On YouTube: "A Murder But Not A Crime" from "Chicago"

I am sure some readers have never seen the movie or musical Chicago. It's important to note the authors of this musical were men.

I want to comment on this particular scene; two points stand out. First is that the stories told during the scene don't convey situations wherein the murderesses did the crime for reasons associated with any level of self-defense. They simply rationalize using fatal means to redress non-fatal levels of perceived or real offense. Secondly the use of a risque form of dancing with the convicts scantily clad is no accident. This dance act could have been done with the actress/dancers dressed in penal garb, but they were dressed up instead like chorus girls. This underscores the tendency for people of both sexes to be distracted by the sexuality of women while considering their culpability for patently and sometimes seriously anti-social acts. As you watch the clip, be honest with yourself-- don't you pay a little less attention to the unjustifiability of their excuses for committing murder due to the fact that your attention is divided between what they are saying and what they look like? I believe the authors of this musical were on to something. I believe with this particular dance act they were making a statement. They have been roundly condemned in MRA circles for this production because of this act and when I first saw it I thought they were being the typical garden-variety sort of manholes. But when I think about it, I leave room for the possibility that instead they were trying to make a statement - that maybe they were pointing out the double-standard at work when perceiving female culpability for criminal acts and underscoring the double-standard by overlaying a dialog of the convict's narratives around their crimes on top of a risque dance number. I think it's possible that the irony and the lesson both have gone past both MRAs and feminists, if not the public in general.