Monday Media Musings - 11/08/21
Only Murders in the Building: Another show I watched with my Tuesday TV group. We ended up watching the last four episodes in one night because we had to know how it ended. Both hilarious and engaging, the television equivalent of a page-turner, Selena Gomez is wonderful, and her chemistry with Steve Martin is spot on. All of the cast was great, really. This show is one of my favorite genres: it parodies a genre while being itself an exemplar of that genre. I think that's what literary analysts mean by pastiche? Jane the Virgin is the example that immediately comes to mind -- a telenovela that simultaneously pokes fun at the conventions of telenovelas. Anyone have any other recs in this vein? Anyway, I don't listen to enough true crime podcasts to have a good sense of exactly all the references, but some were obvious even to me (I recognized the plinky piano theme music as a send-up of Serial immediately). The episode focused on Theo Dimas was particularly interesting, I thought -- a whole episode with no spoken communication, even when we weren't watching through a Deaf character's eyes... until Charles breaks in with his whispered exclamation, which was so effective that I jumped in my seat a little. But it was all wrapping up a bit too fast, a bit too neatly, so I figured we had to be missing something. I had been wondering how they would pull off a second season, but the final moments set up the turn perfectly, and I can't wait to see what's coming next.
My Fair Lady: Our most recent theater experience. I've never seen this show before, nor have I seen the movie, but I was familiar with many of the songs, and I knew the basic outline of the plot -- or at least I thought I did. An English professor of linguistics (Henry Higgins) makes a bet with a colleague that he can teach a Cockney woman (Eliza Doolittle) "proper" speech and behavior well enough that she can pass for upper-class at a society ball, hijinks and romance ensure. And while that's not wrong, exactly, there are a lot of reasons the story wasn't what I expected. The first thing I wasn't expecting was that Eliza came to Higgins of her own volition, asking for help to learn a manner of speaking that will allow her to work in a flower shop. She also knows about the bet from the very beginning -- it's made in front of her, so nothing about it comes as a surprise. The ball, which I had always imagined to be the climax of the story, instead happens at the beginning of the second act, setting up a whole lot of plot that I had no idea was coming. Last, and perhaps most importantly, this particular revival (it premiered in New York in 2018) changes the ending -- Eliza and Higgins do not end up together. The final moment of the show is Higgins standing in his home, Eliza walking away into the wings without looking back, under a spotlight as the rest of the light fades, and then the spotlight snaps off, leaving him alone in the dark. It was a strong moment, and one that makes me feel much more kindly to the show as a whole. To put it bluntly, Higgins is awful -- sexist, selfish, dismissive, deeply classist, far far too impressed with himself... just extremely hard to like. I had no idea how the show was going to make me feel okay about a romantic relationship between him and Eliza, and I'm relieved that it ultimately didn't try. Apparently this is a change from the original, one that was meant to be more true to the original play (Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw). I definitely like it better this way.
Also noteworthy is that the context of many of the songs wasn't what I had assumed. For one, "I Could Have Danced All Night" has nothing to do with the ball -- it's Eliza being wistful about a brief but meaningful moment of connection with Higgins during "The Rain in Spain". And "Get Me to the Church on Time" is about one last night of debauchery before Eliza's father marries her stepmother -- not someone excited about their impending wedding.
As usual for these productions, the staging was gorgeous, the performances were all excellent, the costumes were amazing (clearly modeled on the costumes in the movie, many of which are so iconic that I recognized them immediately even though I've never seen it). Glad I saw it, if just to have finally experienced a show that's such an important part of Broadway musical history. But I do wonder whether some of these shows from the earlier part of the 20th century ought to stay a part of history, not be continually revived.
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I have mixed feelings on the subject of Eliza/Freddy. In the main, I think I agree with you, but if she has to pick one of them, I still think he's a lot better for her than Higgins.
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Also, I have no sources at hand for this, but I seem to remember having heard that the whole "Eliza and Henry as a couple" thing got started when the actor in the original run of Pygmalion deliberately tossed a bouquet to the actress playing Eliza during their curtain calls--- Shaw wrote him a nastygram about it, the actor wrote back saying that he'd increased ticket sales by doing it (the crowd apparently did love it), and Shaw wrote back that he'd ruined the whole point of the story by doing it.
Personally, I just love tales of fandom wank and shipping wars related to classical fiction and its (frequently white and/or male) creators. *smiles*
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None of this means, of course, that Howard was the first Higgins to develop a romantic attachment to Eliza - that anonymous performer in the original run may very well have thrown the bouquet, and GBS's annoyance may have been increased by the fact that he was constantly being told by actors playing Higgins that he and Eliza were in love.
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Absolutely, any public post is fair game for anyone to leave a comment, especialy one as thoughtful and informative as this. :)
I also don't doubt that Higgins was in love with Eliza -- at least, inasmuch as he is capable of loving anyone who is not himself. (There is also a credible reading of Higgins as gay, subtext that Rex Harrison proposed that Alan Lerner make text while My Fair Lady was still in rehearsals. Although Lerner decided not to go that route, that conversation apparently inspired the song "Hymn to Him/Why Can't a Woman Be More Like a Man?"), which, while still subtext, brings the idea much closer to the surface.) As for Eliza, I think she probably thought she might be falling in love with Higgins at first -- at least, that's my reading of "I Could Have Danced All Night." But the shine comes off after the ball, and by the time they have their argument at Mrs. Higgins's house, she's clearly done with him.
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You're absolutely right about "I Could Have Danced All Night" (but I excuse her on the grounds that a ball is so exciting, anyone might confuse it for romance) but the shine definitely comes off. She's very clear-eyed and articulate about why she feels mistreated, and I can only assume that once Harrison/Higgins barks at her "Where the devil are my slippers?" she turns around and walks away again (which he doesn't see because he's got his eyes closed).
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Also omg THIS. This is my problem with half the love-hate relationships in romantic comedies, especially musicals from the same era as My Fair Lady. So infuriating.
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The article I linked in my comment to
azdak above has a lot of good stuff about Shaw's intentions and his frustration with audience and actors who read Eliza/Higgins as a romance. I bet you would find it interesting! I, too, enjoy old-school shipping drama between authors and fans in early fandom. My favorite story in this vein is about Little Women and the ship war between Alcott and her Jo/Laurie-loving readers, a story with which I am sure you're familiar (but if you aren't definitely look it up!)