AN EXTREMELY GUILTY PLEASURE: THE GREATEST SHOWMAN

I recall from my childhood years how annoyed my father grew every time there was a musical film on TV and the actors burst out singing. I am confused to this day about whether the songs were also dubbed or left in the original English version (with no subtitles, that’s for sure). Both possibly happened, for I seem to remember my father loudly complaining that the worst thing about the songs was that you could not understand them. I still don’t like much translated musicals but I have overcome my father’s prejudices, which were my own for years, and, though not the staunchest fan, I can say that I do enjoy musicals both on stage and on screen.

I hated La La Land (2016), however, because I found it to be very weak in its dancing and singing routines, and, above all, because I intensely disliked its tepid discourse about contemporary love. To be frank, I was repelled by it; musicals are supposed to be naïve romantic fantasies, not depressing reminders of the sorry state of love today. Well, never mind. As happens, Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the composers of the songs in La La Land are also the authors of the songs in this other recent musical film: The Greatest Showman (2017). They have also written “Get Back Up Again” for Poppy in Trolls (2016), a glorious hymn to persistence that I recommend you to sing in low moments (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFuFm0m2wj0).

You may have heard about The Greatest Showman because of Hugh Jackman’s very visible shock at losing to James Franco (The Disaster Artist) the Golden Globe to the best actor, back in January. Jackman, who has a solid background in musical theatre, had put much energy into completing what turned out to be a rather complex project, (complicated by his being diagnosed with skin cancer) and he was devastated. At least, Pasek and Paul won the Golden Globe for “This is Me”, though they lost the Oscar to the awesome “Remember Me” in the simply wonderful Pixar-Disney movie Coco.

The Greatest Showman is, as a musical, simply lovely. It has a gorgeous, fancy pseudo-Victorian look which director Michael Gracey does wonders with, it displays thrilling dancing choreographed by Ashley Wallen and it offers eleven exciting numbers, among which one, at least, stands out: the trapeze love dance with Zac Ephron and Zendaya. After seeing the movie once, I found myself recalling every single song, which is, I think, the mark of a great musical. After seeing it again, I could sing most. And this the very key to the film’s transformation into what is now: a cult film doing the rounds of midnight sing-along sessions very successfully. The critics who panned it as a hideous fantasy are flabbergasted. I’m not, but, then, yes I am.

Why’s The Greatest Showman hideous? The screenplay by Jenny Bicks–revised by Bill Condon (it’s her story)–offers a rosy picture of American circus businessman P.T. Barnum which is less than acceptable in its bland lack of criticism of what this shady man did do. The many differences between real-life facts and what the film narrates are irrelevant in some cases: Zac Ephron’s and Zendaya’s characters did not exist; famous Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind had strictly a business-related relationship with Barnum (who organized her first American tour). What is far more controversial is how Jackman’s film presents Barnum as a champion of human diversity, which he was not at all.

Barnum (1810-1891), the founder of the long-lived Barnum & Bailey Circus (1871-2017), was a ground-breaking showman who perpetrated constant hoaxes on the gullible American public and was known for his manipulative ‘freak shows’. The problem with The Greatest Showman is that, unlike David Lynch’s The Elephant Man (1980), it completely fails to address its own key issue: the exploitation of the freaks publicly exhibited in America, from village carnivals to Barnum’s famous Manhattan circus. Barnum’s presentation is simplistic and one-sided: to convince a hesitant Charles Stratton, a midget (or little person), to accept being transformed into General Tom Thumb Barnum uses the argument that if people are going to laugh at him (as Stratton worries) they might as well pay. Incidentally: the real Stratton was recruited when he was only four-years-old, not twenty-two, and, thus, unable to decide for himself. This is the only comment about the dubious business relationship between Barnum and his distinct employees, apart from his snobbish exclusion of them from upper-class events, like the opening gala of Lind’s tour.

That the Barnum & Bailey Circus closed in the year The Greatest Showman opened is a clear indication of the colossal lacunae in the film’s discourse. ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’, as the circus proclaimed itself, was the object of constant complaints from animal defenders until it was eventually forced to bow down to pressure, unable to transform itself into a spectacle better suited to contemporary preferences (think Cirque du Soleil). If Barnum’s record with animals is poor (he claimed that elephants feel no pain in their trunks to justify his appalling training methods), his treatment of his human fellow beings is also deplorable. His career started with the exploitation of a black slave, supposed to be the oldest woman in the world but actually only 76, whom he even exhibited once dead. His many human curiosities and oddities were, if not actually enslaved, at least treated with what now would be called intense ableism. As Richard Brody wrote in The New Yorker, “The movie isn’t merely stylistically mediocre and emotionally simplistic, it’s grossly ahistorical, shorn of the complexities and fascinations of the character whose name is associated with the film. The master of ballyhoo has been ballyhooed off the screen” (https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/the-greatest-showman-and-the-far-more-fascinating-real-life-of-p-t-barnum).

This opinion, as you can see, clashes with my view of The Greatest Showman as highly enjoyable spectacle, an “extremely guilty pleasure”. After The Elephant Man, a film telling the story of how Victorian Dr. Frederick Treves rescued John Merrick–a man suffering from elephantiasis exhibited by ruthless exploiters–we all grew sensitized to a very different view of the freak. Photographer Diane Arbus (1923-71) owed much of her fame to her portraits of freaks in the decaying 1960s shows but now we find her approach abusive. With the rise of Disability Studies in the mid-1980s the very word ‘freak’ became an insult and a new vocabulary of PC terms was deployed. The intensive medicalization that in the 1930s started pulling freaks out of the limelight to present them as cases was, however, also an expression of hypocrisy: Merrick’s deformed skeleton was exhibited only to doctors but it is doubtful that this was only in the interest of science. Incidentally, singer Michael Jackson was its last owner, which is fitting considering what Jackson himself did to his physical appearance.

The ableist hypocrisy I stress is grounded on the impression that the persons once called freaks have been freed from their freakdom to become integrated in society. This is completely false: I would never endorse Barnum’s awful business practices but what I see on the streets and on the screen is a totally homogeneous human body following narrow, damaging beauty standards. Whenever freaks appears in texts calling allegedly progressive, they are woefully sentimentalized. The recent film Wonder (2017, based on the novel by R.J. Palacio) is not only incredibly sickly sweet but also very false in its presentation of children with Treacher Collins Syndrome. It’s insulting to them that pretty Jacob Tremblay had to be put through gruelling make-up sessions when, surely, some actual patient could have been found for the role. This is an argument, of course, constantly advanced by activists in disability causes: we award Oscars to fully-abled actors for playing freaks but reject actual freaks (excuse my language).

The Greatest Showman is guilty of this sin and of many others. When I saw the Honest Trailer for it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaE0JD1X12g) I was truly dismayed. Yes, all the points raised there are undeniable, not only the many lies but also how the interracial romance is used to leave the freaks’ presence reduced to just a colourful background, and how the exploiter is, as I have said, presented as a romantic redeemer. I do not think, then, that I can defend my pleasure in this film without committing many ethical offences. This worries me very much, for I seem to be unable to extricate myself from the conundrum: why am I enjoying a text which I should abhor, given my knowledge of ‘freaks’ and my ideology? I cannot make sense of how my ethical barriers have been weakened.

But I’ll try…

It’s the glee. A trite answer, no doubt. Of course, I’m not the first one to argue that glee is the key. Variety notes that “The Greatest Showman is unabashedly nostalgic. Whereas La La Land was grounded in a darker realism, this film is bright and ebullient, infused with a let’s-put-on-a-show spirit that’s been largely missing from cinema since the days of Judy Garland and Gene Kelly” (https://variety.com/2017/film/features/hugh-jackman-the-greatest-showman-logan-1202629864/). For The Guardian, in an article about the film’s transformation into a surprise sleeper by word-of-mouth, “It isn’t hard to see how the film’s feelgood factor can give audiences a much-needed sense of escape or respite” (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/jan/31/the-greatest-showman-success-film-story-of-the-year-hugh-jackman) from our dark times.

Still, the problem of the subject matter and its treatment remains. In Mel Brooks’ 1967 hilarious film The Producers, Max Bialystock (a Broadway producer) and his accountant Leo Bloom decide to stage the most appalling musical ever, expecting it to be a flop, which would, paradoxically, benefit them. Their aim is to raise money before the play opens and then embezzle it. To their chagrin, however, Springtime for Hitler: A Gay Romp With Adolf and Eva at Berchtesgaden becomes an immense success when some members of the audience start laughing, mistakenly believing it to be a satire. The Greatest Showman is not amenable to this ambiguous reading, which is why I fear that this is actually our own candid Springtime for Hitler, with dancing freaks instead of dancing Stormtroopers.

Director Michael Gracey convinced Hugh Jackman to turn the script into a musical, perhaps as a way to politely tell his fellow-Australian film star that only the addition of songs could turn the awkward content into congenial film material. He was right. The songs and their lyrics provide the film with the uplifting tone which its admirers celebrate but also cancel the more problematic discourse carried out by the rest of the film. Or perhaps I’m totally wrong, and in the times of Lady Gaga and her ‘little monsters’, the images of the ‘freaks’ dancing riotously (so different from the Elephant Man’s tragic passivity) are far more positive than political correctness assumes. This is not nostalgia for Gene Kelly and Judy Garland but for a time when, though exploited, freaks were world-wide stars for (this is important) they were admired performers and not medicalized bodies displaced from public spaces. And, yes, I do know that my argument is problematic to say the least.

Do see The Greatest Showman and check whether what you feel and what you think clash.

I publish a new post every Tuesday (for updates follow @SaraMartinUAB). Comments are very welcome! Download the yearly volumes from: http://ddd.uab.cat/record/116328. My web: http://gent.uab.cat/saramartinalegre/