History MisaimedFandom / Theatre

* The titular character of''Theatre/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet'' gets idolized by people who thought he was cool for being vengeful and for slitting people's throats. Problem is, Stephen Sondheim wrote Todd to be a total psychopath and a VillainProtagonist. This is lampshaded in the line, "and I will get him back even as he gloats/in the mean time, ''I'll practice on less honourable throats''." Todd is just as bigoted and flawed as the "filth of the earth" that he claims to despise so much. Also, the message of the play is [[CycleOfRevenge revenge is just as horrible as the deed done to trigger it]], and [[VengeanceFeelsEmpty it accomplishes nothing but bringing more pain]]. This is made clear when [[spoiler:Sweeney Todd unknowingly kills his own wife at the end of the story]]. But nope, people marvel at how "awesome" Sweeney Todd is, wish they were him or that they were as cool as him, and quote him multiple times. Not made better by the [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids disturbing amount of teenagers who have seen only]] [[Film/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet the film version]], and do the same things fans of the musical do, except amped up to 11 because of Creator/JohnnyDepp.

* ''Theatre/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet''. Dear LORD! Of all the revenge tales that get a lot of fans due to the central character and how apparently "cool" he is, this one sticks out most. People idolized him (and still do idolize him) and thought he was cool for being vengeful, for slitting people's throats, often going "I wish Sweeney would slit my throat!". Problem is, Stephen Sondheim wrote him to be a total psychopath. This is especially lampshaded in the line, "and I will get him back even as he gloats/in the mean time, ''I'll practice on less honourable throats''." He is just as bigoted and flawed as the "filth of the earth" that he claims there are. Not to mention the message about revenge being just as horrible as the deed done to trigger it should be made clear when [[spoiler:'''he unknowingly kills his own wife''' at the end of the musical]]. But nope, people marvel at how "awesome" Sweeney is, wish they were him or that they were as cool as him, and quote him multiple times.
** Not made better by the [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotForKids disturbing amount of teenagers who have seen]] [[Film/SweeneyToddTheDemonBarberOfFleetStreet the film version]], and do the same things fans of the musical do, except amped up to 11 because of Creator/JohnnyDepp.
** On the more bizarre side: there's a Sweeney Todd barbershop chain [[{{Defictionalization}} in real life]]. Yeah, I'd go there...
*** In Reading, England there's a pie shop called Sweeney & Todd with a barber's shop next door. The pies are very good.

** It gets even worse when fans ship the Phantom with Christine and go on about how Raoul (who was an aspiring Arctic explorer in the book) is boring and less attractive and that Christine is an evil tease for choosing him by the end. Because heaven forbid a woman marry her sweet childhood friend instead of the raving murderous madman who stalked her, scared her half to death, and threatened to kill her boyfriend if she didn't marry him. The sequel to Creator/AndrewLloydWebber's musical, ''Theatre/LoveNeverDies'', handled this matter by turning poor Raoul into a gambling addict and alcoholic and again raising the possibility of the Phantom and Christing getting together, [[spoiler: ultimately making the misaimed fandom pairing the ''legit'' one]]. The existence of the show serves as a ''massive'' ContestedSequel in the phan community largely because of this - those who view it as a legitimate sequel come into conflict with those who think it shouldn't be taken seriously, making this a case where the misaimed phantom have almost withdrawn entirely from the community at large to form their own groups.

* Much like the other adaptations, there are fans of ''Theatre/{{Beetlejuice}}'' that ship Beetlejuice with Lydia. This sect of the fandom is particularly odd because there's [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwdE-mqXgNc an entire song in the musical]] when Lydia [[spoiler:agrees to marry him]] dedicated to mocking the senseless idea of her being attracted to him, as well as highlighting the pedophilic overtones of the ship.

* There are a few ''Theatre/BeMoreChill'' fans who think having a SQUIP ''would'' be helpful and cool, especially for those who struggle in social situations, even though the musical makes it pretty clear that [[BrainwashedAndCrazy the side]] [[DrivenToMadness effects]] seriously outweigh the short-term benefits.

* The most famous quote of ''Theatre/NoExit'' is "Hell is other people!", showing [[ItWasHisSled the famous plot twist]] that the characters' IronicHell is just being stuck in a room with each other forever. It's often brought up was a justification for antisocial behavior, but the point of the story was that all the main characters are enormous jerks who are incapable of forming positive relationships. It wasn't that ''all'' social activity was bad, just social activity with toxic people.

** ''Phantom'' contains an in-universe Misaimed Fandom as well, with Erik writing, and forcing the opera company to perform, the opera ''Don Juan Triumphant'', an apparent rewrite of Mozart's ''Theater/DonGiovanni'' where the title character avoids his gruesome fate and gets the girl. Erik does not seem to understand that Juan/Giovanni was in fact a ConMan, rapist, and murderer whose death via being DraggedOffToHell by the spirit of the father of one of his victims (whom Juan himself killed) is clearly portrayed as richly deserved.

** ''Phantom'' contains an in-universe Misaimed Fandom as well, with Erik writing, and forcing the opera company to perform, the opera ''Don Juan Triumphant'', an apparent rewrite of Mozart's ''Opera/DonGiovanni'' where the title character avoids his gruesome fate and gets the girl. Erik does not seem to understand that Juan/Giovanni was in fact a ConMan, rapist, and murderer whose death via being DraggedOffToHell by the spirit of the father of one of his victims (whom Juan himself killed) is clearly portrayed as richly deserved.

*** Stephen Greenblatt, the Shakespeare scholar and editor of the Norton Anthology of Literature noted that compared to Theatre/TheJewOfMalta by Creator/ChristopherMarlowe, Shakespeare ''is'' nicer since he allows Shylock to live albeit converted to Christianity, recepient of a HumiliationConga and moreover condemned to being a second-class citizen. However, Marlowe's play has Barabas as an unrepentant VillainProtagonist who never converts, and remains DefiantToTheEnd and moreover ascribes no qualities of mercy to Christianity or any other religion (indeed its message is explicitly ReligionIsWrong) which means that Shakespeare's [[OverlyNarrowSuperlative more liberal for his time and place take on an anti-semitic stock character comes off as far more offensive]] and that it is possible to subject Marlowe's defiant AtLeastIAdmitIt to DracoInLeatherPants and RootingForTheEmpire than Shylock.
** ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet'' gets two helpings of this, usually because people who talk about it seem to have not read it. One the one hand, you get the MisaimedFandom who seems not to realize that Romeo and Juliet die, and it's a tragedy (hence, it is called The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin seriously]]). On the other hand, you have people who assume it's not actually a love story and that Romeo and Juliet are just stupid teenagers who should have listened to their parents, even though those parents are too busy being locked in a completely pointless feud to really do any sort of parenting (which is a big cause of why Romeo and Juliet's relationship is doomed) and even though their lines about being in love are some of the best poetry Shakespeare's written. Romeo and Juliet mishandled their love for each other, but they ''were'' in love.

* The Phantom in ''Theatre/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'' has a dreadfully MisaimedFandom. In [[Literature/ThePhantomOfTheOpera the book]], he was so deformed as to be compared to a walking corpse. In the musical, he's as sensual as can be. He gets about as much of this as every other villain who has a tendency towards [[MagnificentBastard Magnificent Bastardry]]. But somewhere along the line (around the time Gerard Butler played him, actually) some people forgot that the Phantom's primary physical characteristic is that he's ''ugly as Hell''. Nothing causes more of a collective facepalm in the phan community than someone saying something like "I didn't like [[Film/ThePhantomOfTheOpera1925 the silent movie]]; the Phantom was so ''hideous''!"

* The Phantom in ''Theatre/ThePhantomOfTheOpera'' has a dreadfully MisaimedFandom. In [[Literature/ThePhantomOfTheOpera the book]], he was so deformed as to be compared to a walking corpse. In the musical, he's as sensual as can be. He gets about as much of this as every other villain who has a tendency towards [[MagnificentBastard Magnificent Bastardry]] and a fair amount of FetishFuel in their build, really. But somewhere along the line (around the time Gerard Butler played him, actually) some people forgot that the Phantom's primary physical characteristic is that he's ''ugly as Hell''. Nothing causes more of a collective facepalm in the phan community than someone saying something like "I didn't like [[Film/ThePhantomOfTheOpera1925 the silent movie]]; the Phantom was so ''hideous''!"

* ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dVWsBKHgWU Das Wild in Fluren und Triften]]'' from ''Theatre/DerFreischuetz'' has often been said to glorify war, mostly by various stripes of Nazi. A particularly notable example is from ''{{Hellsing}}''. The song is really about Cuno, the head forester, trying to cheer up Max, one of his subordinates, who, because of his failure in a recent shooting-match, may stand to lose both his position and the woman he loves, by speaking of the trial-shot the next day. The title even means "The game in meadows and pastures".

* The Tea Party likes to use "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" from ''{{Cabaret}}'' as a rally song for "taking back the country." It is unknown how many of them know that the song was used to symbolically represent the rise of '''UsefulNotes/NaziGermany'''. (This is partly AdaptationDisplacement: in the stage version, the song only became associated with Nazis in a reprise.)

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* [[TheZerothLawOfTropeExamples Of course]], Creator/WilliamShakespeare's works are subject to this. Made difficult since we don't have anything remotely like WordOfGod on what his intentions were for his plays and characters, leaving it subject to AlternateCharacterInterpretation that is unlikely to ever die:

** Falstaff, a lazy fat drunk whose main purpose in the ''Theatre/HenryIV'' trilogy was to show how dissipated Prince Hal really was, became so popular that (according to legend) Shakespeare was asked by Elizabeth I to write a comedy around him, which is how we got ''Theatre/TheMerryWivesOfWindsor''. (The Queen probably didn't make that request, but she might as well have; audiences really were clamoring to see more of Falstaff.) Modern productions, and Creator/OrsonWelles' Film/ChimesAtMidnight have reinterpreted Falstaff as the Protagonist of the plays, seeing his devastating critiques of war, martial glory, and honor as more compelling than the play's hero who doesn't think twice about ''sending untold numbers to be killed''. Shakespeare's plays were certainly commissioned and sold as propaganda for the state and royalty, so reinterpreting his works as anti-monarchical via Falstaff is certainly something beyond anything Shakespeare could have intended.
** Shylock in ''Theatre/TheMerchantOfVenice'' is an anti-Semitic caricature but today's audiences see him as a TragicVillain who see his famous speech as an example of anti-racist ideas snuck into propaganda by Shakespeare. This allows modern readers to re-interpret the anti-Semitism that undoubtedly was originally in the play and recast the whole thing around Shylock. Most modern productions do some editing, for instance omitting Shylock being forced to convert at the end.

** It gets even worse when fans ship the Phantom with Christine and go on about how Raoul (who was an aspiring Arctic explorer in the book) is boring and less attractive and that Christine is an evil tease for choosing him by the end. Because heaven forbid a woman marry her sweet childhood friend instead of the raving murderous madman who stalked her, scared her half to death, and threatened to kill her boyfriend if she didn't marry him. The sequel to AndrewLloydWebber's musical, ''Theatre/LoveNeverDies'', handled this matter by turning poor Raoul into a gambling addict and alcoholic and again raising the possibility of the Phantom and Christing getting together, [[spoiler: ultimately making the misaimed fandom pairing the ''legit'' one]]. The existence of the show serves as a ''massive'' ContestedSequel in the phan community largely because of this - those who view it as a legitimate sequel come into conflict with those who think it shouldn't be taken seriously, making this a case where the misaimed phantom have almost withdrawn entirely from the community at large to form their own groups.

*** Proto-Feminist scholars once saw Portia as a positive female character since she demonstrates active agency, has more guile than the heroes and eloquently voices her views in law to defend Shylock. Modern audiences see her as a DesignatedHero who is more or less party to state persecution of Jews and whose formerly beloved 'the quality of mercy' speech is one where she more or less states that Christians are more merciful than Jews, which a modern audience no longer sees as anything other than religious propaganda, and which considering the overall conceit of the play is nothing more than {{Hypocrisy}} and MoralMyopia.

*** "Hath not a Jew eyes..." in particular - most scholars agree that the purpose of this soliloquy is to demonstrate that Shylock ''does not actually understand what a human being is'', since the only trait he describes unique to humans is vengeance, a vice associated with Jews. Now it's usually treated as a showcase of his humanity and how he's been wronged by Christianity.[[note]]Yet the main characters are just as sneaky and/or vengeful as Shylock is. This is really less Misaimed Fandom and more simple YMMV. [[FairForItsDay The social conventions of the time also feed into it,]] making it much harder to take Shylock at face value.[[/note]
*** Proto-Feminist scholars once saw Portia as a positive female character since she demonstrates active agency, has more guile than the heroes and eloquently voices her views in law to defend Shylock. Modern audiences see her as a DesignatedHero who is more or less party to state persecution of Jews and whose formerly beloved 'the quality of mercy' speech is one she identifies as native to Christians more than Jews which a modern audience no longer sees as anything other than religious propaganda.

*** On the same note, "Brevity is the soul of wit"...

** Also, ''Theatre/{{Macbeth}}'''s "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" speech is a favorite of many {{Straw Nihilist}}s who don't realize Shakespeare used it to show how twisted and desperate the protagonist has become.
*** Since it comes immediately after he learns of the death of his wife, it presumably shows the eponymous character going into a VillainousBSOD, rather than being a bold statement of considered philosophy.

** Shaw himself has one, mostly from people who think that, as a Socialist, he was anti-Imperialist. He wasn't; he was in favor of the Boer War, for instance, and ''virulently'' opposed to Irish independence.

* [[TheZerothLawOfTropeExamples Of course]], Creator/WilliamShakespeare's works are subject to this. Made difficult since we don't have anything remotely like WordOfGod on what his intentions were for the play and the characters, leaving it subject to AlternateCharacterInterpretation that is unlikely to ever die:

** Another example is the song "What Keeps A Man Alive?", which is a lyrical FreudianExcuse about how poverty leads to savagery in order to survive. Brecht condemned this attitude, as in practice, it meant that the poor would prey on one another rather than organizing and bettering their condition. This was missed at people that took the message at face value and ignored how in the play, they end up remaining under the thumb of Macheath and Peachum, and miss the final lines (often left in production) that people only see those in the light but ignore the ones who are out of sight.

* Creator/BertoltBrecht: Inventor of Epic Theater, communist and Marxist, critic of UsefulNotes/{{Capitalism}} and yet far more popular in the capitalist West than the Communist East, who largely rejected his modernist and revolutionary aesthetic in favor of socialist realism. Brecht [[IntendedAudienceReaction aimed his plays for a largely capitalist audience]] so this didn't bother him mcuh because in his view, revolutionary agitation and modernist alienation are more useful to a capitalist audience than one in a socialist audience, at least in theory. What would bother him are the following ironies:

* Creator/BertoltBrecht: Inventor of Epic Theater, communist and Marxist, critic of UsefulNotes/{{Capitalism}} and yet far more popular in the capitalist West than the Communist East, who largely rejected his modernist and revolutionary aesthetic in favor of socialist realism. Brecht [[IntendedAudienceReaction aimed his plays for a largely capitalist audience so he did indeed aim his plays for a capitalist western audience]] because in his view, revolutionary agitation and modernist alienation are more useful to a capitalist audience than one in a socialist audience, at least in theory. What would bother him are the following ironies:

* Creator/BertoltBrecht: Inventor of Epic Theater, staunch hater of Capitalism, and victim of terrible MisaimedFandom.
** When ''Theatre/TheThreepennyOpera'' first premiered in Berlin in 1928, it was a satirical indictment of the bourgeoisie, although it was wildly popular with this particular social class.
** Similarly, it seems strange how "The Ballad of Mack the Knife" (from said opera) transformed from an eerie depiction of a serial killer/rapist/arsonist/thief to a happy-go-lucky jazz standard. The badass lyrics and neat meter are probably responsible (not to mention how many jazzy singers are linked with the Mafia).
*** However, the tune by which we know said ballad is not the one Brecht intended for it. He had a general policy against songs that were pleasant to listen to.
*** It certainly doesn't help that most kids born in 1975 or later are [[WeirdAlEffect only familiar with the tune]] via the zany [=McDonald's=] parody "It's Mac Tonight!"
** Another example is the song "What Keeps A Man Alive?", which is a lyrical FreudianExcuse about how poverty leads to savagery in order to survive. Brecht condemned this attitude, as in practice, it meant that the poor would prey on one another rather than organizing and bettering their condition. This was missed at people that took the message at face value.

* [[TheZerothLawOfTropeExamples Of course]], Creator/WilliamShakespeare's works have attracted a misaimed fandom:
** Falstaff, a lazy fat drunk whose main purpose in the ''Theatre/HenryIV'' trilogy was to show how dissipated Prince Hal really was, became so popular that (according to legend) Shakespeare was asked by Elizabeth I to write a comedy around him, which is how we got ''Theatre/TheMerryWivesOfWindsor''. (The Queen probably didn't make that request, but she might as well have; audiences really were clamoring to see more of Falstaff.)
*** Though Falstaff's devastating critiques of war, martial glory, and honor resonate so heavily that some readers forgive him his faults because his faults ''don't send untold numbers to be killed''. This claim can't be made of Henry and the others. Falstaff's amazing take-down of Henry and honor [[http://audiopoetry.wordpress.com/2006/05/09/falstaffs-honour-speech/ here]] is simply brilliant.
** Take a close look at Shylock in ''Theatre/TheMerchantOfVenice''. An anti-Semitic caricature, or a tragic satire thereof? The characterisation of Shylock is [[FairForItsDay just interestingly complicated enough]] (unlike the totally monstrous caricature in ''Theatre/TheJewOfMalta'', for example) that it allows modern readers to re-interpret the anti-Semitism that undoubtedly was originally in the play and recast the whole thing around Shylock. Most modern productions do some editing, for instance omitting Shylock being forced to convert at the end.
*** "Hath not a Jew eyes..." in particular - most scholars agree that the purpose of this soliloquy is to demonstrate that Shylock ''does not actually understand what a human being is'', since the only trait he describes unique to humans is vengeance, a vice associated with Jews. Now it's usually treated as a showcase of his humanity and how he's been wronged by Christianity.
*** ...Yet the main characters are just as sneaky and/or vengeful as Shylock is. This is really less Misaimed Fandom and more simple YMMV. [[FairForItsDay The social conventions of the time also feed into it,]] making it much harder to take Shylock at face value.

* Nazi and Neo-Nazi Wagner fans. Wagner was indeed anti-Semitic, but believed that Jews should assimilate culturally and convert to Christianity, not that they should be wiped off the face of the Earth. He had a number of Jewish friends, including conductors of his operas. But the association of Wagner with Nazism has become so ubiquitous that some people who don't check their facts think Wagner actually ''was'' a Nazi, despite the fact that he died before Hitler was even ''born.'' Some Jewish couples take this to the point of not playing Wagner's [[LohengrinAndMendelssohn most famous composition at their wedding]]. It doesn't help that Hitler himself saw Wagner's operas as ringing endorsements of Nazism (though many of the other leading Nazis weren't fans of his operas), and that many of Wagner's descendants from that time were close friends of Hitler and approved of his interpretation.

* In the original production of Tennessee Williams' ''AStreetcarNamedDesire'', Marlon Brando's depiction of Stanley Kowalski ended up making Kowalski more sympathetic, even though he was a wife-beating rapist. Williams ended up revising the play to give Kowalski a bigger role and to make him a more complex character.

** Theatre/PeerGynt has got a ''lot'' of this. This spineless bastard of a cheating, slave-trading, troll-mating scrupulous liar has become somewhat of a Norwegian amalgam. His redemption at the end of the play doesn`t help much. The fact that Ibsen wished to ''satirize'' Norwegian attitudes seems to have been completely lost on later generations, and a "Peer Gynt reward" given yearly to somebody who has made Norway more known outside the country is a case in point. Not that people who actually read the play thoroughly doesn`t snark about this fact a lot.

** It gets even worse when fans ship the Phantom with Christine and go on about how Raoul (who was an aspiring Arctic explorer in the book) is boring and less attractive and that Christine is an evil tease for choosing him by the end. Because heaven forbid a woman marry her sweet childhood friend instead of the raving murderous madman who stalked her, scared her half to death, and threatened to kill her boyfriend if she didn't marry him. The sequel to AndrewLloydWebber's musical, ''Theatre/LoveNeverDies'', handled this matter by turning poor Raoul into a gambling addict and alcoholic and again raising the possibility of the Phantom and Christing getting together, [[spoiler: ultimately making the misaimed fandom pairing the ''legit'' one]]. The existence of the show serves as a ''massive'' BaseBreaker in the phan community largely because of this - those who view it as a legitimate sequel come into conflict with those who think it shouldn't be taken seriously, making this a case where the misaimed phantom have almost withdrawn entirely from the community at large to form their own groups.

** Take a close look at Shylock in ''Theatre/TheMerchantOfVenice''. An anti-Semitic caricature, or a tragic satire thereof? The characterisation of Shylock is [[FairForItsDay just interestingly complicated enough]] (unlike the totally monstrous caricature in ''The Jew of Malta'', for example) that it allows modern readers to re-interpret the anti-Semitism that undoubtedly was originally in the play and recast the whole thing around Shylock. Most modern productions do some editing, for instance omitting Shylock being forced to convert at the end.

* Some fans of {{Theatre/Wicked}} actually believe that ''Wicked'' is the actual story of what happened and hate on ''Film/TheWizardOfOz'', and making the Wicked Witch out as a total victim, and Glinda as a manipulative ChessMaster. This was ''not'' Gregory Maguire's intention in the book the play is based on. He stated he wanted to heighten the mystery of the witch, not explain her. Elphaba is actually an AntiHero and WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds. What makes it even worse is that ''Wicked''/''Wizard Of Oz'' is ''not'' a chicken/egg situation. ''TheWonderfulWizardOfOz'' and [[Film/TheWizardOfOz its famous movie adaptation]] came first.