Sarah Schulman, who claims in her book
Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America, that Jonathan Larson's
Rent stole from her novel
People in Trouble the
wildly original plot of a lesbian, lesbian, straight guy love triangle
talks to Slate in this article.
Whatever. What pissed me off was her assertion that this is "a country in which there's no lesbian play in the repertoire".
It's one thing to haughtily blame your lack of success on a dead guy, it's another to pretend to be an expert on queer culture and have never heard of Lillian Hellman's
The Children's Hour.
I don't blame Sarah Schulman for trying to stir up some controversy to get attention, but if you're going to speak for "Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred ripped-off gay folks", it might help if you actually know what you're talking about before you presume to speak for me.
Sarah, I have neither your whiny politics, nor your ignorance of "our" own history, so make a fool of yourself all you want, but make it clear you speak for yourself and not all gay people everywhere. In fact, your ignorance serves as a kind of anti-activism, trivializing Hellman's accomplishment to your own advantage, denying the gay community's rich historical tapestry, a record which skirts both the mainstream and the experimental, whether you are aware of it or not. Slate should have called you on this and considering your area of "expertise", you should know better.
