Oversimplified Bigotry in ‘Kinky Boots’ Musical

The Tony-winning musical “Kinky Boots,” currently running on Broadway, has received both critical and popular acclaim as a progressive show that promotes the acceptance of gender-nonconforming characters. However, the musical only engages with bigotry on a superficial level and fails to address the main character’s ingrained prejudices in a meaningful way.

The story centers around a cisgender man, Charlie Price, who forms a business partnership with Lola the drag queen in a last-ditch attempt to save his family’s shoe factory. Together, Charlie and Lola manufacture a line of boots which combines the flashy designs typically marketed to cisgender women with heels strong enough to support the build of transgender women.

For most of the show, Charlie comes across as ignorant but not ill-intentioned. He clearly does not understand cross-dressing, referring to drag queens as “trans-vet-erans” immediately after having learned the connotational difference between “transvestite” and “drag queen.” Yet overall, he is civil and generally polite to Lola. He uses female pronouns without comment and is willingly vulnerable with her about his past, showing a level of trust and respect that indicates an acceptance of Lola as a person.

Until, that is, Charlie is behind schedule.

During the factory’s push to finish their new line of boots in time for a fashion show in Milan, a stressed-out Charlie radically switches tactics, electing to have cisgender women model the shoes instead of drag queens to avoid “embarrassing the name of Price & Son by parading a planeload of misfits.” He tells an outraged Lola, “Once the industry sees your work, you’ll be able to stop all this and have a normal life.” The derogatory qualifier of “normal” reveals that Charlie believes cross-dressing is anything but. When Lola calls him a fool, Charlie shoots back, “I’d wager if we stood side by side and asked passersby which one of us is fooling himself, most of the votes would swing your way.” He continues: “You’re a joke. You think you’re being all mystical and deep representin’ the best of both sexes, but I’m here to tell you all you are is daft. You say you want to be treated like a man; then start acting like one.” And then, the final nail in the coffin: “I’m sorry, but sometimes the truth hurts.” Wounded and furious, Lola leaves the factory, soon followed by the rest of the workers.

Charlie’s arrogant, offensive, and close-minded outburst does not undermine the integrity of the musical — far from it, in fact. On the contrary, this scene startlingly establishes that Charlie’s awkwardness around Lola throughout the show was not simply a result of unfamiliarity, as it had previously seemed, but rather a sign of deeply rooted biases.

For the purposes of the musical, this in and of itself is not a problem. The fact that Charlie is portrayed so positively before his prejudices are exposed may even make the message more powerful. This seemingly jarring change forces viewers to realize that an outwardly likable character can be just as bigoted as an abrasive and openly hostile one. As a candid exploration of prejudices and of how a character genuinely overcomes them, the musical could have engaged with audience members of all viewpoints rather than merely those who already share the writers’ opinions. Especially with the potentially schmaltzy message of acceptance at the core of “Kinky Boots,” this approach could have been very effective for reaching viewers less familiar with or supportive of different gender identities, without conveying malice or condescension.

Unfortunately, the musical takes a different route. Seemingly unbothered by Charlie’s disparagement of Lola, his employees do not request an apology before they forgive him, even tearing up their paychecks to fund the company’s final effort. And worse still, Lola returns to save the business just a few scenes later. For Lola, an apology via voicemail seems to be enough to redeem Charlie’s cutting insults.

In glossing over Charlie’s prejudices regarding gender norms — which, if they have not changed in his weeks of working with Lola, could not have fundamentally changed in the days between his attack and their reconciliation — “Kinky Boots” contradicts the very message of acceptance that it claims to promote. The musical’s oversimplified resolution suggests that having prejudices is not intrinsically bad, so long as they remain internalized. The token progressiveness of “Kinky Boots” masks the show’s blind eye to the subtler, far more prevalent form of bigotry displayed by the main character, a bigotry which, if unconscious and internalized, is very real.

The intent of the creative team of “Kinky Boots” — to represent a community rarely given a respectful spotlight in theater — is admirable, and I am sure that they meant no harm by the musical’s ending. However, when addressing such complex subject matters, they and future writers must carefully consider every implication of the plot. Especially in a professedly progressive story such as “Kinky Boots,” it is vital to resist hasty, predictable happy endings that, though emotionally satisfying on the surface, downplay the real difficulties of the themes involved.

—Contributing writer Jessica N. Morandi’s column, “The Might of Musicals,” explores the societal implications of musical theater, with a focus on Broadway and off-Broadway shows.