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Aug 16, 2022

"13: The Musical": A Pint-Sized "Will and Grace" or a Grade School "High School Musical"?

 13: The Musical, now streaming on Netflix, sounds like Trevor: The Musical and Better Nate Than Never: gay kids facing homophobic harassment, but finding a safe place in musical theater.  I'll stream it, at least until I find out if the central character is gay.

Scene 1: 20% of the population of Manhattan is Jewish, and in some suburbs, it's over 90%.  Immersed in this culture, 12-year old Evan (Eli Golden, below) blissfully practices for his bar mitzvah.  Rabbi Shapiro (Josh Peck) criticizes his Hebrew pronunciation with a joke from the 1990s: "It's God.  He wants his language back."  Jerk!  

They discuss the horror about to befall Evan: his parents are divorcing, and he's moving with his mother to...ugh...Indiana, where Jews are as rare as Democrats. 

 How can he have a killer party, when he doesn't know anyone there, and anyone he meets is bound to be anti-Semitic?  There are 17,900 Jews in Indianapolis alone, dude.


Scene 2: 
 Evan and his crew sing about how he was an A-list cool kid, planning a huge bar mitzvah blowout, but then...plop, Dad dumps Mom, and Mom drags him away to...ugh...Indiana.  Why can't he live with Dad?  At least until after his bar mitzvah?  

Dad (Peter Herman, top photo) appears at the synagogue to say goodbye.  Evan does the "I hate you!" bit and runs away.  

Hey, Mom is Debra Messing, the gay guy's female life partner on Will and Grace.  I wonder if she's leaving Will, too,

Scene 3:  A cow moos as they enter Walkerton, Indiana, population 2,234, a standard stereotyped small town, the way people who've never been to one imagine it.  Grandma (Rhea Pearlman!) does the cool grandma thing while Mom remembers her failed writing career.  Dad calls; Evan ignores him.

Scene 4: Morning. Mom tells Grandma about the misery of the last year, with "lawyers and therapists and carbs."  People break up -- get over it.  Evan comes in, griping about the paucity of Jews in town, and how can he have a Bar Mitzvah when the nearest temple is 2000 miles away? (um...there are synagogues in Indianapolis, South Bend, Bloomington, and Terre Haute).  

Then a 12-year old girl, Patrice, arrives.  She better not be the Girl of Evan's Dreams, or I'm leaving.  He doesn't have a jaw-dropping hormone-oozing moment, but you never know.

Scene 5: Patrice is all liberal, into environmentalism and Sylvia Plath.  She introduces Evan to Archie, who uses a wheelchair and is heterosexual, in love with it-girl Kendra.

Then Patrice and Evan sing about the town, "the lamest place in the world -- but much more interesting, now that you're here."   Darn, they're a romantic couple!  Why couldn't Grandma have introduced Evan to a boy?  Well, maybe there will be some gay kids at school.

Scene 6:  School.  We're introduced to the romantic intrigues of this very diverse small-town Indiana community. Mean Girl Lucy (Asian) and Sidekick Kendra (Hispanic) both likes Brett (black), but he just likes Kendra. In fact, he's been dreaming of kissing her all summer.  

Their gang also includes three guys (Hispanic, white, and black) and three girls (Hispanic, white, and black).  They sing about how much they missed each other over the summer.  Small town -- didn't they see each other every day?

Scene 7:  Lunch.  Evan tells the cool-kid gang about his upcoming Bar Mitzvah.  They don't know what that is, so Mean Girl Lucy gives an anti-Semitic explanation.  "No!" Evan exclaims.  "It's a big party, with a DJ and dancing."  Isn't there also...um, like a religious ceremony involved? 

Uh-oh, the gang hates Patrice!  "She thinks she's better than everyone else, because she composts and doesn't use straws."  And Patrice hates them.  She has her own outcast gang, Archie (the one who uses a wheelchair) and a nonbinary person named Zee.  So the conflict will be Evan's gang vs. his girlfriend, like in "High School Musical"?

Meanwhile, at home, Grandma pressures Mom to return to her failed writing career.  "But what can I write about?  I've hit rock bottom.  My life couldn't possibly get any worse."  You have a nice place to live, enough food, and someone who is paying all of your expenses and not pressuring you to find a job..  I'd call that a sweet life.


Scene 8:
Sports practice.  The cheerleaders, all girls,  discuss Kendra's upcoming kiss with Brett.  "You only get one shot at a first kiss.  Do it wrong, and your social life is over forever.  No one will ever want to date you, or be your friend." Lucy sings about how she is going to betray her bff and kiss Brett first.  Then she'll have him!  Um...girlfriend, you're allowed to kiss several people.

Left: Josh Peck, best known for the Nickelodeon teencom Drake and Josh, plays the rabbi.

Scene 9: Breakfast.  Mom is a terrible cook.  Evan and Patrice have broken up. Dad calls; Evan ghosts him.

Evan goes off to play baseball with the cool kids -- boys only, because of course no girl is into sports. Lots of sexist stereotypes.

Meanwhile, Archie complains to bff Patrice about the upcoming Kendra-Brett kiss: "If they kiss, I'll never get Kendra, and my life will be meaningless forever." Maybe date someone else?

Scene 10: Evan and Brett playing basketball by themselves.  Could they have a gay-subtext buddy-bond?  No, Brett is just being nice to Evan so he'll get to play the guitar at his Bar Mitzvah.  He's also a song writer.  His repertoire includes "Kendra," "Hey, Kendra," and "Is Kendra Home?"  Evan agrees to find a place for Brett to kiss Kendra.  

The other cool boys discuss the movie Bloodmaster.  "Our parents will never let us see it!" But, Evan sings, it's the perfect place for a first kiss!  They just need to sneak in. 

Complication:  Lucy drags Evan aside and threatens him: make sure that Brett and Kendra don't kiss, or I'll tell everyone to stay away from your Bar Mitzvah!  

I'm done.  I'll just go through on fast-forward, to see if there's any LGBTQ representation.  At all.


Nope
.  Zee appears in two more scenes, but never is referred to with they/them pronouns, so maybe they're just androgynous.  Some of the cool boys don't get girls, but there is no indication that they like boys; they're just too deeply invested in the Brett-Kendra thing to worry about their own romances.

What about Evan?  In the stage musical, he kisses Patrice.  Here he doesn't.   You could still, possibly, read Evan as a gay kid, and Patrice as his bff, Grace to his Will.  It's a stretch, but possible.

2 comments:

  1. Why are kids' shows like this? Like, this seems to be "we look down on the landlocked states for being backward" and then the writers themselves have these archaic ideas about gender roles.

    Bloodmaster. Sounds like that period in the 90s when all new comic book characters had to have names that were riffs on Deathstroke. Even the good guys.

    Also, other than het, what's so hard about Hebrew pronunciation?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It wouldn't be hard to show some boy cheerleaders and some girls playing basketball along with the boys. I guess they needed a boy/girl split so each could sing about how much they liked the other.

      Delete

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