All That Jazz

I was gut punched by this "It Gets Better" video created by members of the current Broadway cast of Chicago. It is supposed to encourage young gay women and men (and other misfits) having a rough time of it, but the stories of bullying, one after another, eight minutes of them, are immensely sad. The fact that the protagonists all ended up on Broadway - plus some with relationships and one with a child - seems beside the point, of little comfort. The service this video performs is that, as the stories pile up, you feel the hopelessness, you understand why suicide would seem like a relief. (Sad music in the background was no help. It's Chicago for Heaven's sake; I kept wanting to hear the opening vamp from the show, building up to a rousing chorus of, "Oh, I'm no one's wife, and oh, I love my life!") As well as these people's lives have turned out, one sees in their faces that you never get over it. The Ambassador Theater is just a better class of refuge, not a winner's circle.

After this I watched a similar, shorter video by the cast of the national tour of "Wicked," which video is also peppier, sexier, and more fun. And it affected me much less. No one seemed permanently scarred. And I like permanently scarred. I think John Kander and Fred Ebb, the creators of Chicago, like permanently scarred. (I think of the late Fred Ebb in the present tense.) Think about it: they also created Cabaret, Kiss of the Spider Woman and the brand new Scottsboro Boys. Their specialty is making permanently scarred sing. Certainly Bob Fosse, Chicago's original director/choreographer, liked permanently scarred. He made permanently scarred dance. He splashed permanently scarred across movie screens. Lenny Bruce reading court transcripts to a dwindling, hostile audience in Lenny. The graphic death of a Playboy bunny in Star 80. (Yes, I liked that film.) I once heard a Russian theater director tell of a meeting of Russian actors at which salaries were at stake. "How much," one actress demanded, "are our wounds worth?"