I hate musicals.

I can hear the shock of surprise coming all the way from Michigan.

But I do. I hate them. I hate them all, except The Wizard of Oz and Damn Yankees, and if Doctor Dolittle (the 1967 version) counts, then that one isn't so bad.

I didn't use to hate them. In fact, I used to enjoy them once upon a time. I don't know why I enjoyed them, though. I must have been hopped up on the magic juju beans, or just exceptionally bored (remember, I grew up in a town of less than 60 people in the zip code, and where NBC was the only fuzzy station that came in). I have re-watched some of them, and they're downright stupid. West Side Story, in particular, rubs me the wrong way. I get that back in 1958 it was revolutionary because of the subject matter and the choreography and how it ushered musicals into the modern era. But whatever. "I Feel Pretty" makes me want to kick someone in the balls.

Another one that annoys me is My Fair Lady. Eliza Doolittle's voice is so obnoxious, I often feel inwardly glad that Audrey Hepburn's own voice was so horrendous that the director was forced to hire some unknown singer voice-over Audrey in the final cut. It makes me glad to know that the director didn't even warn Audrey of this fact before the premiere, so that she was utterly horrified--not to mention "robbed" of an Oscar (Grace Kelly deserved it that year far more than Audrey did anyway). Furthermore, when Eliza changes her voice to something pretentious and, if possible, even more obnoxious, Audrey Hepburn's whole tiny-waisted, doe-eyed, classy mystical balloon is completely deflated for me. She becomes a kind of horrible monster whose beauty is meant to carry the movie. Also, her beauty just makes the men in the film fall in love for her for no other reason than they want to get a handful. And what about the final freakin' line in the movie, when Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) says, "Fetch me my slippers!" I hate that this film is inherently chauvinistic and misogynistic. That just makes me want to kick another person in the jimmy.

I hate all things Andrew Lloyd Webber. You name it, if he wrote it, it disgusts me. Evita: boring. Starlight Express: my brain feels like it's going to melt--what's with the rollerskates! Jesus Christ Superstar: bleech. The only version of JCS that I ever liked was when Lorie, Des and myself made our own lyrics out of it, with many references to poo. The poo strangely matched exquisitely with the score as we parodied.

It gives me a great amount of satisfaction that The Phantom of the Opera movie completely flopped at the box office. If there was any justice in the world, George Bush would be impeached, Donald Trump would make his new wife donate her $200,000 wedding gown to some poor family so they could auction it and buy a house, and Andrew Lloyd Weber would have to refund every sorry fool who purchased tickets and mistakenly sat through his emotional pandering sentimental garbage. "The Music of the Night" is one of the worst songs ever written. It reads like my broody high school boyfriend wrote it in a fit of romantic depression. I think Roger Ebert says it best, though:

But what I am essentially disliking is not the film, but the underlying material. I do not think Lloyd Webber wrote a very good musical. The story is thin beer for the time it takes to tell it, and the music is maddeningly repetitious. When the chandelier comes crashing down, it's not a shock, it's a historical reenactment. You do remember the tunes as you leave the theater, but you don't walk out humming them, you wonder if you'll be able to get them out of your mind. Every time I see Lloyd Webber's "Phantom," the bit about the "darkness of the music of the night" bounces between my ears, as if, like Howard Hughes, I am condemned to repeat the words until I go mad. (I have the same difficulty with "Waltzing Matilda.") Lyrics like:

Let your mind start a journey through a strange new world/Leave all thoughts of the world you knew before/Let your soul take you where you long to be/Only then can you belong to me.

Wouldn't get past Simon Cowell, let alone Rodgers & Hammerstein.

I know that Rodgers & Hammerstein are the institution of musicals, but I never liked Oklahoma!, Carousel, South Pacific, The King and I or The Sound of Music. They're all too cutesy in the end. Except maybe Carousel. I mean, the father is French white trash, is murdered, and comes back to somehow help his daughter, but ends up slapping her instead. It's awesome. It was interesting because it wasn't perfect and gleaming and happy, but ultimately the storyline ends up really boring.

The last musical I'll rail against is Grease. Why is it that every single teenage girl I knew wanted to be Olivia Newton-John. But they never dressed like her when she was sweet, they always chose the trashy version at the end of the movie. Which leads to why I hate Grease almost as much as I hate Andrew Lloyd Webber: the only way Olivia Newton-John could get John Travolta to be interested in her again was to dress like a slut. That is such a horrible message. And apparently an effective one as well, judging from the numerous girls I knew growing up who idolized her.

The only good things to ever come out of musicals: John Travolta's dancing machinations and ruby slippers.

( 3comments )

at February 25, 2005 7:43 AM  Ish said...

I'd agree with you about most of this. I tend to like Sondheim. My Fair Lady is a travesty. I' don't have any of your problems with Audrey (although I'll admit to possibly wanting a handful) but the ending is a total sellout. But you must have read Pygmalion, right? It was a bullshit ending that wasn't in the source material added to send the audience home happy, but it doesn't work because Higgins can't change and despite his attempts to fool others he's really a brute at heart. And Eliza can (and did) change and became a much better and stronger person than he was. You can't go back to what it was before.

This is a peculiar pathology with men in the modern era, that Bernard Shaw got almost picture perfect. Many men want a woman to serve them, the way they were raised, but they want to respect her too. And so long as she serves them and remains dependent, they can't respect her, so they push her to become more independent, and then when she does they wonder why the laundry isn't done. Twisted and broken, but it shows up over and over. Bernard Shaw nailed this, but in My Fair Lady they turn it into an exploitive fantasy that somehow these things can live together. And it never works that way.

 

at February 25, 2005 8:19 AM  Nicoli Ivanovich said...

Guys and Dolls is good for a laugh. The songs aren't really all that catchy though. It's more like Fraiser, on stage, with an audience, with musical numbers.

I'm glad that when I was in it I didn't have a singing part though because I can't sing well, and quite frankly I wouldn't want to be grouped with the people that did have singing parts in it either. Most of them sounded like they took turns sucking off a donkey.

 

at February 25, 2005 1:46 PM  Lorie said...

I actually enjoy Evita. (The movie, because I've never seen the stage version or even listened to a soundtrack of it.) The Spanish language connection probably lured me in. But "Another Suitcase in Another Hall" was one of my favorite songs for quite a while.

I have a couple of good quotes from Orson Scott Card about how much Phantom sucked that I shared with B once, so I don't know if he shared them with you, but I just posted them in my Livejournal so that I wouldn't have a five paragraph comment here.