Brokeology
Mar. 31st, 2011 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mathhobbitSo I saw this play last night. I've seen worse plays. It was a sensitive, funny exploration of emotionally charged subjects with (mostly) believable and likeable characters.
I rate it a .5 on the Dykes to Watch Out For scale from 0 to 3. It was the most naively and blandly sexist thing I've seen in a while. It had two female characters -- the perfect wife and the nagging wife. The perfect wife got a little bit of stage time to establish her credentials and was thriftily reused later in the play. The nagging wife was played by a cell phone -- everyone knows the stereotype; no need to pay an actor! She needn't have any lines; her thoughts are only important in as much as they illuminate the character of her partner.
Any of the three main characters could have been replaced by a woman. I think swapping the father for a mother would weaken the play (which says something about my own sexism), but that replacing either of the two sons with a daughter would make for a very interesting, very different experience. I'm having a lot of fun thinking about how the message of the play would change with each of these replacements.
I rate it a .5 on the Dykes to Watch Out For scale from 0 to 3. It was the most naively and blandly sexist thing I've seen in a while. It had two female characters -- the perfect wife and the nagging wife. The perfect wife got a little bit of stage time to establish her credentials and was thriftily reused later in the play. The nagging wife was played by a cell phone -- everyone knows the stereotype; no need to pay an actor! She needn't have any lines; her thoughts are only important in as much as they illuminate the character of her partner.
Any of the three main characters could have been replaced by a woman. I think swapping the father for a mother would weaken the play (which says something about my own sexism), but that replacing either of the two sons with a daughter would make for a very interesting, very different experience. I'm having a lot of fun thinking about how the message of the play would change with each of these replacements.
