Duet on the Theme of “Everything’s Alright” from Jesus Christ Superstar

Abstract

Research Article| June 01 2023 Duet on the Theme of “Everything’s Alright” from Jesus Christ Superstar Miriam Petty, Miriam Petty Miriam J. Petty is an associate professor in the Department of Radio/Television/Film and associate dean for academic programs in Northwestern’s Graduate School. She writes and teaches about race, genre, stardom, and performance. Her award-winning book, Stealing the Show: African American Performers and Audiences in 1930s Hollywood explores the limits and possibilities of black stardom during the “golden age” of mainstream U.S. cinema. Petty’s work has appeared in Genders, the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, and the Quarterly Review of Film and Video. She serves on the editorial board for the Journal for Cinema and Media Studies, and as a co-chair of SCMS’ Committee on Antiracism, Equity, and Diversity. Petty is currently at work on Madea’s Baby, Tyler’s Maybe, a monograph charting the industrial and cultural appeals of Tyler Perry’s films and plays, from 1998 to 2019. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Joshua Chambers-Letson Joshua Chambers-Letson Joshua Chambers-Letson is a professor of Performance Studies and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University and the author of After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life (winner of the 2019 Outstanding Book Award from the Association of Theatre in Higher Education and the 2019 Erroll Hill Award from the American Society for Theatre Research) and A Race So Different: Law and Performance in Asian America (winner of the 2014 Outstanding Book Award from ATHE); co-editor of José Esteban Muñoz’s The Sense of Brown with Tavia Nyong’o and of Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s China Trilogy: Three Parables of Global Capital with Christine Moke; and series co-editor of NYU Press’s Sexual Cultures series with Tavia Nyong’o and Ann Pellegrini. JCL is currently at work on a monograph about the art of queer love and loss. They are presently the 2022-2023 Thinker in Residence with the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of Popular Music Studies (2023) 35 (2): 15–22. https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2023.35.2.15 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Miriam Petty, Joshua Chambers-Letson; Duet on the Theme of “Everything’s Alright” from Jesus Christ Superstar. Journal of Popular Music Studies 1 June 2023; 35 (2): 15–22. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jpms.2023.35.2.15 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of Popular Music Studies Search I have been thinking about our strange, shared attachment to the rock-opera Jesus Christ Superstar (both stage musical and its film adaptation). Especially our attachments to the characters of Judas and Mary Magdalene, and their exchange in the song “Everything’s Alright.” In the 1971 Broadway production, the role of Judas was performed by two Black actors: Carl Anderson (who also played the role in the film) and Broadway legend Ben Vereen. Mary Magdalene was embodied on stage and screen by iconic Japanese American performer and 1970s disco hitmaker Yvonne Elliman. We both grew up listening to the musical, though its telling with our respective orientations in performance studies and film and media studies that your preferred version was the original motion picture soundtrack (1973) and mine was the Broadway cast recording (1971). But what we both seemed to share, as children, was an attachment to the complex blackness of Anderson... You do not currently have access to this content.