Odds and Ends...includes musings on fans, work, theater...

[shadowkat]

[Lots of people on livejournal are talking about lj april fools jokes, but it doesn't appear on mine. I don't see serialladder or stalkers, or any of this today. In fact my journal looks the same as it always has. Weird.]

Went out with my friend, CW and the IT geeks last evening. During the outing found out an exceedingly odd little tidbit:

Did anyone know that the Broadway (or rather Off-Broadway) revival of Fiddler on The Roof has removed all the Jewish or Judaic elements from the musical? There's no one Jewish in the cast. They've made the story completely secular. Why? Because they wanted to appeal to a broader audience. Now, to make this story just a tad weirder - CW told me that a friend of ours, work colleague, who is "orthodox" jew and a former "rabbi", saw this musical and loved it.

So here I am attempting to imagine Fiddler on The Roof with all the Jewish references removed from it. The musical is partly about anti-semitism and prejudice. Many of the songs actually comment on this.

Also saw what an iPod was. Expensive little gadget. But very handy. Now feel less like an idiot online for not having a clue what one was.

And had an interesting conversation about tv watching where I learned once again that I'm somewhat left of center on this (they adored the procedural shows which I find incredibly dull, I love the more metaphorical/emotional character arc shows)and how our responses to entertainment have a lot to do with our own emotional and psychological makeup at the time of viewing.

Rant on TV suspension of disbelief or shows that are stretching it:

1. 24 - okay how many things can a person possibly do within a 24 hour period? I think 24 just exceeded the suspension of disbelief quota on its gimmick again.

2. The OC - interesting show, but some of the teens look the same age as their parents, this is not good. Misha Barton who plays Marisa looks the same age as her mother. Actually the only two actors who look like they might be teens on this show are the ones playing Seth and Summer and even that I wonder about. Reminds me of Beverly Hills 90210 and the 30 somethings playing 19 year olds. At least the OC has made fun of this factor. I'll give them that. Interesting show. Still not a worthy replacement for ATS, but better than anything else on on Wed with ATS on hiatus.

3. Joan of Arcadia - Joan getting ankle stuck in a washing machine, and why does she always do what these supposed avatars of God tell her?

4. Tru Calling - why hasn't the police questioned Tru yet for always being on the scene of the crime and stalking people who get attacked?

Character bashing/criticism/venting (whatever you want to call it) has raised its ugly head online again. Always does when people get bored. Actually beginning to find some of it fascinating - the bashing/criticism/venting about S7/S6 and certain characters - tells me more about some fans than it does about the show or the authorial intent. It also says something fascinating about the relationship between the author/creators-the text-the viewer/reader. How that relationship can twist, turn and get clouded by outside factors: such as a horrible terrorist event, a fan's depression or own life experiences, an author's loss of interest or some other component of the creation process - say an actor's, and our own cultural values and environment.
There's a lengthy essay somewhere in all this, now the question is? Should I figure it out and write it? Or let it go? Probably let it go...since it's not like I don't have ahem other things I should be focusing on. But it is interesting to think about. How we react to certain characters or stories, why we reacte to them and even more important how we react to one another's views concerning them? It's relatively easy to support or even react to a view that validates your own but how do you react to one that is contrary to it? I'm not very good at reacting to contrary views right now, I admit, but that may be why I find it fascinating.

Comments

[buffyannotater.livejournal.com]

Did anyone know that the Broadway (or rather Off-Broadway) revival of Fiddler on The Roof has removed all the Jewish or Judaic elements from the musical? There's no one Jewish in the cast. They've made the story completely secular. Why? Because they wanted to appeal to a broader audience. Now, to make this story just a tad weirder - CW told me that a friend of ours, work colleague, who is "orthodox" jew and a former "rabbi", saw this musical and loved it.

Interesting, I've heard nothing but bad things about this revival, from Jewish friends and relatives who have seen it. Even worse than the removal of the Jewish elements is the fact that the two main characters, Tevye and Golde are depicted as being incredibly sexually attracted to each other, which although it seems innocuous enough, strips the show of the dichotomy between the generations that is the main theme of the play. Tevye and Golde met the day they were married. Over the years, they have learned to love and respect each other. But is their daughters who fall in love, and go against tradition by choosing their own husbands, and marrying for love and lust. This play, which is about the dissolution of ancient traditions and evolution from the old to the modern times, loses a great deal if Tevye and Golde are, in the words of a friend of mine, shown to be as hot for each other as their kids are for their boyfriends.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Even worse than the removal of the Jewish elements is the fact that the two main characters, Tevye and Golde are depicted as being incredibly sexually attracted to each other, which although it seems innocuous enough, strips the show of the dichotomy between the generations that is the main theme of the play.

I agree, that's also weird. Why did they make that decision? It goes against the original authorial intent (the playwright's) and the thematic element. Fiddler on The Roof is a fascinating play/musical about differences in generations, how tradition affects people, and how we view one another through the veil of tradition or what we were taught and how you need to break away from that.

There's a song in Fiddler about why Golde doesn't seem to show the same affection for Tevyv that his daughters show their boyfriends. It's a brilliant song - "Do you love me?"
And she tells him all the things she does for him. But he keeps asking, because she's not exhibiting the physical component. That song would make no sense whatsoever if Tevyve and Golde are shown really into each other physically.

I can see changing the location or even modernizing the show a bit, but to change items in it that cause the story to make no sense? Just seems really odd to me. I mean, Hamlet has been done so that it takes place in the business world/corporate arena and I've seen West Side Story substitute different racial groups (which sort of worked) and Jesus Christ Superstar placed in 21st century, but they still stuck to the essential themes. Or even Cabaret which redid the choregraphy. The changes didn't cause songs or dialogue to seem out of place. The dialogue if anything was enriched or given an interesting twist. I just don't see how these changes to Fiddler work in that context. And if they don't work? Why do them? Why attempt to fix what isn't broken?

Weird.

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

So here I am attempting to imagine Fiddler on The Roof with all the Jewish references removed from it.

Me too. It sounds like a banana split without the bananas and ice cream. Can't deny there might be something left of value, but after taking out those elements how the heck and you call it a banana split?

[buffyannotater.livejournal.com]

There's a song in Fiddler about why Golde doesn't seem to show the same affection for Tevyv that his daughters show their boyfriends. It's a brilliant song - "Do you love me?"
And she tells him all the things she does for him. But he keeps asking, because she's not exhibiting the physical component. That song would make no sense whatsoever if Tevyve and Golde are shown really into each other physically.

Yes! And I read in an article somewhere that in the new version, this is no longer a comedic song. That all of the irony is stripped out of it, and instead it is a straightforward love song between the two characters. Whether this was done through how the lines are delivered or whether the lyrics themselves were changed I don't know. What I do know is that I have absolutely no interest in seeing this production. If I really want to see a show, I could always just spend my money on seeing Wicked for a third time. ;-)

[arethusa2.livejournal.com]

Contrasting views can add to my understanding, but views that are contrasting because the viewer seeks validation instead of illumination drive me crazy. (And of course I've done this too at times.) But this is what art should be, individual to each person's experience and interpreted through his/her own psych to find some understanding of self. The best shows try to examine experiences universal to everyone. In MASH it was the fight against dehumanization, in All in the Family it was the relationship between the older generation and the younger one, as the young people began reshaping the world to their own principles, in The Mary Tyler Moore Show it was the families we create with others as adults. (Rather like AtS, come to think of it.) Through watching and discussing the shows we learn to understand each other (hopefully), by seeing that under the superficial differences people have the same needs.

When we're lucky we find shows like BtVS and AtS, that let us reach places inside ourselves vicariously through Buffy and Angel, places that otherwise might be too frightening. If you're afraid of Buffy's darkness, you might be afraid of your own. If the Champions must be pure and faultless, perhaps we loathe our own faults. Our "buttons" are our fears, desires and dreams. I love the flawed characters because our flaws make us what we are, for good or ill, and I'd rather accept the flaws and make them strengths than hide and deny them.

I saved a quote you might find interesting. It's from a MSN interview with Ron Perlman, now in Hellboy and formerly in the tv show Beauty and the Beast.

"It seems to be a running theme," Perlman tells Zap2it.com about the recurring beasts in his career. "I've always felt there were aspects of me that were monstrous, and you can either hide from it or confront it, embrace it and understand that those are aspects that make you unique and define you and motivate you. You can either overwhelm or overcompensate for them -- but they truly define you as a human being."
Perlman has finally come to grips with his inner beast, but this peace appears to have come after years of struggling with his self-image.
Aspects of his looks that he felt were "monstrous," "were troublous enough in my psyche that they became encompassing to the degree where they affected my every thought, the way I composed myself, the way I carried myself. So that life became a question of either dealing with this monstrousness in one way or another," he says. "One finds a way to understand and make friends with that monster and understand that that's the very thing that makes you who you are. That's your emotional and spiritual fingerprint."
It turned out that acting was the key to dealing with his self-image.
"I get a chance as an actor to grapple with those things in a very coincidental kind of way," he explains. "I didn't set out to be Vincent, or Hellboy for that matter, I just coincidentally got to play them, and this dialectic that goes on within Hellboy: Is he evil because he was born to serve evil, or is he good because he's been nurtured to serve good? Therein lies his humanity. And therein lies the choices that he makes that define him and define his warrior heart."
Ironically, the one thing that the experience has taught the actor is that there's a beast inside most of us -- or at least the people that Perlman is most interested in.
"I don't think I'm any worse than anybody else on earth because of these aspects of myself that are hideous," he says. "I think the only people I'm interested in are those that are in touch with their monstrousness. I'm not interested in guys who walk with a swagger and think that they own the world and that they're entitled to better things or more things than I am because they have nothing wrong with them. I'm not interested in those people -- those people bore me. I'm interested in the Hellboys and the Vincents."

The beastly can be beautiful.

The entire article is here.

http://entertainment.msn.com/celebs/article.aspx?news=153988

But what happens when the hero becomes monsterous?

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I generally agree, btw, with Ron Perlman's comments - I've always found the beast's hunting their humanity to be fascinating, and to be honest, I tend to prefer pricky characters. Five dimensional characters I'll call them.

But what happens if the hero, the pristine lovely girl suddenly becomes monsterous? What then? On the boards I've seen this on - the posters adore Spike and like Angel, it's Buffy, oddly enough, that they can't stand. Actually I'll extend that - it's Buffy, Xander, Dawn, and to a degree Willow. Our heros. The ones who look pretty and aren't monsters. This would sort of be like disliking Beauty as opposed to Vincent the Beast in Beauty and The Beast. Now this is fascinating. Why the sudden dislike for our heroine? Is it because she has human foibles? Or is it because they see her abusing the aforesaid monsters? Excluding them. Slaying them. Is the viewer over-identifying with the monster? In S4 BTVS, the writers were taken aback by the number of fans who prefered bad-boy Spike to heroic Riley. Fans hated Riley. Not all, of course. But many did. There was no monster in Riley. Not really. He was normal. But in *some* fans minds he was monsterous. About 60% of the fans online at the time As You Were aired saw Riley as the bad guy, not Spike who was the misunderstood monster with the demon eggs. There was also a huge number of fans who turned their back on the heroine - their view was - "she's superior, she's holier than thou, she's beating him up because she thinks she's all that..." - it wasn't the darkness in themselves or the heroine they seemed to be responding to here, but something else. Perhaps they saw in Buffy - people who had tormented or hurt them. The heroine they'd sympathized with all these years - suddenly took on the face of their tormentors.

It reminds me of a very interesting passage in the last Harry Potter novel - where Harry discovers his heros, his father and Sirus doing things in the past that have been done to him in the present. They tormented weaker students to show off. Harry is understandably discombobulated by this information, how can his father have been a bully?
Well, his father was fifteen years of age at the time and human - that's how. The same thing happened on BTVS - we ask ourselves how can our heroine be a bully? How can our hero be one? How can they take on the face of the people who hurt us? They are supposed to have the face of our defender. Now they have the face of our enemy.

Another example - Spike in S6 BTVS attempted to rape Buffy, this bothered some fans horribly, particularly Spike fans who had suffered a sexual assault or been raped. How could they like this character or identify with him? If they identified with him were they allowing themselves to identify with their attacker? Were they okaying that action? Of course not, but logic as you know seldom enters into an emotional response. The situations are very different. For one thing Spike is not real, he's a vampire, he's soulless at the time, and the relationship was *very* different than that of any real person. But it's hard to see that when emotions are involved.

It's really very complex in a way, isn't it?

Re: But what happens when the hero becomes monsterous?

[arethusa2.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's as complex as people are. You are absolutely right, I've seen just the reaction you describe. And there are many more reactions and levels of reaction; I know that I watch the show on a couple of levels.

If I remember correctly, Harry was forced to develop a more complex understanding of human nature through his new knowledge of Dumbledore, Snape, James and the others. He's learning about the gray area between bad and good. Rawling did a good job of hinting at why Snape grew up to be such an unpleasant man without excusing him or James for their behavior.

[atpolittlebit.livejournal.com]

"Did anyone know that the Broadway (or rather Off-Broadway) revival of Fiddler on The Roof has removed all the Jewish or Judaic elements from the musical? There's no one Jewish in the cast. They've made the story completely secular."

Next up on Broadway: The long-awaited brand-new revival of West Side Story newly re-worked to remove the gangs and all mentions of ethnicity, why it's almost like "Romeo and Juliet" only with singing and dancing, and no teen suicides to give the wrong idea. This time they live happily ever after. Reserve your tickets now!!

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Broadway (or rather Off-Broadway) revival of Fiddler on The Roof has removed all the Jewish or Judaic elements from the musical
Wasn't there a proposal, a few years ago, to produce a new edition of the Narnia stories with all the Christian symbolism removed?

Chronicles..

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Wasn't there a proposal, a few years ago, to produce a new edition of the Narnia stories with all the Christian symbolism removed?

I vaguely remember that. They can't do it to the books, without the estate's permission, of course, because it would be a flagrant infringement of World Copyright Law. I'm pretty sure the books aren't in public domain yet. The difference with Fiddler is it is a play - so you can perform it without some lines or remove certain things - people do that all the time. The performance of Fiddler is considered a separate work than the play. There's a loop hole for Fiddler, at any rate.

That said, I vaguely remember that they mentioned removing the Christian symbolism from the new film versions of The Chronicles of Narnia. This they can do. And it's understandable that they would want to - since you get a broader audience that way. But, the question remains - should they? Doesn't that remove something crucial from the text and from the author's original intent? Also how much can you remove without hurting the story?

I remember Disney did this with the re-release of Fantasia sometime back. They removed all the politically incorrect cartoon or animation images from the film, so people wouldn't be offended. Did this hurt the film, make it better, or not really affect it one way or the other?
I don't know - having never seen the original version.