Throwback Thursdays: 1776 The Musical

(via broadwayworld)

It’s almost the Fourth of July, and for those of us here in the United States, we’ll soon be celebrating our nation’s founding. For me, that often meant watching 1776 with my parents, and I have to say that I adored this musical. The film version of the musical 1776 came out in 1972, and the musical itself came out in 1969. It follows John Adams as he tries to get a difficult, cantankerous, and often divided Congress to agree on American independence.

However, if you are a Hamilton fan, this musical might be a disappointment for you. This movie is very white and almost entirely male, with the exception of two female cast members, only one of whom plays a significant role. Regretfully, while there are some great moments in this musical, as far as representation goes, it definitely falls short.

Fanfiction Fridays: The Glitterbombs of Angry Queers by 148km

It’s Asexy April in the world of fandom, and while in past years I’ve had a relatively easy time finding lots of cool fic starring asexual characters, this year has been far harder. I’m not sure if it’s because my fandoms have changed drastically, or if Asexy April just didn’t get good advertising this year, but never fear. I looked back through my bookmarks folder and found a Les Misérables oldie but goodie to rec for today.

Featuring the usual culprits. (via stagedoordish)

Dear Evan Hansen: A Tasteless Exercise in Forgiving White Male Mediocrity

I love me some musical theater. So while I had heard from a friend that Dear Evan Hansen had a deeply unpleasant storyline, when my mom offered to buy me and my brother, who was visiting from my hometown, tickets, I figured I’d give the show the chance to prove itself. I headed into the theater last Saturday night knowing none of the music and with only my friend’s brief synopsis of the plot to go on. What followed was two and a half hours of the most disgustingly tasteless story I have had the misfortune to experience in a theater. I spent the entire first act feeling like I was actually going to be sick to my stomach, and found no real solace in the second act, which was frustratingly absent any repercussions for the title character’s reprehensible behavior.

(via playbill)

Spoilers for the show and a trigger warning for discussion of ableism and suicide after the jump.

La La Land, Racism, and the Real History of Jazz

(image via Variety)

Hollywood loves few things more than it loves itself. I grew up watching old musicals with my mom, and many of them were super meta: musicals about actors putting on a show. Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney headlined a whole host of these films, enshrining the “Show within a Show” trope. My dad put it well, when I auditioned for a play in middle school: “Just don’t think you can solve the world’s problems by putting on a show.”

La La Land may not be trying to solve the world’s problems, but it’s certainly trying to save a few people. It won a stupid number of Oscars and was mistakenly announced as this year’s Best Picture (Moonlight actually received this year’s honor). But for all its adulation, La La Land is currently on the receiving end of accusations of racism. And those accusations are well-founded: as Refinery29 points out, one of the two main plots is about a white manic pixie dream boy saving real jazz from the silly Black sellouts. Ouch.

Is La La Land actually racist? The truth is a bit more complicated.

Spoilers abound below the cut.

Throwback Thursdays: Wicked

(via centerstageboca)

The first time I saw Wicked, it was 2005, and my high school musical’s cast, crew, and a passel of chaperones had come to New York to see the sights—including the still relatively new show. We sat in the very last row of the very last balcony, and I cried like a baby at the end. (I still do, even just listening to the soundtrack.)

Time passed, and a million fairy tale retellings, Ozian and otherwise, came and went, inundating movies, books, television, and comics. But no matter how these stories ebbed and flowed in popularity, Wicked has stayed strong and stayed open, belting out its loving but revisionist history of L. Frank Baum’s fairytale world eight times a week at the Gershwin Theatre in New York. However, I haven’t seen the show in years, and the last time I saw it was with the national tour, rather than the Broadway version. So when a good friend came to visit me in NYC a few weeks ago and asked if I wanted to go see the show, her treat, I was delighted to agree. I was surprised to find, however, that despite the show’s age, it seems more relevant now than ever.

Top 20 Romantic Couples in Geekdom (10 Canon/10 Fanon): 2017 Edition

Let’s face it, 2016 was tough, and 2017 doesn’t look to be much easier. So let’s delve into some of our favorite geeky romantic pairings to help us cope! Yep, it’s Valentine’s Day, that sickeningly sweet holiday when our authors nominate and then vote on ships for our Top 20 Romantic Couples in Geekdom (10 Canon/10 Fanon) list. It is now my duty to present to you the super cute and sexy ships of 2017!

(via tenor)

Throwback Thursdays: Singin’ in the Rain

A few years ago I went through an old movie phase where I watched a bunch of classic movies like Casablanca, Some Like It Hot, and so on. I enjoyed some more than others, but I did not expect to find a movie that would became one of my all-time favorites and one of my go-to choices for when I need a comfort movie to watch. And so today, I want to throw way back to 1952 and talk about Singin’ in the Rain, a hilarious musical whose portrayal of Hollywood and the movie business holds up even today.

Entertained by Marginalized Characters, but Not Empathizing with Them

A few weeks ago, vice president-elect Mike Pence went to see Hamilton and the internet got into big fights over it. No surprise there. While there is no need to retread the controversy itself, or get into political debate, Pence and his party’s politics are well known. This event got me thinking, though, why would he want to see that musical? Was Pence unaware of the racial and social issues inherent in the musical? Maybe. Surprisingly enough, this made me think of many online multiplayer games in which we can see the same phenomenon happening. In games like Overwatch, people sometimes behave in a racist or sexist manner even while playing with a very diverse cast of characters. But I started to notice that this behavior is more prevalent when characters’ identities aren’t reflected in stories.

(via USA Today)

The Hamilton Mixtape: Adding Female Stories and Stories of Color

The Hamilton Mixtape has finally come out after much anticipation! I thoroughly enjoyed the musical’s soundtrack and what performances I could see via broadcasts and award shows. So a collection of musicians covering songs from the original and creating new songs that used the originals as starting blocks really intrigued me. The Mixtape is fascinating as an adaptation, as a musical album, and in its culturally progressive themes, and I thought it was a fun overlap of the camp of Broadway and the vulnerability of hip-hop and sincere pop music.

Let’s Not Do the Time Warp Again and Just Say We Did: A Rocky Horror 2016 Review

I am an eternal optimist when it comes to reboots, mostly because it’s exhausting to be constantly whining about a ruined childhood. All I hope for is that the reboot captures the spirit of the original.

Unfortunately for the laboriously titled The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do The Time Warp Again, that wasn’t easy. To belabor my metaphor, they probably shoulda called the reboot Ghostbusters to help them with capturing that spirit, because the movie struggled and grasped and ultimately failed to do so.

(via Popcrush)

Spoilers below.