That's Entertainment!

Over the last year or so, our girls have become captivated by a lot classic Hollywood musicals. They sing the tunes to each other as part of games, and sometimes just to themselves. (Recently, at a playgroup with some other kids, another woman from our church was taken aback to hear Caitlyn, our four-year-old, singing quietly to herself "If I Were a Rich Man," except she tends to change the lyrics around a little; more often than not, it becomes "If I Were a Rich Woman.") Some of their favorites include Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Meet Me In St. Louis, The Sound of Music (of course), Singin' in the Rain, Mary Poppins, Annie, The Music Man, The Wizard of Oz and more. Granted, not all of these are what most people think of when you talk about old Hollywood musicals; interesting how Mary Poppins, for example, since it was produced by Disney and features animation, is left off most musical lists. But for the girls it's all the same; something about the way in which music mixes with story, becoming part of the story, has really grabbed them. I think in some very basic way it's teaching them about what art and entertainment really are. For one thing, it was exciting for them to discover on their own that "Esther" from Meet Me in St. Louis is also "Dorothy" from Wizard of Oz, and so forth. More fundamentally, I think it has helped them see that, as people in real life do not break out into song depending on their mood, these otherwise very realistic stories (all right, maybe Mary Poppins and Wizard of Oz don't qualify) must therefore be a peculiar kind of "comment" on real life, a way of throwing some aspect of it--its humor, pathos, pain, unpredictability, whatever--into sharp relief. Megan, our eight-year-old, in particular I think has been helped by these musicals. Since she was very young movies of all sort have just overwhelmed her imagination; the musical cues alone would, when it looked like there was going to be any conflict featured on screen (and we're talking about Cinderella-level conflict here; we police our children's viewing habits pretty closely), drive her out of the room, to hide in closets and under bed sheets. It's not that she doesn't have a strong and powerful imaginative sense, or an ability to focus on the story; she'd continue to peak out at the tv, or run back and forth asking us what she'd missed. It's just that, for whatever reason, she's particularly sensitive to intense imaginative presentations, and tends to so clearly identify her own thinking with what she's seeing that the merest sign of danger or embarrassment or confusion is often too much for her. (She's like this with books as well as visual entertainment, as I explained in my Harry Potter post.) But the confrontations and adventures she's seen in musicals have had a different effect on her; she can handle them, via the music, much, much better than I had thought she could. She's learning about being a viewer, about what it means to be entertained, in other words. Which, when it isn't constructed as a passive enterprise but a critical and engaged one, is a very good thing.

Their interest in musicals followed Melissa's and mine; at some point about a year or two ago we decided that we were really lacking in the classic Hollywood entertainment department; my mom loved all these old musicals, directed several for local casts in our church when I was growing up, and I felt particularly embarrassed by the fact that I'd forgotten so many plot points and songs. So we started building up a collection. We're getting most of them on DVD, which makes it easy for the girls to play their favorite scenes over and over again, and also makes it easier for us as parents: we can more easily show them great songs without them begging us to let them watch movies we don't think they're ready for yet. Fiddler on the Roof, despite its very accessible and engaging music, is clearly a little too heavy and mature for them at this point; ditto for My Fair Lady (possibly my favorite of them all) and West Side Story. (And they'll have to age about another ten years before we let them watch Chicago!) And the fact is, we've found that we don't really think all of these movies, even some of the most famous, are worth the time. Oklahoma? Great music, but the characters and story are terribly boring. Carousel alternated between creepy and dull. And Hello Dolly! was a horrible vanity project; An American in Paris, while not horrible, suffers similarly. So it's not like everything out there is gold.

Recommendations, for us or for the girls? What classic works of entertainment are we missing? We should probably rent The King and I, and see if it hold up to our memory. I've still never seen South Pacific, amazingly enough. How about Anchors Aweigh? That's where Gene Kelly dances with Tom the Mouse, right? Any others?