Thursday, December 18, 2008

Will call

Alright, I'll tell you this even though you'll make fun of me for it. I went and saw Shrek the Musical last night. Free tickets! Friend and I were there ironically but I can assure you the rest of the audience was not, and by rest of the audience I mean the 5-year-olds and the middle-aged gay men. And it turns out that the people who write musicals know exactly which side their bread is buttered on, because both of those audiences were specifically catered to, although sometimes not at the same time (unless 5-year-olds know what "hot tranny mess" means). Seriously people, there were jokes I didn't even get. By the way, booze at musicals is expensive.

Am I done disavowing this now or do I need to transcribe the conversation we had about how Broadway is a terrifying radicalization of pure appearance, technically perfect (stage design, lighting, singing) but completely devoid of essence - witness: a musical, based on a cartoon, in which every joke is a reference, and every reference a cultural meme, born on another television show or movie, all of which effects not a social commentary or even successful diversion but merely an endless inversion (and inversion and inversion) OOOKAY I'll stop.

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