My Dreamcoat Era: "One More Angel" and Loss
I saw a local production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat recently, and I have Multiple Things To Say About It. Since I'm entering my Peak Writing Era in school I thought I'd structure this as multiple parts, rather than trying to structure it as a single mega-post. Enjoy!
There are two reasons why "One More Angel In Heaven", the song from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, is unusual. The first is that, in an act of chronological anarchy, it temporarily replaces the musical's ancient Middle East setting with Stetsons and country twang. The second is that, despite being a song about death, it focuses on gain rather than loss:
There's one more angel in heaven
There's one more star in the sky
Joseph, we'll never forget you
It's tough, but we're gonna get by
There's one less1 place at our table
There's one more tear in my eye...
The song enumerates how Joseph's death is a gain rather than a loss; its brief dip into what there's "one less" of is immediately blunted by another "one more". There's a double meaning to this. The song's performers, Joseph's brothers, have just sold him into slavery for fun and profit, and in this song they're lying to their father about how Joseph actually died a heroic death. The invocation of gain is a way of consoling their grieving father-- but it's also, with a wink and a nudge to the audience, an acknowledgement of how the brothers benefited from arranging Joseph's "death". Even in the context of performative discourse with their father, the brothers can't help licking their lips at the result of their scheme-- hence the ease with which they think about gain.
Of course these brothers get their comeuppance later in the musical-- "Those Canaan Days" in the second act features language of loss, confirming that selling your brother into slavery is not the move. For example, "No one comes to dinner now / We'd only eat them anyhow" is a direct rebuttal to "There's one less place at our table". So I'm comfortable saying that "One More Angel" uses language of gain in connection with death to make the eleven brothers look less trustworthy and likable. After all, "loss" is literally a euphemism for death.
But death need not be so tied up in loss. As fellow blogger Grim puts it, "life requires assimilating matter", so grieving death can't be biologically imperative or even cross-cultural2. And there's a very prominent example in Abrahamic context of death being uncoupled from loss.
That's right, I'm your youth pastor now: You know who else died for someone's gain?3
I know, I know, it bothers me too.↩
"Assumed Thanatophobia: A Common Modern Western Anthropomorphization", Grim, bone-eater↩
Obviously I'm not the first person to draw parallels between Joseph and Jesus. "A virtuous shepherd with his father's favor is transactionally killed / depersoned but is brought back, saving his tribe but also acting as their judge" is a pretty meaty throughline, and even the listicles have caught on. Shockingly there's no clickbait-exegesis on how Andrew Lloyd Weber is harboring anti-Christian values for denying these parallels.↩