What do “Gutenburg,” “Spamalot” and “Titanique” all have in common? They are all satirical musicals. Satire is a work that uses wit and sarcasm to poke fun at or criticize something or someone. Writing a work of satire requires walking a fine line between funny and ironic and downright insulting. For example, many argue that the musical “The Book of Mormon” insults the African people by its portrayal of them on stage. Satire can often touch on serious subjects, but keep the mood lighthearted. To do this, there must be a balance between humor and respect.
“Slam Frank” is what happens when someone takes a work of satire too far. As described in broadwayworld.com, “The musical satire imagines what happens when a progressive community theater company decides that maybe now is not the time for us to center these privileged, straight, white European Jews (who spent three years in an attic, hiding from Nazis). And so, in an effort to make our world a better place, this heroic fictional theater troupe transforms Anne Frank’s true story into an intersectional, multiethnic, genderqueer, decolonized, anti-capitalist, hyper-empowering Afro-Latin hip-hop musical.”
In this retelling of The Diary of a Young Girl,” Anne Frank is renamed Anita Franco, with her story set to hip-hop music and the identities of the rest of the characters completely changed in order to “diversify the Holocaust.” This whole concept is meant to ridicule anyone who tries to make the Holocaust not about the Jews, but comes off as an insensitive evocation of Anne Frank’s name and in addition, the memory of the 6 million murdered along with her.
The entire musical’s social media account plays into the satire, exploring how they will be “de-colonizing” and making the Holocaust as a whole more relatable to other minorities. This content is very harmful for two reasons. For the people who realize the concept is satire and are playing along with it, they are making incredibly insensitive comments, even as a joke. For instance, one comment I saw under a video about one of the songs was “6 million albums sold!” with a fire emoji right after that. Then there are the people who truly believe this narrative and the content coming out of this account as reality. Overall, this show downplays Jewish suffering of the past and present by bringing up the ever-popular idea that since Jews are white, they can’t be oppressed.
The entire show is disrespectful, and while the end point the musical is making is relevant, this is an inappropriate way to address this extremism. Even down to the lyrics, there is no respect for the memory of Anne Frank and others’ experiences in the Holocaust with a rap saying, “‘N’ if you’re different / Then sew your patch in / I guess that’s what happens / When you let the Nazis / Dictate the fashions,” and later continues with “I ain’t mad though / I love fashion / She gon’ write it all out in her diary.” The show is scheduled to have staged concert readings in June at Asylum NYC, but there is already a petition to combat this disrespectful production (https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-opening-of-slam-frank-a-disrespect-to-jewish-history).
In a time where Holocaust denial and antisemitism are at an all time high, and there are fewer and fewer survivors around, we must focus on telling the true stories of the Holocaust. This is how we can combat the surge of Holocaust denial and keep the idea of “Never Again” a reality. We as a community must demand respect be given to Jewish stories as it would to other cultures’, and that is no laughing matter.
