Gaiety Girls
March 28, 2008 at 2:59 (Bertolt Brecht, Gene Krupa, Marlene Dietrich, gay exhusbands, musical theatre)
Tags: Bertolt Brecht, gay exhusbands, Gene Krupa, Marlene Dietrich, musical theatre
Well, fine, I’m on a (gay) roll with inexplicably yogurt-loving, antisocial lesbians. I came upon this brilliant old (last October) post on Deutschland ȕber Elvis about attempting to teach irony to German police, while looking for something totally different (Schoenberg somethingsomething, if you care). The story is great, it’s well told, and I can viscerally relate to odd encounters with traffic cops.
However.
What I want to know is why do The Gay People love the musical theatre? And, once we’ve figured that out, why don’t The Straight People, and why don’t The Lesbians (whatever side of the yogurt fence they stand on)?
My exhusband is gay, so rest assured I have even less insight than the straightest of all other straight people. Clearly. All I can tell you is that he seemed ungay enough for me to marry him and, looking back on his lax attitude to home furnishings and clothing, not to mention his complete silence on hot guys and ideal gay vacation spots at the time, the only thing I can look back on with any sort of reasonable self-accusation is his fondness for the musical theatre.
And, boy, did he love it!
Whereas, I and my lesbian and inveterately heterosexual friends will never be persuaded to care at all where precisely it is that the wind (allegedly) goes sweeping down the plains. The less advanced of our two races easily get Lerner and Loewe confused with Leopold and his friend! Apart from a sentimental fondness for Marlene Dietrich resulting in casual knowledge of a few too many 1930s cabaret songs and Holländer riffs, and possibly here and there a cruel delight in the spectacle of Marlon Brando breaking into ’song’ with no defensible narrative impetus, we just don’t care. And we can’t be made to.
Yes, I admit I crank up the Kurt Weill every so often, but it’s only ever the Brecht-Weill, and it’s never Teresa Stratas; I never forget myself and let things slip into Gilbert and Andrew Lloyd Anything. And if ever there were an argument that from the very start Gays Are Gays and the Rest Is Rest, it is to be found at the crucible of Musical Theatre. If we can have a Nalgene, we can certainly have a Gay Gene, and if little Jake or Tyler or Ronan knows what the Hills Are Alive with, and whether or not there is One Maiden Breast (Oh!) and can sing a musical list of Argentinean place-names before he knows whether to pass the Phillips head or the hex bit when Daddy is again sandwiched between the Ikea sofa and the Crate and Barrel rug, then the fight should be over, the debate won, and all the gay men and their straight female friends should retreat to their corner in victory (and eat celebratory yogurt to the strains of ‘Gypsy‘ or ‘Cats,’ erroneously convinced that they are too fat).
Meanwhile, we contentededly chunky straight and lesbian people can go out for some pizza and double bock, knowing there is nothing we can do to make ourselves like Broadway or Celine Dion, but feeling a little better knowing we don’t even have to try. It’s an argument that everyone wins!
headbang8 said,
March 28, 2008 at 10:03
Many thanks for the compliment, Vi.
Funnily enough, I did try to go straight myself, and almost married a fine woman. My slovenliness and taste for power tools, plus the fact that I carried the garbage to the end of the drive without complaint, convinced everyone that I was robustly heterosexual.
But I couldn’t hide the musical theatre thing. It was the only place in life where I could find some emotional truth.
The crafters of musical theatre say that a song should occur when the emotions run high enough that they must explode. The characters don’t break into song; they break into truth. They open up.
These musical eruptions appeal to those of us who, from time to time, need to conceal our true feelings because they are socially unacceptable.
Just my theory.
By the way, you used Celine Dion and Broadway in the same sentence. Jeezus! And exactly how long were you married to this gay guy?
Love, HB8
vifargent said,
March 28, 2008 at 11:21
Hmmm. You seem a reasonable person, and you offer a reasonable-sounding defense. I of course remain staunchly unconvinced, and ‘Rent’ or ‘Cabaret’ for me will continue to seem like Celine Dion with a bunch of dancing gay men around. (Not that I’ve ever seen either of course; to experience such things might dilute my opinions.) And clearly my prejudice in this area runs sky-high: I am a musical-theatre atheist!!! No agnosticism here. No sir.
We weren’t married long at all. This of course allowed my mother for years to insist that I ‘turned him gay’ - always an unpleasant topic, and unwinnable argument, at family gatherings. I think once we started talking even hypothetically about babies it all became a bit too real, the weight and magnitude, the sheer stark Reality of the whole thing, and he was able/forced to come to terms with all the impulses and the rationalizations he’d had to wrestle with for so long.
I have to admit that while there was indeed slovenliness, there were no power tools or any sort of particular handyman gifts in R’s domestic repertoire, and I was the one to whom fell all taking-scary-spiders-outside duties. But no obvious cliches other than the musical theatre one, and ‘being nice.’ Of course, after we split up, he lost about 70 pounds, worked out incessantly, started tanning, going to discos, keeping his hair trimmed, enjoying trance and dance music, and only taking vacations which bore the imprimatur of ‘Out’ magazine.
But were you raised religious? Or in a small town? Because neither you nor R were reaching adulthood in the 1950s; there were at least some out role models. R’s family were staunchly Catholic, and his cowboy (not literally, but he did even wear the duds to hammer the point home) father was, frankly, the absolute most homophobic person I have ever met. So I can see trying to believe he could sublimate this huge portion of himself just in order never, ever to have to have to deal with the enormous pain that one simple sentence would rain down on him and his family. All his life would change for the worse in an instant. It’s hard to contemplate!
I’m religious myself, but neither reactionary nor dogmatic, and I realize that religion is very often used for evil - in grandiose ways, sure, but also quietly, in making people hate themselves. I believe that if what you are doing is respectful of the other person, then no Creator worth His salt could condemn it. This of course sadly leaves out about 70% of things done in the name of this or that religion or god, such as making good, decent people feel they must cover up a huge part of their hearts or risk being hated, vilified, and renounced…
Macaulay said,
May 28, 2008 at 6:38
Macaulay says : I absolutely agree with this !