We got the obsessive collector. This doc though is not about the Broadway show memorabilia we expected. Instead, we learned about the mostly bygone era of corporate sponsored musical theater which thrived in 1950s through the 1980s. This relationship of the arts to industry somehow made me think of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976).
Allow me to explain.
Steve Young (Not the HOF football player)
This song, "My Bathroom" is from the 1969 production of The Bathrooms are Coming, a musical created for American Standard. The joke of the bit is that these recordings are odd or quirky or seemingly absurd. Typical of the collection were recordings such as "We've Got it All in Rockford," "Parakeet Training Record", "How to Buy Meat," and the comic gold (mined by donsbasement, as well) that is William Shatner's "Mr. Tambourine Man"
Pretty snarky.
Steve Young was the main writer of this bit and he went to record and book stores looking for these oddities. Along the way, he discovered the history of the industrial musicals.
In an interview with the Detroit Free Press, April 2019, Young said....
I, at first, was just looking for something we could make a quick joke about. It seemed absurd and maybe a little sad that there were entire, full-blown musicals about electrical power or tractors or how to sell floor tile or insurance. I certainly had no idea when I started on this path how many twists and turns there would be of me getting to meet people and learn about their lives and feel like a member of various families, which I treasure.."
Young became an avid collector of these very rare recordings and his story and the story of industrial musicals is told in the (somewhat too long) documentary. Here is the trailer.
The industrial musicals were paydays for theater producers, directors, writers, musicians, actors, singers and dancers. Their productions geared towards salesmen (mostly men, mostly white) reflected the capitalist optimism of the 50s and 60s before running into troubled 70s. A time which also saw the decline of this genre.
/红光亮, Red, Bright, and Shining
Meanwhile in China, Mao Zedong's goal was to purge remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society. Artists who were guilty of these practices were condemned, imprisoned, and sometimes killed. The party tried to create a new visual culture one that celebrated workers, farmers and industrial progress.
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| "Long live the triumph of Chairman Mao's revolutionary line of literature and art!" |
Any representation of Mao had to be 红光亮, Red, Bright, and Shining further reinforcing the cult of Mao.
And then strange things happened in 1972. Nixon went to China and Andy Warhol reportedly read an article in Life magazine that called Mao the 'most famous person in the world." Warhol based the image from the cover of Mao's 1966 Quotations from Chairman Mao.
The Red, Bright and Shining movement of China has fared far better in cultural circles than the industrial musicals of the somewhat intersecting eras. The industrial musicals were hidden in plain sight and certainly not taken seriously as cultural offerings. Yet, the visual images of the Cultural Revolution have maintained artistic relevance.
Here are some exhibitions of art created during the Culture Revolution.
University of Oxford: 2019
Cornell University 2009
Stanford University 2019
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk. VA, 2018
No conclusions. Just odd or quirky or seemingly absurd.
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