Musicals, Millennials, and #MeToo

Nothing is sadder than the fact that at least one, if not two, generations of young people will never experience the unmitigated joy of American musicals, those glorious films of the 1950s and '60s that unabashedly celebrated the attraction and affection men and women quite naturally feel for one another. Not until the 1990s did the natural magnetism of the two sexes for each other become disallowed, tainted and reformulated as misogyny and/or assault. Feminism has destroyed romance, they did it on purpose. Why? The obvious reason would seem to be to rob both men and women of the pleasure of attraction to one another. Like all of the musicals of the 1940s, 1950s and '60s, love, romance, and sexual attraction were the order of the day those films' reason for being. Filmgoers delighted in the raucous, lusty excitement of love at first sight and the certainty of love everlasting. Nothing of the sort is allowable today. When the statue of the kiss that became the iconic moment of the end of WWII is vandalized with "#MeToo," we know we are living in an America unfamiliar to those of us older than the last two generations. Our young people, too many of them, know nothing of the truth of American history. They know nothing of the American Revolution, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, the Holocaust, the founding of Israel, the Vietnam war, etc. They have been purposefully denied the actual facts of their own nation's history in service of the Marxist agenda of their teachers and professors. The film Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is a spectacular musical. Based on the short story by Steven Vincent Benet, "The Sobbin' Women," it is a tale reminiscent of the settling of the West, like How the West was Won, another must-watch film about the settlement of American as it moved west. Kiss me Kate (1953), is a version of The Taming of the Shrew of which Shakespeare would be proud. It exudes exuberant love and lust, much of which would be deemed criminal today. It stars three powerful, talented women and the men who love them and includes songs like "I Hate Men" and "Too Darn Hot!" Then there are the the classics: Oklahoma, South Pacific, Carousel, Flower Drum Song, Singin' in the Rain, West Side Story, Paint Your Wagon , The Sound of Music, etc. There are many more. All of them are romantic comedies with underlying themes of seriousness of varying degrees; loss, discrimination, history, etc. Given what these past two generations have been taught by leftist teachers and professors, they would be horrified by the unmitigated passion of the men and women characters toward each other. So intent upon being outraged at the slightest hint of what they have learned is an offense, they will be forever deprived of the jubilant pleasure these films depicted and of what they taught. In Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, for example, Millie marries Adam on the day she meets him without knowing he has six younger brothers who have yet to be civilized. Today the brothers would all be labeled toxic. But rather than take offense and being accustomed to hard work, Millie takes on the job with relish. It is a story of the successful making of families and all that that requires. It is also hilarious and chock full of astonishing dance numbers.

Last week an iconic statue of The Kiss based on the photograph taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt on August 14, 1945 as Americans learned that WWII was over and won was vandalized with red paint and "MeToo" scrawled on it. Rod Dreher published an account of one professor's discussion of the The Kiss that is a must read. Today's young people have been robbed of the capacity for joy in even the simplest, most obvious, spontaneous moments. But as Dreher's professor has written, they have not been taught enough American history to grasp the historical impact of the moment. They have been taught to see every nuance of male behavior, however natural, innocent, or complimentary as a threat. At the same time they are now convinced that there are many, many genders, not just the two. Gender dysphoria has become a fad, the newest hip thing with which to be afflicted. Colleges promote it. Our culture has gone off the rails and seems intent upon extinguishing itself. Why? Because feminism is what is toxic. It strives to make men unnecessary villains and women into malcontents because men are unnecessary villains. Feminism, along with all the -isms it birthed (political correctness, microaggressions, trigger warnings, safe spaces, toxic masculinity, etc), has relegated two generations of young men and women to frustration and confusion as their natural attraction to each other has been denigrated and even criminalized. If only all those musicals of the 1950s and '60s were still watched over and over again as they were throughout the 1970s. Young people might begin to grasp how things used to be, not with the rage and fury the anti-happiness left has inculcated in them but with an eye to the delight with which men and women once so easily interacted with each other, from Shakespeare's day until the 1980s. Those films were not without conflict and heartbreak but they reveled in unbridled love and romance that generated happiness. This is not to suggest that cruel and toxic men and women do not exist; we all know they do. Young people need to have the sense to recognize evil when they see it. But what has been done to these millennials is beyond reprehensible; it is catastrophic. It is doubtful those already indoctrinated by man-hating, gender-is-a-social-construct professors can be saved. Parents and Grandparents! Save your young girls and boys from the blight of silly notions like gender fluidity, intersectionality, and toxic masculinity. Start them off young with a diet of all those old musicals. Let them see that once upon a time men and women navigated their biological differences with competence and delight rather than anger and distrust.