Beauty pageants are one of the many symptoms of an ill society. Other symptoms include, but are not limited to, high mortality rate, low literacy rate, large prison population and economic injustice. Oh, and Crocs and Pauly Shore.
So, then, why do beauty pageants exist? What causes them? And what do we imbibe or slather on ourselves to get rid of them?
Let’s begin with a brief history. While women in ancient Rome were donned with flower crowns and called beautiful, they were also honored for exemplifying certain intangible attributes such as bravery and generosity. The current custom of rewarding women primarily for their pulchritude has spiraled into an ironic glitz parade where we now honor women for looking like whores. We sexualize their appearance and suck out their souls.
We have reduced the once-benign practice of publicly lauding a woman’s grace to the present malignant practice of lauding her ability to apply glitter. Pageants have metastasized and have become a Stage IV destruction of our collective self esteem.
What is being done to eradicate this scourge?
House of Gold, written by Gregory Moss and produced by the Ensemble Studio Theater, has opened and is running at the Atwater Village Theatre through December 4. House of Gold explores, through multi-media bedazzlement, some varying perspectives on the causes and side effects of beauty pageantry.
The play also draws parallels between beauty competitions and bullying.
The play doesn’t delve super deeply into the myriad connections between the two. It simply coughs up the germs, and the audience is left to incubate them.
One angle, quite possibly, is that pageantry is a form of bullying. Parents force girls into roles the girls are uneager to play, and this power imbalance stymies the girls’ growth. Also pageants function as a form of incest.
Yep, I said it.
Even if a girl is not directly molested by her father or judge or trusted neighbor who invites her into his gross and stinky car, she is molested by a society who sexualizes her – who co-opts her childhood for the pure pleasure of adults.
Gates McFadden, in her direction of House of Gold, holds up a multi-media stethoscope through which we hear the fractures of our culture, which lends great intrigue. At times such use of multiple media enhances both action and emotion, yet at times it comes off as showy and distracting. This is ironic in a production that aims to denounce gratuitous display.
Why use a stethoscope when a simple listen would suffice?
Furthermore, there is an autopsy scene that might be better performed in shadow behind a scrim, closer to the audience and with fewer props that aren’t so clearly plastic and visible. Because while the topic and dialogue of this scene are fascinating, the plethora of synthetic props detracts.
However, I much prefer a show that over-does it to a show that plays it safe.
Time is of the essence in this battle to cure our culture of its cacophobia (though I’ll always loathe Crocs), and we should employ every resource in our midst.
The most striking technological tool used in this production is the animation (crafted by Drew Christie) which is breathtaking. It is both simple and profound.
And the actors interact with the animation cleverly. They could afford to do so more often, mind you, culminating in ways that surprise and transcend. There is a common flaw in this production in that clever things are done once or twice and then abandoned. Once an element is introduced, like an actor interacting with the animation, it could be attempted more times – repeated again and again in order to gain momentum and ultimately pay off. Instead, the director (or is it the writer?) moves on to something else.
Nonetheless, the animated images will remain imprinted onto my memory much like my mother’s collection of wigs and dolls.
The script has some tricky bits. Interwoven with poetic language are some awkward one-liners and a few clichéd and on-the-nose characters and notions, such as the creepy man asking the little girl to get into his car.
And just as a scene is about to reach a degree of depth and approach a bone truth, it shifts and turns and escapes from the emotional nerve.
So many themes are touched upon and then let go: stand-up comedians as male idols, whites trying to be black, Stepford Wives lounging in lasagna layers of denial, and more. So many feelings emerge but are not cultivated, nor are they allowed to reach catharsis.
Like a pageant contestant, the play becomes emotionally stunted.
The choreography of the bullies (by director Gates McFadden) is lovely, though. To see bullies dance is ironic, and it reminds us of a bully’s potential for inner beauty that is squandered by his need for short-term, external gratification.
The moving of walls and platforms in order to take on varying identities is also delightful – surely due in large part to scenic designer Kurt Boetcher.
Visually, the play is stunning.
The closing moments of the play, during which the protagonist, Jon Benét Ramsey, speaks in soliloquy downstage, are so wrenching and powerful – or potentially wrenching and powerful, that they are alone worth the expenditure of money and time.
Unfortunately, the spell breaks too quickly. The actress moves upstage – way upstage – changes her register and shifts from emotionally connected to intellectually detached.
While on the one hand, I was relieved to not have to feel, on the other I was disturbed at being let off the hook.
I wanted to push through the pain.
With regard to the highlight of the show, the pièce de résistance, the jewel atop the tiara, the performance by Jacqueline Wright in the role of Jon Benét Ramsey is nothing short of astounding.
By the end of her turn as six year-old girl, after her brief monologue (that should last for another minute and end the show) the audience is so rapt by Wright’s portrayal – by her vulnerability paired with wisdom (that only a grown woman who has lived in a society where beauty is God could achieve) that the whole show, with all its abstract distractions, comes to a close.
The wound heals.
Believe it or not, this play is a comedy. It is a dark comedy, but a comedy nonetheless, and it includes, albeit quite briefly, live recordings of stand-up comics – perhaps to proclaim that the male version of beauty pageant contestant is stand-up comedian? That theme could have been further developed!
This play is worth seeing for a few simple reasons:
- Jacqueline Wright’s performance is mesmerizing;
- The themes, while not fully developed, inspire thought and drudge up important emotions; and
- The innovative staging, while a bit scattered and sometimes lacking in clear purpose, model for other theater artists the art of risk-taking, because greatness is not achieved without great risk.
After seeing the play and reliving the memories of when your own mother stuffed you into too-small Mary Janes and sponge curlers and a ruffled skirt that barely covered up your plastic Whoops! panties, I recommend that you run a marathon replete with rubber bracelets and then host a telethon adorned with sequined models to raise money and awareness so that we might one day find a cure for this malady. This plague. This pandemic. This fatal belief that people are toys without souls.
House of Gold runs at the Atwater Village Theatre 3269 Casitas Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90039, through December 4, 2011.
And "Pretty," a satirical (and hilarious) web series on the same topic, premieres its third season November 1.
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