’I’m Here To Remind You’…About the 1990s
“In June 1995, twenty-one-year-old singer/songwriter Alanis Morissette released her alt/indie rock album, Jagged Little Pill, which went on to sell 33 million copies worldwide.
Thirty-one years ago, in 1995 I was a teenager trying to figure myself out, achieve perfection in an era raging with fad diets and impossible beauty standards, learn how to date in a culture rife with sexual tensions and politics, and meet my parents’ expectations for their oldest daughter. I remember playing Jagged Little Pill in my portable CD player plugged into my old car’s tape deck on the way to and from school, blasting Morissette’s angst from the speakers and feeling like finally, someone – a young woman no less – was screaming about how impossible it all felt. It was validating and infuriating, cathartic and raw. To a theatre and choir kid, it felt very dramatic. In the best way.
Thirty-one years ago, in 1995 I was a teenager trying to figure myself out, achieve perfection in an era raging with fad diets and impossible beauty standards, learn how to date in a culture rife with sexual tensions and politics, and meet my parents’ expectations for their oldest daughter. I remember playing Jagged Little Pill in my portable CD player plugged into my old car’s tape deck on the way to and from school, blasting Morissette’s angst from the speakers and feeling like finally, someone – a young woman no less – was screaming about how impossible it all felt. It was validating and infuriating, cathartic and raw. To a theatre and choir kid, it felt very dramatic. In the best way.
Every generation has its own coming-of-age challenges and albums that become the soundtrack to that formative time in life. The 1990s were a period of extreme contradictions. On the one hand, the US and many other western countries were riding the third wave of feminism, benefiting from and oftentimes taking for granted the strides made by our mothers and grandmothers during the second wave of the 1960s and 1970s. Women in the workforce but were earning at best $.75 to every dollar earned by male counterparts and they were encouraged to “take their daughters to work” on certain days to encourage their own future participation in the capitalist machine. Despite being undervalued in the workplace, women were portrayed regularly in 
media as superheroes and supernatural – Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sabrina the Teenage Witch are just two examples – and the X Files introduced a whole generation of women to STEM fields. Female entertainers like the Spice Girls marketed sequined, sparkly “girl power” to a generation of young women ready to claim space and find their own voice. Yet on the other hand, media in the 1990s minimized women by promoting impossibly, dangerously thin supermodels like Kate Moss, celebrated for what is known as their “heroin chic” look and seeming ability to physically waste away before viewers’ very eyes. Furthermore, idealized representations of women continued to be overwhelming white, skirting the concept of intersectional identities developed by feminist activist Kimberlé Crenshaw. Hypersexualized performances and visual culture created by and about women weaponized sexuality for both men and women, resulting in rampant toxic masculinity, homophobia, and misogyny that short circuited cultural strides towards gender equality, and stymied individual women’s sense of self-worth, safety, and abilities.
media as superheroes and supernatural – Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Sabrina the Teenage Witch are just two examples – and the X Files introduced a whole generation of women to STEM fields. Female entertainers like the Spice Girls marketed sequined, sparkly “girl power” to a generation of young women ready to claim space and find their own voice. Yet on the other hand, media in the 1990s minimized women by promoting impossibly, dangerously thin supermodels like Kate Moss, celebrated for what is known as their “heroin chic” look and seeming ability to physically waste away before viewers’ very eyes. Furthermore, idealized representations of women continued to be overwhelming white, skirting the concept of intersectional identities developed by feminist activist Kimberlé Crenshaw. Hypersexualized performances and visual culture created by and about women weaponized sexuality for both men and women, resulting in rampant toxic masculinity, homophobia, and misogyny that short circuited cultural strides towards gender equality, and stymied individual women’s sense of self-worth, safety, and abilities.
Jagged Little Pill: The Musical is set in the present day in an affluent Connecticut suburb just outside New York City. If we do the math, the matriarch of the Healy family, MJ, like Alanis Morissette herself, came of age amidst the culture wars of the 1990s and its impossible standards for young women. Her lived experience, as it aligns with the themes of repression, perfectionism, sexual exploitation, and inadequate coping strategies such as substance abuse are reflected in Morissette’s lyrics and inevitably impact MJ’s worldview and relationships with her spouse Steve and her children, Nick and Frankie who are in the throes of their own Gen Z coming-of-age challenges. The missteps and sexual dynamics of MJ’s own youth play out in new and agonizing ways as her children, who are desperate for their mother’s approval and understanding, attempt to navigate the landscape of their youth in the twenty-first century. As the first digital native generation they are learning to script the narrative of their teenage years in an era of social media, surveillance, and cell phones. Jagged Little Pill: The Musical invites audiences into a year in the life of two generations of the Healy family, revealing that life is “ironic,” that “you live, you learn,” and if you’re lucky, your family will “love you just the way you are” even if you’re not “perfect.””
– Jocelyn L. Buckner, Dramatrug, Jagged Little Pill
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