The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway MusicalWarrenHoffman. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2014.

Abstract

The Great White Way: Race and the Broadway Musical Warren Hoffman. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2014.Providing an analysis of the Broadway musical from the 1920s to the present rooted in performance theory, Warren Hoffman convincingly argues that musicals, even those musicals that seem to have nothing to do with race, exhibit stereotypes and assumptions that sometimes challenge but, more often reinforce, the audience's own racial prejudices. Hoffman insists that the view of Broadway musicals as fanciful, silly, throwaway entertainments (3) allows them to make powerful statements about race and American identity that generally go unrecognized and unquestioned. For instance, at first glance, The Music Man (1957) would seem to have nothing to do with racial issues but merely hearkens back to the simple life of small-town America decades before. However, the small town of this musical is all-white, and identifying this town with genuine American values, he maintains, makes a powerful statement about race and American identity. Such diverse Broadway musicals as A Chorus Line (1975), South Pacific (1949), and West Side Story (1957) exhibit America's shifting understanding of race, how racial identity is performed, and what performances are and are not most authentically American.Hoffman insists that the Broadway musical from its earliest days can best be understood through the theoretical perspective that identity, particularly racial identity, is something performed, rather than something intrinsic to an individual. The 1927 musical Show Boat has long been criticized as racist for many reasons, not the least of which is that the AfricanAmerican characters are portrayed as one-dimensional, unevolving stereotypes through the many years covered by the musical's plot. While Hoffman avers that Show Boat portrays racist stereotypes, he believes that [i]t is also a musical about theater and performance itself (32). To see Show Boat as merely a racist screed is to ignore what he sees as the clear authorial intent to foreground race and force the audience to confront its own tendency to see African Americans as one-dimensional people. Similarly, condemning the musical as unredeemably racist would require ignoring the plot itself, especially the plot line where light-skinned African-American Julie garners success so long as she is able to pass as white. Hoffman's conclusion, based on his reading of this plot line, is that Show Boat sets forth the notion of race as performative identity rather than as an essential human trait. …