famous theater fails at fanfic
I just got back from seeing the new musical The Blue Flower. According to the website, it's about "four lovers and friends finding their way through a world in pieces" during and after World War I. The characters are loosely--and I mean LOOSELY--based on German painters Franz Marc and Max Beckmann, plus Dada collage artist Hannah Höch, and Marie Curie (yes, that Marie Curie). This should have been right up my alley, but I found it incredibly boring: there is zero characterization, and everyone spends the whole time spouting clichés about the First World War being, like, you know, really really long and not at all fun. The songs were pretty, but they all sort of blended into each other.
Partway through the show, I realized the real problem: it's an incompetent piece of fanfiction. So apparently the writers had the bright idea of doing something like this:
"The Blue Flower"
Historical RPF AU
Pairings: Franz Marc/Marie Curie, Max Beckmann/Hannah Höch, Franz & Max friendship and UST
This could have been awesome! I would love to see a plausible AU plot for how Marie Curie managed to make great scientific discoveries while having hot affairs with German artists. Also (on a more obscurely geeky track) I would find it hilarious to see Franz Marc and Max Beckmann as BFFs, with slashy sexual tension fueled by heated arguments about the relative merits of nature mysticism and urban angst. (I don't think they even knew each other IRL.) And Hannah Höch could have cut up all their paintings and made collages--so much for male masterpieces!
But, alas, the writers completely dropped the ball: instead of coming up with a plausible AU where all these characters could meet, they were just like, "We're going to call the characters Franz, Max, Marie, and Hannah, but they will simply be vague stereotypes of bohemian youth, and if you expect them to resemble their historical models in any meaningful way, then you are a conventional bourgeois audience member and we thumb our noses at you."
On a more serious note, I was actually really disturbed by the portrayal of Hannah Höch (the inventor of the feminist photocollage, and one of my bisexual historical heroines) as a vampy Weimar cabaret girl, like a combination of Sally Bowles and Louise Brooks. Yes, Höch did also have a black bob (like in my Louise Brooks icon here), but she was a FEMINIST PERFORMANCE ARTIST and didn't get up on the stage just to attract and sleep with famous men. Ahem. But this is getting too geeky even for LJ. Luckily, I have a chance to teach the film of Cabaret for the first time next semester, and we can talk about the implicit sexism and historical laziness of the Weimar Cabaret Girl image then...
In short: Hannah Höch, I love you! Louise Brooks, I love you too, but do you realize that your black bob has become a sexist cliché of "decadence" that totally obscures your kickass legacy of rebellion against Hollywood?
(If I could figure out images, there would be cool pictures here, but instead I'm linking to wikipedia on Hannah Höch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_H%C3%B6ch)
Partway through the show, I realized the real problem: it's an incompetent piece of fanfiction. So apparently the writers had the bright idea of doing something like this:
"The Blue Flower"
Historical RPF AU
Pairings: Franz Marc/Marie Curie, Max Beckmann/Hannah Höch, Franz & Max friendship and UST
This could have been awesome! I would love to see a plausible AU plot for how Marie Curie managed to make great scientific discoveries while having hot affairs with German artists. Also (on a more obscurely geeky track) I would find it hilarious to see Franz Marc and Max Beckmann as BFFs, with slashy sexual tension fueled by heated arguments about the relative merits of nature mysticism and urban angst. (I don't think they even knew each other IRL.) And Hannah Höch could have cut up all their paintings and made collages--so much for male masterpieces!
But, alas, the writers completely dropped the ball: instead of coming up with a plausible AU where all these characters could meet, they were just like, "We're going to call the characters Franz, Max, Marie, and Hannah, but they will simply be vague stereotypes of bohemian youth, and if you expect them to resemble their historical models in any meaningful way, then you are a conventional bourgeois audience member and we thumb our noses at you."
On a more serious note, I was actually really disturbed by the portrayal of Hannah Höch (the inventor of the feminist photocollage, and one of my bisexual historical heroines) as a vampy Weimar cabaret girl, like a combination of Sally Bowles and Louise Brooks. Yes, Höch did also have a black bob (like in my Louise Brooks icon here), but she was a FEMINIST PERFORMANCE ARTIST and didn't get up on the stage just to attract and sleep with famous men. Ahem. But this is getting too geeky even for LJ. Luckily, I have a chance to teach the film of Cabaret for the first time next semester, and we can talk about the implicit sexism and historical laziness of the Weimar Cabaret Girl image then...
In short: Hannah Höch, I love you! Louise Brooks, I love you too, but do you realize that your black bob has become a sexist cliché of "decadence" that totally obscures your kickass legacy of rebellion against Hollywood?
(If I could figure out images, there would be cool pictures here, but instead I'm linking to wikipedia on Hannah Höch: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_H%C3%B6ch)