[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Editing literature to conform to current custom

[Jen Faulkner]

On Mon, 1 Jul 2002, cindysphynx wrote:

> Lyrics first.  My niece came over recently, and she was singing the
> song from _West Side Story,_ "I Feel Pretty."  Now, I believe the
> original lyrics contain the phrase, "I feel pretty, and witty and
> gay."  But lo and behold, the sheet music had something else
> like "pretty and witty and *bright*," I believe.  "Gay" had been
> dropped.  I assume this change was made because "gay" now has a very
> different meaning when the lyric was first written.  It would strike
> modern audiences as rather off for a young woman in a story in which
> she falls in love with a man to be singing that she is "gay."
>
> So is this change offensive?

Actually, no.

As I understand, this change is based not at all on the meaning of the
word "gay," but rather on the placement of the song in the movie vs. the
stage play.

In the original stage production, "I Feel Pretty" opens Act II, after
the rumble has already taken place.  The song's bumped up in the film to
long before the rumble, setting it earlier in the timeline.  The change,
I believe, is then to alter "night" to "day" (by changing the rhyming
"bright" to "gay"), and "bright" is in fact Sondheim's original lyric.
The movie lyric is "I feel pretty and witty and gay / and I pity any
girl who isn't me today,"  while the stage lyric was "I feel pretty and
witty and bright / and I pity any girl who isn't me tonight."

It's the stage lyric, with "bright," that's in the sheet music.

(Now if it had been changed for the reason Cindy posited, that would
indeed offend me, not because Sondheim's lyrics had been changed -- I
certainly believe that dramatic exigencies can overrule the 'sanctity'
of an author's words, since one is then offering an interpretation, and
not a (tran)script -- but that they were changed due to homophobia.
Such a change would be patently offensive.  So I certainly hope my
understanding of why the lyrics were changed, and how, is correct!  And
the word "gay" had already in the 50s -- a similar meaning can be traced
back at least 20 years earlier, making its first appearance (as a
possible ad lib?) in a line by Cary Grant in *Bringing up Baby* (1938),
where, when asked why he's cross-dressing, he says, "Because I just went
gay all of a sudden!" -- acquired its present meaning, as I understand
it, anyway.)

--jen, who's look! look! posting. :)

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Clamavit lupus, >>Ergo huffabo, et puffabo, et tuam domum inflabo!<< Et
huffavit, et puffavit, et totam domum inflavit!" -- Tres Porcelli.

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