Early Morning Thoughts on "The Music Man" and Systemic Racism

[TygrBright]

Last edited Sun Jan 9, 2022, 04:05 PM - Edit history (1)

Over here in the Lounge's Happy Movies thread, someone reminded me about the 1962 film of Meredith Willson's 1957 Broadway hit "The Music Man." All my life, it seems, it's made me happy to re-watch that film, watch clips of the best musical numbers, attend any live performances within reach, etc. So much craft goes into the staging, the rehearsing, the timing of the numbers, the joy of a cast that pulls it off adds a palpable layer of euphoria to the performance. It's just... fun.

Or, it was. I hadn't watched any clips in a while. Maybe 3-4 years since I sat down and watched the whole film. Haven't seen a live version since (I think) 2004.

About the 3rd or 4th clip ("Ya Got Trouble" ) I noticed something in my head wasn't right. By the time I viewed "Wells Fargo Wagon" I was a little uncomfortable. I shut down the feed and went to bed, and woke up with the realization that what was making me itchy about it was how WHITE the damn' thing is.

But is it?

Honestly, the underlying themes and character motivations are universal human things - the fast-talking con artist who realizes there's something bigger and better than the next score; the young woman seeking to be 'different' and find a wider life than the stifling values an insular community offers; locals wary about strangers and change coming in from 'outsiders' learning in the end that if you embrace a change and make it your own, you triumph. Even the little sub-plots of the young lovers in spite of parental opposition, the reformed shill trying to find a place and a home, the squabbling community elders who find unity in shared creative endeavor... all of it could be a Spike Lee film, or an August Wilson script.

Okay, so, maybe it's just how WHITE the cast of the 1962 film is. Glaringly, reflectively white, you could paint a roof in the desert with that white and stay plenty cool under it.

But there have been versions that aren't quite so white... the Kennedy Center did a version with Norm Lewis as Professor Hill, so I watched a couple of clips. (Norm aced it, BTW.) But... nope. Still got that squicky vibe.

There's a new production coming out with Hugh Jackman in the lead role, but a few Black actors got some work in the deal, including Emily Crow as Zaneeta Shinn and Philip Boykin as school board member Olin Britt. In checking this out, I ran across a fair bit of backing-and-forthing in the theater commentary world about how little that is and how this is, yep, one more racist Black-people-need-not-apply lack of opportunity, etc. I can't disagree. Tokens ain't diversity.

There was an all-Black concert (i.e., sung with some dialog but not fully staged) version at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in 2014. No clips that I could find, but I bet the music was excellent indeed.

All the same, imagining that production from that book (libretto) even with an all-Black cast, still made me uneasy. How about with "color blind casting?" Or, more thoughtfully, "color-conscious casting?" That imagining led me down some interesting research roads and I'm grateful to have learned more about this ongoing discussion in the entertainment world.

But no, that's not it. No matter how carefully cast, thinking about "The Music Man" just hits my "Holy CRAP, is this racist!" button now. Why?

And finally, I teased it out:

It's the setting.

It's the history connected with that setting. That beautifully nostalgic world of rural America in 1912, with its technicolor sunsets and small-town familiarity and family values and quaint technology. It's even more idyllic than "Leave It to Beaver" and the white utopias of 1950s network television.

Leave aside the dark underbelly of realism for white people - women, poor people, discriminated-against ethnic minorities, etc. in 1912 rural America. Postulate that the idyllic portrayal of people who could be worried about the morals of their youth exposed to something as threatening as a POOL TABLE but redeemed by the experience of shared creative joy, is some kind of accurate representation of River City (actually Mason City) in 1912. Could it be?

Possibly.

But at what cost?

Those idyllic small-town America hamlets may have existed, they may even have been as serene and cosy as portrayed. They may have nurtured all those virtues of sturdy self-reliance AND concern for neighbors and friends, appreciation for patriotic expression, support for tradition and family and all the rest of those good and happy things.

But looking at America in 1912, what else was going on?

Well, the Daughters of the Confederacy were busily promoting a narrative of white supremacy, rewriting textbooks, installing monuments, and insisting on a version of history that was "fair" to the racist traitor losers who fought for an economy based on slavery. Jim Crow laws were on the rise in the South. Northern cities were ghettoizing Black people who migrated there and installing all kinds of extrajudicial forms of segregation - redlining, employment restrictions, covenants, designated second-class schools, etc.

In 1912 there were lynchings in Arkansas and Texas; in 1911 there had been five lynchings including one in Pennsylvania. America's economy was changing from primarily agrarian to primarily industrial - and in both versions, the near-slavery exploitation of Black labor enabled white oligarchs to allow sufficient wealth to trickle to a growing white middle class to bolster white supremacy and their own hold on power.

In other words, what Meredith Willson remembered from his youth in Mason City may indeed have been idyllic - as idyllic as frosting, spread on a cake baked with a large amount of shit among the ingredients.

Color-conscious casting isn't going to address that. There is simply no way to shoehorn the notion of a Black person AS a Black person into any of those roles. There wouldn't have been a Black Mayor in rural Iowa. There wouldn't have been Black school board members. No Black piano teacher teaching the little girls of the town or running the Library. No mixed marriages back then, either. And no socially acceptable Black couples in the upper strata of town leadership, for sure. Eulalie McKecknie Shinn and her gossip flock would have included not a single Black woman.

What about "color-blind" casting?

It occurs to me that any brown faces at all in a "Music Man" cast may well contribute to the entirely idealized version of history portrayed in "The Music Man". No matter who or how you cast a Black actor in that story, it will be incongruous and antihistorical. A Black conman trying to sell band instruments to white rural families? Mayor Shinn wouldn't have told the school board to "get his credentials!", he would have headed the mob running the (Black) Professor out of town on a rail... if he was lucky.

A Black Marian Paroo? (Well, sure, there were Black Irish, but...) No, sorry, in 1912, no Black face would have appeared in a rural Iowa library unless it was after closing hours, with a bucket and a mop, maybe.

Presenting, on the stage, a River City of 1912 with a sprinkling of brown faces among the white - does it allow us to sanitize and ignore the brutal historical reality of 1912 America for those same brown people? Does it enable our complicity in the appreciation of that lovely white boiled icing atop that shit-infused cake?

I love the music. I love the stories of the characters.

But I'll never be able to watch it again without a troubling awareness of just how racist River City was, and remains.

This is what growing beyond racism is about for white me in 21st-Century America. I embrace it in the hope that someday my grandson will routinely be able to attend fabulous musical theater embracing the experiences of Americans who aren't white, in a wide variety of historical and geographic settings. And it will be great, and fun, and a part of the entertainment landscape both ordinary and celebrated.

hopefully,
Bright

[LuvLoogie]

1. To Kill a Mockingbird was released in 1962 as well

With Gregory Peck, Brock Peters, Robert Duvall

[Grasswire2]

2. My take on MUSIC MAN is a little different.

You see, my family lore includes my grandfather's possible brush with Willson, in a tiny town on the Saskatchewan prairie, when Willson traveled there as a clarinetist in the Sousa band on tour of southern Canada.

My grandfather, in addition to being a carpenter, was a music man. He organized bands in small prairie towns. He got the locals to buy instruments, he taught men to play instruments, and the bands held concerts on Saturday evenings and on Sundays. He even built the bandstand and the benches (being a carpenter).

He told of once "sitting in" with the Sousa band when it came through, on tour. He played a silver trombone.

And so we always wonder if Grandpa was the inspiration for Willson's MUSIC MAN. Although Grandpa was not a con man or a womanizer -- he had five children and a homestead to try to grow wheat.

I have been in touch with a highly qualified professor of music history, in Canada (and a shirt-tail cousin) to ask him if he thought it was possibly true. He replied that it is possible, but extensive research would be needed to prove it true. Expensive research.

And so we just think it is true. And we love it.

Incidentally, troves of material regarding Sousa's band, Willson, and related are available on the Internet. All the press reviews from the extensive tours, all the programs, and so on .

If it wasn't so hard to post a photo on DU, I would post a pic of my grandpa music man, leading his band in Ceylon, Saskatchewan. A twenty-five piece brass band!

As for the ethnic diversity --- I suppose that in early twentieth century lower Canada, the indigenous people were also excluded from the cast. Sigh.

[Tetrachloride]

3. For those of (aspiring) in the film industry, every kind of diversity is a challenge

and has been so in every decade.

I recently posted a topic which implicitly was on diversity in a certain FB group. Not a single like or comment, no matter the talent involved. A smallish but informed working group.

[TygrBright]

4. I always hope for discussion, even if it's just to explain to me how little I know...

...or how wrong I am.

Silence is discouraging, I know.

regretfully,
Bright

[Effete Snob]

5. Try these lyrics on for size

Having been Harold Hill in my high school production, I’ll never get them out of my head anyway:

“ One fine night, they leave the pool hall
Heading for the dance at the Arm'ry
Libertine men and scarlet women, and ragtime, shameless music
That'll grab your son, your daughter with the arms of a jungle, animal instinct”

The “jungle music” thing was readily recognizable to Willson’s audience, steeped in the then-current objection to rock and roll as associated with negroes.

To be fair, though, the point of that song, and of the story generally, is to show that those people were susceptible to demagoguery and manipulation based on stereotypes, so you need that canvas on which to paint that picture.

Also, the mayor’s objection to Tommy Djilas, who ultimately saves Hill’s hide by leading secret practice sessions of the band is that he’s the “wrong type” of suitor for his daughter. Like the salesman Ali Hakim in Oklahoma, his surname was probably more recognizable as a symbol of undesirable ethnic background to audiences of the time.

But the point is that River City is a haven of small minded bigotry.

[Effete Snob]

7. Drilling down further...

The story doesn’t work in an open-minded, cosmopolitan River City.

“Miser Madison” the deceased benefactor of the town, for whom many public works are named…

“He left River City the library building,
But he left all the books to HER!
Chaucer, Rabelais… Balzac!”

Marion refers to him as “Uncle Maddy” and he obviously knew the books would not be safe in the hands of the narrow-minded prigs who populate the town.

It is that small mindedness of the townsfolk which is the engine for the story.

[MadameButterfly]

19. The musical exposes the gullibility of people

which is reflected in Trump world today.

A few posts down is a video of "Trouble in River City"
It shows how a self-serving con-man creates a problem where there was none, and the people fall for it. Sound familiar?

Instead of seeing this musical as racist, perhaps we should see it as insightful of society. Any story from that time would reflect a segregated community, and if you apply today's standards you won't find any acceptable art from that time. But the story doesn't make the white community look good. They fall for the simplest, most obvious con. They are as afraid of outsiders and new ideas and as open to conspiracies as are the rural and low-information communities of today.

I often think of The Music Man when I hear of the conspiracy theories that have been bought by the Trump base. it was quaint entertainment when the villain was a pool table and the solution a musical instrument. Not so when the villain is half the country and the solution authoritarian rule. But the psychology is not so different.

The Music Man shows the humanity of the townspeople despite their foolishness and naivete. We must remember there are real people caught in the bubble who deserve a better, a real solution. They just want that band for their kid, and don't know the best way to get it. The real villains are the leaders of the coup, not the captives of the cult.

Where the Music Man departs from sound psychology is Professor Hill being turned around by true love. That's not going to happen for us in the struggle to save democracy. And if I met Marian today I'd tell her to run away from this con-man as fast as she can.

[Sur Zobra]

6. I felt the same way the last time I watched the first Star Wars

Last edited Mon Jan 10, 2022, 04:18 AM - Edit history (1)

It was probably around six to ten years ago that I watched it. I was gobsmacked at how there wasn’t a single nonwhite human character in the entire cast. James Earl Jones doesn’t count because he was always “in costume”.

The movie was made in 1976 for pete’s sake! Apparently there wasn’t a single minority extra/actor in all of Hollywood in 1976

On a side note, many years ago, my sisters and I watched The Sound of Music on New Year’s Eve and I remarked that I would like to see it remade with an all black cast. Of course the story takes place in Austria, in the 1940s, and Nazis are white, but how wonderful would it be to have Jennifer Hudson singing the part of Maria, etc.?

I grew up going to opera, in Santa Fe, NM and I got used to seeing POC in lead roles, and in the chorus. I expect to see POC in every movie, every opera, every musical.

[niyad]

22. Umm, "I was gobsmacked that there wasn't a single white character"?????

[Sur Zobra]

23. Thanks for the heads up!

For the life of me I’ll never know how I fucked that up

[niyad]

24. You are most welcome. I read it three times to make sure that I had read it correctly.

By the way, James Earll Jones voiced Vader. The person in the costume was David Prowse in IV, V, and VI.

[Hortensis]

8. And now it strikes almost everyone who sees it new as downright

weird, and wrong. Almost, of course, because some areas of the nation have so few POC that one can be out shopping all day among the dominant demographic and never think anything's odd at all, because it isn't.

Neverthess, the changes are enormous. A lot more's happened than a black president since then that a lot of people never thought they'd see in their lifetime.

[samnsara]

9. i love the Music Man.. i watched it on stage in Mass.....The Theater By the Sea

..what a beautiful venue and i loved the play.

[Tetrachloride]

10. I watch foreign films pretty often.

Instant diversity. Not always a lot of it but more than zero.

[hunter]

11. It wasn't on my mom's or my dad's "Happy Movie" list.

Their parents were refugees to Hollywood from rural white racist anti-intellectual U.S.A..

One of my grandfathers, who'd fled small town anti-intellectualism by joining the Army Air Corp, wasn't able to cast off the last of his rural Montana racism until I married my wife, who he called a "Mexican girl" and men in his family simply didn't marry Mexican girls, especially the more Native American looking sort, so he boycotted our wedding. To his credit he got over it.

One of our kids got us tickets to "Hamilton" just before covid. We loved that. "The Music Man" could be done in a similar way.

Romanticizing rural white U.S.A. wouldn't be a thing if they didn't have disproportionate political representation.

The Senate needs to be neutered, just as the House of Lords was neutered in the United Kingdoms.

Random impressions...

[Totally Tunsie]

12. So, you're saying Ya Got Trouble

right here in River City?

[UTUSN]

13. Thank you. & I learned that its debut staging beat West Side Story for the Tony.

I was going to stay away from the Happy thread to keep from Debbie-Down-ering, but am pleasantly surprised at your take.

[Marthe48]

14. In HS, I was in the chorus

of a production of Music Man. I grew up in an all-white neighborhood, all white school system (2 Japanese girls, sisters, were the total diversity in 12 grades) Thanks to my Dad and other relatives, I grew up with plenty of racism, sexism and disdain for the ethnicities represented in and around Cleveland. I opted out of taking his outlook as my own. But, as a white person, it will take me the rest of my life and more to keep growing away from what I was taught and toward what I want to know.

The Music Man was really popular among our parents. My Mom and Dad had an LP of the sound track. I loved The Music man for many years. I loved the characters, who as TygrBright pointed out, were normal for me at the time. I was surrounded by white people and never gave it a thought that none of the characters with black, or any other race but whiote. I loved the idealized town. We lived in a suburb with no town center. Cleveland was our town center, and even if we were only a few miles from downtown, it might as well have been Mars. Our all-white teachets in grade school and jr. high and high school did a fine job trying to raise our awareness of the how other races in the U.S. lived, but at the time of this production, the Hough riots were in the future, and Mrs. Knox, a black nurse who came to our house to give my great-aunt vitamin B shots was the only black person I had ever met. She was nice to me, and all of us kids liked her.

I didn't have a normal suburban childhood or home. There was a lot of stress, illness, heartache and turmoil. Because The Music Man idealized American life, I loved it. The peace and tranquility, where the adults had minor disgreements among themselves, and wrung their hands over those wild kids, and some of the adults had the same longings and dreams I had, made that particular fictional town exactly where I wanted to be. Maybe the idealism is what made The Music Man so popular. I don't know. I would watch it when it was televised. My Mom or sister would call me to let me know it was on. As I matured, I saw things beyond the surface, even if I wasn't aware that I saw those things, and finally, didn't watch it any more. I hesitate to say that The Music Man is racist, systemic or otherwise. One of the posts pointed out that Mason City was America in 1912, and I think The Music Man was white America in 1962.

If you watch old TV shows, especially westerns and science fiction, there were many plots that involved prejudice getting rooted out and decent people in the show understanding that hatred was wrong. You can hear the same theme in old radio shows. Gunsmoke especially had many stories that involved white people getting along with Native Americans, Chinese and occasionally black people. Maybe the big screen lagged behind tv land at that time. Now, I'm not sure if the entertainment industry understands we still need tutorials disguised as drama, and that in real life it needs to be more inclusive.

I appreciate your insightful essay. It gives me more to think about. Thank you.

[TygrBright]

16. Thank you, for your thoughtful response.

Yes, it offered a very comforting fictional space to escape to. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with escapism - it's one of the basic functions of entertainment, after all. But when it's over-used or misused, it perpetuates the problems from which we're escaping.

That "nice (white)" vision of a vanished America is easily recognizable as fictional, but even as we acknowledge it's fantasy elements, there is a temptation to attribute the appeal of that idealism to a recognition of, or connection to, a core of realism within the fantasy.

Except that beyond the basic human motivations and stories the WHITENESS of this rendering connected the beloved ideals to the whiteness and reinforced the fundamental assumptions of white supremacy.

To be fair to Willson I doubt that was intentional. But it may have been unavoidable.

I do remember many of those plots/episodes you refer to - especially in "Gunsmoke" and "Star Trek" and "The Munsters", as well as some episodes of Route 66 and Twilight Zone. Of course, that was in the days when the public airwaves were somewhat regulated and a certain amount of socially responsible content was required of the networks for their access thereto. But even those were always pretty much from a white POV, portraying white people as heroes for 'helping' people of other races, or helping their fellow-white people understand and accord access to various rights.

Even today, the percentage of Black, Asian, Latinx/Hispanic, and Native voices telling their OWN experiences and their OWN stories from their own platforms is woefully inadequate.

sadly,
Bright

[Marthe48]

21. After I wrote

I thought of the break-through shows of the 1970's --Sanford and Son, The Jeffersons, and others, that to me, showed realistic characters. It seemed that finally, people of color were getting their due. But it seems like the era has come and gone.

I don't watch cable tv, so I am out of touch, but the last couple years I did watch shows, seemed like having black people as main characters was a strain on the writers and producers to make their presence realistic and their characters plausible.

Take care. Write more

[Demovictory9]

15. From "i love lucy" to "brady bunch"...basically all white worlds

Even "sex in the city" as a person of color, i am always aware that we are made invisible particularly in the presentation of upscale lives

[TygrBright]

17. I can only imperfectly imagine the sense of 'being invisible' people of color experience...

...in the realm of commercial entertainment and storytelling.

Invisible, and SILENT/silenced.

Even when the entertainment establishment tries to portray or include diversity, the decisions seem to be always shaped by white people and white peoples' understanding of the issues involved.

"Here, let me tell your story for you."

disgustedly,
Bright

[Dial H For Hero]

18. It's a product of its time, and can be enjoyed as such. I mean...ye gods!

[RobinA]

27. Ditto!

My first clue that it wasn't presenting real life was that people were singing and dancing in the street! It's a set piece.

[andym]

20. The Music Man mocks small-mindedness of small town USA just pre-WWI

Last edited Sun Jan 9, 2022, 10:58 PM - Edit history (5)

That same small-mindedness in the modern era afflicted Rush Limbaugh fans and afflicts Trumpers today in Iowa and elsewhere.

Marion is the actual hero of the Music Man, she is the only educated progressive-minded person there, and she is held in great suspicion by the townsfolk. Eventually she saves the day.

An argument can be made such small-mindedness as in River City is directly related to racism and other biases and prejudices shared by people of such towns at that point in US history. The Music Man pokes fun at them and frankly ridicules them (for example turning the mayor and friends into a barbershop quartet whenever they are closing in on investigating Harold Hill). So in its anti-small mindedness theme it is indirectly criticizing the isms, including racism that was part and parcel of River City (Mason City) Iowa in 1910. I'm not sure you want a cast of non-white people here, when the play is casting a spotlight on some of the biases, prejudices and all around narrow mindedness of small town USA white culture in 1910 and their small-town sensibilities look foolish (that Prof. Hill can get them worked up about a pool table--lol). Con man Hill directly shows why their modern day equivalents are so prone to con men like Trump.

The stories of Sherwood Anderson in Winesburg, Ohio or even "Inherit the Wind" about the Scopes monkey trial go much further in eviscerating small town America, but the Music Man in a good-humored way is criticizing that same small town America and their biased, narrow worldview.

[Paladin]

26. I like your take on it.

But then, in our high school production of "Music Man," I got to be in the barbershop quartet, the four of us could carry a tune, and we brought the house down. I didn't share a classroom with a black student until my freshman year of college. That's my background, that's how I grew up, and there's not a hell of a lot I can do about it, more than 50 years later. I like to think that I've made up for it in subsequent years as a liberal Democrat and as a fierce advocate of racial equality. That's the way it is.

[ananda]

25. Homey smalltown living is the logo for white supremacy.

That's why the Hallmark channel is so... there.