Results tagged “Feminism” from Blogway Baby

Hey, this is cool. Venus Airlines, the featured airline in my new musical Plane Crazy which is part of this year's New York Musical Theater Festival, has just introduced a new "retro campaign" that harkens back to the airline's heydey in the 1960s.

According to this article from AdAge, Gus "Guppie" Crenshaw, grandson of Venus Airlines founder Sam Crenshaw, had this to say about the new campaign:

"Venus Airlines was one of the stars of the mid-sixties Jet Age revolution, and our reputation for the sexiest "stews" in the sky was a big part of our success. As my grandfather used to say, "If you have to fake it, just shake it..." and our stews were shaking their bottoms for the bottom line.

And although Venus Airlines has gone through a rough patch over the last thirty years, being basically reduced to a single crop-dusting contract in southern Dakota, we feel that the time is right for the Venus Airlines message to emerge once again into the "sexy skies"...

I think the the buzz on Venus is on the move. Even Broadway shows likePlane Crazy are featuring Venus as an example of blossoming womanhood in the 1960s."

Say Gus: "Our new "Va-Va-Venus" campaign is a clever play on our "VA" (Venus Airlines) acronym, and the secondary meaning of "Va", which in Spanish is "Go". So, from the perspective of one of the sexiest countries in the world, it's "Go-Go-Venus", which is also a nice play on the "Go-Go Girl" sensibility of my grandfather's airline."

When asked about a potential backlash from millions of offended women across the country, Gus laughed and responded, "Dude, c'mon, everyone likes to look at sexy stews..."

In recognition of the support and friendship for Venus Airlines from Plane Crazy, Venus Airlines is supporting Plane Crazyby giving 100 Venus Airlines Mile High Club miles to everyone who attends a performance of Plane Crazy.

As a competitive response, other airlines are expected to soon follow suit.

Plane Crazy will be appearing this fall at The Beckett, 410 West 42nd Street
(south side of West 42nd Street, between 9th & Dyer Avenues).

Performance times are:

Thursday, September 15 at 8:00 pm
Saturday, September 17 at 4:30 pm and 8:00 pm
Thursday, September 22 at 1:00 pm
Friday, September 23 at 4:30 pm
Sunday, September 25 at 1:00 pm

Yesterday I took in a matinee ofRespect: A Musical Journey of Women(written and created by Dorothy Marcic) at the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts where it is currently playing an open run.

From the colorful retro graphic design to the fun trinkets sold in the lobby (boas, '60s sunglasses) you know this is supposed to be fun. Or maybe if you're walking around wearing a stripper boa, you better be wearing dark glasses so no one recognizes you...

The show is a musical revue that traces the progress of women from the days of corsets to today, using music from the various periods (sorry) along the way. The author, Dr. Dorothy Marcic, is played by an actress (Karan Pappas) who uses her female family members' various stories (Aunt Lilly, her mother, etc.) over the years to pull us along.

In the author's note in the program Dr. Dorothy Marcic says:

Respect is a result of five years of research, writing and development. It began when I was asked to do a presentation in 1999 at a Bahai Social and Economics Development since equality of men and women is one of the principles taught by Baha ullah. The world of humanity has two wings. One is women and the other men. Not until both wings are equally developed can the bird fly. Because I was experimenting with music in my leadership programs, I decided to add some music to those presentations. As I did the research to find a few songs, I realized that popular music tells the whole story of women in the 20th century. After the Orlando presentation, an agent got me a book contarct and I recorded some CDs. Thus began my new career in the one-woman show, which I have performed all around the US and the world, and which now has evolved into the four-woman musical theatre production which opened in its first professionally-produced commercial run at the Cuillo Center for the Arts in West Palm Beach FL on July 16 2004, running through October 2004. Now it is playing in Ft. Lauderdale and Chicago.

And based on the audiences reaction yesterday, Chicago women love it. The only men in the place were the band (of course), the house manager, the guy serving drinks, the guy taking tickets, and the four or five husbands along for the ride.

The cast of four is wonderful, with great voices. The strongest and most charismatic of the bunch is Jeanette Fitzpatrick whose rendition of "It Must Be Him" is the comic highlight of the show. The songs (61 in total!) are fabulous hits past and present. They range from the Betty Boop-delivered "I Wanna Be Loved By You" to the disco classic "I Will Survive". (I'd love the see the legal work that went into getting permission to use all these songs.) For the most part they were well arranged and sung with so much joy and energy that I wasn't pining to hear the original version.

Having said that, I felt the whole show really didn't hold together and it felt simplistc and a tad preachy. I didn't get enough of the "stories" to really make the songs meaningful. It felt like I was at the taping of an Oprah show (minus the great door prizes). Given the strong feminist message I assumed was coming in the show, it starts off surprisingly (or not surprisingly...) with Dorothy relating a visit to a cocktail party thrown by an ex-beau who has now taken up with another woman. She proceeds to cattily ("Meow, saucer of milk for Table 2") mock this new girlfriend in the dramatized conversation before launching into the singing and dancing of the show.

I also find it interesting that this "female musical history" is expressed with songs written primarily by men (only 3 of the 61 songs are written solely by women -- "At Seventeen" by Janis Ian, "Wide Open Spaces" by Susan Gibson and "Born a Woman" by Martha Sharp).

In fact, the songs touted as the big feminist anthems (see how far we've come) were written solely by men ("I Will Survive", "These Boots Are Made for Walking", "You Don't Own Me"). Conspicuously absent, at least to me, were songs by Carol King from her history-makingTapestry album.

The other bone I have to pick with the show is the ridicule of some of the older songs: "I Enjoy Being A Girl" by Rodgers and Hammerstein was sung by Barbie dolls doing a robot dance. Grrrrrr.

It said in the program that song was being used by special arrangement: I wonder if theRodgers and Hammerstein Organization has seen the show...

Or Lionel Bart's "As Long As He Needs Me", which to me is bloody brilliant song because it expresses a very real, true complex emotion, that I'm sure women and men alike still experience today.

And then, to top things off, they mock The Sound of Music's "For Good" and "Sixteen Going On Seventeen". Double Grrrr. And another Rodgers and Hammerstein slur: Does the RHO really know what's going on here?

And what's with ending the show with "This One's for the Girls", a mediocre country pop hit (Martina Mcbride made it a hit). It includes lyrics like "...this one's for all the girls about 42, throwing pennies into the fountain of youth..." What kind of strong feminist message is that? I'm a 42-year old woman, so my one concern should be that I'm getting old?

Maybe this the key problem with using pop hits in the musical theater format.

Musical theater songs are exactingly crafted to express the emotion and feelings of a character. Using songs after the fact (pop hits) to demonstrate a point theatrically is a bit like shooting darts blindfolded -- you hit in the vicinity of the target but you rarely hit a bullseye.

However, I do applaud the overall goal of the show, which is to celebrate women. And the audience left with big smiles on their faces. Now I think I'm going to go out and buy the sheet music for "Johnny Get Angry"...

E.Y. "Yip" Harburg, who wrote the words to "Over the Rainbow," "Old Devil Moon" and "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?," was honored today (April 28) with a commemorative U.S. postage stamp. How cool is that?

According to this article in Playbill:

The United States Postal Service's new 37-cent commemorative postage stamp shows a picture of Harburg smiling on his older years, with the words "Somewhere over the rainbow skies are blue" floating around him.

Apparently this was pretty typical for Yarburg whose passion for social causes "seeped into his shows". The article says:

A wildly playful writer who penned antic verse (and choice romantic lyrics) for the musicals Bloomer Girl, Finian's Rainbow, Jamaica, The Happiest Girl in the World, Darling of the Day, Flahooley and the film The Wizard of Oz, Harburg (1896-1981) was also fiercely supportive of liberal social causes. His political feelings often seeped into his shows, offering views on slavery, freedom, women's suffrage, class, the arms race, war and more.

Women's suffrage? Yip Yip hooray!

Of course, he is most famous for the classic "Over the Rainbow", co-written with Harold Arlen. It was named the number one film song of all time by the American Film Institute, and in 2001 it was chosen as the greatest song of the 20th century in a Recording Industry Association of America/National Endowment for the Arts poll.

Over the Rainbow...Finian's Rainbow...I guess he liked rainbows!

I've always thought that the time was right forPlane Crazy, a Fun Feminism musical.

But I'm seeing more and more evidence that its time has come! First of all we all know thatMenopause the Musical has been running for a while, and the Canadian hit We're Still Hot(similar topic) opened off-Broadway in January.

When I was in Chicago, I noticed a show called Respect: A Musical Journey of Womenopening April 17 at the Chicago Center For The Performing Arts. It is billed as a musical revue celebrating women through American pop music, with more than 60 songs, including "What's Love Got To Do with It?" and "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'". Next stop:Plane Crazy on Broadway!

There's a good Plane Crazy discussion thread on MetaFilter. I'm heading over to weigh in on the discussion.

From MetaFilter:

I should probably state for the record that it is likely Ms. Conn is using this 1960's music style ironically, applying it as both a commentary on the era and the world as it was then. I'm sure she'll hear about this post and comment in some way or another (and likely already has).

The problem is, a lot of these "short-cut" aesthetic styles that came out of mass entertainment always do an amazing disservice to the eras they portray, since they cut out a lot of humanity for the ease of using some tried and true "phrases" to lock the "setting" and move on.

Here's the topline on my philosophy: I have two daughters, and I want them to fully achieve their potential. I don't understand a world that would deny them that opportunity, and I don't understand cultures that hold down the potential of 50% of the population.

Why did I choose to base a musical about feminism in the 1960s? Well, in a way, it was an easy choice since the '60s were the decade where the modern feminist movement came to life. As well, the spirit of optimism of the 1960s is important to the hopeful message of Plane Crazy. The 1960s represented an era that embraced change, and had great hope for the future.

So, in fact, I am using the decade as a dramatic device to reinforce the message of the show.

Now, a moment on the message of the show.

Today, the term "Feminist" has become loaded with a lot of negative baggage. Feminism is sometimes typecast as a dour, man-hating, bankrupt philosophy. This makes me very sad.

So I call my philosophy "Fun Feminism".

Fun Feminism embraces the innate female traits of love, joy, and sexuality. Some of us like men. Some of us want to have children. Most of us like sex...but don't tell us what we do or don't want, don't tell us how to think or how to act. If I want to be a Mommy...that's cool. If I want to be a corporate ladder climber...that's cool. If I want to be a musical theater writer...that's cool too (but who would want to do anything that silly!)

Fun Feminism is about choosing who you want to be and what you want to do, and not having your limits set by anyone else -- or by society.

It's no coincidence that by the end of Plane Crazy, one character becomes a mommy, one character becomes a feminist organizer, and one character decides to go and beat the ad men at their own game.

Finally, while I appreciate the seriousness of these issues (which are important to me), I also want to be entertained when I go to the theater.

I'm a huge fan of Tom Lehrer who always managed to wonderfully combine the serious with the silly. I've been heavily influenced by Tom Lehrer, and I believe that you can teach people more when you entertain them, when you engage them, when you make them laugh and when you get them singing!

Maybe one day someone will write an original musical or a revue about Clinton's presidency. Or perhaps they will just take existing songs and work his story around them.

Well I just found the perfect song (title).

I've been reading a new book called The Rise And Fall Of The Broadway Musical (by Mark N. Grant), given to me by my fabulous husband. I've just started it and the author is still discussing the First Age of Musicals, and in particular the composer Victor Herbert, who wrote "March of the Toys" (from Babes In Toyland), "Gypsy Love Song", and "Kiss Me Again". Well apparently he had another well-remembered song entitled "A Woman Is Only A Woman, But A Good Cigar Is A Smoke".

I kid you not!

These pre-1920 compositions include many hair-raisingly politically incorrect titles that make me cringe.

However, I only feel qualified to report on the ones that are degrading to women, being a woman myself. I'll leave you to read the book to discover the others...

I grew up in a feminist household. Although my father was Hungarian and born in 1926, he always regarded my two twin sisters and I as fully capable of doing anything and being anything we wanted (as long as it made lots of money!). He was happy when I got married, but secretly I think he wanted me to be a driven, single, business tycoon who would one day grace the cover of Fortune magazine.

At university I joined the women's groups on campus, started reading Ms. Magazine, stopped wearing a bra (actually, I really didn't need one all that much...) and generally swore off men forever.

However, I found the groups a tad boring, switched back to Mad Magazine, joined Queen's Musical Theatre, and met my future husband who was also in the Queen's Commerce program. So I got my MRS degree after all...

But I still firmly believe that a woman should have a choice to do whatever she wants -- whether that is to have a career outside the home, or to have kids and stay home, or to do some combination of the two. Yes I know we've come a long way baby, but we still have a long way to go (just check out the beer ads on TV!), especially around the globe. That is one of the reasons I wrote Plane Crazy -- to remind us, in a fun and entertaining way -- about the issues that women have faced and continue to face today. Well...also to win a Tony and meet Hugh Jackman, but that's a different story.

So endeth the lesson, at least for today.