Hey! Let's keep it accurate here! That's Bitter Womyn Studies, fella! :0)
A lot of homosexuals are going to see a boy who won't grow up and think, "That's a very attractive target. I like what I see."
Now, if you can get a woman to portray the boy, a lot of straight men might also watch and think, "I also like what I see."
In my opinion, it just serves to confuse the whole thing and cause people to feel that homosexuals and heterosexuals are not so very different from one another. In reality, however, heterosexuals are normal, and homosexuals have a mental illness.
Only a queer would look at Peter Pan and decide he’s a queer icon.
I thought Dorothy and her friends from the Wizard of Oz were gay icons?
Clap if you believe in fairies, kids!
Well, let’s see. Peter Pan is a cross dresser who hangs out with fairies and kidnaps young boys. That does seem to be a bit unseemly, looked at from a certain perspective.
“On stage, Peter is almost always played by a woman.”
I thought is was because stagehands had to use ropes to fly Peter around and a girl weighed less.
Am I wrong?
Why must every single thing be sexualized, a perversely sexualized to boot!
I saw Mary Martin (Larry Hagman's mom) play Peter Pan on TV back in the early 60's. Even as a small child I wondered why they would do that. He's supposed to be a boy! It didn't make sense then and it doesn't make sense now..........................
I don’t think that they should use a woman to play Peter Pan. It’s confusing to children.
Peterless Pans...oh, never mind!
The grand old tradition of British theatre, particularly "the pantos" (children's Christmas pantomime, which had its roots in the Italian commedia del'arte) has always had cross-dressing principals. The man dressed up as a comic woman (the "Dame" who is always good, or the "Ugly Sister" who is a villain) originated with the great clown Grimaldi, whose tumbling and acrobatic skills were unmatched (plus none of the actresses of sufficient skill to handle the work wanted to play an old and ugly woman!)
- And the "Principal Boy" was always played by a woman. On the one hand it was a plum role, on stage almost all the time, and on the other a boy old enough to handle the demands of the acting would be at risk of having his voice change any moment.
So it's tradition, born mostly of practical concerns in a long-running show, nothing to do with sexuality. Sometimes I feel like C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves when confronted with this "Everybody in History is Gay" nonsense - "The implications would be, if nothing else, too comic. Hrothgar embracing Beowulf, Johnson embracing Boswell (a pretty flagrantly heterosexual couple) and all those hairy old toughs of centurions in Tacitus, clinging to one another and begging for last kisses when the legion was broken up… all pansies? If you can believe that you can believe anything."
That is because a boy of the right age would only have the part for a few months, maybe a year.
Finding children of that age who can carry that kind of role is not easy. Having to find two, (star and understudy) would be very very hard.
It is easier to find a small female who will not begin to grow a beard or have her voice change at an awkward time.
What are the racial stereotypes in Peter Pan? That is something I missed.
I’ve seen many an opera with a female cast in a “trouser role.” They’ve been doing it since Hector was a pup. No one’s getting in a tizzy about that...