{"id":21397,"date":"2025-06-29T21:54:30","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T04:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/?p=21397"},"modified":"2025-06-29T21:54:30","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T04:54:30","slug":"article-about-shrek-the-musical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2025\/06\/29\/article-about-shrek-the-musical\/","title":{"rendered":"Article about Shrek the Musical"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/kuscholarworks.ku.edu\/server\/api\/core\/bitstreams\/bcbd21f8-3b2b-4a63-a1ee-dda372dcf78f\/content\">\u2018Let Our Freak Flags Fly\u2019: Shrek the Musical and the Branding of Diversity<\/a>,\u201d by Jessica Brater et al. (Published in 2010.)<\/p>\r\n<p>Covers a whole bunch of interconnected topics. The article starts and ends with some comments about Obama, but is mostly focused on the history and development of <cite>Shrek the Musical<\/cite>, and the diversity-related positions that DreamWorks did and didn\u2019t choose to take. The article talks about product tie-ins, the economics of Broadway shows, proposed remedies-for-social-problems \u201cbased on individual commitment, rather than systemic change,\u201d cleaning up Times Square, marketing campaigns, William Steig\u2019s original book, Black male sidekicks, gay male sidekicks, and lots more.<\/p>\r\n<p>Here\u2019s one bit I was particularly struck by:<\/p>\r\n<blockquote>\r\n<p>Viewing performance footage online is a mode of previewing the live theatrical event, which reassures consumers that they are making a sound financial investment, while instilling what Richard Caves calls \u2018rational addiction\u2019: the consumption of cultural goods to increase one\u2019s \u2018expertise and training\u2019 so that one experiences more \u2018thrills per hour\u2019 when consuming similar goods in the future.<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-improving-society","category-theatre"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21398,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21397\/revisions\/21398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}