Hi, everyone. And welcome to one of your favorite segments, The Sound of Musicals

歡迎回來【曲外之音】. Hi, Oliver.

Hello, again

It has been a very long time.

It has been,yeah, I'm sorry, I've been very, very busy recently. I've had no time to enjoy my musicals.

So now we're back and let's talk about more musicals.

Fantastic. Have you got a musical in mind for today?

Yeah ,yeah, I mean let's do something, I would say a bit more light-hearted, so as I mentioned before, let's do Hairspray.

Ah, Hairspray. This is one which I hadn't seen before. You had said we were going to record this. So this one's a new one for me.

Yeah ,叫【發膠】 Hairspray. It’s a through and through... very American musical. What do you feel about it? I know you have probably, since then, watched it or at least listen to musical scores.

Yeah, I have the opportunity to listen to all the songs and the scores.

And I know it deals with some very serious themes and issues, but honestly just listening to the music. I just thought fun like it's... there’s so many upbeat and happy songs going through it. It was just really nice to listen to.

Yeah, I mean it does deal with some heavy like big themes, societal themes. However they are doing it in a more sort of like a teen musical type of feel.

It did feel a bit like a very positive teenager’s view on life. Really .

Exactly. Exactly.

I mean sometimes we just really need that level of positivity, don't we?

It's necessary. Sometimes definitely you can get too serious about things and it is nice to be reminded and just kind of something to relax you a little bit in a way.

Exactly. Life is hard enough.

Yeah.

Okay, so Let me give you guys the background of this. So Hairspray is an American musical with a book of the same name, and it's based on a movie of the same name and the songs like Oliver mentioned in this, it's very upbeat. They are mostly dance music. They are 1960s style dance music, and the sort of downtown Rhythm and Blue, R&B. It's set in 1962, Baltimore Maryland, this place in the United States.

And it is all about a teenage girl. She's chubby, but she's upbeat. She dreams to dance on this popular teenage show, this dance show, dance program. And she finally got the role on the show. And she became a celebrity overnight and she also was very active in fighting for social changes. Well. She sounds like a really, really upbeat teenager.

She does. There's lots going on there, very active and upbeat and positive person.

Exactly. So the actual musical on stage opened in 2002. And then it actually won eight Tony awards including one for Best Musical. So it actually has won a lot of awards.

Wow. That's good.

Exactly. And I think it perhaps we need to talk about the setting of the musical, although the musical was not that old. But the whole setting of the story, like I mentioned, is in the 1960s, Oliver, you've heard of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, right, starting from the 50s to the 60s.

I have. It was a very important time in the development of modern American society.

It is basically about abolishing racial segregation. 是這種種族隔離, 那個時候的美國還是比較種族隔離, 就是黑人和白人之間的有非常明顯的segregation. Like in the story, like African Americans were not allowed to be on the show.

There's a clear racial discrimination, and then African Americans were really disenfranchised and that was a period where there was a lot of resistance, lot of civil disobedience, and they were fighting for their own rights.

They were fighting, but most of the movements, methods and the way they went about it, it was nonviolent. It was just standing up, making themselves heard, and resisting where they can in as many nonviolent ways as they could.

Exactly.

It is incredible what people that did. It was incredible.

It's not just African Americans fighting for their own rights. It was also people, even the non-African Americans who were supportive, they were also joining this whole Civil Rights Movement. And then that period was called the Civil Rights Era.

Yeah, it was lots of different groups of people who were not treated equally within society standing up and gaining the rights they deserved in the end. Let's go back to Hairspray, I think. Could you, because I've only listened to the music, could you tell me the story of the show?

Yeah, I'll tell you and also our audience. It's a pretty straightforward story.

So the story, like I said, is set in 1962 in Baltimore. The main girl, this Tracy girl, she is an overweight high school student, when I say overweight she's pretty big. But she's very confident. Very very confident. And In fact, in the show or in the musical or in the movie version, you could see her always always very positive, very cheerful, even when she wakes up and goes to school, she sings this song is saying like good morning, Baltimore and all that.

The reason why it's called Hairspray, I think you probably in your research probably found out about this.

First of all, it's because Tracy has this larger than life attitude, so she's got this very exaggerated hairdo and for which she's getting sort of penalized or at least criticized by her school by having inappropriate hair.

Yeah, so it’s that sort of it's a reference to standing out and expressing yourself and things in the 1960s, American society where everything was a little bit more kind of reserved. People were following the social norms type of thing. And then this teenage girl has big hair which is completely crazy for some of the people in her school.

Yeah, exactly. So after school she rushes home with her best friend Penny and they were catching this local teenage dance show that they really love called the Corny Collins show.

This is actually based I think on a real show in America it's not called the same name but this type of shows, they also invite like sort of teenager guests to dance and sing on the show. So that is the premises.

After they hear announcement for the audition for a place a vacancy on the show. Tracy begs her mom for permission to audition because obviously she's still a teenager so that she needs her parents' approval.

Her mom who's also very big, actually do you know that her mom in this is a drag role, so it's played by a man.

Yes, I had seen that for the advertisements I remember seeing for the movie... for I remember seeing John Travolta dressed up with this big hair as well.

Exactly, Tracy的媽媽在這里面, 她是一個反串角色, 就是一個男性扮演的. But like her mom doesn't want her to go to the audition because her mom doesn't leave the house. She fears that her daughter being big, being overweight, she's gonna get laughed at.

So finally she managed to convince mom she was supported by her father. And she auditions for the show. She bumped into this teenage heartthrob Link and that's like a sideline.

He kind of they fell for each other, blah blah. And then this show has a really racist, really conservative and racist producer. She would reject anyone who doesn't fit what she would considered the norm which were probably skinny white people. So she rejects Tracy because Tracy is big and she rejects a black girl because obviously she's black. So this was the whole premises. The show is very, I would say bigoted. The producer is very bigoted.

It sounds like that is setting up, as you mentioned, the idea of the Civil Rights Movement and the social reforms and such that this show talks about.

Exactly. And that was the norm in the day. And you wouldn't believe back then they had allowed black dancers to be on the show once a month, when they called that day “negro day”.

Oh my goodness, that's awful, that's so bad.

I know. Exactly. So back at school, by the way, guys you cannot use that word now, but... this was the case back then.

It is said it is a word of the time, which....

Yeah, and I bet they were thinking this was good enough, they got a day what else do they want? Right? They were probably thinking in lines of that.

They probably thought they were doing a very generous thing.

對, 就一個月一次, 他們會允許黑人演員上臺表演, 那個時候60年代的當時那個情況就是這樣. 而且那一天居然被叫做 “negro day”, 其實這是黑人那一日, 現在這個詞已經不能這樣用了, 因為它是一個很有明顯歧視的詞.

So Tracy back at school is sent to detention where she met this black dancer Seaweed. He is the son of the hostess of this “negro day” on this show. And this guy her schoolmate teaches her dance moves and she uses these new dance steps next day to introduce herself to the show. And then when... the show is called Corny Collins Show, so when Corny Collins sees Tracy dance, he gives her a place on the show. So basically she passed the audition. So she went on the show, but after it, the show's sponsor now this brings back to why it's called Hairspray, the show's main sponsor. It's a hairspray, brand. It's a hairspray company

Right? It's not just her hair being larger. It's the sponsorship.

I know, I know, they hold this competition called Miss Teenage Hairspray Competition.

Okay, again, very just in your face, there's no subtleties here.

I know. So after the show, the sponsor goes to the producer wanting to bring Tracy on the show and also Tracy’s attitude of wanting the show to be more open to be more inclusive. But this producer is really, really angry and she determines to ruin Tracy.

On the other hand, Tracy is getting more noticed because she went on the show right? And she got this call from the owner of a plus size dress shop, yes, a plus size dress shop. Which back then if you think back then it's pretty impressive. Nowadays we talk about plus size, we know body positivity, but back then I don't think that was the norm.

No, that would have been a very unique thing to find, I'd imagine in most places.

Plus size就是這種大碼女裝店, 它是個大碼女裝店.

Now they want Tracy to be basically their spokes girl essentially. And lo and behold, she said yes and then her fame is becoming more evident in school. People start to copy her hairdo, no, talking about celebrities. Yeah, and so she was also doing the spokes girl thing at the shop. Tracy being a true activist starts to rally everyone to march against the station on the following days like the “mother daughter day” as black people were not allowed on the show except for that one day of the month, so they're protesting against this whole bigotry, but the producer called the police and the police arrest them all. So basically they were arrested as activists, as protesters. I mean it is very much on the nose. It's very much on the nose.

It is very much.

Yeah, and then there are lots of details about it, but then eventually she escaped prison with the boy she likes, this guy on the show.

And then Tracy thinks it's really unfair that after all their hard work, the whole show is still segregated and black people are still not allowed. So they decide to try harder.

So what they did was on the day of the Miss Teenage Hairspray competition where they know it's going to be televised. She went on stage, she took over the stage with her friends, you know a bunch of really colorful characters, including Seaweed and his mom. They're both African Americans. And then they went on and then they were doing this song, this number. And She was declared the winner of the competition. People really loved her. And the sponsor was happy.

At the end, the governor has pardoned Tracy, so she no longer needs to go to prison. She was given a full college scholarship so that she can go on doing what she likes and the producer and guess this, I thought the producer would be punished in the way of like fine or prison sentence, but no, the producer gets appointed the position of vice president of ultra glow beauty products for women of color.

So it's like poetic justice.

They've put her in charge of creating cosmetics for the people she is prejudiced and bigoted against .

Exactly. Exactly. Obviously she didn't like it. So this was basically the story.

It's a pretty straightforward story. It's about a fearless young schoolgirl, teenage girl who is not the ideal version of beauty, not the ideal size, but she's so very confident so full of life. She is basically the center of the small group of people. And together they protested against prejudice. This prejudice is not just against people of different color, but also people of different sizes, maybe even people of different orientations. So eventually they got their victory. So that's the story.

It's a very, as you say, straightforward on the nose story, but quite powerful at the same time.

I think this is why because of in today's whole climate of political correctness, this is why Hairspray is still being brought up again and again, as something that is still not outdated.

No,there's still social inequality in many many areas. It would be wrong for people to think how everything is equal and fair cause it's not for some people and there still is work to do and a distance to go and improve.

Yeah. Can I just ask you, Oliver, like, what's your take on musicals like this? Because obviously it kind of has a political message in it. Does it? I don't know like what is your take? Do you appreciate this message? Or do you think it's a bit too on the nose?

I think this is one of the forms of kind of expression of ideas and and morals and morality which is necessary in society.

Today we have musicals and movies and videos online which deal with these things. But in the past, it was books and pamphlets and speeches of people which made social change. Societies don't change unless people, all people see the problem and make an effort.

And I think that musicals like this and movies and shows like this are a great way to kind of show people what needs to be changed.

Yeah I mean, I think you've got a point there, actually, some of the musicals we talked about before, like Les Mis, your favorite, I guess some of the other things like The Book of Mormon that they also have a kind of a political message to send.

They do. I think it's difficult in a lot of ways to keep ideas and the messages of the writers and the creators out of their work. No one can be completely unbiased in anything. And I think for a lot of people, it's seeing these different ideas and these different ways of thinking and the values of the show and of the creators. That's one of the reasons why people enjoy them so much.

Okay. And that's enough first episode of Hairspray. We told you about some of the background and also the storyline which is a little bit long, but I think you guys got it.

Now we're gonna wrap up here in the next episode. We're gonna go into the story and explore the themes and most importantly, share with you some of the musical scores. And thank you, Oliver for coming to the show.

Thank. you. It's been good to be back.

We'll see you next time.

See you later.