tootsie isn’t a bad show: an essay by tumblr user phantom-evil-nightshade (with proof!)
ever since it opened, tootsie the musical has been getting a lot of hate from broadway fans. kind of sad, in all honesty—it truly isn’t as bad as people make it out to be. i’ve watched both the movie and saw the broadway show, so allow me to explain youtube-commentator style why this show is very not transphobic or misogynistic or whatever and why everyone thinks it is. feel free to debate with me in dms, reblogs or replies, but if you make it obvious that you didn’t read this then i will only ignore you.
to kick things off, we’ll be going in chronological order. so let’s go way back to the original movie from 1982. the movie “tootsie”, starring dustin hoffman, is about a man named michael dorsey who disguises as a woman to get a job. cue the high jinks as michael finds himself in very sticky situations, including men wanting to kiss him, his friend getting upset because she was trying to get the role he got, and his inability to ask out the girl he likes because she sees him as a woman.
seems problematic, right?
well, not exactly. the funniest scenes in tootsie (both the movie and the musical) are caused because of michael’s own mistakes. it’s acknowledged throughout both versions that what michael’s doing is bad. hell, there’s a whole song in the musical (“jeff sums it up”) where he says “you fucked it up-you really fucked it up” like ten times.
now, let’s discuss further the two versions together. i saw the movie in preparation for the musical, but when i saw the musical, a lot was changed—from the obvious to the subtle, it’s near impossible to call the musical problematic if you’ve seen it. by “seen it”, i don’t mean “just read one or two reviews and decided you knew everything”. i mean actually saw the musical live, or a bootleg of it. because here are some things the reviews DONT tell you (in the musical):
when jeff (michael’s roommate) finds out about what he’s doing, he tells him that it could be really harmful to certain groups of people. i couldn’t remember all of it, since he was speaking kinda fast, but i do remember he said “gay women, straight women, trans women” right at the end. the show openly acknowledges that michael’s actions aren’t good, and are fueled by his own selfishness.
another gem from our boy jeff is from the same scene as the one above, i believe, as it also ties into what point was made there. jeff tells michael that he just stole a job from a woman, and went on about misogyny in not just the theatre industry, but the working industry in general. and by the way, this and the thing above weren’t meant to be jokes—although it is a comedy, this scene was serious (some people even clapped for jeff).
the woman michael falls in love with is NOT A LESBIAN. this seems to be a super common misconception in the tootsie hate playgroup. she isn’t a lesbian in either the movie or the musical. she literally has a song in the musical where she sings about how she met a guy she loved, but he left her because he wanted a wife and kids, but she wanted to pursue an acting career and just didn’t have the time to be a housewife (“there was john”). i’ll explain it in further detail here—at the very end of act 1, julie kisses michael (as dorothy) on the cheek, and he kisses her back, but impulsively on the mouth as a lover would. they both get super flustered and julie runs off, and michael mad at himself. now, i can see where the lesbian misconception comes from—there’s a scene in act 2 at julie’s house where julie asks dorothy if they can date. i didn’t understand this scene a lot, but i personally believe it’s because julie mistook kindness for love, and also thought dorothy loved her because of the kiss before and wanted to make her happy. however, there was some dialogue here which pretty much speaks for itself:
dorothy: i’m not a lesbian!
julie: neither am i.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD MICHAEL WASNT INSTANTLY FORGIVEN. everyone was pissed at him. he was immediately fired, there was a whole two minute long scene where sandy was destroying michael’s stuff while jeff watched in amusement, and julie was incredibly angry. the last scene reminded me a lot of that of dear evan hansen. michael finds julie in a park and tries to explain his actions. he tells her that he only did it for the work, and that he wants to make it up to her. he tells her that he wants to try and learn how to be dorothy, but without the wig and dress (since dorothy was someone julie could trust and feel comfortable around). julie tells michael that being a woman was so much harder than anything he experienced as both himself and dorothy, and he understands completely. she doesn’t quite forgive him, but she’s obviously willing to try.
another thing that i see a lot of is controversy around one line in the show taken vastly out of context. after michael reveals he’s a man, he says something along the lines of “being a woman is not the job of a man” (forgive me if the wording is a bit wrong). this quote was taken out of context and was spread with the intention of making people think that it was an attack against trans women. but, let me repeat: it was taken out of context. you had to hear how passionately he said it to understand fully, but when he said it, he meant it in the sense that was mentioned earlier: how he stole a job from a woman. the audience clapped after he said that. it’s hard to completely explain, but again, everything he said was about him being sorry for taking the job (he was talking to sandy), and it took me a couple seconds after he finished it to even think “hey, that quote sounds familiar”.
that’s all i can think of for now. as said at the beginning, i’m open to civil debates and questions about anything i could’ve possibly missed. will add anything more if i think about it in a reblog.
