Hermione Granger and Hollywood

As Hermione Granger grew up, her bookish, brainy persona was reduced to being more sexy, less threatening – and less magical. --- In The Guardian

Pride in the Yankees

It was a good month to be proud – proud to be a New Yorker, proud to be on the right side of history. On June 24, New York became the largest state to legalize marriage equality. There were predictable howls, of course, but they were hard to hear amid the cries of joy. As though it had been staged, the vote came through on Friday night, still early enough to bring hordes of people to the Stonewall Inn, the bar where on June 28, 1969, riots began that presaged the modern gay civil rights movement. This night, things had come full circle. And with the annual Pride Parade on Sunday, it was icing – and a couple – on the cake.

With a majority vote and the governor's signature, citizens became that much more equal and the union that much more perfect.

But what took so long? Because for every person who insists it's too soon, that humanity isn't ready for single-sex marriage, there are hundreds of others who are sorry and ashamed that the path to equality in what's supposed to be one of the freest nations on earth has been so slow and rocky, to say nothing of unfinished.

Future citizens will cringe. Much as we cringe at photos of water fountains with the word "Colored" tacked over them, or at images of Phyllis Schlafly leading the battle against the Equal Rights Amendment, so will there be universal shuddering at photos of the 2008 California state ballot, with Proposition 8 inside – people's basic civil rights, being put to a vote, as though the rights of people to live and love as they want were no different than determining allocation of funds for state parks.

But as Martin Luther King Jr. said, "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." We rarely move with the haste we should, but we do move. We turn our anger into power, and we achieve change.

And it does take anger. Organizations like the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis had worked tirelessly to achieve gay rights, but the rage unleashed by Stonewall pushed everything out into the open. It's a point made in Larry Kramer's 1985 play 'The Normal Heart,' fortuitously in revival on Broadway. The play is about the rise of the AIDS crisis. At the time, it was a call to action. Now, it is history.

Thirty years ago, on July 3, 1981, the New York Times published its first article about AIDS. It was written by Lawrence K. Altman and called "Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals." The slowness of state, government, and media to take action during the early days of the pandemic is another point that makes us cringe – San Francisco ran rings around New York in pouring money into health care. In 'The Normal Heart,' a character asks why those who rioted at Stonewall and formed the Gay Liberation Front didn't fight for right to get married, instead of the right to legitimize promiscuity. Later, it's pointed out that "Maybe if they'd let us get married to begin with, none of this would have happened at all."

With the "Defense of Marriage Act" still federal law, 'The Normal Heart' isn't yet as purely historical as we'd like it to be.

'The Normal Heart' won three Tony Awards on June 12, 2011. The ceremony was hosted by openly gay actor Neil Patrick Harris and featured an opening number in which he sang that Broadway "is not just for gays anymore." It was hilarious and even audacious and highlighted the historical home theatre has always been for gay men and women. But the Tonys of the past few years are also remarkable for what hasn't been part of the ceremony. As the 1980s wore on, the "In Memoriam" segment featured dozens of young men. Year after year, the audience was shown an entire generation of theatre professionals being destroyed. Those faces, each a slap in the nation's face for not doing more, more quickly, have been mercifully absent in recent years. The men, and the theatre, are alive.

We're still too far away from full equality for all citizens. But New York took an important step towards making what was once deviant, normal. And for that, we can be truly proud.

My Post on Guernica's Blog

I am very honored to be published on Guernica Magazine's blog today, discussing the current war on women and how keeping poor women down is literally medieval:

Guernica / Sarah-Jane Stratford: The Taming of the Screw

Comments at Guernica most appreciated. Thank you!

'Spider-Man' Is (Not) the Stuff of Legend

It's back. Although it never really went away.

'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark' officially opened on Broadway last night, after a record 180-odd previews (some well-reviewed new plays don't run as long), several serious injuries, and a critical bludgeoning on what was meant to have been one of its opening nights, back in February.

At that time, New York Times critic Ben Brantley wrote, "“Spider-Man” is not only the most expensive musical ever to hit Broadway; it may also rank among the worst." After the much-discussed sacking of the show's director, Julie Taymor, and an extensive rewrite, Brantley acknowledges that the show has improved: "this singing comic book is no longer the ungodly, indecipherable mess it was in February. It’s just a bore."

'Spider-Man' is one of those shows that's becoming all too common on Broadway – the show that gets produced because it seems like a sure thing. It comes outfitted with its own brand. Tourists know what they're getting without needing a précis, and so long as they are given a spectacle, they will walk away happy. And it's critic-proof.

Which this mostly is. Even prior to the re-work, 'Spider-Man' was one of the few shows regularly playing to full capacity. Whether that was because of the above reasons for why it was produced, or because its troubles became legendary enough that people had to see it just to enjoy a train wreck, hardly matters. It's bringing people in, and may continue to do so.

But no matter how much redemption it might be said to earn in the form of box office receipts, the stories of its troubles will always cling like stubborn cobwebs. Putting aside those audiences, it might be Broadway's 'Heaven's Gate.'

(for those who thought that honor goes to the notorious 'Moose Murders,' which Frank Rich reviewed so memorably in the Times, the difference is that 'Moose Murders' was a comparatively inexpensive production.)

The similarities between 'Spider-Man' and 'Heaven's Gate' are striking. Director Michael Cimino, fresh off his Oscar win for 'The Deer Hunter,' was touted as a visionary (although without question, Ms. Taymor is far more deserving of that accolade). He was given a lot of money and free rein to make his film, which almost immediately ran over budget and schedule. The executives at United Artists were tempted to fire him, but the dailies were beautiful and, after all, the man was an Academy-certified visionary. He finally gave them a film that was five hours and twenty-five minutes long. They forced him to cut it to four hours and the result was famously described by Times critic Vincent Canby as an "unqualified disaster" and similar to a "forced four-hour tour of one's own living room."

'Heaven's Gate' was promptly yanked from theatres and edited down to 140 minutes – this time, without the director's participation. It was then re-released. Roger Ebert was one of many critics who still could find nothing good to say about it. He noted that "If the film was formless at four hours, it was insipid at 140 minutes…It is the most scandalous cinematic waste I have ever seen, and remember, I've seen 'Paint Your Wagon.'"

David Ansen observed in his 'Newsweek' review that “An epic vision isn’t worth much if you can’t tell a story," but Cimino, who wrote the script, wasn't interested in creating a comprehensible narrative. He once said: "I don’t believe in words and dialogue. They are quickly useless. One only gets near people when taking the time to live with them." Which sounds like someone trying to say something "important," but forgetting that dialogue can be a key function in a film.

Julie Taymor does care about story, and would never say anything so asinine. But when she said that “tying this story back to mythology…is something I really wanted to do. It’s something you can do in the theater — go into this absolutely dreamlike mythic place, out of time, between reality and dream world,” it suggested that the story for 'Spider-Man' might be going places that would be hard to follow.

It was not, perhaps, Ms. Taymor's artistic hubris that made 'Spider-Man' such a spectacular mess. She has made films that failed, but her inventiveness and attentiveness have never been called into question. Ironically, she may have suffered from the same problem that helped fell 'Heaven's Gate' – too much money. With so much cash at hand, the show could be turned into an extravaganza of special flying effects, elaborate costumes, and set pieces. A complicated Greek myth plot thread allowed for yet more spectacle. But in the end, all that's created is what Steven Bach, one of the United Artists executives who oversaw 'Heaven's Gate,' described as "the perfection that money can buy, the caring it can't."

This is, after all, why theatre still matters. It has the power to make us care, to create connections in its own fully unique, millennia-old medium. Done simply, but with care for its story – as was the short-lived 'Scottsboro Boys,' 'Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson,' and 'Passing Strange,' just to cite a few – theatre can truly connect and transport us. As the late, great book writer Arthur Laurents said, "That was all and it was enough for me: fantasies are better left fantasies."

-- Oh, and here's a 'Spider-Man' that has serious street cred:

Truth Can Hurt, Even When Tap-Dancing

Colman Domingo and Forrest McClendon in 'The Scottsboro Boys

Broadway's Tony Awards will be held this Sunday, honoring the plays and musicals of the 2010-11 season. Although nominations usually include some surprises – to the delight of journalists and theatergoers alike, most of whom hate being bored – this time the surprise was a juicy one. The long-closed Kander and Ebb musical 'The Scottsboro Boys' was nominated for 12 awards, second only to the likely winner, 'The Book of Mormon.'

Despite its pedigree – Kander and Ebb also created the legendary shows 'Cabaret' and 'Chicago' – 'Scottsboro' was not a Broadway success. There was plenty of speculation as to why, mostly centering on the show's subject: the horrible true story of nine black teenagers who were falsely accused of raping two white women in 1931 Alabama. While they escaped the death penalty, they were jailed for years and most of their lives utterly ruined. The case did much to galvanize those who would begin organizing the Civil Rights Movement, ultimately bringing about the end of Jim Crow. Without knowing that 'The Scottsboro Boys' was a dazzling marvel, as vigorously entertaining as it was vigorously unsettling, Broadway audiences shrank from it.

Not that other shows dealing with complex, uncomfortable history have failed to draw audiences. 'Cabaret,' for one. But when it comes to dealing with American history, and particularly race, people get squeamish. It didn't help that 'Scottsboro' was not only about a ghastly episode of history, but used a ghastly musical format – the minstrel show – in which to tell the story. Minstrelry has the dubious distinction of being the first truly American theatrical style. Wildly popular in the 19^th century, minstrel shows consisted of white people in blackface lampooning (and insulting) African-Americans. By the time the shows were passing out of fashion during World War I, they were already creating discomfort. As such, the format works well for 'The Scottsboro Boys,' a show that seeks to inform and unsettle, even as it entertains.

It's the "inform" aspect that also raised some objections. Some people complained that the show overused its artistic license, particularly in its depiction of the central defendant, Haywood Patterson (played by the highly deserving Tony nominee Joshua Henry). The show suggests that he died in prison in Alabama, rather than tell a lie that might have set him free; whereas in reality he successfully escaped the Alabama prison, only to be reincarcerated years later in a Michigan prison on a charge of manslaughter, and this was the prison in which he died. The show might have avoided going into these details so as to maintain the character's nobility – or maybe because it's a bit convoluted for a coda.

Whenever you're compressing several years of history into a two-hour show (the Scottsboro trials went on through 1938), things need to be cut and altered. It's the old saying, "God writes lousy drama" – sure, truth is often stranger than fiction, but if it's going to work in an artistic medium, it needs some massaging.

Arguably, it wasn't what the show didn't include that really bothered people. It was what it DID include. There's a difference between taking a true story and making it wildly inaccurate to serve modern taste or a creator's prejudice, versus streamlining in order to more deeply explore the characters and events. It might be best to term 'The Scottsboro Boys' as springboard history. Yes, it's not exact, else it wouldn't be good drama, but it might propel audiences to study the real events of the case if they don't know them, or revisit them if they do.

Good drama makes hard choices. Some people shuddered at 'Scottsboro's' use of the minstrel format, particularly because the brilliant writing, directing, and acting made it so entertaining, which added to the discomfort, which heightened the thrill. This should have brought audiences in by the boatload – it's the rare show that includes electrifying numbers about electrocution, for a start.

'The Scottsboro Boys' is not a show that wants you to sit back and relax for two hours. It wants to touch you, to make you see real people and the pain inflicted upon them. It wants to make you think, and ask questions. Above all, it wants to make you angry. Anger, real anger, is what changes the world. When someone stands up – or, in the case of Rosa Parks, sits down – and says "No," it's like lobbing a grenade into the social psyche. The more people realize that, the more they might take that knowledge gleaned from history and apply it to modern injustice.

Which is exactly what also made 'The Scottsboro Boys' relevant to our times. In the space of only 80 years, what was accepted then has long been abhorrent. But modern America is also the sweet land of birtherism, Prop 8, and HR3. Clearly, a lot more "No" is necessary.

Just think about all the great theatre it'll make someday.

C'est N'est Pas Magnifique

As more French women feel emboldened to come forward about sexual assaults committed by Dominique Strauss-Kahn and other politicians, there are some in France who are desperately trying to insist that turning private behavior into a subject for the public discourse is purely American. The fact that there are political consequences is pronounced even more ridiculous. After all, it was the French who rolled their eyes and could not comprehend the ire when Bill Clinton was being publicly raked over the coals for being a rake.

The difference is, back then, the French had a point. While the president was not going to win any awards for being a good husband, and given the political atmosphere should have been more circumspect, one still needs to draw a distinction between consensual acts among compos mentis adults, and highly unwelcome coercion.

Both Maureen Dowd and Katrin Beinhold have written cogently about the ongoing story and the wider discussion regarding gender disparity. Kelli Goff made the further point that poor women come in for extra scrutiny. Plus ça change – women are no sooner done fending off attacks than they must defend themselves in the public eye. It must be blissful for the conservative cranks who want to turn back the clock to the 1950s. It was the rare woman then who, if she was assaulted, wasn't accused of having asked for it.

The larger problem, as both Dowd and Beinhold point out, is that men take up a disproportionate amount of political and journalistic space, meaning men still get to set the gender agenda, along with the political discourse. However the women conduct or present themselves, the contempt the men have for them is abundantly clear. In the 1950s – and earlier, and later - girls were told that they had to be chaste and modest or else boys wouldn't respect them. Guess what? Boys don't respect them anyway!

Australia recently elected a female prime minister, but that doesn't equal equality. When Finance Minister Penny Wong was interrupted in a meeting and firmly requested to be allowed to finish, MP David Bushby MIAOWED at her. She told him exactly what she thought of his schoolyard behavior, and he eventually apologized, but will it change anything? Some of the world's more repressive regimes justify their lack of women in the public sphere on the grounds that they are protecting the women from this sort of harassment.

Wittgenstein said "The world is everything that is the case," but increasingly, women are saying that it had better not be. They've been considered as having to be responsible for their own behavior and that of men for centuries. Decades ago, when Israeli ministers suggested a curfew for women to avoid possible rape, Prime Minister Golda Meir responded: "But it is the men who are attacking the women. If there is to be a curfew, let the men stay at home."

She won that round, but the battles continue. In the States, it's the far-right that proves itself inherently misogynistic again and again in both behavior and policy – it's hardly shocking that so many proposed laws are directed at women, attempting to keep them "in their place." When Anita Hill accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment, she was discredited as a bitter woman trying to bring a good man down.

Thomas prevailed, but plenty of men on the far-right have been brought down by sex scandals of their own creation. But cheating on a spouse, while reprehensible, shouldn't destroy a career. No, the problem is that these are the men who have extolled themselves as moral exemplars, so much so that they freely legislate how others live and love. They seek to punish women for putative promiscuity by taking away access to affordable contraception and safe abortions, but clearly hold themselves above their own moral law.

In France, they congratulate themselves for not being so hypocritically puritanical. Maybe not, but neither have they progressed. Liberté and égalité are very much just for the fraternité. A fraternité that might do well not to rally so enthusiastically around DSK and assorted atavistic attitudes about women. Assault is a crime, pure and simple. As Richard Nixon might have had it, there's a difference between being a dick, and being a crook.

Memorializing, Not by Rote

World War II Soldiers

In his thoughtful article in the New York Times on the most recent crop of books discussing World War II, Adam Kirsch poses the question, "can this war still be considered the 'good war'?" As he says, the "passage of time changes the contours of history," and these books are detailing aspects of the war's prosecution by the Allies that are decidedly less than noble, thus attempting to call into question the extent of the moral compass that has hitherto been so exact.

Not that history has shied from the war's dirtier stories. The firebombing of Dresden, the fact that Stalin was at best a complex and worrying ally, and the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have all been explored at length for decades. But with the exception of those who believed that we should instead have been allied with Hitler against Stalin to suppress the threat of communism (expressed by a repugnant character in the 1946 film 'The Best Years of Our Lives', representing the vocal minority), there has never been any cogent reason for any member of an Allied nation to feel anything less than pride for having fought and won the war.

Even as more stories of Allied ruthlessness are given a spotlight, it does not – nor should it – lessen the pride in the fight. The British and other European nations can regret not taking a harsher diplomatic stance during the 1930s, and the Americans can be remorseful about not entering the war at once to stand with our friends, but understanding more about the nature of the fight only gives us a clearer sense of both the present and the past.

As Kirsch says, we turn events into myth for the purposes of memory.  "We need stories to live by, because we want to honor our ancestors and our country instead of doubting them." Where we fail history, both in its truth and in our understanding, is in romanticizing the prosecution of war. Even when causes are just – the impetus of the Union in our Civil War; the Allies in World War II – the battles themselves are still ugly. It's David's paintings and Wilfred Owen's poetry that are beautiful. The poetry of the first world war in particular reminds us of the humans who were conscripted into the great inhumanity. Most wars throughout history have been the attempt of humans to destroy other humans for the sake of human gain. World War II forced humans to destroy other humans to preserve humanity – a point acknowledged by the former enemy as well.

Which is perhaps why the Allied side of this war, as opposed to many before and since, has virtually escaped being satirized. The stances and policies of the 1930s are subject to jokes, as are American neutrality and, of course, the Axis powers, especially the Nazis. These points were made the subject of criticism through comedy at the time and are still done so today.

Frank Adu and Woody Allen in 'Love and Death'

World War II remains an untarnished memory because of its clarity. Kirsch states that "the present is always lived in ambiguity," but if a war is going to be fought successfully, the combatants actually require certainty. Otherwise, there is no means of justifying the action. The attempt to do so without a tangible and unambiguous enemy is what has prompted jokes, such as Woody Allen's point in his 1975 film 'Love and Death,' satirizing the Napoleonic Wars (among other things). The squad leader explains "If we kill more Frenchmen, we win. If they kill more Russians, they win." Allen's character - a proudly unwilling soldier - asks "what do we win?" The answer is nonsensical, the question quickly dismissed. Although it is not discussed, it is easy to imagine that Allen had Vietnam in mind as he chronicled the silliness and ultimate pointlessness of the combat.

In Alan Bennett's 2004 play 'The History Boys,' a character who treats history as an opportunity for show and personal gain opines that "there's no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it" – meaning that in honoring the dead, people don't recall the facts surrounding any given war. The character's approach to history is irresponsible, but in this sense he has a point. Memorial Day should not be an excuse for forgetfulness or detachment. Our present is always bound in our past, and understanding the past in full is the only means by which we can guide ourselves in the present and thus into the future. We honor the dead, but history lives.