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Maybe i'll format this into a proper shrine with cooler information. Currently it's a home for this GARGAUNTAN essay i wrote after seeing the show. It's messy and doesnt really have a thesis. Maybe i'll get around to cleaning it up, but i thought i'd publish it before it spirals into nothingness. Either way, please enjoy and tell me ur feelings about wartime nostalgia and queerness and all the other things that crop up!
Guess who saw this musical in April and won't shut the ever loving fuck up about it? THIS GUY!
(brief detour that will save you confusion later: The UK includes the island of Great Britain, the territory of Northern Ireland, and all of the crown dependencies: the UK is the whole remaining empire. Great Britain, which is often shortened to Britain, is the big landmass that contains England, Wales, and mainland Scotland. Technically, Scots are British. they get upset about this because nobody likes being conflated with the English. England is the country that has the parliament and London and tea and crumpets in it. there is no such thing as a 'British' accent etc. you have to specify what country you mean, or even what part of which country. North Wales and Newcastle do not sound the same!)
Operation Mincemeat is currently my favourite musical. I don't think it's the technically best musical ever made, but it's fun, it's queer, and it appeals to my tastes. After mulling it over for a few days, i think I've come to the conclusion that Operation Mincemeat is Britain's answer to Hamilton. That might sound very, very extreme, but hear me out. Hamilton is a big, crazy, sung through musical that asks the question of 'who built this country, and what does that say about us now?' Whilst it focuses on the founding fathers, Miku binder and all, it rather cleverly uses parts of USian culture nurtured by immigrant communities. From a cast full of actors of colour to a soundtrack that is almost entirely rap, to Lin Manuel Miranda himself. Hamilton tries to challenge the white narrative. It succeeds, pretty damn well.
...'Who Lives, Who dies, Who tells your story?' it's the people you tried to quash!!! fuck you Washington!!
It might be tempting to say that SIX is the English Hamilton. They came about at the same time, were both big and shiny, were both fucking massive in their respective territories and globally, and they both 'decolonised' a well known narrative. But SIX isn't a response to Hamilton. Their developments overlapped, and whilst SIX takes a sledgehammer to a foundational myth of England, it only targets one pillar of one story, and doesn't challenge any grander narratives in the way that Hamilton did.
Operation Mincemeat, however, is nothing like Hamilton. Despite being the greatest west end success... ever, It's still clinging onto its barebones framework from when the actors were so poor they had to share beds [In The Frame, 5.26] just to be able to afford to put the show on. It's got heaps of dialogue based scenes, wasn't choreographed, has 90-100 roles split between 5 actors, and generally speaking, most of the cast have been white so far. except Jean Leslie, who is usually, but not exclusively, cast as a woman of colour. And WWII was far too recent to be the founding story of the nation.
...But, maybe it's not. WWII sits in a really strange place in UK history. As much as Britain (see foreword) has oodles and oodles of history before then, The United Kingdom in its current form only came about in 1927 (Ireland was kept against their will from 1800 to 1927, when it was partitioned into North and ROI). Many of our cultural staples were formed during, or as a result of this war. Whilst writing this essay in my head, i realised just how well-oiled the British Wartime Mythology Machine is. We are first taught about WWII through the lives of children our own age (5-9 years old). Evacuees, child-sized gas masks, corporal punishment, and all the other things that tell us tender babes, that the war happened to us at home too. As slightly older children (9-12) we learn about the holocaust and the wider impact on Europe, and Anne Frank's diary is used to contextualise it for us. The Land Girls were made out to be icons for the girls, and all the strongest boys should want to be the brave front-line soldiers. Some of us got a little confused upon seeing the masculine, chivalrous parts of the WLA, or the women who shaved their heads to trick army officers into letting them join the big strong boys and never looked back. Whoops. (Don't worry. We'll get to Ewen Montagu.)
Operation Mincemeat does not challenge the 'blitz spirit' or the 'stiff upper lip' narrative. The class barriers have not been removed, but are out of sight for the most part, MI5 are sexy, and the most important bit: There's a fairy godmother right at the start of the narrative that says 'Now, you may have been told that everyone was poor, hungry, and smelt like eggs. But, if you look a little closer, that's not true!' This blitz-fairy is the crucial spine of the British War Narrative. if the narrative isn't military propaganda, it is a bedtime story recited by the blitz fairy. Operation Mincemeat may seem like the former, but it is entirely the latter. If you've seen the show, you will recall that even amongst the 98 or so roles, there is no fairy, or didactic narrator to open the scene. However. There is Montagu. I told you we'd come back to him! Monty and Hester are two halves of the same set of scales. When the show opens with Monty, alone, feet on the desk: this is when the imaginary blitz fairy in our heads does the work. An actress, dressed as a man, smiles knowingly at us and at once, two things become true.
Monty's opening is a warning before the story that says, without words: 'You may think that the war was all doom and gloom, but trust me for a little while, and you'll see something more interesting.' -- sound familiar?
And it works! Later, when Hester is introduced, the same thing happens but with less hand holding. Hester's actor simply correct's Jean's 'Yes, Sir' to 'Ma'am.' and then about 12 seconds later, Charles' actor comes in wearing a bow and three-quarter skirt and makes a few rowdy quips. Thus, an agreement is made: we can laugh at the jokes that Charles' actor makes, as long as we agree to never laugh at Hester.
These moments of preparation that they give the audience is kind of a butlerian act of genius. Butler is responsible for the concepts of 'performative gender' and also the idea that gender is a 'social construct'. Butler makes it very clear that this second idea doesn't mean that gender isn't real, but rather that it is untouchable. How do you convince people that time isn't real? I suppose in this manner, Operation Mincemeat is a postmodern narrative. as much as i fucking hate to say that. But it does challenge the grand narrative of gender and bodies. and it also does a bunch of other post modern things (pastiche, distrust of authority, metatextual historography, intertextuality. oh God. My degree has ruined me.) When Butler breaks down gender perception, they make it clear that it's not entirely in the subject's control. Some of it is what the observer already understands about gender roles. These pre-conceptions are a real bastard.
What do we see about Montagu? When his actress steps on stage, we as an audience make a million judgements. I was going to a few, but they're so multitudinous and small that it felt weird. Either way, every single person in that audience without doubt makes some sort of internal judgement about Monty's body, and his gender.
But, Monty's actions, from that same second he steps on stage, feed us contrasting information. I think it really speaks to the actors that play him. There's very little doubt that we're meant to percieve him as a man, even if there's something in our heads that tries to fight that. He consistently reaffirms that he is not feminine. His actions, and the things he controls about his body are perfectly crafted to say 'I am closer to a man than a woman.' It's brilliant. And Monty is one of my all time favourite characters to ever see. Whilst yes, I am still human and am deeply in gay love with Tash Hodgson and every other actor who steps up to the role, my main point is that he inspires me to thrash against the constraints of gender performance. He swaggers and boisters and uplifts and tells us to ignore his body and focus on the infinite other, more interesting things about him. Like the literal 2 second long scene of him and charlie ... pissing? unironically one of my favourite scenes for some reason. It's such a funny chance to breathe in perhaps the most chaotic number in the entire musical.
And yet the queerness of this piece keeps building. There's no strictly Queer narrative, Monty and Charles weren't in gay love, Hester wasn't trans. On paper, there's nothing queer about the operation and the story surrounding it. But by laying the foundations of 'appearance does not matter right now', everything suddenly feels VERY queer. It was pointed out to me that the most masculine woman in the show is Jean. She's bold and passionate. She is also, the only woman in the 'main 5' to be played by a woman. Charles, similarly, is the least masculine character out of the 'main 5'. He's again, the only man of the 'main 5' to be played by a man. This visible gender affirmation puts them on par with characters that should be their superiors. Charles and Monty feel like equals because they're both slightly askew, despite the fact that Monty absolutely should be able to tear Charlie to bits. And sure enough, right at the start of the musical we see this potential 'true' hierachy, when Monty blithely drinks out of Charlie's mug, whilst introducing himself to Charlie.
I think the situation between Hester and Jean occupies an interesting space, because Hester's physical, underlying masculinty means that she becomes an authority figure, even more that the script makes her. It would be very easy for Jean to pass her off as an old spinster, and if she was played by an older actress, we might be inclined to dismiss her too, but her presentation stops that from happening. We know she will be a character to reckon with, all based on underlying bodily judgements. Isn't that fascinating as hell?? In real life, Trans women are often dismissed, harshly judged, and ignored. In pantomime and music hall tradition, they're a laughing stock. but Hester's construction turns those judgements into a real strength of character, all without being an explicitly queer narrative.
There's something in Montagu's performance of class that echoes the actress' performance of gender. When Monty talks to the navy boys, he is determined to be percieved on their level, calling Charles a 'real landlubber' and other silly things. It is clear that Monty has quite frankly no idea what he's talking about, and it doesnt really serve him any purpose other than gratification. It reminds me of George Eliot's introduction in Poe Party. Both scenes serve to make this interloper look a fool by asking 'what do you get out of this?' In both scenarios, the men they try to impress are coarse and uninterested. Except in Mincemeat, Montagu has convinced everyone of his gender. Reading all this gender philosophy has made me very unpleasant to talk to concerning matters of Gender. Every single person on earth has a different gender. and i say that with my full chest. Montagu's position as a privately educated sexyman puts him in a life completely different to that of the navy captain. He has been raised to be very confident in his position, (fortune favours bravery, and a fortune's what i've got!) and thus his masculinity has a sort of vulnerability to it -- he knows he will never be challenged. The navy captain has been made out, admittedly by Montagu, as a rougher man. Perhaps not an Eton man. Someone who is used to being challenged and must 'prove' his worth. He's still confident, and brushes Montagu off like an annoying child.
The class barriers haven't been entirely lifted, but Operation Mincemeat takes the position that they don't need to be, at least not in this story. Hasildon's thick 'farmer' accent and idiotic disposition places class as a primary barrier. The working class characters, or at least characters with working class accents, are the ones that ask 'what the fuck are you going on about? what are we even doing?' not just to individual characters, but to the whole establishment. Glyndwr was a working class welshman, One of the Navy Boys is Geordie, Hasildon is rooted in the countryside. All of these characters challenge the narrative and try to slow it down. I think this is played to their detriment - and maybe speaks of the wider use of class in English Comedy, but Operation Mincemeat is a romance about the founding of the country - Focusing on the dirty details slows us down.
And that takes us back to Hamilton. I promise i didn't forget. Operation Mincemeat is a response to Hamilton because it does the exact same thing as Hamilton, but in a way that is nothing like the American method. The conversation of 'who built this country, and who told that story?' cycles back to class. In Hamilton, white politicans are played by a cast of dozens of people from marginalised races. In Mincemeat, the entire English Institution is played by 5 people and a desk. I mentioned earlier that there was a point where the original cast lived on a shoestring budget to just keep the show afloat, and that's the most vibrant reflection of Post War Britain that the rest of the essay almost doesn't need to exist. The audience are told to not pay attention to the audience's faces, just what they wear, and ignore the fact that not a single actor gets a break longer than 3 minutes in a 160 minute long performance. The actors, like the working class of this country push through no money and no rest so that their work can be credited to the big wigs at the top. Glyndwr died under a fake, middle class english name. And that was what was on his tombstone for YEARS until they finally added his real name. There are so many people behind the scenes of the making of a country. Mincemeat maybe isn't as obsessed with legacy, but it is invested in the future. For these two hours, we saw the past in a gorgeous, open technicolour. That freedom doesn't have to end in the past.
Thanks for reading!
Whilst writing this essay, I ended up writing down a list of 'wartime nostalgia truths'. I thought they'd be more prevelent than they ended up being, but i want to keep them here anyway. Maybe you can do something cool with them.