Analysis Of The 1999 Broadway Musical 'Oklahoma !'

Oklahoma! Response Paper
The musical being watched and analysed is Oklahoma! It is a 1999 Broadway musical directed by Sir Trevor Nunn and choreographed by Susan Stroman starring Hugh Jackman, Josefina Gabrielle and Shular Hensley amongst others. Oklahoma! is originally the result of collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, with the former composing the music and the latter writing the screenplay. It is touted as a landmark American musical, and the 1999 production is a marker of the musical’s 70th anniversary. The musical, on the surface of things seems like mostly like a love story, but from my point of view, there are a few other themes lurking below the surface. Most central to the story, I believe, is the portrayal of the distinction between civilised American living and animalistic living. Though this may sound bizarre at first, but after a deliberate peeling of the various layers of the musical, this theme most resonates with me.
The ideal American, in the mid-1900s, was white, cheery, decent, well groomed and clean-cut and also chaste. Moreover, the way to achieve this idealistic tendency was to put faith in science and technology. The term “modern” became synonymous with clean, hygienic and good. This emphasis on good through science and technology was so strong that even nursing babies naturally was shunned in the face of bottles in place of a mother’s teat and lab-created formula in place of natural milk. Being civilised and progressing scientifically were the way to