ON ‘SMASH’ AND THE DELICATE BALANCING ACT OF THE BACKSTAGE GENRE
There are a lot of things not to like about last night’s pilot episode of SMASH (as perceptively noted by Tumblr’s own esteemed Richard Rushfield, and recapped better than humanly possible by Rachel Shukert over at Vulture), but the thing that struck me the most was a fundamental question that plays into the very nature of the backstage genre, namely, how do you reconcile the characters’ attitude toward their “show within the show” versus the hard evidence we as audience members are watching first-hand?
Consider the cases of the great Ed Wood and Boogie Nights, in which the disconnect between our responses to the “films within the film” being presented versus the protagonists’ responses is what informs our understanding of them as characters. The movies the characters are making are obviously meant to be “bad,” yet we believe 100% in their delusional belief in their own creations, resulting in more than a fair amount of pathos.
Now consider the case of Smash, where we are asked to identify with ostensible Broadway professionals who sincerely think doing a musical about Marilyn Monroe is actually a good idea: how are we meant to feel the second we see them earnestly reacting to their own clearly horrible musical number in rehearsal by proclaiming it “brilliant?” Are we expected to view them like Ed Wood and Jack Horner or, perhaps, the Ishtar songwriting duo of “Rogers & Clarke,” with Angelica Huston as their Max Bialystock? Or do they really mean it, meaning, by extension, that the makers of Smash expect us to feel the exact same way their characters do, in which case all suspension of disbelief and audience identification is stretched beyond its limits? Something to think about….
