I’m with you here but (I’ve probably written this on the thread but here we go again) one day quite recently was like WAIT SBFSB is based on the Rape of the Sabine Women and this entire musical glorifies this and has a jolly musical about women crying as they’re physical dragged away from their home which then actually happens?! Oklahoma! Is another problematic one, there’s a whole song where someone’s just trying to persuade a man to top himself and a woman is basically just spending her entire life being slut-shamed.
I’m not denying they’re good fun for all the family if you don’t look too deeply but goodness me the amount that was acceptable as funny films for children is astonishing. Even something like the Wizard of Oz has someone squished with a house and after two seconds of Dorothy angsting we’re all singing and dancing about super cool! A person died!
Full disclosure, my favourite is Sweeney Todd. However that is out and proud about being basically a horror flick disguised as a musical (thinly disguised when it actually became a horror flick, nobody could sing properly really), all the main characters are obviously evil and meet horrific ends apart from the innocent ones and even they end up driven mad or corrupted and the music is FANTASTIC. It doesn’t come on advertised as child-friendly and ten minutes in we’ve already made fun of a fat person and probably casually killed off some others. You know going in knowing that it’s going to be something horrible because there’s literally demon in the title.