Look Out! Musical Theater is a "Homosexual Stronghold"

Date: 15 Jul 2003 21:17:23 -0700
Newsgroups: alt.politics.homosexuality,rec.scouting.issues,alt.religion.christian-teen,alt.radio.talk.dr-laura,ne.general
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There has always been homosexual involvement in American musical
theatre and a homosexual sensibility even in straight musicals, and
recently the Broadway musical has welcomed openly homosexual themes
and situations.
As William Goldman notes in his book on Broadway, The Season, the
Broadway musical would not exist without homosexual involvement.
Goldman speculates that homosexuals like other marginalized groups
tend to congregate in areas where they feel safest, and theater has
long been a homosexual stronghold.
Although Goldman's study of one Broadway season is more than
twenty-five years old, his chapter on "Homosexuals" remains one of the
best discussions of gay men and the commercial theater. Still, it does
not explain completely the attachment many gay men have to the musical
theater or the fact that in the popular imagination a passion for
showtunes is practically a marker for homosexuality.
The musical theater is, of course, by no means exclusively homosexual
in its creators, performers, or audiences. Many of the best and most
famous composing teams--Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Alan
Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe, George and Ira Gershwin, for
example--were apparently quite straight, though other accomplished
Broadway composers, notably Cole Porter, Leonard Bernstein, and Jerry
Herman, were and are at least predominantly homosexual.
The number of other homosexual men and women involved in the creation
and performance of Broadway musicals is difficult to estimate, but
surely it is very high. So great is homosexual participation in
musical theater, for example, that Martin Gottfried in his biography
of choreographer and director Bob Fosse speculates on several
occasions how (and if) Fosse's heterosexuality made his choreography
and direction different from the work of his peers.
Homosexual choreographers, designers, writers, actors, dancers,
singers, costumers, and so on, have contributed enormously to the
creation and sustenance of the Broadway musical.
But that does not necessarily explain why so many gay men enjoy the
musical theater, collect recordings of the shows, savor Broadway lore,
and follow the careers of particular musical theater stars. Surely
these gay fans are aligned spiritually with their more frequently
noted brothers, the "opera queens."
Lesbians have also been involved in the musical theater, but there has
not developed among lesbians the same cultic response to Broadway
musicals as there has among gay men.
How Musical Theater Has Served Gay Men
Musical theater during its peak in the first two-thirds of the
twentieth century served gay men in several ways. Perhaps most
important, it provided a safe place for gay men and straights to meet
on a culturally neutral, although closeted, playing field.
The musical theater made male participation in song and
dance--activities identified with highbrow effeminacy in many parts of
American society--acceptable in a popular entertainment form that
reinforced the validity of heterosexual romance. Thus, gay (as well as
straight) men could engage in culturally suspect behavior and win
approval for doing so.
Unlike opera, the Broadway musical made it a point to attract large
audiences, becoming even more accessible to small-town gays and
straights alike through national touring companies, amateur
productions, cast albums, and movie adaptations.
Broadway shows and their associated lore and products also provided a
connection with New York, a mecca for many gays trapped in repressive
places leading what they felt were boring lives. No doubt many
straight fans felt the same, but gay men learned quickly of the high
gay involvement on Broadway in important creative and performing
roles, a fact that made musicals additionally appealing to gay men.
Furthermore, artistic gay men could engage in "show" or
"performance"--public display of their interests--in what was at once
a particularly American and gay context. Opera and ballet, until very
recently, were tainted with a strongly European and classist aura, but
the Broadway book musical from its earliest days--as in the Jerome
Kern, Oscar Hammerstein musical Show Boat (1927)--was centered in
American history and culture, presenting the country's energy and
myths of exploration, settlement, success, and happiness.
In participating in the musical's mythic display, gay men
participated, at least vicariously, in a culture and history that
otherwise tended to be silent about their own lives.
http://www.glbtq.com/literature/musical_theater.html