Download INTRODUCTION ~ A s what seems to have been their homeland

~ INTRODUCTION ~
A
s what seems to have been their homeland – the United States – musical theatre is a
real melting-pot. From its start, it has made dance and music and drama meet. In that,
it was direct heir to the operetta which principally expanded during the 19th century, more
particularly in Austria-Hungary with Strauss and Léhar, in the United Kingdom with Gilbert and
Sullivan or in France with Offenbach and Albert Willemetz in the 20th century. Nevertheless, the
genre amply became synonymous with the Anglo-Saxon culture, which the vitality of some American
creators added to a broadcasting through the cinema made possible. There was actually one art
missing : cinema. If the musical are first set on the « Great White Way » in the so theatrical
Broadway, in New York – where most actors are dying to perform and thus crown their career with
success – a no less industrious Hollywood soon seizes those that achieve greater success. As a matter
of fact, experts make a difference between musical comedy – which is performed on stage – and
musical movies. The American designation « musical » for the first one would rather connect it with
music, due to grandiose orchestras in the States, unless you recall this is the contraction of « musical
theatre », which brings us back to the artistic diversity of the genre. As far as musical movies are
concerned, they are often its fruit, provided it has been tested on the stage in Broadway, then
delivered to the Hollywood industry. All things considered, an adaptation with a view to get a juicy
success. Musicals really are motley because of the arts they gather, but they do not forget the mass
audience they are aimed at, so that they might fall into uniformity.
However, are these musical just one more manifestation of what a bit of an anti-American
tradition called « mass culture », unvaryingly mixed ? A flat « yes » would indeed be quite far from
reality. History of art showed how much artistic disciplines, several times, did stray from pure
estheticism so as to drift into denunciation or propaganda. It would have been, on that account,
quite surprising for such a crossroads of arts to ignore the phenomenon – especially in the 20th
century that followed a 19th century which represented a great step towards opulence industrializing
European countries and the United States. No wonder either the latter pioneered the boom of a
culture that cannot help but flirt with uniformization, but which at least expresses freely in the land
of the freedom of speech illutrated by Norman Rockwell in 1943. More, the musical particularly
flourished during the 60s – time to contest strongly on the other side of the Atlantic the war in
Vietnam, to support the Civil Rights movement for the Black minority. So that was in that
questionning atmosphere America melted arts that already were ideology bearers. Another remark
as every story, the musical is linked up to at least two times : that of the scenario, and that or those –
considering the numerous reruns and readjustments – of the release. Such a historic duality can
therefore be very useful for the author to artistically express his opinion. If so, American musicals
from the 60s and 70s were tinged with representations of the world and America, by the United
States itself.
In that case, are musicals simple entertainment or a mine of information to the historian ? Are
they just stories or real history ?
I will try to answer these questions through a commentary on one of those musicals – that is to
say Chicago. Why that one ? Because it deals quite well with the main features of the American
culture, and it would have been useless and tedious to study more of them, wouldn't it ? Anyway,
because I appreciate it, and on the other hand, because it allowed me to treat a period of the
American 20th century while drawing constants in the American history and mentalities.
CHICAGO : « it's all circus »
C
hicago, here is a plural musical. The script was based on a play by Maurine Dallas Watkins, who
drew inspiration from an incident that took place in Chicago in 1924. Chicago was first
set in 1975 by Bob Fosse and Fred Ebb, then was adapted to the cinema in 2002 by Rob Marshall.
He had already set the musical on stage, and this first experience as a producer ended up with a
success since the movie was awarded five oscars, and Rob Marshall got a nomination as best
director. I decided to work on the 2002 version. The chronological gap between the news item that
gave the scenario and the release of the film will allow me to enlight some similarities between the
two times, and thus about America from the « roaring twenties » to the 21st century, about how the
United States works. The storyline is actually simple : the murderers Roxie Hart – who killed her
lover – and Velma Kelly – who killed both her husband and her sister – are ready to all to become
famous. Those two fictitious killers were indeed representing real women who were charged with
murder in 1924. There was a will to make entertainment out of a news item, that is to say to set up a
musical on quite a real stage. The question is to know whether the incident – which obviously
occured locally in such a wide country – really is representing the United State at this time. Despite
the Prohibition laws in 1919 with the 18th Amendment to the US constitution – which made it illegal
to buy, sell or drink alcohol – Belva Gaertner (the real Velma Kelly) and Beulah Annan (the real
Roxie Hart) had no trouble in getting the booze they wanted. And the Chicago lawyer W.W. O'Brien
who was trying to get in the spotlights and gave birth to Billy Flynn, gave fame to its clients
through press conferences he orchestrated brilliantly.
So the movie presents – with the blue eye in the beginning that seems to say « come and
see » - a time when the tension between tradition and entertainment, so American, was growing
stronger and stronger, while revealing the wheels of a « star system » which hardly hides an
important feature in today's America : justice is a real theatre.
I. « AND ALL THAT JAZZ » : when jazz rocked a society of tradition.
In 1924, « the war to end all wars » was over. Five years earlier, men would die in the European
trenches, but the « roaring twenties » had brought a new era. Time had come to have fun and « paint
the town », for music and the radio, for fashion and fame. The music people preferred at the time was
jazz. By the way, you enter the movie to the sound of clarinets, trumpets, basses and the piano. The
first song in the movie is entitled « All that Jazz » - an American expression that became informal
language – meaning « and all the rest », which semantically places jazz as the engine for the roaring
twenties. As far as the master of ceremonies is concerned, he is a black, so as to remind us of the
African-American origins of the new born music. The flappers – young women with short skirts
offending their mothers' puritan fashion : « let's make the skirts shorter », as the presenter declaims
before the last song Hot Honey Rag. They were dancing Charleston and made their parents crazy,
collecting lovers, as the imaginary line between Velma and her late sister seems to attest: « She'd say:
'What your sister like?' I'd say: 'Men.' ». Finally, the women also had short, shingled hair. Vaudeville
and « perfect double act[s] » experienced a peak popularity. On top of that, a new kind of
entertainment – talking movie – was about to grow in 1927, whith Al Jolson, whom Roxie Hart
mentions in the film, in The Jazz Singer. Life was beautiful. Illiteracy back then in America broke a
record slumping downwards 6%. women were changing, started to drive cars and already lived longer
than men, on the average: 54.6 years to 53.6. Nobody thought the stock market would crash by the end
of the decade, leading to the Great Depression. The jazz girls swore by infernal cocktail of booze and
jazz. Second city in the United States, Chicago was not only the fort near to the Lake Michigan it used
to be, but more of an « open door » to the wild extents of the country. To many adventurous
youngsters, the city represented the last short-stop to buy products or drink illegal booze.
In front of so much freedom, in a country certainly young and dynamic after the industrious
19th century and having built much on the First World War, but nonetheless deeply attached to its
Founding Fathers' traditions – especially as far as religion is concerned – a reaction to the excessiveness
of the « roaring twenties » was to be anticipated, and it did not take long before it broke. If as far back
as 1919, the 18th Amendment imposed a legal ban on alcoholic drinks, it not until January in 1920 that
no-one was allawed to distill, transport, sell or buy alcohol. Moreover, it was the « tragic combination
of liquor and jazz » which led the gullible Roxie Hart to crime and vice, wasn't it ? However,
Prohibition is onlyone face for the puritan reaction that partly belongs to religious beliefs. A great
example of this is the vision of adultery that is developed in Chicago. Roxie Hart cheated on her
husband Amos with the man who sold them their furniture, Fred Casely. When she shoots him down
because he lied to her about his so-called influential friends at the club, she asks her husband to tell the
police he shot the would-be burglar so as to defend his beloved wife. Here is the vision of the woman
the husband – who supports the house – has to protect. But when the fool realizes his spouse failed
him, he denounces her, and the unfaithful woman shouts: « you're disloyal », as if she was the one to
be betrayed. By the way, if polyandry is far from being accepted, the Mormon Ezechiel Young from
Salt Lake City is quite blithely practising polygamy: as one of the female convicts puts it in the Cell
Block Tango, « he had six wives ». Indeed, the common point between every religious sects in the
United States confirmed patriarchate, even if from 1920 on with the 19th Amendment to the
Constitution, women got the right to vote. One can paradoxically figure out that such a subversion in
values during the 'roaring twenties' was only possible in a country where tradition was already deeply
rooted, and would certainly react. It becomes difficult to distinguish sin from saintliness in the universe
of « reformed sinner[s] ». As far as Roxie is concerned, her alibi for having killed her lover is the
boredom of a desperate housewife without her mechanic husband whereas she « wanted a real home
and child ». Such devotion goes to the point of representing justice with an angel in the law courts.
Even if this symbolism is not characteristic of the United States, though the President still has to swear
on the Bible when starting his term and also the phrase 'under God' has been added once again in the
national motto by the Congress in 1954, and has been pronounced every morning by millions of pupils
in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Even the hardest currency in the world at the time bears the
device: 'in God we trust'. At last, it is also to be noted that there has been a reaction against the 'red'
who were atheists, which did not really fit the American capitalist model. For instance there was the
execution of the Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927, as well as that – fictitious – of the
Hungarian Katalina Halenski, « first woman in the State of Illinois to be executed », according to
the imaginary journalist Mary Sunshine, whereas she is the only one to be « not guilty ». The last song
of the movie, Hot Honey Rag sums up the 1920s quite well, for it is the time when « there's men,
everywhere jazz, everywhere booze, everywhere life, everywhere joy, everywhere... nowadays »,
but it does not forget that progressism often hurts traditionalism, that never completely die in the
United States that is originally a puritan country.
II. « she's giving up her humdrum life » for which star-system ?
(Judy Garland, A Star Is Born, 1954)
(Singing in the Rain, 1952)
1937, the movie A Star Is Born was brought out. Judy Garland – the mother of the legendary
Liza Minnelli and to some extent the ambassadress of the American musical, especially since she
played Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz in 1939 where she sang the mythical Somewhere over the
Rainbow – got the title rôle. In another fiction far from the plains of Kansas – on the other side of
the rainbow of musical – in the second city of America, another star was about to be born: Roxy
Hart. Chicago, within a set of 'roaring twenties', reveals the wheels of a star system that did not
change much since 1924. Fame continues to be a most money-making industry, with an almost
religious reverence to the body, and also is for many the shortest social ladder, or at least, Singing in
the Rain in 1952 seemed to put the emphasis on this, considering Don Lockwood there gets back
his fame going from silent cinema to speaking one after the release of the Jazz Singer in 1927.
Nevertheless, the curtains of the Onyx Club barely hide – certainly on purpose – how transient
those stars can be, as well as their solitude in the Hollywood firmament.
As a matter of fact, Hollywood represented, in the beginning of the century, the barrels of a
certain social ladder to climb the hierarchy. « From just some dumb mechanic's wife I'm gonna be
Roxie », tells the rising star of the movie, played by Renée Zellwegger, in the song that is devoted to
her: Roxy. From the very start of the film, Roxie's ambitions are quite obvious: she naively watches
Velma Kelly's show with envy, even picturing herself in the place of the star. Indeed, cabarets, then
cinema that is only silent during the 1920s (till 1927), where everybody goes – the rich to mix with the
riffraff, the poor to entertain – are as many theaters where celebrities to be can give a spirited
performance. It is true that from the origins, the cabaret presented ass various as numerous acts, but
that did not prevent the daring from standing out from the crowd. Belva Gaertner – the real Velma
Kelly – was a successful cabaret singer. When the naive Roxie Hart tells she was there the night Velma
had been arrested, the star answers with aplomb: « you and the half of Chicago ». This shows, on
top of a blatant narcissism, that cabarets from the 20s had full houses, creating in their auditoriums a
real social 'melting-pot'. Concerning the upward mobility for celebrities, it could be sized up in
thousands of dollars, up till « $2500 a week », according to the ambitious Velma and Roxy. On top of
attracting wealth, celebrity is also synonymous wih power, especially in the United States. To be heard,
one has to be seen. As a matter of fact, celebrity may be a means for women to emancipate. If the
1920s are 'roaring' pre-eminently to the flappers, it is that they had a special status. In 1794, Saint Just
said: 'happiness is a new idea in Europe'. In 1924, Roxy and Velma tell us: « you can like the life
you're living, you can live the life you like », as if they wanted to remember the hope the 1920s were
the bearer of, not only in Chicago, but also in the whole United States, and even all around the world.
But every coin has another side, even fame. First to have access to it, Roxie gives herself
unhesitatingly to Fred Casely, only because she thinks he is influent at the Onyx – from the very
first scene of the movie – whereas she is married to the sympathetic and also credulous Amos.
When she has fallen into disfavour, Velma as far as she is concerned comes to see the new star
Roxy has become, « in an act of desperation »: « I can't do it alone », she sings. One can see how
celebrity works through relations, above all when Sophie Tucker – the real star to whom Roxie
compares – says 'success in show business depend on your ability to make friends and keep them'.
If it belongs to the American dream, one can easily figure out that the dream is reserved to few
people. At a time when the question of renewing the political class is asked, how about the
'showbiz' class? As her mother Judy Garland before, Liza Minnelli has become a true star of
American cinema. Is talent transmitted with DNA or are the babies of stars bottle-feed with
celebrity? If the star is the object of a cult, it is also submitted to strong pressures concerning its
body. A documentary on the American TV channel MTV showed that the body of nowadays'
Hollywood celebrities is severely tested to be the best possible, be it practising sports too
intensively, depriving the body from food, and even taking miraculous diet pills. In the beginning of
Chicago, Fred Casely tells Roxy she has « too bit talent and skinny legs », as if to show that even
though the ideals of beauty have changed, the physical appearance in the star system is as important
as talent. The celebrity must also have style, it sets the fashion: « women want to look like her »,
with a frantic uniformisation. The star of the 20s embodies what the American called 'glamour'.
Surrounded by a male chorus, Roxy says she' « ll appear in a lavallière ». But such a lavallière
quickly turns into a suffocating corset, and the shady side of celebrity really is a golden cage, as
Joyce Carol Oates described it in her book Blonde – which recount the Marilyn's mythical life.
According to Arthur Miller, one of her husbands, if 'the sun looked dull besides Marilyn', she was
also 'the saddest girl in the world', to the point of committing suicide in 1962. Moreover, one can
read on her epitaph – by an irony of fate: 'here lies Marilyn Monroe, 97-62-92'. Being a star was
thus a full time job, a dangerous one. And the emancipation of famous women – with their well
orchestrated scandals – remains quite relative. Does celebrity make you lonely? « I can do it
alone », drops the well-known Velma Kelly at the start of the film. Then she goes on stage alone,
because she has just been shooting her sister with whom she formed the so « perfect double act ».
Another side of the coin, at last, is that one can fall very quickly from the social ladder of fame.
Velma and her worn stocking are a god illustration of the phenomenon, as well as the scathing line
by the lawyer Billy Flynn to Roxie: « you're only a fake celebrity, a flash in the pan, eight days
and you're forgotten ». « That's showbiz », he concludes. An ephemeral celebrity then, that can
however become synonymous with power.
III. « it's only show business » : when democracy makes a spectacle of herself.
All along the film, there is a criticism of justice because it has become a spectacle – particularly
with the device on the law courts: « FAME THEIR NAMES AND DEEDS ». Ir is also present
from the beginning of the movie with the transition from the agressive light the district attorney uses
to interrogate Roxy, to a spotlight when she pictures herself as a singer. The way the hanging of the
Hungarian is set illustrates how justice becomes a show in the act of « Hungarian disappearing ». As
a matter of fact, in reality, people could attend to executions, as testifies Mary Sunshine's commentaries
to make the suspense grow. The press becomes a stooge to the cunning Billy Flynn in his puppeteer act.
And he seems to be right, when qualifying the trial: « it's all circus », for the court soon becomes a big
top, in the Razzle Dazzle song. More than just a conviction for the judicial insitution alone, there is a
real charge with corruption coming from the film. Mama Morton's character – the jailer – concludes
her song with the sentence: « when you're good to Mama, Mama's good to you », « because the
system works, the system called reciprocity », so as to announce the blatant corruption that rules in
Chicago, that Billy Flynn will ironically denounces in his song All I Care about Is Love, whereas he is
driving a de luxe car and his job as a lawyer makes it affordable for him to buy custom-made suits. He
finally throws out in his speech for Roxie's defense a very sarcastic sentence: « even in Chicago, this
kind of corruption cannot stand ». The reconstruction of the crime scene during the trial also
belongs to a show that was advertised with the suspense words « we both reached for the gun »,
repeated then by the chorus of journalist puppets. At last, the final image of the film shows Velma and
Roxie on stage in an act with fake tommy guns, which makes the audience laugh at loud: « who said
that murder is not an art? ». If in the headlines of the papers « Al Capone [is] dethroned [by
Roxie] ! [Since] Chicago becomes crazy about a new star of crime », it really is that from mediatic
democracy to show business democracy, there is only a stage, above all when we learn that obtaining
« maximum penalty » for Roxie, « attorney Harrison could become Governor Harrison ». Such a
vision of the United States as a stage for a political show has been reinforced by event like the election
of the actor Ronald Reagan as President, twice between 1981 and 1989, or also that of Arnold
Schwarzenegger as 'gubernator' in California in november 2003. A constancy in the American history is
here enlighted: it is a short step from Hollywood to the White House.
~ CONCLUSION ~
T
gainst a backdrop of 1920s – of which it qualifies the openness in many ways – Chicago is thus a
musical that aims at entertaining its audience with a historical and theatrical setting. Not that far
from reality though, considering it purposedly denounces how many aspects of the
American way of life can be too much of a show. Entertainment or denounciation, then?
Denounciation through entertainment, no doubt... A history lecture then, given by Americans, about
Americans, which does not seem to lack lucidity when one confront it to the real history of the
continent of all hopes... And sometimes of all disillusionments. The musical still is a form of
entertainment. Nonetheless, if one goes further than the siren song of a music you may want to danse
to, or the scenario everytime more passionate, one can figure out 'musical theatre' is not that 'theatrical'.
The obvious success it gets makes a great vehicle for success out of it. At last, stories... for history. And
all that jazz!