My childhood home was filled with the sounds of musicals. My father loved them and they played a central role in our entertainment world—especially when we lived in Turkey (1955-61). Dad and I played the 33-1/3” records over and over again. He’d bought a fancy German (Grundig) record player, on which we could stack up records and they’d fall, one by one, to the platter. The needle would automatically move over to the edge of the revolving record and beautiful music would issue forth. We loved that fancy record player; and we often played the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein. We also watched all of the musicals, in movie form. To this day, I can sing—badly—most of the words of most of those songs!
Last night, OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting) played clips—visual and aural—from the movies and from the soundtracks, in a sort of documentary testimonial to the works of Oscar Hammerstein. My enjoyment of these musicals had always been emotional, heartfelt, joyful—-but I had not realized or remembered the strong social messages that were contained therein. I learned last night of Hammerstein’s active political work during the frightening McCarthy era in American politics—Hollywood actors had been strongly targeted as subversive, many blacklisted by government witch hunts, unable to work for long periods of time in the 1950s. Hammerstein spoke out against the hate mongering ideas of McCarthy (whose actions were sparked by a fear of Communism); Hammerstein was a speech writer for politicians; he acted out his anti-racism beliefs in arenas beyond musicals.
As I watched the very familiar scenes from his movies and listened to the words of the songs, I was struck by how very powerfully these films brought across the evils of racism and other kinds of marginalization of human beings. I was also struck by my own lifelong lack of conscious attention to the musicals’ connections to real social issues. I had heard these songs, listened to them, sung them throughout my life; yet I do not remember ever thinking of them as social commentary. I had thought of them as capturing the human spirit, as portraying human emotion, as appealing stories about the human condition—expressing joy joyfully, sorrow sadly, pleasing to watch. But I had not thought consciously of the strong social messages embedded within.
The clips shown brought forth strong memories of my father, my childhood, pleasures experienced watching and listening to the songs. But they also struck me as strong morality plays. In The Sound of Music, we see the contrast between the harsh treatment of children by their Austrian father, contrasted with the loving and joyful care given by the newly hired nursemaid/teacher. In one scene in South Pacific, we see the initial shock of a regular (1940s) American woman confronted with her lover’s children from a previous inter-ethnic love affair, leading eventually to another scene showing her acceptance of the children and their father, the man she loves. In Oklahoma, men and women in love make light of the conventions that prescribe their gendered interactions. In the King and I, the English teacher sings of learning from the children as she teaches them; and the king, whose power is absolute, expresses his uncertainty in song when confronted with cultural difference.
These stories are not historically accurate, and they surely include elements we might find problematic if seen again now (I have not gone back and viewed the full films, though I’d like to!). But I was touched, seeing the clips and learning about the man who’d produced them, by the degree to which the values expressed captured ethical issues I feel strongly about—and in a seamless, entertaining way that may in fact be far more powerful than the conventional modes of preaching from a pulpit or railing from a political platform. I didn’t realize I was watching morality plays, but they probably have played a subconscious role in establishing and maintaining the value system that has guided my life!