Maxim vs "The Swimsuit Edition"

I am currently involved in my first production post-college. It's a small community theatre in Fort Wayne, originally started as an outreach from a church. It has since changed and the director says they aren't affiliated anymore. (I'm not so sure about that since he's still getting a paycheck, but that's a whole other issue.) We will be opening "Much Ado About Nothing" this weekend, one of my favorite shows. It's funny, has lots of good lines and makes for an excellent movie. It even has a good message attached to it. Several actually. Instead of really looking to those however, the director has decided to rely on "experts in the field" and take an extremely different view on the play - it's all about sex.

Yep. Any line in there could have a double meaning and since that's the way Shakespeare intended the play to be presented, it's up to us to find the double and play them up in any way that we can. I wasn't in rehearsal until nearly tech week so I missed a lot of what was building up. It was shocking to watch a run for the first time and see what had happened.

Here's a little more background information for you: per the directors choice, we have kept the original language completely intact, made the costumes Southwestern and have added a sleazy modern magazine to one scene, modern beer cans to others and a modern slingshot to another.

I hope your face is as confused as mine was.

What? What is going on? What time period are we in? I still have no idea. All of these choices were made all the more confusing yesterday with the costumers comment of "you can't wear that jewelery, it doesn't match our setting." What setting?!?! We don't have one.

So we have now coupled a complete lack of time period to the directors choice to play up the sex in any way that he can. Not a good mix. That's how the magazine got into the show. That's how all of the crude gestures and comments got into the show. That's why Christi and I had to say something.

This had become a show that was no longer family friendly. I didn't even want my co-workers to come and I certainly didn't want Nate to. It was kind of telling at that point - if I don't want my friends to come see my work, why am I still involved? With that thought in both of our minds, we sat down with the director and talked it out. We came in the next day to find that the Maxim magazine had been replaced with the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition and many of the gestures had been taken out. It all seemed like steps in the right direction and I felt myself relaxing. I had to laugh when the director made a point to tell us that even though the magazine had been changed, it hadn't changed for the reason we thought. Apparently, there just wasn't enough nudity in the first to satisfy the quest to "sex up" the show. I still thought we had made progress.....

.....then I was told that the Swimsuit Edition is the most obscene it's ever been. Bugger.

Now we come to the title of the post. Ta-da! I thought over my reaction to seeing the magazine change and the information I had learned and wondered "Why did I feel my guard go down?" If these magazines are essentially the same, why did I feel more comfortable with one onstage and not the other? Granted, I haven't actually looked at either and I don't plan to, but I have heard for years that the Swimsuit Edition is a bunch of ...... well, raunchy crap. So, is it the name on the cover? Was it the unknown fear of what could be in Maxim? Was it some abstract idea?

I really don't know. But it got me to thinking about the culture around me and the ideas that surround me. Somehow, I have become accepting of Sports Illustrated and do not immediately find it offensive. I had to sit back and remember the true nature in that edition. It's just as bad...... but it's still accepted. People will see that onstage and not blink too many eyelashes. Why? Perhaps because half of that magazine is seen on beaches around the world and the other half is seen on beaches that aren't frequented by families with small children. Goodness, sometimes, it makes its way off the beach and into town.

That doesn't make it right, good, proper, or something we should accept.

Such a place we've found ourselves in. It makes me sad when I really think about it. Sad to think that my friends and I now have to compete with those images. Sad to think that the men in my life and out of it have had to see that. Sad to think of how far things have gone. Even more sad to think that I can't completely shield anyone from it. The magazine is staying in the show. Some of the gestures are staying. There will be parts that I won't watch and I'll tell others to look away. A perfectly lovely show has been tainted. A man who wrote 400 years ago has been tarnished by people who think he was a dirty old man. I'm not learned enough to debate the point but I don't think that's right at all. Even if there was a grain of truth to it, there's no reason to go looking for trouble and insist that it all be shown onstage. People still enjoy a good show and it doesn't have to be "sexed up." Such is the odd concept that rules my life.