When it comes to controversy, most writers will tell you it’s not the stuff you see coming that nails you. It’s the stuff you don’t see.
Everyone in the word business has been blindsided by a silly mistake or an unintentional offense.
And this summer, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, creators of the megahit musical “The Book of Mormon,” have been blindsided.
The musical, of course, makes light of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its missionary efforts. In the early days of the show the question was “How much blowback would there be from the church?” (The answer: not much).
But with the advent of Black Lives Matter the question has now become: “Is it appropriate for two rich white guys from Colorado to make fun of a Ugandan pauper with a bad case of maggots?”
That bit, and a dozen others like it, could get the musical shelved.
Josh Gad, who played the excitable Elder Cunningham in the Broadway premiere, says on PeopleTV’s “Couch Surfing,” Parker and Stone will have to do some serious rewriting before the show is fit for public consumption again.
Gad talks as if the show needs a tuneup and a paint job.
The truth is, the transmission has been torn out.
In 2020, clever white guys can no longer mock suffering Black people.
It’s surprising they ever could.
But then much of the success of the musical came from of its provocative nature. The authors pushed things as far as they dared, then pushed them a little farther. Audiences couldn’t believe their eyes and ears.
But a “cutting edge” production can cut many ways. And more than a few scenes are now painful.
For instance, in one segment the gullible Ugandans, who think having sex with babies cures AIDS, are tricked by a white boy into having sex with frogs instead. The audience roars.
In another, Parker and Stone go for hoots and hollers by showing Johnnie Cochrane, O.J.’s attorney, languishing in hell with Adolph Hitler and Jeffrey Dahmer.
And in what is now a cringe-worthy climax, wide-eyed Ugandans elect to write and perform a song-and-dance minstrel show of sorts for visiting white authorities. All that’s missing is a banjo.
(When you’ve finished giggling and slapping your knee, let me know.)
My guess is Parker and Stone hoped their depiction of Ugandan resilience and courage would make gags at the expense of Black people more palatable.
And it did.
For a time.
But now, the spotlight is beaming on the show’s racial shortcomings.
Rudyard Kipling may have declared, “The brown man is the white man’s burden,” but given our evolving racial awareness, this hip and sassy musical, once the toast of Broadway, now unwittingly reveals the truth. When it comes to musical theater in America, “The white man has always been the Black man’s burden.”
Correction: In an earlier version, Josh Gad’s last name was misspelled as Gadd.