Cannot...stop...laughing...

[ceebeegee]

I'm on All That Chat right now and perusing a thread about the textual changes to The Fantasticks after people started getting uncomfortable with "It Depends on What You Pay." As you all know, the original song was an extended pun on the word rape--the lyrics officially use it to mean abduction but of course the humor comes from the double meaning.

The rape Venetian
Needs a blue lagoon.
The rape with moonlight
Or without a moon.
Moonlight is expensive but it's in demand.
The military rape:
It's done with drummer and a band.

After, say, 1970, people started grumbling about this (I must say, although I am quick to point out sexism in musicals, I never had a problem with this song--I personally find the song hilarious but I can understand why many wouldn't) and Tom Jones wrote new lyrics for the song that licensors can request if they like.

A poster wrote:

I once heard a - maybe apocryphal? - story that a high school staging *The Fantasticks* about ten years ago was worried about the word "rape," so they changed it to "snatch." Is that possible? Was my friend who told me this making it up? She was a very sweet earnest girl who never lied. . .

Someone responded:

God, that's even worse!!

"So you see the sort of SNATCH depends on what you pay"

I've literally been sitting here giggling for the past 10 minutes at this.

Comments

[king-duncan.livejournal.com]

I heard that story from someone who claimed to have heard it directly from Tom Jones- I heard the nuns of the Catholic school only wrote asking if they could make the change.

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

I'm still laughing. Damn, that is some funny, funny shit.

I think it has something to do with my brother Bart's and my adolescent sense of humor. You know how with Batman villains, they always had a sobriquet, like "Catwoman, Criminal Lady"? Bart came up with "Lola Juicy, Criminal Snatch" just because we found that word hilarious.

[dry-2olives.livejournal.com]

The new lyric actually has the line "The comic snatch."

[targemq8.livejournal.com]

I know a couple who claim to have seen this same lyric change at a Baptist high school production.
The best new phrase to me is
"There's the obvious open schoolboy snatch"

I think this lyric is also in Spring Awakening.

[dry-2olives.livejournal.com]

I think it's really interesting how casual references to rape and domestic violence were used for humor in musicals of the 50's & 60's.

In 1967 Carolyn Leigh wrote this lyric for the opening song of How Now, Dow Jones:

The market is a ticket,
A slender piece of tape
That notifies the public of it's economic shape
Which, if it weren't legal, would be statutory rape.

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

And TV shows. "One of these days, Alice--POW, right in the kisser!"

And sexual harassment:

Mononucleosis was discovered one day
By a famous scientist in the following way
He grabbed his lab assistant and when she gave a lurch
He whispered "Cool it, baby, we're just doing research."

I have an old book of Dear Abby letters, and there's one where this young bride is talking about how her new father-in-law pinches her on the butt all the time and Abby basically says take it as a compliment. Are you kidding me? If some nasty old man touched me like that, I'd slap the tar out of him. UGH!

[dry-2olives.livejournal.com]

What's the mono lesson from?

[ceebeegee.livejournal.com]

It's an Allan Sherman song.