#and then the obvious parallels with liking guys and john would lay down the law that under N O circumstances was she too have sex ever beca

[naturenaruto]

been thinkin alot about trans dean and how that would literally make so much more sense about john being soo disappointed and soo demanding and soo resentful..like he had 2 kids but was stuck with an older girl so he put an enormous burden on dean to perform both man (learn hunting and being dependable as a soldier) aaand woman duties (raise a baby basically on his own + take care of john) and how maybe when dean was young at the beginning he didnt mind his hair bein cut short (its just more praxtical sammy!) and he didnt mind john dressing him in boys clothes (ofc dad cant drag a giiiiirl into bars and around hunters jeeeez saam) and then as he got older he realized it suited him just fine so even if john did it to hide him bein a girl he figured well,,,,inreally dont mind a bit! not like im into playin with dolls and makeup anyways! and if john told him to start wrapping his chest and if john found him some off brand t well. it suits him just fine

[poorreputation]

SPN 1X01 Pilot Retrospective Meta

Tag list for old episodes meta! (let me know if you wanna be tagged):

@emblue-sparks @metafest @verobatto-angelxhunter @evvvissticante @dea-stiel @sudo-apt-get-destiel @wildligia (tumbler’s not letting me tag you, sorry)

Pre re-watch notes/things to touch on:

Comparing the Woman in White to John, Sam and Mary/hindsight notes.

S1 motivations vs. S14/15 endgame.

Episode Notes:

Written by: Eric Kripke

Directed by: David Nutter

A long post, so I will put it behind the cut.

Lawrence, Kansas

22 years ago

We begin our tale with Mary bringing Dean into Sam's nursery to say goodnight. John enters the room, and in a nice bit of short-hand, he's wearing a USMC (United States Marine Corps) shirt, showing John was a soldier.

There's a shot of Mary and John in a picture. We already know they're married, so why is it here?

Mary thinks it's John in the nursery, only to find him asleep in the living room in front of the TV. (again, a connection to John's past, he's fallen asleep watching a war movie)

Something that'll become a continuity issue, later in the show: Mary's many years of experience being a Hunter, only to not recognize the flickering of lights as a sign of trouble.

Of course, Mary's wearing a white gown, (white is usually seen as a pure color/ of purity, but in this instance a connection to the Woman in White/see Jess later)

Mary's dead, and everyone involved is scarred for life.

The look on John's face, as we finish the Lawrence sequence, is that of a broken man, who's seen something that will eat away at his mind.

Stanford University Present Day (2005)

Okay, the first image we see of Jess is her in a nurse's costume, white with red trimming. Jess also has medium length curly blond hair. Guys, she looks like Mary, especially in Mary's death scene (white gown, covered in blood). 

We focus in on the picture of Mary and John for visual shorthand, confirming this is a grown-up Sam.

We establish Sam is "scary" smart, has aspirations of becoming a lawyer, and has a job interview on Monday.

Jess: "Knock 'em dead on Monday." laying it on thick, Kripke.

Sam: "What would I do without you?"

Jess: "Crash and burn."

*smooch*

Damn you, Kripke.

Night scene, and holy shit, why do Sam and Jess have so many plants? Why doesn't future Sam have plants in the bunker, you know, something low maintenance?

Dean, why the fuck can't you use the door? Or a phone?

From the get-go, Dean's cocky, suffers from eldest sibling syndrome, and is a shameless horn-dog.

Sam: "He's on a Miller time shift." See, when I first watched the pilot, years ago, I didn't realize this was Sam implying John was a drunk. These things would just fly over my head.

Sam wants to make a point of including Jess in the conversation, of being honest. And yet, the moment Dean says John is on a hunt and hasn't returned, that honesty goes right out the window. More on that later.

Sam and Dean's exposition dump in the hallway, a part of me feels it's an odd way to catch the audience up to speed, while the other part of me knows this is how families argue when they spend most of their time biting their tongues. Sam especially seems the type to mull over his thoughts, storing away comebacks for the perfect moment when they'll be most effective (like later in the episode). Also, it's been years since the brothers have seen each other (we're told later it's been at least 2 years since Dean bothered Sam), they're so icy towards one another.

Sam: "You think Mom would've wanted this for us?" we'd find this out later in S4, but, no. Funny enough, maybe if Mary shared her knowledge of Hunting, something more could've been done (foreshadowing).

Dean: "What're you gonna do? Just live some normal, apple pie life?" Dean, if you'd only taken your own advice, we could've avoided S6.

Sam, paraphrasing John: "If you're gonna go, stay gone." Well, that's only very emotionally manipulative.It does, however, remind me of the U.S. military’s views on those dishonorably discharged, and since John raised them as "warriors", it's not a stretch to think, in a time of crisis, John treated his sons as soldiers.

Dean: "I can't do this alone."

Sam: "Yes, you can."

Dean: "Yeah, well, I don't want to."

This exchange, this vulnerability from Dean, after his initial introduction of being a cocky asshole who hits on his brother's girlfriend, shows just how much of a facade Dean's attitude is. In the end, he's a kid scared of losing his Dad.

It's this vulnerability that convinces Sam to listen.

Come the fuck on, "I can never go home." after we establish Sam left John and Dean, left Hunting behind, and was told to never come back (home). KRIPKE. YOU'RE *not* SUBTLE.

2 years, Dean says, since they last talked. Either Sam entered college late, (20 rather than 18) or Sam and Dean kept in touch even after Sam and John's blow-out fight.

Again, Jess pries for more info, and Sam changes the subject. Nope, that’s not gonna bite him in the ass, at all.

Jericho, California

(insert biblical/wrestling reference here)

We meet monster fodder, I mean, some random dude, who tells his girlfriend Amy over the phone he can't see her that night. He slows down to a stop and picks up the Woman in White.

Anyway, another example of a young woman with curly, medium length hair in a white gown/dress. I mean, her house even looks a bit like John and Mary's old place.

We get a brief, blurry shot of the Woman in White and her kids. Sorry, but if you're familiar with the legend of her/La Llorona, it's easy to see where this is going.

Oh, and whatshisface is dead.

Chips and soda. Breakfast of champions.

Sam's being a real sassy bitch about how Dean and John get their funds. I get it, world-building for the audience, bit it shows just how passive aggressive Sam is in these early seasons; Dean's clearly playing moderator between Sam and an absent John.

Sam: "Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Metalica? It's the greatest hits of mullet rock." Sam, it's not Dean's fault you have poor taste. Shut your cakehole.

Sam: "Sammy's a chubby 12 year old." or, it's what a big brother says to his infant sibling to calm him down, oh wait.

Monster bait's name is Troy. Yeah, I don't care.

Dean sassing the officer and Sam stomping Dean's foot. Yep, they're brothers. This interaction is where their chemistry really starts to shine through.

Amy and her friend are peak mid-2000's goths/emos, good lord.

Dean's "I told you so" smart-ass look as the friend shares the rumors in town, he's such an older sibling.

They... they never tell Amy what happened to her asshole boyfriend, huh? Well. Sucks for Amy.

Researching on a public library computer, fucking hell. (nothing wrong with that, I’ve worked in a public library, but they’re doing super-secret Hunter’s stuff in such a public place)

Have it paused on a photo of Constance Welch, the Woman in White, and the article mentions her husband's exact line of work; associate manager who works the graveyard shift at Frontier auto salvage. Gives me shades of Bobby, who also lost his wife under tragic circumstances.

A mother leaves her child unattended, comes back to check on them, tragedy strikes. Or, so the story goes.

Dean confronts Sam about living a life of willful ignorance, and even asks if Jess knows the truth. Sam makes it clear she doesn't and he intends it to stay that way, as Dean sarcastically quips, "That's healthy".

Really, the more I think about it, the more S6 feels like the inverse of S1; Dean tries to live a normal life, Sam comes stomping in to rain on his parade. Lisa is kept largely in the dark about Dean's past, and gets hurt because of it.

Dean: "You can pretend all you want, Sammy, but sooner or later, you're gonna have to face up to who you are."

Sam: "And who's that?"

Dean: "One of us."

Sam: "No. I'm not like you. This is not going to be my life."

Sam thinks Dean's just talking about Hunting, but Dean means more than that, he means family. One of us, Dad and me, a Hunter and a Winchester.

Sam: "Mom's not coming back." and so on about how he doesn’t even remember Mary, doesn’t share John’s obsession. 

Dean: "No chick flick moments." Dean, dude, bro, you're the one who started this by breaking into Sam's place like a dramatic bitch, and then proceeded to give life/relationship advice. It's already a chick flick.

John's room being covered head-to-toe in case notes, only to come to the obvious conclusion it's the Woman in White. But, Sam said, because of the salt line, John was worried. Now, as far as I can remember, John was never a target of this spirit, so, I think he was paranoid about Yellow Eyes. After all, John had notes on devils/demons up, too, so maybe. I could be wrong.

There's something amusing about Sam and Dean's first duo Hunt, one without John, includes one of them getting arrested. Just, how rare that happens in the rest of the show, compared to how many laws they break daily.

Sam talks to Joseph Welch, who seems to wear the same clothes as Bobby. Also, Sam looks like a giant standing next to him.

Joseph lies to Sam's face about his and Constance's marriage, and it takes Sam a moment to work up the nerve to call him out on it. Or, it's Sam losing his temper. They're dealing with a murderous ghost, after all, and this guy wants to hide the truth.

Sam's done with lying witnesses, and now he's making fake calls to the cops. Gloves are OFF.

So, it's revealed John's purposefully leaving Sam and Dean clues, the journal, and the coordinates, but won't outright tell the truth.

Sam: "I'm not unfaithful. I've never been." See, Sam, that's only in the cheating department. You are, however, keeping Jess in the dark about dangerous stuff. Can any relationship with such big lies every be a faithful one?

Again, the imagery of the flickering lights. A standard in the show later for when a ghost's around, but considering all the visual parallels between the Woman in White and Mary, I think it's intentional.

That CGI of the ghosts vanishing was kinda shit, though. So is the sound of water swirling down a drain, I'm now just thinking of a toilet.

Dean: "I'll take you home." and there, in an episode where the ghost is afraid to go home and face the consequences of their actions, Sam too must go back to Jess.

Sam discovering Jess' body on the ceiling, as the room's engulfed in flames, never fails to give me chills. Hot damn.

Post Episode Notes:

While the pilot is a treasure trove of world building, plotting of character arcs, and chemistry between Jared and Jensen, it still doesn't make up for the fact it's bookended with 2 women getting fridged. Mary and Jess don't get to be characters, only fuel for man-pain, and argue with me all you want, but Mary's send-off in S14 is far superior to what she got in the pilot.

I remember seeing Kripke discuss how many drafts they went through while writing the pilot, and it feels like that at quite a few points. Like maybe the sheriff was to get more time, or Troy's father, who I believe is a cop, would've been more vital to the plot. And Amy, who'll spend who knows how many weeks and months putting up missing person posters for Troy.

I believe Kripke also said they'd considered killing John at the end, rather than Jess. I think, and this is pure speculation, the more they went into the lore for the Woman in White, the more they knew Jess had to die. I don't like it, wish they could've done it different, but it fits the story they wanted to tell.

The Woman in White, John, Mary and Sam, in hindsight

It's a retcon from S4, but if Mary was honest with John about her past as a Hunter, maybe they'd have a better chance with fighting Azazel. It's tragically paralleled to Sam not telling Jess about his own past, which may have prevented her death. And while you could say Heaven and Hell would still have their way, and shape Sam and Dean the way they want to, I'd like to think, given the chance, free will could prevail, And, look at how often keeping secrets is framed as one of the worst things the characters could do to each other?

Additionally, if John had been honest with Sam and Dean about what he wanted them to do, and what kind of danger they were really in, maybe Sam wouldn't have left Jess alone.

Thank you for reading this monstrosity of a meta, I hope you enjoyed/found it interesting!

[wellplacedrocket]

I Visited the Mormon Temple Square and it Really Reminded Me of BioShock Infinite

I don’t go on a lot of (read: any) religious touristy sort of adventures, so maybe the Mormon Temple Square isn’t all that weird in the grand scheme of things. But I’ll be damned if it didn’t give me hints of Columbia, the city in BioShock Infinite. Hear me out on this.

I want to caveat before I go further that it’s probably gonna seem like I’m really picking on Mormons here. I’m not. Mormonism is absolutely no weirder than any other religion, and there are plenty of Mormons (probably most of them) who are much smarter, more hardworking, successful, and better to their fellow man than I am. If you roll your eyes at scripture of Moroni, but turn around and worship Jesus or Vishnu or Odin or Buddha, and follow the World of God as explained to you by Muhammad, then your cognitive dissonance is so thick, so dense, that it must throw off compasses. I don’t think religious or spiritual people are stupid for being that way.

Anyway.

I was in Salt Lake City with a few hours to kill, and figured the Mormon Temple Square would be the one thing I couldn’t get anywhere else, so why the hell not? Let’s get my Mormon on. Many of the buildings in the Temple Square are made with this gorgeous white granite that pops up nearby, and so to the eye a lot of it looked like the White City of Gondor.

The visitors centers are small museums that lay out the history, scripture highlights, and current tenants of Mormon theology.

As a kid, I was raised Catholic-lite, but I’ve never been to the Vatican, and I wonder if there’s similar stuff anywhere else among worldwide Christian churches. That Noah’s Ark museum in Kentucky, maybe? The tone of much of this stuff seems to be to reassure outsiders that hey, Jesus is still just the best! He’s the best, you guys. We’re not any different from your local bake sale-having church people at all! In fact, there doesn’t seem to be much that explicitly tries to contrast with other Christian sects whatsoever, until you get to the Book of Mormon (the actual Book of Mormon) stuff that takes place in the Western Hemisphere.

A lot of this stuff came across to me as a “here’s how to be” kind of children’s book in museum form. It’s not really propaganda, I guess, because conduct prescriptions are what religions are supposed to do. However, the exhibits and artwork they had showing important people in Mormon scripture and the paramount religious events in their lives started giving me weird, familiar vibes.

A 19th century New Yorker who has some sort of religious awakening, begins to preach, gathers a cadre of like minded true believers, establishes a hyper-ardent offshoot Christian sect in the U.S., insists upon racism as one of the pillars of this new theology, is revered as a prophet to his people, gains power and respect (which he abuses), and begins an exodus of his followers out of American society to found their own civilization which will eventually prove hostile to the U.S.? Oh, you thought I was describing Joseph Smith or Brigham Young? Well, surprise, it’s (also) Zachary Hale Comstock, villain of Bioshock Infinite.

I’m not the first to draw this comparison. Here’s a much better article than I could hope to write from an anonymous blogger who claims to be an ex Mormon. And Bioshock creative head Ken Levine mentioned in a Mother Jones article:

There’s a bit of Joseph Smith in [Comstock], a bit of Teddy Roosevelt…Roosevelt was a very progressive figure in many ways. But he was also what you’d probably call a neoconservative in his view of America’s role in the world. So I have trouble comparing Comstock to him directly. Also, I’d have trouble just comparing Comstock to Joseph Smith or Brigham Young. I mean, the American-centric nature of the religion that he forms has some similarities to Mormonism, but there’s nothing in the Mormon church that approached the level of sinisterness you’d find in a Comstock.

In the game (where the next bunch of linked images are from), Comstock is a religious figure with a hyper-nationalism for his own vociferously racist vision of America, which never actually existed and is more twisted than even our own real history. There’s a part of the game where you play through a museum dedicated to the history of Columbia, the city-state Comstock founded, and it puts a very religious sort of spin on the founding of the United States and points in its history. Abraham Lincoln is called “The Apostate” and is remembered as an insidious Satan figure, while John Wilkes Booth is a saint. The Confederate Army, being the true soul of America to these zealots, is led by the angelic spirit of George Washington. The locals are generally hostile.

All of this stuff is understandably batshit, because they were trying to write a villain in Comstock. I’m not saying Mormons are or were evil like this guy. I’m saying it seems pretty likely that the devs took Mormon lore, cranked the evil and steampunky sci-fi up to 11, and out came Comstock and Columbia.

The American founding fathers appear in Mormon religious works, notably in writings by Wilford Woodruff, fourth president of the LDS Church, describing religious visions:

The spirits of the dead gathered around me, wanting to know why we did not redeem them ... These were the signers of the Declaration of Independence ... I thought it very singular, that notwithstanding so much work had been done, and yet nothing had been done for them ... I straightway went into the baptismal font and called upon brother McCallister [sic] to baptize me for the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

The LDS Church is extremely PR conscious and has left doctrinal, institutional racism behind, but it’s a poorly kept secret that the early days didn’t look too good. Unlike the populations of other Western Territories (Colorado and California in particular), the Mormons mostly took a pass on the Civil War, though to their credit, there isn’t much evidence to suggest explicit sympathy for the Confederacy. However, here’s Brigham Young:

Shall I tell you the law of God in regard to the African race? If the white man who belongs to the chosen seed mixes his blood with the seed of Cain, the penalty, under the law of God, is death on the spot. This will always be so. The nations of the earth have transgressed every law that God has given, they have changed the ordinances and broken every covenant made with the fathers, and they are like a hungry man that dreameth that he eateth, and he awaketh and behold he is empty.

And now here’s Comstock:

What exactly was the Great Emancipator emancipating the Negro from? From his daily bread? From the nobility of honest work? From wealthy patrons who sponsored them from cradle to grave? From clothing and shelter? And what have they done with their freedom? Why, go to Finkton, and you shall find out. No animal is born free, except the white man. And it is our burden to care for the rest of creation.

The Mormons flirted with armed rebellion but eventually backed down when the United States and local native nations made it clear they were not fucking around. Joseph Smith, a 100% legit, honest to God prophet to his people, had some pretty dark things to say about the U.S., especially the godless northeast cities:

Nevertheless, let the bishop go unto the city of New York, also to the city of Albany, and also to the city of Boston, and warn the people of those cities with the sound of the gospel, with a loud voice, of the desolation and utter abolishment which await them if they do reject these things. For if they do reject these things the hour of their judgment is nigh, and their house shall be left unto them desolate.

And here’s Woodruff again, in a prophesy “confirmed” by Young:

While you stand in the towers of the Temple and your eyes survey this glorious valley filled with cities and villages, occupied by tens of thousands of Latter-day Saints, you will then call to mind this visitation of President Young and his company. You will say: That was in the days when Presidents Benson and Maughan presided over us; that was before New York was destroyed by an earthquake. It was before Boston was swept into the sea, by the sea heaving itself beyond its bounds; it was before Albany was destroyed by fire; yea, at that time you will remember the scenes of this day.

Well, here’s a scene in Bioshock Infinite that shows a time-travel flash forward to the future year 1984, what Comstock will do if not stopped. He floats Columbia right over New York and starts bombing:

How the hell do they not get shot down? Sci-fi weapons or shields, I’m guessing. Columbia imagines if a civilization of religious secessionists hadn’t decided to chill out in the end, the way the Mormons did.

If you need any more convincing of the connection here, in BioShock Infinite, one of the protagonists who the player spends a lot of time with and who drives the story is Comstock’s daughter Elizabeth. She is kept a gilded-cage prisoner and wants out of Columbia, and much of the action is about helping her to escape. SPOILER ALERT FOR A 5-YEAR OLD GAME: Elizabeth’s parentage isn’t what it seems, she was actually given the name Anna at birth. Well, there was a famous ex-wife of Brigham Young, one of 55, who decided she wasn’t about that life, alleged domestic abuse against Young and filed for divorce (both a huge deal for their time), and ultimately wrote an autobiographical account called Wife No. 19. This woman’s name? Ann Eliza Webb.

No doubt you could substitute any other religion and find similar parallels to BioShock Infinite in art and lore, but the Americanness of the LDS Church is what sells this idea to me, how both the real life Mormon church and the fictional characters and civilization draw from the cultural fundamentals of this country, as well as our absolute worst elements. The obvious difference is the Mormons wrestle with the racism and violence in their church’s past, and for sure try to do good works in the world today. Not so for Comstock and Columbia. But that’s part of what made them such compelling villains.

[ismael37olson]

I've Been a Sinner, I've Been a Scamp

A lot of musical theatre fans love Anything Goes, but consider it a guilty pleasure, the artsy equivalent of Mississippi mud cake, just a mindless, old-fashioned musical comedy confection. They register great surprise when I describe it as a sharp satire. But it is. Musical comedy had dealt in gentle social satire since the beginning, but Anything Goes was the first successful Broadway musical comedy to build its story on two parallel threads of fierce, pointed satire. This time the plot came out of the satirical agenda, rather than the satire being just a fun side joke. I've written a lot about the neo musical comedy, which emerged in the 1990s as one of the dominant musical theatre forms. A neo musical comedy involves the devices and conventions -- and usually the full-out joy -- of old-fashioned musical comedy, but with a more socio-political, more ironic, and often more subversive point of view. Think of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, Bat Boy, Urinetown, Heathers, Something Rotten, The Scottsboro Boys, Cry-Baby; but there were a few examples even earlier, like Little Shop of Horrors in 1982, The Cradle Will Rock in 1937, and really, The Threepenny Opera in 1928. And arguably, Anything Goes in 1934. Anything Goes was a dead-on satirical chronicle of That Moment... which also happen to be This Moment. Maybe we're just too used to Anything Goes at this point, to see it as it once was. But this is a show that includes a mock religious hymn to a (supposed) murderer, skeet shooting with a machine gun, a love song that mentions snorting coke, and a parody religious revival meeting featuring a song with a slyly sexual hook line. If you doubt the double entendre of "Blow Gabriel, Blow," this is the same songwriter who wrote in the title song, "If love affairs you like with young bears you like..." That meant then what it means today. And notice in the scene leading up to the song, most of the confessions are sexual. Reno is presented as an explicitly sexual presence from the beginning, so her spot as lead singer / evangelist, and with her randy angels as back-up, it's hard not to read the song as sexual double entendre.

In comic counterpoint to that, the language of the "Blow, Gabriel" lyric is Religious Symbolism as a Second Language. This is an amateur, or more to the point, a religious outsider, leading this revival meeting -- with the help of the fake-minister "Dr. Moon." It's obvious neither of them are really believers, and that doesn't seem to bother the crowd a bit. And by the way, why do we want Gabriel to blow his horn? The Bible says that "an archangel with the trumpet of God" will announce the Second Coming, and people have assumed that's Gabriel, particularly since Milton made that connection in Paradise Lost. During the Depression, many American believed that they were living through the "great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world until now, no, and never will be." (Matthew 24:21) So riffing on that, Reno and her angels (I think we're supposed to assume this is one of their regular numbers) pray for the archangel to signal the end of the tribulations (Prohibition, the Depression) and announce with his trumpet the coming of Christ. Reno assures Gabriel she's ready to "trim [her] lamp," a Bible metaphor meaning she'll work at and maintain her faith (to keep oil lamps burning brightly and consistently, you have to trim the wick back), that she's mended her ways (we can only guess what those ways included), that now, "I'm good by day and I'm good by night." Of course, that line assumes that Reno hasn't always been "good by night." But these "sinners" aren't asking for forgiveness or anything; they just want to "play all day in the Promised Land." It's a remarkably crass take on the Book of Revelation's thousand years of peace and righteousness. And all this to jazz music, until recently considered the devil's music... In one section, they all chant:

Satan, you stay away from me, 'Cause you ain't the man I wanna see! I'm gonna be good as the day I was born, 'Cause I heard that man with the horn! Do ya hear it?

Once you really pay attention to this lyric, you realize this section is all about the End Times. They want to be good, because Jesus and Judgment Day are coming soon! One of the more subtle jokes in the show is in this song, when the women take the melody and the men sing "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" in counterpart, also a song about angels taking "me" to heaven. Since this is the male passengers and crew singing this counter-melody, are we to read that as spontaneous, that religious fervor is taking them over? Since this is always a big, involved, full-company, Broadway musical comedy dance number, it lays on top of our fake revival meeting an even more cynical layer of comment -- religion really is show business. But there's even more swimming around in Anything Goes. When the show opened in late 1934, Prohibition had ended just a year earlier, but the Depression rolled on, and the Dust Bowl kept destroying lives. The FBI was at the height of its notoriety, but the public loved some of the gangsters on the FBI's Most Wanted list (which is the whole point of "Public Enemy Number One"). Importantly, the FBI -- standing in for law and order in general -- is not on board the S.S. American. In fact, they arrest the wrong guy at the beginning of the show, and leave the ship! They're not up to the job. They can't/won't protect us. Was this a comment on how hard it was for law enforcement to catch America's celebrity criminals, John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Bonnie & Clyde, et al.?

Here on the S.S. American, we are in Shakespeare's metaphorical woods, away from laws and civilization, where two things will happen. First, love will get "fixed" as our characters de-couple from the wrong partners and re-couple with the right partners. Second, with lots of liquor and very little "law," these passengers are free to act on their impulses, to chase after various forms of vice, to be their "natural" selves. And notice that the ship is called the "American" -- this place of no rules and no law is 1930s America, where (until a year earlier) lots of Americans broke the law by drinking alcohol. When that many Americans broke the law, when they stopped believing in the institutions that failed them, America became functionally lawless. By calling the ship the S.S. American, the show's writers were underlining their social commentary. As a comic microcosm of our country, these passengers showcase the worst of the American inclination to make celebrities out of criminals and show biz out of religion, an inclination as prevalent today as it was in the thirties. But the satiric aim is more pointed than just those two overarching themes. So what else does Anything Goes satirize? A lot. Even though economists will tell you the 1929 stock market crash did not "cause" the Depression, it was still the starting pistol, and most people in 1934 believed rich Wall Street types were to blame. Notice that in Anything Goes we have two representatives of Wall Street -- the drunken, horny, nearly blind Mr. Whitney, and the shit-disturbing rogue Billy Crocker. The name Crocker comes from the French for "heartbreak." In this story Wall Street is decidedly undependable.

Richard Whitney had been the very famous president of the New York Stock Exchange and during the 1930s, he was famed for steering his clients through the treacherous waters of the Depression. But his success was a scam of the proportions of Enron and Bernie Madoff, and he was finally caught in 1938 when his firm collapsed. Still, as audiences watched Anything Goes in 1934, Whitney was the hero of the rich, so naming Billy's boss Whitney -- and making him a drunk -- was a pretty subversive reference. According to Wikipedia:

On October 24, 1929, Black Thursday, Whitney attempted to avert the Wall Street Crash of 1929. Alarmed by rapidly falling stock prices, several leading Wall Street bankers met to find a solution to the panic and chaos on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. The meeting included Thomas W. Lamont, acting head of Morgan Bank; Albert Wiggin, head of the Chase National Bank; and Charles E. Mitchell, president of the National City Bank of New York. They chose Whitney, then vice president of the Exchange, to act on their behalf.  With the bankers' financial resources behind him, Whitney went onto the floor of the Exchange and ostentatiously placed a bid to purchase a large block of shares in U.S. Steel at a price well above the current market. As traders watched, Whitney then placed similar bids on other "blue chip" stocks. This tactic was similar to a tactic that had ended the Panic of 1907, and succeeded in halting the slide that day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average recovered with a slight increase, closing with it down only 6.38 points for that day. In this case, however, the respite was only temporary; stocks subsequently collapsed catastrophically on Black Tuesday, October 29. Whitney's actions gained him the sobriquet, "White Knight of Wall Street."

It is a little weird that Mr. Whitney's first name is Elijah, coincidentally (?) named after the nineteenth-century inventor and arms manufacturer... The Harcourts (and Mrs. Wentworth, in the '34 version) stand in for America's "cafe society," the 1% of 1934. In the original version of the show, the Harcourts' family business was in serious trouble and needed saving, which was the reason for the arranged marriage. Is it any wonder Billy and Hope both would like to escape this culture? According to an article on the PBS website:

The Great Depression was partly caused by the great inequality between the rich who accounted for a third of all wealth and the poor who had no savings at all. As the economy worsened many lost their fortunes, and some members of high society were forced to curb their extravagant lifestyles. But for others the Depression was simply an inconvenience especially in New York where the city’s glamorous venues – places to see and be seen – such as El Morocco and The Stork Club were heaving with celebrities, socialites and aristocrats. For the vast majority the 1930s was a time of misery. But for many American dynastic families, parties helped to escape the reality on the street and the grander the better.

Parties and trans-Atlantic cruises. Many stories of the Great Depression show us the shattered and disenfranchised turning to religion in their time of need. But church attendance grew during the Depression only about five percent. Notably, no one aboard the S.S. American in Anything Goes has that spiritual need, and so for these people religion becomes show business, entertainment, the latest fad. Though the content of "Blow, Gabriel, Blow" is basically reverent, the song's rowdy, fast, jazz music quickly and comically short-circuits any hint of real religion fervor. This is religion as party. The only genuine symbol of religion we see in the show is the comically clueless Bishop Dobson, who's banished from this community (i.e.,mistakenly arrested) before the ship even sets sail; and all we're left with is the fake religion of fake-minister "Dr." Moon, and the gambling "Christian converts." Genuine religion (and conventional morality), the Baptist tent revivals and religious radio shows of the 1930s, are all missing from this place. Here there is no moral control -- it's Shakespeare's woods. In the 1930s, the 1960s, and also today, Dark Times bring forth the most pointed satire. Anything Goes opened halfway through the Depression, which also begat brilliant satires like Of Thee I Sing, Let 'Em Eat Cake, and The Cradle Will Rock.. The 1962 revival opened at the start of one of the most divided, angry decades in American history. The 1987 revival opened on the infamous Black Monday, the day the stock market crashed again. None of the show's targets feel dated, because we're struggling with all the same things now. Still today, religion is often repackaged as slick, high-budget show biz. When America's evangelicals strongly support the womanizing vulgarian and sexual predator Donald Trump, religion in America is on life support. And still today, we make celebrities out of criminals, and depending where the various investigations lead, Trump may be the best illustration of that too. Cole Porter's songs have all the bite, the sophistication, and the smartass humor of Ira Gershwin and Yip Harburg, but Porter's songs often bite a little harder, his lyrics closer to how people talk, instead of always just building toward a funny rhyme. Like those of the great George M. Cohan, Porter's lyrics sound like they could actually come out of the mouths of the characters. If his songs can often be transplanted from one show to another, that's only because many of his shows were about the same kind of people -- smartass, subversive, sexual, clever, ironic, complicated, and contradictory. Just think for a second about all the characters in Anything Goes that have contradictory impulses. Porter wrote both in contemporary slang and in genuinely elevated, powerfully poetic language when the moment called for it. His songs can be emotionally shattering and they can be icily cynical, about the most intimate insecurities or the most macro satire. Porter and his co-writers were writing old-school musical comedy, but they were also chronicling our times -- then and now -- most insightfully. It's so much fun working on this rich, crazy material. Long Live the Musical! Scott from The Bad Boy of Musical Theatre http://newlinetheatre.blogspot.com/2018/01/ive-been-sinner-ive-been-scamp.html