Spring Awakening & Jersey Boys
by Samantha Steven
I saw two shows on Broadway that showcased Ayn Rand’s view of art particularly well. Often times, I can’t easily sum up stories—as most have a mixed philosophy—just as America has the mixed Hebrew, Greek, and Roman philosophies. But I saw two Broadway shows in two nights and was struck by how one would be the Romantic heroic vision Rand would applaud and the other glorified suffering.
The first play, Spring Awakening, centers around teens coming of age and adjusting to their hormones in a strict religious German community. I really liked where it was going theme-wise at first; particularly in this school scene where protagonist Meikoff resents mere memorization and wants to analyze ideas, not reiterate the professor’s beliefs. In the song “All That’s Known”, he observes “Thought is suspect and money is their idol. And nothing is okay unless it’s scripted in their Bible.” And later: “Still, I know to trust my own true mind and to say there’s a way through this.”
In this WHAT TIME German background though, we have these fun punky, cussy, songs that perfectly capture teen angst with sex, masturbation, school dogma, insecurities, growing up—all that awesome Holden Caufield cynicism and frustration.
Spring Awakening especially portrays the harms, silliness, and hypocrisy of equating sex with sin & shame as Judeo-Christean morality encourages.
But while it excellently showcases these Atlas themes, I got turned off when the main girl character, Wendla, upon learning that her friend Martha got beaten by her father, asked this guy she liked—Meikoff—to beat her with a switch from the tree. She says that she has never been beaten or suffered and wants to take Martha’s place. He refuses, but she continues to goad him. Finally, he hits her once, but she cannot feel anything through her skirts. She pulls up her clothes and he hits her leg, and she taunts him for "just stroking" her. Finally, Melchior throws away the switch and beats her with his fists until she screams.
I know this is supposed to be some kind of role-playing sexual thing and a part of the whole “awakening”, but I just find it disturbing and annoying. And the play acts like this is such an artistic, hallmark movement. When Meikoff suggests to Wendla that someone report her friend’s father to the police; Wendla ignores the practical advice and continues to urge him to beat her as though that would solve the problem in a more “beautiful” way. The understone is “Suffering is inevitable; we might as well all share in it together.” In a another scene and another context, Meikoff says hates this bourgeois society and wishes that everyone had enough morality to let themselves be equal with one another. Ehh.
Anyway, the play ends with everyone killing themselves: well Wendla dies having an abortion and their suicides are held up as the only solution to a world full of suffering. I don’t know—it just takes such a dark, perverse turn and that Wendla character strains credibility with such a perverse “empathy” if you could call it that to be beaten because her friend is beaten. It’s not like she’s a sister who asks to take the punishment instead, but she just wants to be hurt because others are hurt.
The other play, Jersey Boys, is the one Ayn Rand would like because it’s not a malevolent sense of life story, but instead recounts the success story of the 1960s Franki Valli and the Four Seasons (Oh What A Night!, I Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, Walk Like A Man, Big Girls Don’t Cry..etc. The list goes on and on.) Anyway, it depicts talent and achievement and has happy giddy 60s music to accompany it. Basically a VH1 Behind The Music type of show; you leave the theater happy and inspired whereas you leave the theater of Spring Awakening wondering how some scenes related to overall storyline and you want a better sense of foreclosure than the typical Shakespeare tragedy-end: “And then everyone died.” Still, Spring Awakening had outstanding performances & music. The lyrics capture teen angst perfectly. And I do like several themes. I just wondered what the writer started smoking when all this masochistic shit entered the picture. And a lot of the lines of dialogue were just plain corny and stupid—basically every time Wendla spoke I cringed and every time she’d sing she’d almost redeem herself, but then she’d talk again. Moritz was the best character, but he killed himself because this girl he liked asked him out—which of course makes perfect sense. Avoid anything good that happens in your life; just embrace your suffering and kill yourself and you’ll have the ultimate spring awakening. Ayn Rand would be turning in her grave if she saw that play. Cliché I know, but she would.
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