Seinfeld Is Unfunny/Theatre: Difference between revisions

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* ''[[West Side Story]]''. Today this musical seems like a terrible conglomeration of clichés on top of the material it takes from ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]'' (which itself was a fresh take on a clichéd story in its day). But ''[[West Side Story]]'' started a lot of musical conventions which became clichés, including its (for the time) grittiness, its use of street slang and cursing, its (relatively) sympathetic portrayal of minority characters, and its use of ethnic musical conventions.

** ''[[West Side Story]]'' has arguably aged very well, particularly since its characters look a lot less stylized and stereotyped than most 1950s "delinquent" characters. In fact, it probably ''influenced'' street-gang fashions (particularly the wearing of the bandanna) for decades afterward!

* ''Bürgerliches Trauerspiel'' (''Bourgeois Tragedy''). During the Age of Enlightenment this sub-genre of drama arose, in which virtous commoners were shown as victims of the machinations and depravities of aristocratic villains, which at the time was considered daring and subversive, sometimes even seditious and revolutionary. Some of them are still performed today, most notably Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's ''Emilia Galotti'' (1772) and Friedrich Schiller's ''Kabale und Liebe'' (1784), but are often now seen as dated and quaint. This is not an entirely new trend, as the bourgeois values propounded in "bürgerliche Trauerspiele" became subject to criticism themselves, which in the 19th century led to the writing of Realist dramas with bourgeois villains.