SOMEBODY SET UP US THE BOMB: Anne Frank as a ‘Pansexual Latinx Girlie’ — Joke, Woke, or Just Plain Offensive?

The show’s own website says, “‘Slam Frank’ imagines what happens when a progressive community theater company decides to transform Anne Frank’s true story into an intersectional, multiethnic, genderqueer, decolonized, empowering Afro-Latin hip-hop musical.”

At first glance, it sounds highly offensive. At second glance, it still sounds highly offensive but with a caveat. The play’s creator, Jewish composer Andrew Fox, claims it’s not exactly what it sounds like. Rather than being woke garbage, it’s meant to make fun of woke garbage. Liberals laughing at themselves and all that — who knew it was possible?

But does it work?  Depends on who you ask. I’ve read numerous reviews, and many people seem to love it. Others claim it’s hard to be in on the joke when the joke is not so obvious. Either way, most of them seem to agree that it’s hard to tell if the play’s — presumably left-leaning — audience realizes it’s satire or thinks it’s just another notch on the belt of performative virtue signaling that has taken over the theater, television, and film industries these days.

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[Olivia Haynie of The Forward] also writes that whenever Fox does any sort of interview or media, he’s in character, pretending to be an ultra-woke playwright, making it even harder to understand where the joke might begin. He says things like, “Latinx girlies feel included in the Holocaust.” Looking at his background, as well as the backgrounds of the rest of the creative team — including Sam LaFrage, the artistic director of an LGBTQ-themed children’s theater company — doesn’t help either. It’s all leftists making fun of leftism. How very meta of them.

Yes, it’s very meta, but if leftists are realizing how far over its skis their ideology became during Trump’s first term, culminating in the PC annus horribilis of 2020, that’s a positive accomplishment. Still though, in regards to the headline on Sarah Anderson’s post, embrace the healing power of and.