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healingmirth(this has nothing to do with the rest of the entry, but am I the only one who hates blogs that have the subject line as the URL? I'm probably the only one. I'm sure everyone else finds it wildly helpful and/or accessible. I don't tend to title my entries in a useful way, though, so maybe my failure there is all of a piece.)
So I was reading this blog article about American Idiot: http://thecraptacular.com/2010/07/the-last-of-the-american-boys-american-idiot-the-alleged-non-future-of-dudes/ (see what I did there? now you too have access to the subject line)
The point of that commentary, if I can be trusted to summarize, is that the women seeing the show are realizing how much it is about the fact that young, single, white, American males suck at life. I do not disagree with this point, which should not be surprising.
What got me thinking, though, was this quote that they included:
referring, of course, to Will, Johnny, and Tunny.
It wasn't until about ten minutes after I'd read the article that that quote came back to me, and I said "Hey, wait a minute..." because I totally disagree with that characterization of why Tunny enlists. This got me started thinking, because as I've mentioned before, one of the things I love most about the show is how open-ended it is. I can also see any number of paths that lead Our Heroes to where they are at the start of the show. It is a little odd to me that I hadn't considered that someone else watching the show is going to have a very different interpretation of the events onstage. It's extra-odd when you consider that it's a sung-through show, and I would estimate that at least 50% of it belongs to Johnny or Johnny's issues.
(It occurs to me at this point that I don't know if I've talked about how Michael Mayer sees a homoerotic theme in Favorite Son, and that Tunny is "seduced" into joining up. It's his show, obviously, so I'm not about to say that he's wrong, but. I'm sure there is a psychological term for envy being tied up in and/or transforming into desire, and I think that's a much stronger argument than "Tunny thinks Favorite Son is hot." Perhaps that falls under the point he was trying to make, and I just didn't read it that way. The way the show is staged, though, I think Tunny thinks the dancing girls are hot, and would like some dancing girls, and perhaps some wartime glory, of his own. Maybe I just need a new prescription for my slash goggles.
But, again, this is not Tunny joining because he's angry.)
Now, I agree that at the start of the show, Tunny undeniably presents as the angriest of the three. I think he probably is the angriest of the three. But the way I've always seen his character is that rage dissipates (or transforms or redirects in some way that isn't immediately recognizable as rage) once he gets to the city.
So, I don't think he joins the Army because he's angry. I think he joins the Army because he's unmoored. I think there's an argument to be made that his (possible) depression in the city is anger turned inward, and since the Favorite Son is the thing that snaps him out of that depression, then you could say that his anger sends him to the recruiting office. However, I think you could also argue that Tunny is just really, really bored in the city, or simply apathetic, or scared, or any number of things that have more nebulous/questionable ties to anger.
If I were to pick my most consistent interpretation, I'd say that once Tunny was removed from his environment, the things that he was angriest about just faded away. I think there's potential for him to become angry at new things, if he was just an angry dude in general. In my head, there's potential for him to be just such a permanently angry guy, but I don't see that onstage. That may be the character, or (un-)intentional in Stark's performance, or just character bleed-through on my part from his other roles.
And now, I'm going to draw an analogy that I will probably regret, but here goes. I'm going to start down the rabbit-hole of bad ideas by drawing sweeping generalizations about two types of anarchists. Let's say that there are thug-type "anarchists", who basically don't think about much, but are probably most motivated by the prospect of beating people up without reprisal. Then there are your more well-educated anarchists who believe that governments are harmful/immoral/wrong, etc. and have all the relevant writings of the previous few centuries at hand in order to help make their case.
I can see an argument for applying either of those models to Tunny's anger, and I'm not sure which is the more likely one. If he was just angry all the time, for no articulated reason, then I can see how his cut-string puppet act in the city could follow from that. However, I can also easily see him being so sure that X, Y and Z were the reasons why life sucked in the suburbs, and coming slightly unhinged when presented with a whole new set of circumstances that also sucked.
Uh, yeah. So you tell me.
So I was reading this blog article about American Idiot: http://thecraptacular.com/2010/07/the-last-of-the-american-boys-american-idiot-the-alleged-non-future-of-dudes/ (see what I did there? now you too have access to the subject line)
The point of that commentary, if I can be trusted to summarize, is that the women seeing the show are realizing how much it is about the fact that young, single, white, American males suck at life. I do not disagree with this point, which should not be surprising.
What got me thinking, though, was this quote that they included:
In a conversation about the show’s characters, an acquaintance summed it up: “One knocks up his girlfriend and is so depressed that he can’t get up off the couch. The other one becomes a drug addict. And the other one is so anger-filled that he goes to war and gets himself blown up.”
referring, of course, to Will, Johnny, and Tunny.
It wasn't until about ten minutes after I'd read the article that that quote came back to me, and I said "Hey, wait a minute..." because I totally disagree with that characterization of why Tunny enlists. This got me started thinking, because as I've mentioned before, one of the things I love most about the show is how open-ended it is. I can also see any number of paths that lead Our Heroes to where they are at the start of the show. It is a little odd to me that I hadn't considered that someone else watching the show is going to have a very different interpretation of the events onstage. It's extra-odd when you consider that it's a sung-through show, and I would estimate that at least 50% of it belongs to Johnny or Johnny's issues.
(It occurs to me at this point that I don't know if I've talked about how Michael Mayer sees a homoerotic theme in Favorite Son, and that Tunny is "seduced" into joining up. It's his show, obviously, so I'm not about to say that he's wrong, but. I'm sure there is a psychological term for envy being tied up in and/or transforming into desire, and I think that's a much stronger argument than "Tunny thinks Favorite Son is hot." Perhaps that falls under the point he was trying to make, and I just didn't read it that way. The way the show is staged, though, I think Tunny thinks the dancing girls are hot, and would like some dancing girls, and perhaps some wartime glory, of his own. Maybe I just need a new prescription for my slash goggles.
But, again, this is not Tunny joining because he's angry.)
Now, I agree that at the start of the show, Tunny undeniably presents as the angriest of the three. I think he probably is the angriest of the three. But the way I've always seen his character is that rage dissipates (or transforms or redirects in some way that isn't immediately recognizable as rage) once he gets to the city.
So, I don't think he joins the Army because he's angry. I think he joins the Army because he's unmoored. I think there's an argument to be made that his (possible) depression in the city is anger turned inward, and since the Favorite Son is the thing that snaps him out of that depression, then you could say that his anger sends him to the recruiting office. However, I think you could also argue that Tunny is just really, really bored in the city, or simply apathetic, or scared, or any number of things that have more nebulous/questionable ties to anger.
If I were to pick my most consistent interpretation, I'd say that once Tunny was removed from his environment, the things that he was angriest about just faded away. I think there's potential for him to become angry at new things, if he was just an angry dude in general. In my head, there's potential for him to be just such a permanently angry guy, but I don't see that onstage. That may be the character, or (un-)intentional in Stark's performance, or just character bleed-through on my part from his other roles.
And now, I'm going to draw an analogy that I will probably regret, but here goes. I'm going to start down the rabbit-hole of bad ideas by drawing sweeping generalizations about two types of anarchists. Let's say that there are thug-type "anarchists", who basically don't think about much, but are probably most motivated by the prospect of beating people up without reprisal. Then there are your more well-educated anarchists who believe that governments are harmful/immoral/wrong, etc. and have all the relevant writings of the previous few centuries at hand in order to help make their case.
I can see an argument for applying either of those models to Tunny's anger, and I'm not sure which is the more likely one. If he was just angry all the time, for no articulated reason, then I can see how his cut-string puppet act in the city could follow from that. However, I can also easily see him being so sure that X, Y and Z were the reasons why life sucked in the suburbs, and coming slightly unhinged when presented with a whole new set of circumstances that also sucked.
Uh, yeah. So you tell me.
