Take the skinheads to the theater instead

All the people who made Producers jokes about the Hitler Restaurant in Bombay should have saved their breath, because a better ship just came in: a new musical called White Noise, which “explores how racism has alarmingly crept up to the edge of pop music.” Seems farfetched, but its main characters, teen pop stars Blanche and Eva, are based on Prussian Blue, a pair of 14-year-old twins who have made a career from white power pop. The producers, creator/director Ryan J. Davis and composer/lyricist/bookwriter Joe Drymala, told Broadway World that a sendup of Prussian Blue “seemed like the kind of thing you could do in a campy way and really make fun of the idea of white supremacist pop music.” Melding pop music, which prides itself on sugary inoffensiveness, with fascism is a hard sell, but Drymala swears it makes sense. Pop music, he explains, is “mundane, it’s manipulative, it taps into our most base instincts, and there’s no escape from it. ... Pop music has a nakedly emotional appeal, just like the most effective propaganda.” One could say the same for advertising, really. I must say, I applaud Ryan and Joe for at least using shock entertainment to make a point. And one can almost understand why white supremacists attempt to pollute pop music. Without their misguided efforts, would there still be a place in the industry for blonde, white women?

—Posted by David Kiefaber

September 6, 2006 in Kiefaber | Permalink