Les Miserables

1 February 2001
Sur-prise par-tie! It'll take a lot to cheer Victor up.

I have successfully taken control of the International Arts Council, with the aid only of fawning and cunnilingus. My first piece of policy is to be the strict enforcement of new regulations on the content of musicals. Whilst it is widely acknowledged that musicals need to be scrapped per se, I have been advised (appropriately, I believe) not to launch myself onto such a minefield with all guns blazing. There are several factors, besides an overwhelming moral responsibility, to be considered.

There's a certain risk involved in depriving the masses of their opium, the plebs of their circuses. Proles like musicals because:

1. They have a certain universality of theme. Plots can be reduced to two categories - unrequited love and unrequited love due to the divisive nature of conflict. Common people are too ugly to get laid and get into lots of fights, hence a certain Neanderthal imaginary identification.
2. They can identify all the songs. Even the least musically gifted can guess the ending of a Lloyd-Webber number. In fact, some researcher somewhere has transposed all of his songs one on top of the other in order to prove that they're identical. Try it yourself one day if you're already done with scratching your eyeballs with a hatpin.
3. To a troglodyte, the musical represents class, an extra-special night out in a capital city. This air of excitement has led to the phenomenon known as "starlighting", whereby the underprivileged attempt to collect the full set of musical experiences on offer, thereby showing themselves to be "cultured" and savant.

The last function, although seemingly subversive, is entirely harmless and, in veritate, useful. True, you don't want people getting ideas above their station that would upset the (non-existent) class system. But there's something about Phantom of the Opera that is curiously like soma. Provide them with a holiday from life BUT (and here's the rub) make them pay for it.

Naturally I have also had to take into account the interests of the participants, the so- called "actors" and "singers". The Musical Alliance's recent demonstrations world- wide have brought the prospects of the "profession" under international scrutiny. The Alliance alleges that a ban on musicals would result in up to 80 per cent of the "actors" having to be put down. Whatever the benefits of such a scheme, I can do without that much blood on my hands. Consequently the Council will be implementing a different scheme.

From 15th March 2001 there will be a full-scale overhaul of the content of musicals. Content will be strictly limited to the following topics:

1. Horse rape
2. Tattooing babies
3. Dysfunctional electrical equipment
4. Hard-to-reach back teeth

A definite improvement. Not only two more categories, but items which studies have shown to predominate in the waking thoughts of your average prole.

In response to my directives the writing/composing collectives have been hard at work in production of randomly generated pieces. So far they have completed the following:

Aspects of Zoophilia (possibly to be renamed My Mare Lady) - charts the blissful, though forced, union, and subsequent agonising separation in the horrors of Great War France, of a young gentleman and his comely grey mare. Current obstacle: how to get the horse to sing. Note to stage management collectives - mace or cosh?

Annie Get Your Toaster - a woman in a man's world, Annie Oakley dreams of becoming the fastest electrical repair person in the West. Does she succeed? Like I'm going to tell you. Buy a fucking ticket.

Grease - zoophilia again.

So, the plots initially seem slightly unlikely or unrepresentative. But any more so than the presumption that heavily made-up rollerskatin' humanoids can accurately represent the emotional entanglements and career concerns of railroad carriages?