MEN, MASCULINITIES and MUSICAL THEATRE By
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‘NOT JUST FOR GAYS ANYMORE’: MEN, MASCULINITIES AND MUSICAL THEATRE by JAMES MICHAEL LOVELOCK A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Music School of Languages, Cultures, Art History and Music College of Arts and Law University of Birmingham September 2016 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. ABSTRACT This thesis explores how the changing masculinities of the 21st century have affected how young men connect to musical theatre as a genre that has been stereotypically seen as gay. The investigation is first located in the theoretical framework of masculinities, utilising the concepts of the male sex role, hegemonic masculinities and inclusive masculinity to chart how the performance of the male gender has changed over the past century. The project then adopts an empirical approach to a group of 161 men and 25 women, establishing a methodological framework for correlating sexual orientation with attitudes towards musical theatre. There is a further honing of this methodology through the adoption of Jenifer Toksvig’s The Fairytale Moment exercise, which identifies how each participant connects to narrative through a core emotional drive. Finally, this data is tested through three case studies of how individual participants connect to Les Misérables, Wicked and Soho Cinders, concluding that the emotional content of musical theatre is now as desirable to straight men as it is to women and gay and bisexual men. For my wonderful family: Mum and Dad, Julie and Adam, Tim and Katy, and my excellent nieces and nephew, Bethany, Isabelle and Leonardo ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am extremely grateful to Dr. Paul Rodmell, who has supervised this project over the past five years and has provided endless encouragement, thought-provoking discussion and a surprisingly detailed knowledge of The Sound of Music. I would also like to thank Sue Miles, the music department administrator, who has provided much appreciated support to enable me to balance my department teaching with my PhD studies. I have been teaching part-time at the University of Wolverhampton since 2014, and I would like to thank my colleagues Sarah Browne, Dr. Sarah Whitfield, Hannah Dulson and Dr. Demetris Zavros for their helpful suggestions and moral support during the write-up stage. I would also like to thank Dr. Richard Glover for his support as my research group leader, and Eileen Matthews for keeping me sane and organised. The empirical data collection in this study is based around an exercise that Jenifer Toksvig conducted during a musical theatre writers’ course, and I am very grateful that she has allowed me to use this as a starting point for my project. I would also like to mention Christine Denniston and my fellow writers at Writers’ Lab, who have talked through several elements of my thesis with me. Special thanks goes to George Stiles and Anthony Drewe for allowing me to interview them in April 2013 about Soho Cinders. Finally, I would like to thank all of the participants who gave up their time to take part in face-to-face interviews, online surveys and informal conversations, and the numerous other friends that have supported my research. I hope that this thesis is able to reflect their enthusiastic and thoughtful contributions towards an understanding of how young people connect to musical theatre in the 21st century. TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ‘Not Just For Gays Anymore’ PART I Chapter one: ‘What the hell… what if he’s a girl?’: masculinities and 23 musical theatre in the 20th and 21st centuries Chapter two: ‘Why not try to see things from a different angle?’: a 57 review of academic literature on the musical theatre audience Chapter three: ‘You’re still our brothers and we will fight for you’: 75 inclusive masculinities and the 21st century musical theatre audience Chapter four: ‘Careful the tale you tell, that is the spell’: Toksvig’s 104 Fairytale Moment and reader-response theory Chapter five: ‘Everybody’s got the right to their dreams’: the role of core 129 emotional drives in retelling narratives PART II Chapter six: ‘Every man will be a king’: masculinities and the core 156 emotional drive in Les Misérables Chapter seven: ‘It’s not lying – it’s looking at things another way’: 197 Wicked and its LGBTQ audience Chapter eight: ‘Wishing for the normal’: queer-normative spaces and 231 ‘straighting’ the ‘queer’ in Soho Cinders Conclusion ‘Love is love is love is love is love is love’ 261 Appendix A: Online survey based on the Klein Sexual Orientation Grid 268 Appendix B: Online musical theatre survey 283 Appendix C: The Fairytale Moment by Jenifer Toksvig 288 Appendix D: Transcript of Gary’s story interview 290 Appendix E: Transcript of Liam’s Wicked interview 294 Appendix F: Transcript of Stiles and Drewe’s story interview 296 Appendix G: Online survey based on Soho Cinders concert performance 298 Bibliography, Musical Scores and Mediography 302 1 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 Lyrical analysis of ‘Soliloquy’ from Carousel (bars 1-189) 26 Figure 1.2 Lyrical analysis of ‘Soliloquy’ from Carousel (bars 190-end) 28 Figure 1.3 Musical example – ‘Soliloquy’ from Carousel (bars 42-49) 30 Figure 1.4 Musical example - ‘Soliloquy’ from Carousel (bars 222-229) 30 Figure 1.5a Musical example - ‘If I Loved You’ from Carousel (bars 214 31 -217) Figure 1.5b Musical example - ‘A Puzzlement’ from The King and I (bars 32 5-12) Figure 1.6 Musical example – ‘If I Loved You’ from Carousel (bars 33 266-273) Figure 1.7 Musical example - ‘There’s Nothing So Bad For A Woman’ 33 from Carousel (bars 62-69) Figure 1.8 Musical example - ‘Twisted Every Way’ from The Phantom 41 of the Opera (bars 17-24) Figure 1.9a Musical example - ‘Little Lotte’ from The Phantom of the 44 Opera (bars 1-6) Figure 1.9b Musical example - ‘Music of the Night’ from The Phantom 44 of the Opera (bars 1-8) Figure 1.10 Musical example – ‘Tune Up’ from Rent 48 Figure 1.11 Vocal structure of ‘Rent’ from Rent 50 Figure 1.12 Musical example - Mark and Roger’s harmony line in the 51 chorus of ‘Rent’ from Rent (bars 37-45) Figure 1.13 Musical example - ‘Goodbye Love’ from Rent (bars 134- 52 145) Figure 1.14 Musical example – Collins’ entrance in ‘Today For You’ 54 from Rent (bars 1-4) Figure 1.15 Musical example – ‘You’ll See’ from Rent (bars 55-60) 54 Figure 1.16 Musical example - ‘What You Own’ from Rent (Bars 63-70) 55 Figure 2.1 Demographic information about the authors of the key texts 59 on musical theatre and its gendered audience Figure 3.1 Recruitment cohorts for the study (first contact only) 79 Figure 3.2 Responses to the statement ‘During the past twelve months, I 81 would identify as…’ categorised by recruitment cohort (male participants only) Figure 3.3 Responses to the statement ‘I have socialised with / I would 82 like to socialise with people that are...’ (male participants only) Figure 3.4 Responses to the statement ‘I have made emotional 83 connections with… during the past year’ categorised by sexuality cohort (male participants only) Figure 3.5 Consistency between sexual attraction, sexual behaviour and 84 sexual fantasy categorised by sexuality cohort (male participants only) Figure 3.6 Participants that have had or would like sexual experiences 86 with both men and women categorised by sexuality cohort (male participants only) Figure 3.7 Participant involvement in musical theatre by recruitment 91 cohort Figure 3.8 Participants that have been directly involved in musical 92 theatre productions, by sexuality cohort (male participants only) Figure 3.9 Responses to the question ‘which of the following best 93 reflects your opinion on musical theatre?’ by sexuality/gender cohort Figure 3.10 Top responses to the question ‘what do you most dislike 97 about musical theatre?’ for participants that are musical theatre fans or enjoy musical theatre Figure 3.11 Top ten favourite musicals displayed by gender cohort 98 Figure 3.12 Top ten favourite musicals displayed by male sexuality 98 cohort Figure 3.13 Analysis of the central power triangles in the overall top ten 101 musicals Figure 4.1 Three parallel accounts of Little Red Riding Hood 124 Figure 4.2 Analysis of the moment where the woodcutter saves Little 126 Red Riding Hood Figure 5.1 Categorisation of core emotional drives 130 Figure 5.2 Categories of core emotional drives by sexuality cohort - 132 hero-protagonist archetype Figure 5.3 Categories of core emotional drives by sexuality - 133 disenfranchised-protagonist archetype Figure 5.4 Categories of core emotional drives by sexuality - outcast- 134 protagonist archetype Figure 5.5 Categories of core emotional drives by sexuality - anti-hero 136 and nemesis archetypes Figure 5.6 Categories of core emotional drives by sexuality - minor 137 character archetypes Figure 5.7 Analysis of the gender of protagonists in the chosen 138 narratives by sexuality cohort Figure 5.8 Fairytale moments and core emotional drives for male 141 participants with the generic theme of ‘planning and preparation’