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Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein IIs Carousel (1945) presents two discrete challenges to directors and producers intent on reviving the work for contemporary audiences. First, the musicals misogyny is substantial as exemplified by the physical abuse protagonist Billy Bigelow inflicts upon his wife, Julie Jordan. Laurie Winer contends that the musicals cardinal sin is not its dramatization of domestic violence per se, but rather the manner in which Julie excuses Billys maltreatment and indirectly teaches her daughter that abuse is a form of love.1 Furthermore, Billy suffers no material or social consequences for his actions, which makes Carousels ending less than satisfying for justice-minded spectators in the present day. Hammersteins libretto, an adaptation of Ferenc Molnars Liliom (1909), deviates from its source material: rather than upholding Molnars ending and consigning Billy to hell when he fails to atone for his misdeeds, Hammerstein granted him passage to heaven in the musicals final scene. This decision is reflective of what philosopher Kate Manne refers to as androphilia, or a cultural compulsion to collectively ignore, deny, minimize, forgive, and forget the wrongdoing of men who conform to the norms of toxic masculinity, and behave in domineering ways towards their historical subordinates: women.2 Second, and in relation to its decidedly masculinist orientation, Carousel (like most musicals from the so-called Golden Age) has historically centered white figures and elided the existence of BIPOC subjectivities. Its original Broadway production and initial first-class revivals in New York City featured white or white-passing actors exclusively, as did director Henry Kings 1956 feature film adaptation? In depicting racial homogeneity, these iterations of the musical joined with other mid-twentieth century cultural products to reify white supremacy and patriarchy as the primary organizing principles of American life. Continuous revival presumably strengthened the musicals investments in these interlocking systems of oppression, but while Carousels masculinist rhetoric is maintained by its libretto, its reinforcement of whiteness relies in part on the continuous presentation of uniformly white ensembles. Therefore, the directors and producers of Carousels early revivals played a significant role in preserving the musicals ties to white supremacy by populating their productions with white actors. This history suggests that any attempt to divest Carousel from whiteness requires a cast- ing intervention that accounts for how audiences read race,...





