Family-Unfriendly Aesop/Theatre

Examples of Family-Unfriendly Aesops in Theatre include:

Avenue Q contains many such unconventional Aesops, though some are tongue-in-cheek. Examples include "The Internet Is for Porn" and "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist." Another Aesop in the show is "there's nothing wrong with being gay," which on one occasion is humorously expanded to "it's perfectly fine if you're gay, unless you're a Republican."
- The biggest Aesop in the play can be summed up in Lucy the Slut's line: "Everyone only has one revelation in life: they find out they aren't special."
  - And look how well that turns out.
The musical Carousel and the play Liliom on which it is based contains one of these, personified in the immortal line: "It's possible for a man to hit you, hit you real hard, and have it feel like a kiss."
- Amanda Palmer did a cover of the song "What's the Use of Wondrin" as a creepy domestic abuse ballad...and didn't have to change a word.
Grease has the moral that you should be willing to change yourself completely for a guy. To be fair, it seemed like the writers were trying to show Danny changing himself for Sandy as well, through participating in wholesome sports and going out for a letter jacket, but this hardly shows up in the final version.
- It also has the wonderful moral that girls who don't smoke, drink, or have sex are laughed at behind their backs and will only find acceptance when they give in to peer pressure.
- "You're the One that I Want" mollifies this a little, but only a little. Significantly, this number didn't appear in the original stage show. What does appear (at least in the 1994 revival) is "Since I Don't Have You," which is comparable to "Unworthy of Your Love" from Assassins in its theme of "If I'm not in a relationship with this person, I'm a worthless individual," except only in the latter are we supposed to think of the character singing as mentally disturbed.
- Let's be honest though, if Sandy had remained The Ingenue, we'd be complaining that the message was "The only acceptable thing for a woman to be is pure, innocent, and virginal." Not to mention saying the film promotes conformity isn't all that accurate. Sandy becoming a "bad girl" was conforming to the Pink Ladies, but in the context of when the film is set, she is being extremely nonconformist to society's mores. If anything, keeping Sandy a "good girl" would send a much more pro-conformity message.
- For that matter, the idea that the only choice girls have is to be a Purity Sue or a chain-smoking bad-girl is pretty family unfriendly.
Our House has the moral 'If you don't give yourself up after committing a minor, non-violent and non-malicious crime, a Corrupt Corporate Executive will burn your mother.
In The Wild Duck, the entire cast turns out to be one giant Dysfunction Junction that is only keeping itself together by repressing every one of their hidden sins and weaknesses through willful delusion. When the resident Wide-Eyed Idealist attempts to unravel some of these lies and bring about truth, the result is the suicide of the family's young daughter. As the man who attempted to keep all this under wraps at one point muses:

Doctor Relling: Deprive the average human being of his life-lie, and you rob him of his happiness.

The kid's play The Magic In Me says that if you can't do something right off the bat, you'll never learn to do it.
Rent: "True artists are too good for day jobs." Even when your friend's good graces are all that stand between you and the shelter.
- Alternately, "You can have a day job or be an artist. One or the other." Aside from Mimi, none of the characters have ostensibly paying jobs that they actually like. (Except for Benny and Joanne, and their jobs are more mainstream than the others'.)
  - Also it's totally OK to kill someone's dog.
- more can be read here
Death of a Salesman: dreamers get crushed under reality's dirty heel. Deal with it.
- Although a slightly less Family Friendly Aesop is "don't let your dreams blind you to your actual circumstances"; Willy's problem isn't necessarily that he's a dreamer, but that he's so fixated on his dreams that he ignores real life when he shouldn't.
  - Willy is a good carpenter, his wife could forgive his infidelity if he confess, and his sons are so angry with him because he never wanted to acknoledge reality. Willy's situation could be really improved if he only could muster the valor to change his ways. A lot of people confuses his stupid and petty delusions with dreams.
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers is essentially "Stockholm Syndrome - The Musical." Although the male characters have clearly learned by the end that women are human beings and not trophies to be snatched by force, that doesn't really mitigate the depiction of the kidnapping scenes as harmless slapstick comedy.
Several of the less family friendly aesops in Wicked are mentioned here.

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