OKLAHOMA!

[Treaclewell]

When I was a child I enjoyed musicals with not much thought, but they had a lot of darkness to them. While holed up with a broken arm I've been revisiting, and just watched Oklahoma from the Proms. Very good, but what about the young men? Not just Jud Fry, to whom I shall return, but the rest. Avid customers for Ali Hakim's postcard merchandise, clients of burlesque and other things a gentleman never mentions, and that is almost presented as innocent. What do you expect when they ride for days on end with just a pony for a friend? It's the way things are. Jud, on the other hand is a very familiar figure. Now, he wouldn't be lurking in the smokehouse with his collection of pictures, but in room with wifi, and his longing for something real and his murderous response to rejection. He has already killed where he was turned down. Was he based on a real case of the time, an early incel? And why on earth did Laurey, whose gut was telling her he was a wrong'un, lead him on? I don't think I can watch it again.

Seven Brides for Seven Brothers next as a palate cleanser?

smiley winky thingy

Goodness me. It's a musical from long ago attitudes were completely different then. It has cracking sing along tunes. If we cancelled all art with some dubious parts it would be a very boring world.

There's also Carousel, with this gem:

Louise Bigelow (daughter): But is it possible, Mother, for someone to hit you hard like that - real loud and hard, and it not hurt you at all?
Julie Jordan (mother): It is possible dear, for someone to hit you, hit you hard, and it not hurt at all.

Gaslighting much? And let's give a thought to Nancy in Oliver, belting out "As Long as He Needs Me", a song of loyalty to the drunken, violent, thieving husband who beats her mercilessly and will beat her to death.

Times change, and they've both got some thumping good tunes.

OKLAHOMA was based on a play by Rollie Lynn Riggs. A love triangle, also a musical but with folk songs. The playwright had Cherokee ancestry and in part it was a commentary on what I suppose was colonisation of the west by European settlers.

The attitudes to Jud were the same as now. There has been a recent version whch questioned the 'trial' at the end to mixed receptions.

God, let us not take our sexual politics from musicals!

I played Nancy in Oliver! a million years at school, and got a standing ovation for my ‘As Long As He Needs Me’, where a prostitute sings of her pimp, who later kills her:

AS LONG AS HE NEEDS ME
OH YES, HE DOES NEED ME
IN SPITE OF WHAT YOU SEE,
I’M SURE THAT HE NEEDS ME

WHO ELSE WOULD LOVE HIM STILL
WHEN THEY’VE BEEN USED SO ILL?
HE KNOWS I ALWAYS WILL
AS LONG AS HE NEEDS ME!

I mean, I was fifteen. Not a great message.

Sometimes little glimmers of awareness shine through even in 50s films and musicals.
Is 'Take Me Back to the Black Hills' from Calamity Jane? I can remember exactly - but I do remember ..presumably Calamity.. saying just before she bursts into song something along the lines of 'This country is so beautiful, no wonder the Indians are fighting to keep it..'

And I've seen a couple of very B Westerns where there's a lot of awareness that the Native Americans were - shock horror! human, and the land belonged to them. I remember a scene in one where they had taken the 'Indian' chief's little son hostage, and the townsfolk were calling for the 'red........' to be killed, but the Sheffiff [James Stewart, I think] said 'Why I'd no sooner harm that child than ..' and he turned to the clergyman and said '..thank I'd shoot your little Elias!'
As you can see, these scenes stood out in my memory when the rest of the film faded..

They indicate that even in the 50s there were people in Hollywood who understood the real story of 'The Wild West' and the fate of the Native Americans, but that wasn't the chosen discourse for public consumption.

And on a lighter note - don't tell me that 'A Woman's Touch' from Calamity Jane is all about housework because nobody in Hollywood could possibly have wanted to sneak in a cheeky little lesbian reference in 1953

The politics in many songs is troubling. Billy Joel's Virginia. Sting/Police's Don't Stand So Close to Me.

I agree about the musicals. I'm reduced to listening to some numbers rather than the entirety. Some musicals have mostly dropped from catalogues, Song of the South comes to mind (iirc best known song from that is Zip a dee doo dah).

However, I freely acknowledge that there wouldn't be much of a catalogue of drama, music, or even dance if problematic sections were removed.

Even Meet me in St Louis has that very toe-curling 'minstrel' song sequence.

I think Singing in the Rain is okay.

I do love a lot of the classic musicals, but wouldn't want to take them as a guide for right living.

Singing’ in the Rain is brilliant, but I do find myself watching some of the brilliant sequences like ‘Good Mornin’!’ a bit askance since Debbie Reynolds talked about how painful and exhausting they were to film (‘Good Mornin’!’ which looks so zingy and effortless, took from 8 am to 11 pm to shoot, and her feet were bleeding by the end), and how foul Gene Kelly was to her because he thought her dance skill level was poor. And how the studio medic wanted to out her on ‘vitamins’ (aka amphetamines), aged 17 to keep her on her feet, and if it hadn’t been for her parents refusing, she could have been dead in her 40s like Judy Garland.

Not to mention 'Delilah'😱
Deano's comment
I do love a lot of the classic musicals, but wouldn't want to take them as a guide for right living.
is very wise.

There's a whole lotta -isms going on in popular song, and if you start factoring in the private lives of the performers, it's a real minefield.

I have no settled opinion about what to do about that; I can't say I never want to hear a Michael Jackson song on the radio ever again because of what he did to children, but I am sure I never want to hear a song that actually makes a recognisable uncritical reference to the likes of violence against women or racism or paedophilia in the lyrics. That's not entertainment.

At least that's what I think at 12.20 on 12.10.24!

I went to see that revival of Oklahoma! recently. They made a point of saying they hadn’t changed the script, it was all in the production and direction. It was not a laugh a minute. The bit when they are all bidding for the women’s picnics was very much the men paying for women; Jud was terrifying; Laurey covered in blood in trauma induced shock as everyone else sings around her - it stuck with me but I was very glad I hadn’t invited my mum for a fun night out.

But I don't think you have to say the guy who killed Delilah was bad in the song because I don't think it needs pointing out - it's really sad if it does need explicitly saying

he's clearly possessive and deranged. If anything the song is saying act like a possessive monster and turn into a real monster
And a warning to women to steer clear of such men

As for Nancy and her love , it's reflecting what we see daily here , women blind to their situation

I absolutely love Seven Brides for Seven Brothers despite the appalling sexual politics. They really were the proto incels. I quite often have ‘all the women were sobbin’ sobbin’ sobbin’ oh mighty sad’ in my head 😂 I mean how many musicals reference Plutarch? And also the ballet dancing with axe in ‘lonely as a polecat’, I have no notes 👏🏻

as much as the sexual politics in that era are so disgraceful it’s also interesting to me that it was aspirational for men to be accomplished singers and dancers whilst also remaining ‘manly’.

But many women in abuse relationships speak like this! They believe they can save him, he's good underneath. He's misunderstood.

Tbf there’s plenty of women post on MN about cheating and abusive dh’s who still think along the lines of this song.

@redorangeye110w cross post.
Great minds …

The barn raising, axe dancing, lonesome polecat sequence is pure joy and the young male ballet dancers are splendid, but some aspects of the script . . .

Speaking of male dancers, what about the Olympic gymnastic team sequence in Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend, and poor Jane Russell's failure to get any of them to give her even a passing glance. Very camp, very entertaining.

Seven Brides.. was adapted from a short story that was a re-telling of the Rape of the Sabine Women.
Now I know 'rape' has taken on a more specific meaning, as in 'The Rape of the Lock', but in the case of the Sabine/Sobbin' women, it meant both.
That's one of the facts that I find hard to dis-remember whenever Seven Brides is mentioned.

Is that the musical with the lines 'he looks like he's asleep/it's a pity he won't keep/but it's summer, an' we're runnin' outta ice' ? which I think is hilarious
but only if you know that he's not actually dead!

My favourite production of Oklahoma was by Ilkley Amateur Operatics.
The cellist arrived mid overture and chatted to a violinist whilst removing her hat and coat.
The farmers and the cowmen sang in broad Yorkshire accents.
And the female conductor had decided to dress in gingham but had short, grey hair and from the back looked like a man in drag.
Strangely I was the only person that found it funny.

I think this is what makes it for me, it’s an absolutely wild pun. I’m always aware of it and think - can’t believe they made a song out of this, this is insane.

That’s in Oklahoma, and it always cracks me up too.

I agree about the Sabine Women and the appallingly cutesy Stockholm Syndrome, not to mention the unexamined idea that it’s women’s job to ‘civilise’ animalistic men. Maybe someone will remake with the kidnapped women breaking out of the house with an axe and skiing down the mountain.

Though every time I remember that the seven brothers’ surname is Pontipee I laugh because I imagine them as the Pontipines from In the Night Garden toddling about making little meeping noises…

I think everybody needs to see that number.

Mary Poppins is the best - it's a brilliant story about many things. About working too hard and not spending time with your children, about how banks and financial organisations work etc. So overlooked because it's seen as a film with cartoon dancing penguins...

Yes, musicals are quite troubling but reflect attitudes of their time. As are films and songs of their day.

Thats based on Charle's Dickinsons book though which absolutely is about social evils at the time - its a very bad thing that Nancy, a lovely sweet person, is being pimped out by her abusive boyfriend and is eventually murdered by him. Its still happening today and people still think its bad just as (some) Victorians CD included did.

Lots of musicals do this though - take actually quite dark story lines (the book Fiddler on The Roof is based on is very depressing) and make a fun song and dance number out of it. Its not really (just) a social attitudes of the time thing - its a musicals liking wildly inappropriate subject matter thing. As satirised in the Producers (Springtime, for Hitler, in Geerrrmanyyy)