My Hot Take on What’s Really Wrong With “The Prom”
By: Megan Gogerty
Tags: The Prom, Politics, LGBT, Netflix, Musicals

Remember when I said I had An Opinion about A Thing but I wasn’t going to share it? Hahaha, I’m irrepressible!

I watched The Prom! I really loved the first 30%! I felt smart when I recognized Patti LuPone’s haircut! I thought James Corden was just fine, probably because I’d read so much criticism about his performance, the bar was sufficiently lowered! I found the ham-fisted moralizing to be typical Ryan Murphy! I want Meryl Streep’s turquoise silk dressing gown! I found the songs, with their INexPLICabLE PItcH ChANgeS to be pretty dumb but fine! Keegan Michael Key is a national treasure! Nicole Kidman’s part really needed to be played by a dancer! I really loved 70-something Meryl having a love interest in his 40s — flip that script, Meryl!

But here’s my big beef that I can’t let go of: the plot hinges on a pernicious, seductive lie. It’s a lie that suckers us, a trap that the left — including me — falls into all the time. It’s dangerous, it’s killing us, and we have to shake off its stultifying effects before it’s too late.

The lie comes when Andrew Rannells goes to the mall to sing to the homophobic teens, to get them to stop being little shits to our lesbian heroine. He sings a cute lil’ number pointing out all their hypocrisies — how, yes, the Bible may say homosexuality is bad, but what about your tattoo, Candace? What about your parents’ divorce, Justin? Aren’t you all going to hell, too? Can’t you all just (cue chorus) Love Thy Neighbor?

What a fantasy.

See, we figure, we have the facts on our side, right? We have logic — our arguments are better. Surely, if presented with our facts and our logic, our opponents will wake up to the error of their ways. They’ll see that we’re right, and they’re wrong, and they’ll be so grateful that we, their smarter friends, have saved them from looking foolish. The lie says, we can reason our way to equality.

We can’t. And thinking we can fundamentally misunderstands what is polarizing us.

Take marriage equality. People who are against it are unreasonable. We have the facts! Gay marriage doesn’t affect straight marriage, kids with gay parents have just as good outcomes as straight parents, etc. We have the arguments. It’s so obvious.

But if you’re against marriage equality, it’s not about facts and arguments. And when presented with our facts and arguments, studies show you just dig deeper into your position and get resentful. You ossify.

People who hate gay people hate them, not because the Bible tells them so, but because they feel, on a bone-deep lizard-brain level, that “the lifestyle” is an existential threat to their own identity. Marriage looks like this. Family looks like this. This is how the world is organized, how it’s supposed to be. A new picture is deeply terrifying on an existential level. Who are they, if LGBT people aren’t excoriated? Where are they in the pecking order, if the people we all agreed were deviants are suddenly respectable? Am I the deviant now? Not it!

We’re never going to convince the mean preacher in Footloose that dancing is good. We’re never going to convince the racist that “Black people” is not synonymous with “criminals.” We’re never going to convince the misogynists that women with advanced degrees can also be experts, that people have the right to control their own reproductive destiny, that liberty and justice for all means even for people they don’t like or trust. And as long as we think we *can* convince them, we’re going to be frustrated and exasperated and chasing our own tail.

We gotta stop convincing. We just have to steamroll ‘em.

In that way, Hairspray’s “You Can’t Stop The Beat” offers a better argument. Pout in the corner if you want to, but we’re dancing. You can’t stop it. Change is here, so get with it or get out of the way.

Cut the deals to get the votes, but get the votes. Insist on the future we want. Organize, organize, organize. We’re here, get used to it. This is the future liberals want.

I’m talking to myself, of course. One of the great agonies of the last four years was watching my fellow Americans — relatives! — fall for obvious grift of the Trump administration. It’s painful and heartbreaking to see loved ones fall for the hoodwink, and to watch helplessly as the destruction rolls over us in gruesome shockwaves. Who among us, who has been living in reality, is surprised there’s been a massive cyber intelligence breech, and the Russians have been browsing through our national security secrets like assorted chocolates? Who among us is surprised to find such callous disregard for human life at the center of the federal government’s so-called “policy” of herd immunity, which flies in the face of all known science? Who among us is surprised that this “election fraud” dust storm is actually a cheap fundraising tactic, raising millions of dollars for Trump’s own use, never mind its debilitating long-term effects on our democracy?

There’s no reasoning with people who actually want four more years of this shit.

The Prom is a fantasy, like Hairspray is a fantasy, like Grease is a fantasy, like Annie is a fantasy, like Wicked is a fantasy, like Hamilton is a fantasy. They’re all fantasies. That’s what makes them pleasurable. But this particular fantasy, the fantasy of Be Reasonable, is one we need to absolutely kick to the curb, while we still have things like curbs. (Shout-out to Pete “Let’s Make Every Week Infrastructure Week” Buttigieg as Transportation Secretary!)

Phew — got it off my chest! I feel so free! Hahaha, no I don’t! I still feel terrible! Here I am, trying to convince you that you can’t convince people things they don’t want to believe! I’m having irony for breakfast!