Oklahoma!

This is going to be a rant.  He he.

 

I may have mentioned that I had recently seen the musical Oklahoma! on DVD.  I remember mentioning to someone that I had bought the DVD and gotten a sour look from him.  Apparently, Oklahoma! is something that "someone's grandfather liked", and so is not to be taken seriously as an entertainment option.

 

Thankfully, I ignore the attitude of the modernist philistine.  (I remember another one - a goddamn Greek who didn't like Sinatra -- no wonder Greece, the land of Plato and Aristotle and the first edition of the Gospels, is going down the sewer.).  I watched Oklahoma! and was, to borrow a modernist phrase, blown away!  The songs were terrific!  I have this urge now to memorize some of them by heart.  I also now harbour a secret resentment against those who had seen the musical and not told me about it.  Even having discovered Sinatra, I still feel that so much of my music listening in my life was a waste of time and bad for my soul.  Why was I listening to the Stones and the Pistols?  Such vile, artless, and soulless tripe pumped from a musical sewer -- and it is an insult to the smart engineers who build sewers to say that they would be used as a place to make that sort of music.

 

The movie does darkness right by using contrast.  The baddie Jud, played by Roy Steiger, looks vile by being contrast against the decent, but ideal, others.  Making the film today, the modern film makers would probably think it is necessary that the Jud tortures and rapes some girl on camera -- modern audiences would be too dumb to figure it out on their own, they reason.

 

 

I am thinking of making a musical called Wuxi Jiangsu!  Some of the songs would include:  Everything is up to date in Wuxi City!;  Can't you see you are not in love?;  Aussies and Kiwis should be friends;  Oh!  What a steamy morning!;  The QQ with the fringe on top!; and You're okay Wuxi, Jiangsu!