Tea at Trianon: Cancel Culture and the Golden Age of Musical Theater

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, January 17, 2021

Cancel Culture and the Golden Age of Musical Theater

From Intellectual Takeout:

My mom loved listening to Broadway musicals and particularly favored South Pacific. By the time I left for college, she had played that record so often I had memorized most of the songs and can still belt them out. I also saw the movie with her—I’m generally not a fan of musicals on film, and this one was no exception—but the music, as the old saying goes, “was to die for.”

With cancel culture shredding our culture, that expression might take on a whole new meaning. Sing some of the songs from this tale of U.S. sailors fighting the Japanese in the Pacific, and you might find your reputation hanging from the nearest oak tree.

Let’s start with the score’s most egregious offense in today’s politically poisoned climate: its treatment of women. Back in 1949, when the musical first appeared, euphemisms for women like “dolls,” “dames,” and “broads” were as common as saddle shoes and bouffant hairdos. Oscar Hammerstein, lyricist for South Pacific, opens the song “Honey Bun” with these words: (Read more.)