'Offensive' musical starring a pansexual Anne Frank could save Broadway

[TheProle]

Slam Frank, whose developmental run opened on September 17 and closes on October 26, is a reimagining of the story of Anne Frank that asks: What if her diary were inclusive? What if we addressed the lack of queer representation in that attic? What if we finally told the story of the Holocaust in a way that honours all people, not just the white people it has always centred on?

In other words: what if someone produced a musical about Anne Frank fit for the 2020s?

snip

The reason? It could be that, ever since the first election of Donald Trump, a reactionary “woke” piousness has taken root across America’s cultural institutions — especially in the theatre. Nearly every significant American theatre company continues to apologise for the arrival of Europeans on US soil and to offer pro forma declarations of its own enlightenment. And many shows of late (Thoughts of a Colored Man, The Thanksgiving Play, Liberation) have felt more sanctimonious than subversive.

But Slam Frank proves that true originality still exists in musical theatre. Sparked by a 2022 Twitter commenter who asserted that “Yeah, Anne Frank had white privilege”, it reimagines Anne as “Anita” — a pansexual Latina hiding from the Nazis in a radically inclusive attic with her militant black mother, her neurodiverse father and assorted other disordered personalities.

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/slam-frank-holocaust-musical-broadway-jtfpvtndk

[TheProle]

1. Dissenting View: "'Slam Frank': When Satire Goes Too Far"

“Slam Frank” is what happens when someone takes a work of satire too far. As described in broadwayworld.com, “The musical satire imagines what happens when a progressive community theater company decides that maybe now is not the time for us to center these privileged, straight, white European Jews (who spent three years in an attic, hiding from Nazis). And so, in an effort to make our world a better place, this heroic fictional theater troupe transforms Anne Frank’s true story into an intersectional, multiethnic, genderqueer, decolonized, anti-capitalist, hyper-empowering Afro-Latin hip-hop musical.”

In this retelling of The Diary of a Young Girl,” Anne Frank is renamed Anita Franco, with her story set to hip-hop music and the identities of the rest of the characters completely changed in order to “diversify the Holocaust.” This whole concept is meant to ridicule anyone who tries to make the Holocaust not about the Jews, but comes off as an insensitive evocation of Anne Frank’s name and in addition, the memory of the 6 million murdered along with her.

The entire musical’s social media account plays into the satire, exploring how they will be “de-colonizing” and making the Holocaust as a whole more relatable to other minorities. This content is very harmful for two reasons. For the people who realize the concept is satire and are playing along with it, they are making incredibly insensitive comments, even as a joke. For instance, one comment I saw under a video about one of the songs was “6 million albums sold!” with a fire emoji right after that. Then there are the people who truly believe this narrative and the content coming out of this account as reality. Overall, this show downplays Jewish suffering of the past and present by bringing up the ever-popular idea that since Jews are white, they can’t be oppressed.

The entire show is disrespectful, and while the end point the musical is making is relevant, this is an inappropriate way to address this extremism. Even down to the lyrics, there is no respect for the memory of Anne Frank and others’ experiences in the Holocaust with a rap saying, “‘N’ if you’re different / Then sew your patch in / I guess that’s what happens / When you let the Nazis / Dictate the fashions,” and later continues with “I ain’t mad though / I love fashion / She gon’ write it all out in her diary.” The show is scheduled to have staged concert readings in June at Asylum NYC, but there is already a petition to combat this disrespectful production (https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-opening-of-slam-frank-a-disrespect-to-jewish-history).

https://jewishlink.news/slam-frank-when-satire-goes-too-far/

[hlthe2b]

2. She never got to be who she was going to be so I don't like us filling in the "holes," no matter how...

Hers was the epitome of human tragedy. Let her rest in peace. I see this as exploitation, no matter how it is written/portrayed.

[Oeditpus Rex]

3. I don't see the point of this

But then, the arts don't need much of a point.