"He wrote a rap, heavily indebted to Eminem's "8 Mile," in the voice of a feisty teen-ager whose hip-hop bravado has been dampened only slightly by the fact that she and her family happen to be crammed into an attic, hoping not to be discovered and killed: "When this hiding's over, I'll be in demand, with my prose tighter / And if survival's not the plan, I'll be a ghost writer.""
"Like many viral online debates, this one was rather one-sided: most people seemed to agree that the idea was ridiculous, including the celebrity-gossip site TMZ, which covered the controversy and rendered its own dismissive verdict in the form of a woozy-face emoji. Even so, Fox couldn't shake the thought of a show that tried to update Frank's story for modern political sensitivities."
Andrew Fox, a theatre-loving composer disillusioned with humourless, preachy productions, conceived a satirical hip-hop musical reimagining Anne Frank. A 2022 social-media debate over whether Anne Frank benefited from "white privilege" catalyzed the idea. Fox composed a rap modeled on Eminem's 8 Mile, voicing a brash teen whose family hides in an attic to avoid discovery and death. Fox recast Anne Frank as Latina from the "barrios of Frankfurt," added a neurodivergent, closeted father, and gave the protagonist a crush on Peter, whose gender identity becomes an inspirational element.
Read at The New Yorker
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