Musical Social Commentary

Social commentary through art can hardly be considered a phenomenon restricted to today’s Internet era. Indeed, art’s nature as a means of expression makes it a readily available venue for the expression of anger, frustration, and fear throughout the ages. Throughout the entire scope of the arts however, music is one of the most prominently utilized forms of social commentary across American history, from the folk tunes of the civil rights movement, to the punk of the counterculture movement, and to the hip-hop of today. While music has proven itself perfectly adept at creating social commentary, to combine it with a visual medium such as theater or film could yield a whole new level of potent social commentary. Through the musical, one of America’s most beloved cultural landmarks, a combination of the visual and the auditory landscapes can weave together layers of accessibility, cultural timeliness, urgency, creativity, and even discomfort to form vigorous social commentary. 

Since the combination of musical and visual performance can be traced all the way back to the Ancient Greeks, it is safe to say that it didn’t take long for artists to realize how well these two genres came together. However, the musical has gone through a myriad of phases across the world, making a fully comprehensive study on the musical almost impossible. In the context of America however, the term “musical” has notably encompassed the operetta, vaudeville, musical film, and what we know now as the Broadway musical, consistently an American cultural zeitgeist. Interestingly enough, Broadway’s very foundation was grounded in social awareness. Prior to Broadway, musical art had been reserved almost entirely to the upper-class American in the form of the operetta. To protest this, George M. Cohan, the “Father of Broadway” gave America a fresh take on the musical with Little Johnny Jones, with tunes that he described as “ragtime marches” (Lewis 5,6,7). Naturally, Cohan was disdained upon by the snobby American critic, but his anti-elitist musicals were absolutely beloved by the common American man. Cohan’s insistence on grounding his musicals within his commentary on the conditions of the working class inspired generations upon generations of playwrights to this very day to remain unrestrained, political, and socially aware, making social commentary not just a bold artistic choice but an essential undertone to every great American musical.

With these origins, perhaps it should not be surprising that social commentary is incredibly emphasized in modern American musicals. Where room for debate exists however is how well musicals convey social commentary, and what it is that makes this social commentary effective. To analyze the many ways in which musicals effectively synthesize social commentary, two performances of heady social themes that I have had the chance to attend will be put under the spotlight here: Michael Friedman and Alex Timbers’ Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, and William Bolcom’s operatic rendition of George Kaufman and Edna Ferber’s Dinner at Eight. Both of these examples heavily utilize their musical characteristics in conveying their social themes, making them good case studies of what makes a “good” and “bad” socially conscious musical. 

The idea of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson seems almost impossibly obtuse at first; making one of America’s most controversial presidents in history an emo rock star is not only an ambitious undertaking, but one that can result in egregious failure. Yet the actual execution is utterly genius, with its oh-so-infectious punk rock hooks that indulge the audience just as much as they alienate them. Choosing to tell Andrew Jackson’s story via the emo rock genre (which was at the height of its popularity in the 2000s, when the show was written) also serves to to provide timely social commentary on the formation of demagogues through the lens of a self-absorbed manchild president. Throw in kick-ass rock tunes, layers upon layers of dark comedy, historically-fluid set design, and moments of intensely bleak narrative choices and you have one of Broadway’s most explosive social commentaries to date. But does this explosiveness work in favor of Timbers, Friedman and company’s social message? Truth be told, BBAJ could have easily flopped in about a billion different directions: it could have simply been too eyeroll-inspiring by indulging itself too much in its edgy emo backdrop, it could have been too overtly political that the emo ruse will seem ingenuine, or it could have just been a no-brains rock carnival that fails to hit its audience with the gravity of the historical effects it depicts. 

Thankfully though, Friedman’s escapist rock anthems deftly balance fun with horror, leaving audiences unsure of whether or not their enjoyment of the performance is even moral. He directly addresses this in an interview with Broadway on a particularly brutal song, “Ten Little Indians”: “I always enjoy this song because the audience isn’t entirely sure if they’re supposed to laugh, and then by the end all the laughter stops. But that weird place in between where the song is in between humor and tragedy… It’s fun. It’s fun for me.” (Friedman). Here, Friedman essentially proves that he intentionally wants audiences to feel uncomfortable listening to the song. This phenomenon directly correlates with social commentary master Bertolt Brecht’s “alienation effect,” most popularly utilized through his play The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. 

Like Arturo Ui, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson tells the story of the rise of a criminal demagogue. In neither show is there ever any indication that the protagonist is to be anything but completely abhorred, as Jackson and Ui both commit atrocious crimes across their respective narratives that are never sugarcoated. However, there are certainly differences in approach. Brecht’s take on alienating theatre is creating what he refers to as “the classical, cold, highly intellectual style of performance,” giving the audience nothing to emotionally latch onto and forcing them to “be a good enough psychologist to make [their] own sense of the material presented before [them]” (Brecht). Friedman, on the other hand, creates eerie alienation much differently: “You draw them in with the wit, the humor, the crazy stuff and the anachronisms and all that, and then by the end the bigger questions kind of slowly begin to emerge” (Friedman). Ironically enough, it’s Friedman’s gutsy unflinchingly rock’n’roll approach to social commentary that ends up being the more subtle of the two in effect, giving room for the questions to “emerge” rather than forcing anybody to become a psychologist. However, in spite of their differences, both approaches ultimately intend for and achieve the same alienation effect. Only one of them leaves the audience with the guilt of jamming out to morally questionable catchy rock songs, though.

In addition to being hauntingly eerie, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson’s timeliness is in and of itself a huge part of what makes Friedman’s social commentary potent. A musical directed at millennials about millennial society’s illnesses appropriately utilizes the most quintessentially millennial musical genre, emo rock. An equally contemporary Broadway musical about American historical figures can be found in Hamilton, the musical that swept Broadway off its feet and set the Tony Awards nominations record at 16 Tony’s for one performance, winning 11. Besides the Hamilton-Jackson character parallelisms, another aspect that both shows have in common is picking musical genres that are appropriately timely for their social messages. While Hamilton singles out R&B and hip-hop, arguably the two biggest genres in popular music today, to tell its immigration-inspired tale, Jackson instead opts for the emo and punk rock of the 2000s. Despite the fact that these musicals are not even a decade apart, their divergent musical styles appropriately gel with their audiences to make the pill of a political-historical musical an enjoyable one to swallow. “We take it for granted that hip-hop is the music of revolution… it’s a story of America then, told by America now,” claims Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creative genius that wrote, directed and starred in Hamilton (Miranda). This is, in effect, not only proof of comprehending the society being commentated on, but also of connecting to that very same society to ensure that they understand the commentary being made in hopes of pragmatic social activism. 

By looking at the cultural juggernaut that is Hamilton, we were able to identify the necessity of timeliness within potent social commentary. However, to gain even further insight into crafting culturally celebrated yet socially aware musicals, we need not look any further than the magic of Walt Disney Animation Studios. Walt Disney animated musicals have an inherent, uncontested cultural status that is truly taken for granted today. From Fantasia to The Lion King to, most recently, Moana, the pedestal that Disney musicals sit on top of can easily be identified in how universal their tunes seem to be. “Hakuna Matata,” “Savages,” “A Whole New World,” “Under the Sea”... the list of iconic Disney songs can hardly be amassed. Yet even in Disney’s innocent cartoons lay incredibly strong social commentary: the anti-colonial message of Pocahontas, Aladdin’s harsh look at class stratification, and Mulan’s outcry for feminism are hardly subtle, even upon viewing them as children. In fact, feminine activism particularly comes across prominent in Disney’s modern era. According to “Good Girls and Wicked Witches” by Amy Davis, Disney’s gradually empowering depiction of female protagonists can prominently be found in relatively modern Disney princesses, notably Ariel, Jasmine, Pocahontas and Kida (Davis 171). In the faces of these princesses are their nemeses, the “Wicked Witches,” villains characterized by their own little musical numbers. “Hellfire,” “Poor Unfortunate Souls,” and “Be Prepared” depicted the sheer horror of these evil monsters to children all around the globe, creating endlessly unforgettable pieces of music that simply resonated with the masses. While calling Andrew Jackson a malicious octopus or a power-obsessed lion is probably insulting to both Bloody Bloody’s Jackson character himself and to the drastic effects his actions have had on history, there is an undeniable link between the effect a song like “Ten Little Indians” has on one and the effect “Hellfire” has on a 10-year-old. Evidently, the accessibility and memorability created with music can fortify social commentary effects on both an individual level and on a broader culture.

On the subject of accessibility, the Dinner at Eight opera is an example of a performance brought to life within the musical sphere in hopes of dramatically improving the accessibility of its social commentary. The original Dinner at Eight play and film, while then-beloved, are comparatively dry and calculated. The film particularly takes a cold approach: not quite Brechtian in that it does not aim at alienating to the audience, but its black-and-white sheen and score-less drab render it an effort at capturing Depression-era class woes as realistically as possible. On the flipside, the Dinner at Eight opera is in and of itself as extravagant as extravagant gets, with soaring sopranos singing of fallen lobster aspics and gawks at the mediocrity of the viola. It comparatively attempts to suspend the audience’s disbelief simply due to the nature of its dialogue being sung completely in opera, leading to moments of hilarity and utter ridiculousness to convey its social commentary. Similar to Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, its accessibility is certainly part of what it attempts to do with social commentary, but also seeks to create an extra venue for artistic skill and creativity while exploiting themes from the original script in newfound ways.

The concept of creating an operatic version of Dinner at Eight might seem like an overtly indulgent undertaking for Bolcom at first, and in a lot of ways, it most definitely is. But there’s no denying the impressive thought and craft that went into the creation of the opera; the music itself is an incredibly welcome addition to the dryness of the original script. The horns and nimble woodwinds are harmoniously set against the backdrop of the soaring character vocals, whose individual characteristics can definitely be recognized through their costuming and vocal range. There are also some incredibly impressive examples of dissonance between the orchestration and the vocals; notably in a scene where a washed up actor announces himself as “back on top” with a fidgety and uncertain backing orchestration, revealing his inner anxiety and restlessness (Videos). Evidently, William Bolcom’s mastery shines through in the musical compositions and creative script as well, equal parts wowing the audience and entertaining them.

In spite of this however, Bolcom’s take fails to replicate a major characteristic of the original script: the sheer darkness of it all. While the audience certainly laughs at the ridiculousness of the aforementioned aspic scene, the especially dark scenes from the film are not given any justice at all in their operatic rendition. Heidi Waleson’s review in the Wall Street Journal puts this effect most eloquently, “The tools of opera could have made the story feel like a mad dance at the edge of the abyss; instead, "Dinner" skates along lightly, sometimes amusingly, into inconsequence” (Waleson). Indeed, at no point throughout the entire opera did the stakes ever feel high, and it all ends up passing by like a breeze. Bolcom’s imbalance between crafting a spectacular, technically infallible extravaganza and simply moving his audience end up biting the performance’s social message in the back by the time the curtains roll. While the audience can certainly identify the core message of the opera, meaning it hasn’t entirely failed, I doubt any of the audience members felt the same way a 1939 audience member felt when Larry Renault commits suicide. In the film, the Great Depression felt like a character in and of itself, lurking behind the corner of every scene ready to strike one of the many characters. When it did so in the film, it was utterly devastating. When it did so in the opera however, hardly an audience member batted an eye.

Admittedly, this comparison might not necessarily be fair in light of my previous argument about the timeliness of social commentary, as it is no longer the time of the Great Depression. All the same though, Bolcom’s interpretation here clearly fails to efficiently utilize its new creative medium to the benefit of its social commentary, regardless of the time of viewing both the opera and the film. Echoing my grievances is theatre student Michelle Palm, who claims that the operatic genre failed to do the darkness of the film justice. “While I liked the opera more than the film, the film did a better job at juxtaposing the darkness and the ridiculousness of the situation. The opera was just more entertaining to me because of the welcome addition of music” (Palm). Michelle directly highlights the discrepancy between entertaining your audience and giving them a reason to care, a balance of utmost importance to creating effective social commentary. When I asked Michelle how her musical interpretation of the script would differ, her answer came almost immediately: “I would make really depressing musical theater. Sure, there will be upbeat songs, but I’d have underscores of negative drops to better juxtapose the positive and the negative to tell the story of these characters more accurately. Music should add nuance, not distract. In the opera, the music was just distracting, creating more comedic moments than actually progressing the plot or developing the characters” (Palm.)

By the end of my interview with Michelle, she brought up an aspect of Dinner at Eight that I had previously overlooked: the characters themselves. A script that centralizes about a massive parade of elitist Americans keeping up appearances while their lives secretly fall apart can (and should) yield a wealth of nuanced character developments to send a broader societal message. However, Dinner at Eight’s strict operatic terms left no room for detailed, striking human emotion, effectively explaining why Larry Renault’s death falls on deaf ears. Fellow colleague Madeline McLaughin heavily emphasizes this point in her critique, “The film made you know the characters more intimately, it had close ups and different vocal tones… these things can’t be done with opera. You can’t have words and real emotional dialogue, opera singers only sing. We connect to people by talking back and forth. Nobody goes around and just sings” (McLaughin). However, she goes on to add that her preferred medium to tell the story of Dinner at Eight would have to still be a musical. “There’s such an expressive quality to music… and I think one of the best qualities of musical expression is that it’s not set in stone and it opens the door for very individualistic interpretations. In a musical, you can have both. The music and the personal aspect of dialogue” (McLaughin). The issue here is not the use of music itself, it is merely the lack of thought put into developing the characters within the musical genre. Instead of succumbing to the supposed constraints of opera, Bolcom and company could have done more to emphasize character development through the expressive qualities of opera and music. 

Through different means, Dinner at Eight and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson both attempt to create social commentary under the lens of music and theater. While their goals were similar, their methods largely differed, and so too did their results. In identifying the aspects of their methods that result from this discrepancy, so too can we formulate an argument about what it is that characterizes social commentary as effective. Yes, an operatic musical and an emo rock rollercoaster are hardly comparable by their inherent characteristics; Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson was not successful just because it was a rock musical, and Dinner at Eight was most certainly not doomed to fail just because it was an opera. To disprove these arguments, I have already highlighted the multiple pitfalls that Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson could have taken a nosedive into, as Waleson, Michelle, Madeline and I also identified how opera could have been a fitting genre to convey the darkness of Dinner at Eight. Instead, after having narrowed down a variety of elements that are necessary prerequisites to successful social commentary, I have found that what is so sorely missing from Dinner at Eight is genuinity in its social message.

While there is no questioning Dinner at Eight’s display of technical mastery, it seems as though Bolcom overlooked the importance of giving the audience a sense of urgency through genuinity. Bolcom’s efforts are certainly more than commendable, but the question lies: did he truly feel the gravity of the social message of the source material of his adaptation? While there is no true determinant to this question, a more emotionally-charged Bolcom could have given the darker scenes more time to sink in, more sullen instrumentation, and perhaps even more dramatic lines. If the artist himself or herself does not feel impassioned at the helm of a socially conscious work of art, how can the audience possibly be expected to feel impassioned? Sadly, Dinner at Eight instead feels like a hollow exercise in ambition, especially when put side by side with Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. “Second Nature,” the closing number of the performance, sends chills down my spine to this very day, a feat that Bolcom cannot claim to have also attained. Friedman and Timbers identified the gravity of an event as catastrophic as the Trail of Tears and give that gravity the appropriate amount of weight in their story, as opposed to Larry Renault’s disappointingly curt death scene in Dinner at Eight. To clarify, I certainly am not knocking on the passion Bolcom put into his interpretation of Dinner at Eight, but I most definitely believe it was misplaced. 

Utilizing the musical genre to create social commentary is clearly no easy task. Since the American musical has always been grounded in the realm of social commentary, it is a task almost taken for granted by the masses. The art of creating social commentary through the musical continues to evolve, yet the analyses that centralize specifically on the effectiveness of social commentary remain somewhat surface level. As playwrights and performers of today struggle to effectively express societal woes through their musicals however, examples from historical and contemporary musicals are bountiful and telling. Analyzing just the two examples of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and Dinner at Eight alone has yielded an array of components in effective social commentary via music; accessibility, genuinity, timeliness, technical prowess, character development and even Brechtian alienation can all be achieved creatively and innovatively through the beloved American medium of the musical. Perhaps only time will tell how societies and musicals evolve and flow with one another in innovative, refreshing ways. 

Works Cited

Brecht, Bertolt. Brecht on Theatre: the Development of an Aesthetic. Hill & Wang, 1996.

Davis, Amy M. Good Girls and Wicked Witches: Women in Disney's Feature Animation (9780861966738): Amy M. Davis: Books. www.amazon.com/Good-Girls-Wicked-Witches-Animation/dp/0861966732.

Friedman, Michael. “Behind the Music: Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson.” Broadway. (2011)

Lewis, David H. Broadway Musicals: a Hundred Year History. McFarland & Company, 2002.

Palm, Michelle, and Basil AlSubee. “Thoughts on Dinner at Eight.” 6 December 2017.

McLaughin, Madeline, and Basil AlSubee. “Thoughts on Dinner at Eight.” 6 Dec. 2017.

Miranda, Lin-Manuel. “‘Hamilton: A Founding Father Takes to the Stage.” CBS Sunday Morning. (2015, Mar 8).

“Videos.” Minnesota Opera, www.mnopera.org/season/2016-2017/dinner-at-eight/.

Waleson, H. (2017, Mar 14). 'Dinner at eight' review: Flavorless period piece; william bolcom's opera, based on the play by george S. kaufman and edna ferber, is an exercise in nostalgia. Wall Street Journal (Online) Retrieved from http://proxy.lib.umich.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1876853661?accountid=14667