I think it’s weird that a lot of people say that they don’t like musicals and yet they don’t realize how much musicals have penetrated their everyday life. For instance, in class today my professor played a commercial for Müller Yogurt, and everyone thought that the commercial was pretty good, but what I realized that many may have not was that the song playing in the background was from the musical “Hair” made in the seventies. Additionally, Gwen Stefani came out with a hugely popular song entitled “Rich Girl” a while back. I would hear over and over again from people about how much they liked the song and how amazing it was… but did they know that the lyrics were taken from a song from the award-winning musical “Fiddler on the Roof”? Nope. Also, in a Family Guy episode one of the main characters breaks into “Shipoopi” after making a touchdown, a clear yet unrecognized reference to “The Music Man”. If I were to ask some of my friends if they would watch/listen to something remotely musical I would get a large array of responses ranging from a disgruntled shrug to a “hell no!”. But upon informing them that they were exposed to musical theatre unknowingly I receive a “oh, that’s cool”, or “really?”. They refuse to have anything to do with musicals unless it’s presented to them in an ‘un-musical’ way. I think that most of people’s aversions to musical theatre and any of it’s offspring is due to the mere fact that it has gotten a bad rep over the past few decades as being outdated, glittery, and corny. That’s why Broadway is doing so poorly, they need to be updated, at least a bit, in order to get people to pay that much to see a show. In all, musical theatre is creative and clever and poetic (at least the good stuff, Legally Blond the Musical isn’t exactly a masterpiece), crossing over to movies, pop music, and literature. People just need to see it for what it once was – an onstage expression of an artist’s ideas – and make it that again.