ha! Funny!
Good point in this post, though. I remember having a conversation with my husband after seeing “From Hell,” that Johnny Depp movie about Jack the Ripper (Which, btw, sucked…royally). There’s a scene where one of the murdered prostitutes is shown graphically getting her throat slit, and my husband found it really gratiuitous and borderline offensive.
I, on the other hand, found it to be very effective and the only genuine moment in the entire film. It was the only time that the murder of a woman was shown to be brutal, horrible, and gross and not just something vaguely romantic happening between two people in fancy clothes in a foggy alley.
If I may be a culture snob cineaste for a moment, it’s kind of like the scene in Un Chen Andalou* where the woman’s eyeball is sliced open with a razor. It shocks you out of your complacency and makes you realize, “Oh shit, there’s rape going on there, isn’t there?”
And can I say without sounding like a whiny hen or something that I’m kind of annoyed that this post about something intriguing has only 4 comments and the one about whether or not some other blogger is hurting feminism with blowjobs has like 300 comments with people yelling at each other? I’m not saying anything about the original post or subject matter, Amanda, but it really seems to me the level of civility in comments has dropped recently.
*Well, I’m pretty sure I’ve spelled that wrong so I guess I’m not that much of a culture snob.
I listened to the interview on NPR with the guy who wrote the original lyrics and now rewrote the new version, giving the “literary rape” excuse and I was not happy with it but could not put my finger on it (perhaps because I never saw the play). Thank you for making it clear.
“Literary murder” is widely used to make stories kid-friendly. How often are people in action movies killed in a horrid nasty way as opposed to being dispatched by magic guns that produce no blood or pain? How often have you seen the death of a charachter –usually a woman who isn’t pretty/feminine/virginal enough–played off for laughs? Tying the heroine to the train tracks is the same as throwing the cannon-fodder extras off cliffs, it lets people to thrill to dangerous situations without reminding them of how horrid these things would be in real life.
“The Rape of the Lock”– carrying away a piece of hair.
Of course, it was a satire of romantic writing of it’s day, so it might not be a great example.
Anything that waters down a piece of writing affects the intention of the whole. Your post alone says enough to make clear that there’s more going on with the song than cheap shock effects.
Oddly enough, when my high school performed the play, a female friend of mine was cast in the El Gallo role. She rather enjoyed the farcical creepiness of singing that song.
You know, ran light board for this show a few years back, and I cannot for the life of me remember how it ends. In fact, I could not remember which song was the “rape song” until you started to describe it. I am sure this means something, but I don’t know what.
Probably that I’ve done way too many musicals and I’m trying to block most of them out.
Er, *I* ran light board. I r gud typr.
I’d never heard this before, but I like the song for the reasons you state. People being open about what’s actually going on is refreshing as opposed to the prettied up sexual assaults in the name of romance that are fairly pervasive.
The Sopranos has plenty of sex and violence but it isn’t glammed up. Dr. Melfi’s rape and Tracey’s beating were both absolutely horrific. There was no screen or filter and no attempt to hide how terrible it was.
Or because rape is an unfunny, violating horror and would certainly break the framing of any action-type movie where the violence is generally thorough but not particularly deep.
Yet we allow murder to happen without it bothering us. Rape is too real, I guess. But it strikes me as irresponsible to have rape as a plot device without having rape as a plot device.
Not saying rape should be in Indiana Jones necessarily, but this play is satirizing melodrama. So the point of the song is really to draw attention to the fact that rape is used as a cheap plot device, but is always subtextual, not textual.
I have pretty strong feelings about this. The Fantasticks is one of my very favorite musicals. I’ve seen it three times at the Sullivan Street Theater and I have worn through multiple copies of the soundtrack.
First of all, does NO ONE see the irony in violating the integrity of an original creation in order to excise reference to…violation? I don’t want to rape the past of all its politically incorrect references. I don’t want to remove “nigger” from Mark Twain and keep Song of the South eternally unavailable and rewrite Guys and Dolls so that the women aren’t totally oppressed by sexist patriarchal men who think they’re expressing their manly freedom. Don’t. Want. It.
El Gallo says, “Oh, no, attempted rape,” to the fearful fathers, and then tries and rejects the word “abduction.” He says “The proper word is ‘rape,’ it’s short and businesslike.” And then he sings that single syllable like an anthem, like a love song, like a declaration. Hell, yes, it’s meant to disturb.
One of the illusions being unveiled is that rape is romantic. The Girl swoons as much as humanly possible. She longs to swoon. She longs to be abducted. She has no notion that rape is violating; she thinks she will be carried off to be romanced. Indeed that is what everyone thinks, and El Gallo refuses to use the word “abduction” because he refuses to allow them that comfort.
And not for nothing, but The Fantasticks has tried and failed on the big stage before. The intimacy of a 100-seat theater in the round is generally regarded as key to its success.
I was pretty sure the rape on horseback was “distingue” –
I love The Fantasticks and I have always had mixed feelings about and all the rape stuff.
I think that your assertion that the song was supposed to shock the audience out of their complacency, was supposed to remind people that the melodramatic storylines in so many action movies and shows where the pretty young woman is taken by the creepy older man only to be rescued by the virtuous hero are storylines based around rape is accurate, and perhaps that is why I wish they would have left the lyrics alone.
I listened to the NPR interview with Tom Jones in which he introduced some of the new lyrics. Perhaps the most comical thing about the new PC version is that he hasn’t removed the Indians, as the interviewer pointed out.
previous comment was supposed to say mixed feelings about It Depends on What You Pay and all the rape stuff …
For a more current example, we still commonlt take about the “Rape of Nanking.” But still a most horrible word for a horrible event, in which many actual rapes occurred.
Nah, never bowdlerize. There is a ton of utility in confronting past attitudes and prejudices.
I, too, love the Fantasticks, having run the follow spot and understudied Louisa in a magical Kansas City Circle production in 1961. I think “It Depends on What You Pay”– the Rape Song– is the bravest and most brilliant thing in the show, although the “I Can See It” duet is better musically. Censoring the song is idiocy. I bow to no one on feminist credentials: I was an active feminist in high school, back in the days when feminism wasn’t just unfashionable but was widely viewed as a psychiatric disorder! I’ve defended the original song as a critic, on the International Women Playwrights listserve and other theatrical forums, and on my stagepage web site and in my blog, http://stageblog-glhorton.blogspot.com
I do wish, however, that the original book had been written with one of the plotting parents and perhaps one of the theatrical factotums as female roles. The image of the Gang of Guys defining the entire world of the lone teen soprano may correspond to social reality in many times and places, but musical theatre has traditionally been a more hospitable environment, favoring scores that include second soprano and alto lines in the ensemble. It’s an art form in which women had a toehold, even when church music and professional orchestras barred the door.
PS. I’ve read that the present “Broadway” revival is in fact in a 199 seat house that closely resembles the 155 seat original, and that the production is blessedly free of the electronic amplification now almost universal in musicals.
Scorpio: “distingue” and “new and gay” are both used, in a sequence that (iirc) points up the fathers’ limited literacy.
note to self: consider taking The Fantasticks out of our toddler’s musical rotation now that he’s learning to talk.
Only slightly OT: A few years ago, I watched “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” on cable, and was extremely nauseated by the whole premise. (A man in the American west goes into town and gets married to a local woman, then encourages his brothers to follow the example of the Romans and the Sabine women. They then go into town and kidnap six other women, who of course fall in love with them.)
So how is that play still frequently performed by high schools?
Geralyn,
I have attended productions of the Fantasticks in which, in fact, the parents were played by one male and one female. It works well.
I’m reminded of the “rape” in _The Pirates of Penzance_, in which the pirates descend upon the Major General’s sixteen helpless teenaged daughters (what a quiverful!) and leeringly announce their intention to MARRY the poor dears. In that case, the absurdity of the situation is the point: the audience, confused at the threat of a horror that simply can’t happen in a Gilbert & Sullivan farce, burst out laughing when informed that these pirates are such gentlemen in their unlawful depradations.