STRATEGY THIRTY-NINE
The Social Statement as Plot Device

Some Background

Sometimes when the headlines get too much and we feel overwhelmed by humanity's failings, a song results. The act of writing serves to lessen a sense of frustration. The biggest satisfaction, of course, comes from getting the message to the public. When the songwriter is also a recording artist, then the world readily gets a “Jack and Diane,” or an “Allentown” or “Another Day in Paradise.” When you're a nonperformer writer, the process may be a bit slower, but your statement can still get out there as “40-Hour Week for a Living” and “Who Will Answer” attest.

Attitude Equals Style

A song's style results from the writer's attitude toward a given event or ongoing condition; it may be appreciative, wistful, critical or outraged. For example, “40-Hour Week” is a country tribute to the unsung working class; “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” a folk lament on the effects of war; “Discipline,” a pop plea for safe sex in the era of AIDS.

The Satirical Song

Somewhere between social protest and the comedy song, lies the realm of satire. The satirist is a kind of self-appointed guardian of standards, ideals and truth– of moral as well as aesthetic values–who takes it upon him- or herself to censure human foibles and vices in the hope of correcting them.

In the following examples of satirical songs, the writer points a ridiculing finger at such perennial blemishes on the complexion of society as stage mothers, gauche tourists, unethical politicians, and the snobbish rich.

Depending upon your familiarity with theater songs, many (or even all) of those titles may be unfamiliar to you. Because in satire the emphasis is on the words rather than the tune or groove, the genre's more commonly found in theater and cabaret where the performer has the listener's full attention.

Satire and Personality Type

A satirical bent requires several qualities: an observance of concrete realities, tough-minded cause-effect thinking, a valuing of propriety and lawfulness, and an impulse to set the world to rights. In other words, the characteristics of an STJ. If you share those attributes, you're likely to have a flair for satire. (As did the writer of “Have a Nice Day.”)

If, on the other hand, you're the polar-opposite NFP, it's quite possible that you'll find this attitude somewhat alien. You'll see.

Prewriting Suggestion

Here's a prewriting approach used by Hank Williams, Jr., “I watch TV and read the newspaper and try to keep up with things. And I get mad a lot. I try to put that in a song.” Sounds to me like the perfect preparation for writing “a song with social significance,” as lyrical satirist Harold Rome put it.

First choose a subject of genuine personal concern. The question to ask yourself would be, What element of society arouses my indignation or censure. What lights my ire? Subjects can range from annoyance at bus passengers who exit at the entrance door to outrage at the malfeasance of elected officials.

Small Craft Warning

Writing successful satire requires that your subject be sufficiently familiar to your audience to give your comic barbs instant recognition. Be mindful, too, of your intended marketplace. Quite naturally, that marketplace will be the genre of songs that you like best—folk, pop, R&B, country, cabaret or theater. To help keep your writing consistent in style, imagine a particular recording/performing artist singing your words. Here's a student song tailored for cabaret.

Social Statement Example No. 1: A Satire (Verse/Chorus)
KILL AND TELL

A lady and her lover
Had a king-size brawl one day
And she became too furious
To simply walk away.
So she drilled him full of bullet holes
And left him on the floor.
Now publishers from everywhere
Are lined up at her door.
'Cause when you

KILL AND TELL,
No crime goes unrewarded.
Just KILL AND TELL,
The public loves it sordid.
A story that is gory
Will be sure to sell
And you'll reap a heap o' glory
When you KILL AND TELL.

Then there was the feller
Who got tired of his wife
And laced her wine with arsenic
Thus cutting short her life.
While out on bail awaiting trial
He made a pile of dough
Giving interviews on Donahue
And the Oprah Winfrey show.
'Cause when you

KILL AND TELL.
No crime goes unrewarded.
When you KILL AND TELL,
You're flashbulbed and recorded,
And you can bet your autographs
Will also do quite well
As celebrity mem'rabilia
When you KILL AND TELL.

So if you aim for instant fame,
Here's what you have to do:
Go out and do somebody in.
(The choice is up to you.)
And while you're in your prison cell,
Write down each juicy de tail
And the story you produce
Can go for thirty dollars retail.

Then the book'll be translated
And you'll sell the movie rights,
And the ads'll be on billboards
And the title up in lights.
And your face will make the cover
Of People Magazine:
Just break one small commandment
And spill a lot of beans
'Cause when you

KILL AND TELL,
No crime goes unrewarded.
I can't oversell
The honor I'm accorded:
With a limo to my interviews
And a mike in my lapel,
I make a lively living
Telling how to KILL AND TELL.
^© 1991 Rebecca Holtzman. Used with permission.

Comment

With a happy rhythm and frequent perfect rhyme, the lyric spoofs both the public's appetite for the sordid and the media's glamorization of crime. The tone takes an appropriately irreverent attitude toward human life as the plot cheerfully exaggerates the potential rewards of committing murder. The specificity of name dropping—Oprah Winfrey, Donahue, People Magazine, and the verbifying of flashbulb add both to the lyric's enjoyment and memorability. Rebecca Holtzman, an ESTJ, brings her extravert's (E) love of action and people and places to her STJ indignation over one of society's less admirable qualities, to produce an original lyric topped with a paragram title.

Some Background on a Theater Piece

The next role-model social statement comes once again from Quilt—A Musical Celebration, from which you've already seen the comedy lyric, “Karen's Song” (p. 226–27). This lyric draws upon the biographical data from two true stories.

Social Statement Example No. 2: A Theater Piece
VICTIM OF AIDS

(Mrs. D'Angelo (Dee-AN-je-lo) is a middle-class woman in her late forties. Behind her is seen a 6′ × 3′ quilt panel showing a top hat, tap shoes and sheet music. It reads “Tommy Dee.” She sings:)

Thomas Patrick Anthony D'Angelo, the third,
Could dance just like Gene Kelly and sing just like a bird.
We don't know where he got it from 'cause if his dad or I
Would sing or dance, the dogs would howl and little kids'd cry!
At talent shows and musicals, we'd watch our gifted boy
And see he was a messenger—a messenger of joy.

Thomas Patrick Anthony D'Angelo, “the three,”
Went to New York City, changed his name to Tommy Dee.
And what he did at home, he soon was doing on Broadway.
And then we got the letter where he told us he was gay.
This took some getting used to, but in time, with love, we knew
If Tommy had accepted this, then we'd accept it too.

But I prayed, Dear God,
Don't let my son become
A VICTIM OF AIDS.

“Thomas Patrick Anthony D'Angelo, your son,”
That's how he signed the Christmas card along with David Dunn.
When they arrived together at Christmastime that year
We all approached the meeting with anxiety and fear.
But Dave was just like Tommy, intelligent and fun;
Our Tommy'd found a lover, and we'd found a second son.
Dave and Tommy telephone us every Sunday night.
So when they called on Thursday, I feared something wasn't right.
They said they'd had a blood test, about a month ago
And had they tested positive? The test results said, “No!”

Thank God!
My son would not become
A VICTIM OF AIDS

We laughed and cried and laughed some more
Because the news was great.
And then we said goodbye
And they went out to celebrate…

(Breaking the song structure–speaking:)

And a black Cutlass Supreme
Pulled up beside them asking directions
Tommy and Dave went over
The doors flew open and four men jumped out
Swinging bats and boards
And one had a knife.
Hitting them again and again and again and again and again

Dave got away and ran.
He found a police call box.
Five minutes later the police arrived
And drove to the scene of the attack.

They found the body beaten and stabbed And beside the body written in blood
The words …
“AIDS fags die.”

(She pauses, then resumes singing)

Thomas Patrick Anthony D'Angelo, the last,
Was struck by a disease with a well-established past.
Acquir'd immune deficiency was not my Tommy's fate:
He died from fear and ignorance and violence and hate.
These acquir'd deficiencies contaminate and spread
Till sanity, humanity, and Tommy Dee are dead.
And one by one
We all become
A VICTIM OF AIDS
(Pointing to herself)
A VICTIM OF AIDS
(Looking at her son's Quilt Panel)
A VICTIM OF AIDS
© 1991 Lyric by Jim Morgan/Music by Michael Stockler. Used with permission.

Comment

Despite the plot's extended time span and complexity, Jim Morgan's clear, linear writing made it easy to follow. To compress years of biographical data in four verses requires making every word count: No flab, no needless modifier. The variation motif at the end of each verse's first line—the third/“the three”/my son/the last—is a noteworthy device that acts to both outline the lyric's framework and to underscore its paradoxical climax.

Tommy Dee's death—which resulted not, as his mother had feared, from her son's deficient immunity to the HIV virus, but from society's deficient immunity to hatred and violence—reflects the ironic worldview common to the intuitive/thinking (NT) writer. The INTJ, of the four NT types, manifests an especially strong sense of personal mission. Jim's many years of writing, revisioning, and revising the revue's book and lyrics exemplified his mission to bring the AIDS Quilt panels to life and to bring their message of hope and brotherhood to the theatergoing public. His tenacity and talent were rewarded:Quilt—A Musical Celebration won the much coveted Edward Kleban Musical Theatre Award (of $100,000) for the best original musical revue of 1994.

Since its premiere at the Smithsonian Institute in conjunction with the final display of the entire Quilt, the revue has generated regional productions by Penn State University, the University of Michigan and the University of Las Vegas as well as a London production.

If you're visiting New York and would like to see a videotape of this award-winning musical, call the Theatre Archives Department of Lincoln Center's Library for the Performing Arts to request a screening. I believe that you will be amused and touched by this special musical and that the consummate craftsmanship of Jim Morgan's lyrics will inspire you to develop your own talent to its full potential.

WrapUp

Writing a social statement not only affords you a means to express a pressing issue—whether amusingly satirical or movingly powerful—it affords the public a focused bit of clarity in an often chaotic world.