[Gloria Lee McMillan]

Anyone who has passed through Gary, Indiana, in the last thirty years and watched its tragically slow motion decline can only wonder when a Southwestern US theatre company mounts a new production of Meredith Wilson\’s 1957 Broadway Musical The Music Man which includes the song \”Gary, Indiana\”–the purported home of Harold Hill, a con man.  This musical may speak to the current rhetorical situation for some, but for others who know the tragedy of the disenfranchisement and poverty of the real Gary, a horrible feeling of cognitive dissonance occurs.  Those who know the real Gary, Indiana, may find the satire of con men (including political figures) misdirected at Gary, whose African American population is close to 90% and who are certainly not directing the show at any national level.

The response to satiric sub-texts and barbs in this current rhetorical situation may need to involve some kind of Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (Tom Stoppard play) type of re-imagining of The Music Man to reveal broader and more structural inequity in society than the simple discovery that some presumably industrial munchkins are easily led astray by the Wicked Witch of the Gary smokestacks.  More than a strictly academic textual response, something on the order of Monty Python seems to be called for.

Any round table participants on this project are most welcome.

This topic was also posted in: Economics & Literature, GS Drama and Performance, Interdisciplinary Approaches to Culture and Society, LLC African American, RCWS Creative Writing, Scholarship, Censorship, Exclusion, TC Popular Culture, Teaching Modern British and American Satire, Urban Cultural Studies, Rust Belt Literature.

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