Guys, please, for yours and others safety, go block @/youra-c-u-t-iepie-y-o-u-r-s-e-lf , they’re extremely ableist and have been following random neurodivergent people just to harass them and to tell them to “ký$”. Please stay safe, and if they message you, delete the message andBLOCK THEM.
The definitive reason film Jack is so much better than stage Jack:
Film Jack: Severely defensive of Crutchy when he’s called the g- slur, beats the hell out of the Delanceys for it
Stage Jack: Straight up calls his best friend a slur without any doubt or sense of remorse
Okay so I want to add something to this as it seems like a good place to explain that Disney theatrical’s decision to allow productions leasing the script to cast Crutchie as “either a male or female,” while warranting the opportunity for genuinely and precisely everything I wanted in life growing up from the time I was small, is ableist as hell. Here’s why:
Remember when harvey fierstien said that he only so drastically changed the script in the first place because “the story has to follow the romance”? This is what theatre audiences read into and are always, consciously or unconsciously, expecting. There are a very large number of people on this website who read Jack and Crutchie’s relationship as romantic even when he was a man, and this following would only grow tenfold in front of a Disney audience if it were a man and a woman. That’s just how audiences work whether you’d like to admit it or not. Anyhow. Please keep that in mind as you read this summary of how the show would play out:
We open to hear Jack Kelly sing a duet ballad with his disabled female best friend whom he share sleeping quarters with about how one day he will run away with her and make her a better life out west
Later that same day he meets a woman who can walk and continues to make unwanted advances towards her. This is all behind Crutchie’s back.
Crutchie actively helps rally people for Jack’s strike, standing behind him no matter what, even when it means risking starving and “sleeping on the street in a worse neighbourhood.” This line has far more of an impact given the exponentially higher safety risk that would imply for a girl, especially a vulnerable one. Jack is proud and encouraging. Their relationship has not changed.
Jack continues to flirt with Katherine behind her back
Crutchie is dragged off to the refuge. Jack doesn’t even try to fight it.
The notable absence here is that Jack does not break into the refuge to save her. He simply allows this to happen, despite the fact he has broken himself out of the house of refuge in the past.
Jack sings about their dream to run off to Santa Fe. He calls Crutchie a “damn cr[*]p” and “just too damn slow.” He effectively clarifies with that that he thinks of her as broken, as not good enough. This makes it clear that Santa Fe is his dream, keeping him alive, it does not matter who he takes with him.
Crutchie writes Jack a letter about getting beaten and starved. About her plan to escape, and the fact that she needs help with it and cannot make it on her own. About how she’s only surviving on their dream to run off to Santa Fe together, and misses him. Disney wrote in their official production handbook that the line “your brother” is to be replaced with “your family”. This is clearly indicative of the fact Jack’s entire character arch is about his search for a family; clearly parallel to the fact Jack was meant to stay in New York because he found his family in Sarah; that his family has been the one by his side all along. The sheer amount of times she signs “your friend,” even in the original production, was made to sound ironic and indicative of more.
Jack still does not help her escape the refuge. He leaves her for dead. He does not even fight to avenge her. He ignores her and goes off to kiss Katherine instead.
Crutchie returns. She runs to Jack, all ready to go to Santa Fe, as she planned on doing upon escape, and now Teddy Roosevelt, after presumably speaking to Crutchie about it on the carriage ride in, which explains why he already knows about Santa Fe, has made it possible. Jack barely says a word to her, and immediately gives up on their dream of running away to Santa Fe to stay in New York City exclusively because of Katherine.
In conclusion, it very much reads as a story of Jack Kelly, giving up on his best gal because she is disabled, in favour of an able-bodied woman. I should not have to explain how despicable and disgusting that implication is. Cowboy Jack Kelly was NEVER that cruel. I rest my case.
