You are not alone...
I've just seen Phantom of the Opera in London for the second time, and I'm in a bit of a mood to write about it for long hours. If you don't want to read long musings about this great musical, don't bother with the rest of this entry, because that's all it's going to be!
***
Pitiful creature of darkness,
What kind of life have you known?
God give me courage to show you
You are not alone!
Those lines won’t leave me alone. In truth, they’ve been running through my head for what feels like a lifetime, even though I just got out of seeing The Phantom of the Opera in London less than two hours ago.
Every time I see a show, a good show, I come away with something that can only be described as a high. Some people need drugs or alcohol or sex to feel it. I just need good art. And I'm feeling it right now -- so much so that it feels weird to be sitting on my bed and doing something as ordinary as typing. I feel like, instead, I ought to be dancing and singing and living and laughing and loving. I feel like I need to act; great art also always calls me to action.
But just as I am called to do, so too am I called to reflect. And since there's little I can do now, I think that I'll think for a while and hope that that's good enough.
The thing that really hit me this time around is encapsulated in those four lines I quoted above. Really, it starts a bit earlier, when Christine reproaches the Phantom for his actions:
This haunted face holds no horror for me now.
It's in your soul that the true distortion lies.
In the world of fanfiction, it seems like every other story tries to write Christine and the Phantom together. But the thing that the fanfic authors seem to never discuss is the fact that the Phantom kills in cold blood -- that he is willing to do so in order to possess Christine all to himself. This is what the voice in the back of my head always whispers when I'm reading a particularly smutty Phantom/Christine fanfic. Christine says it best in the line above: a horrifying visage may lose its impact over time, but something as cruel as the ability to commit murder goes deeper than that. This, rather than anything purely superficial, is why Christine can never make the choice to stay with the Phantom. She cannot fathom that a man would kill -- and, in all honesty, neither can I.
But my next question, as I watched the final scene in the Phantom's lair unfold, was who to blame for the Phantom's actions and demeanor. Christine wonders at what kind of life he has known -- for me, this was the beginning of the answer. A life lived in loneliness, shunned by others due to something as unchangeable as a physical birth defect, cannot be a life that breeds compassion and a sense of value for human life. It cannot be a life that breeds humanity, for that is learned through association with others, something the Phantom never has. He even laments to himself that his disfigurement is at the root of all of his problems:
This face that earned a mother's fear and loathing --
A mask, my first unfeeling scrap of clothing.
Pity comes too late!
So the Phantom has never had even the most basic experience of human love and kindness. He has never been taught to regard life as precious, because he has never valued his own. Who wouldn't hate a society that was disgusted by something he had no power to change? Who would not turn against the people who could not see beyond the physical? Christine's sympathy in the final scene is still tinged with that dread which the Phantom associates with his deformity. Even as she asks for courage to show him that he is not alone, that he, too, can be loved, she calls him a creature of darkness. Not even a man -- a creature, like some common animal -- pitiful, like a poor stray dog that no one wishes to take in. Christine criticizes her society for treating the Phantom the way that they have, essentially creating him as a monster where before he could have been a man, but at the same time she is inextricably bound to this society. As one of the beautiful, she can never quite understand what it is like for him to be shunned because he is ugly.
The thing that hits me about this is, Christine could have loved him. She sees past his face, past even his music in that final scene. If only what she saw was something brighter, something more noble, something more humble -- then, she could certainly have loved him. As it is, she is left only to pity him.
***
Another thing that struck me about this performance was the way in which Christine can be defined through her relationships to the men in her life. There are really three important figures: her father, Raoul, and the Phantom. The thing I find interesting is that I can see how each of these corresponds to a different type of love as defined by the Greeks, who had three words for it: eros, filios, and agape.
For her father, Christine feels a love that is almost spiritual. She feels that he has the power to send her an angel from heaven now that he has died; she reveres him and his memory. This is quite like the idea of agape love, or love of the spirit. Often this is defined as the love one feels for god or the supreme being, but really I see it as a love where the relationship is not equal, and one partner is of a higher caliber than the other (or is perceived to be thus). Christine is really just a little girl who wishes she could look up to daddy for all the answers to life's questions. For her, her father represents the security of her childhood and her younger self, bringing her back to a time when there were fewer things for her to deal with.
I see Raoul as playing a very similar role, in that Christine attaches to him because he is a remnant of her past and makes her think of safer, calmer times. Also, she clings to him in the hope that he can protect her from the world around her. I would define their relatinoship as falling under the category of filios, sometimes defined as the love of siblings and friends, because although it is not purely platonic in nature, it is also not seriously sexual. It provides Christine once again with a safety net, something to lean back on. Raoul is the perfect example of the safe choice in love -- there is no danger to her being with him, and it is comfort that she feels when around him.
The Phantom, of course, is practically the embodiment of eros, or the physical/sexual side of love. If Christine's response to Raoul's attentions is to feel comforted, her response to the Phantom's is to feel excited. And it scares her -- of course it scares her! The Phantom represents something completely different to her, a total unknown, an unsolved variable. In addition, he is no figure from her childhood; he does not carry with him the safety of her youth. It's safe to say that her feelings for the Phantom and her feelings for Raoul could not be more dissimilar; Raoul offers her a safe love with no real mention of physical commitment, whereas the Phantom bombards her with the truth of an adult relatinoship. Christine is certainly frightened by her reaction to him, and his music -- I think that what scares her the most about the Phantom is that he can make her respond in a way others can't. He offers her great pleasure through music, but demands in return that she grow up a little. "Little Lotte" of the first act cannot be the same as the Christine who plays in Don Juan in the second act; there must be a change in Christine's character, or else she lacks the nerve to do anything about her situation. Where her father and Raoul have always made decisions for her, the Phantom emphasizes that she must choose for herself. And unlike in her younger years, the choices she makes now will have a great effect upon her future.
***
Dropping the scholarly and philosophical voice for a moment, I really have to say -- the sexual innuendos in this musical are great! In some places they're a bit obvious to even be called innuendo -- they'd put Shakespeare to shame! If you want to know what I mean, listen to "Music of the Night" or "Point of No Return" and try to see if sex isn't the first thing that comes to mind. Some lines from "Point of No Return":
Past all thought of right or wrong -- one final question:
How long should we two wait before we're one?
When will the blood begin to race,
The sleeping bud burst into bloom?
When will the flames, at last, consume us?
Ahem. Well. Yes. So I like it. But only because it's really well written, and the rhyming is good, too. (And because of the way the acting makes it seem all the more obvious when the play is staged that it is really all about sex, and I suppose I am still a teenager so while I don't sit and blush and giggle I am enormously entertained.)
***
Pitiful creature of darkness,
What kind of life have you known?
God give me courage to show you
You are not alone!
Those lines won’t leave me alone. In truth, they’ve been running through my head for what feels like a lifetime, even though I just got out of seeing The Phantom of the Opera in London less than two hours ago.
Every time I see a show, a good show, I come away with something that can only be described as a high. Some people need drugs or alcohol or sex to feel it. I just need good art. And I'm feeling it right now -- so much so that it feels weird to be sitting on my bed and doing something as ordinary as typing. I feel like, instead, I ought to be dancing and singing and living and laughing and loving. I feel like I need to act; great art also always calls me to action.
But just as I am called to do, so too am I called to reflect. And since there's little I can do now, I think that I'll think for a while and hope that that's good enough.
The thing that really hit me this time around is encapsulated in those four lines I quoted above. Really, it starts a bit earlier, when Christine reproaches the Phantom for his actions:
This haunted face holds no horror for me now.
It's in your soul that the true distortion lies.
In the world of fanfiction, it seems like every other story tries to write Christine and the Phantom together. But the thing that the fanfic authors seem to never discuss is the fact that the Phantom kills in cold blood -- that he is willing to do so in order to possess Christine all to himself. This is what the voice in the back of my head always whispers when I'm reading a particularly smutty Phantom/Christine fanfic. Christine says it best in the line above: a horrifying visage may lose its impact over time, but something as cruel as the ability to commit murder goes deeper than that. This, rather than anything purely superficial, is why Christine can never make the choice to stay with the Phantom. She cannot fathom that a man would kill -- and, in all honesty, neither can I.
But my next question, as I watched the final scene in the Phantom's lair unfold, was who to blame for the Phantom's actions and demeanor. Christine wonders at what kind of life he has known -- for me, this was the beginning of the answer. A life lived in loneliness, shunned by others due to something as unchangeable as a physical birth defect, cannot be a life that breeds compassion and a sense of value for human life. It cannot be a life that breeds humanity, for that is learned through association with others, something the Phantom never has. He even laments to himself that his disfigurement is at the root of all of his problems:
This face that earned a mother's fear and loathing --
A mask, my first unfeeling scrap of clothing.
Pity comes too late!
So the Phantom has never had even the most basic experience of human love and kindness. He has never been taught to regard life as precious, because he has never valued his own. Who wouldn't hate a society that was disgusted by something he had no power to change? Who would not turn against the people who could not see beyond the physical? Christine's sympathy in the final scene is still tinged with that dread which the Phantom associates with his deformity. Even as she asks for courage to show him that he is not alone, that he, too, can be loved, she calls him a creature of darkness. Not even a man -- a creature, like some common animal -- pitiful, like a poor stray dog that no one wishes to take in. Christine criticizes her society for treating the Phantom the way that they have, essentially creating him as a monster where before he could have been a man, but at the same time she is inextricably bound to this society. As one of the beautiful, she can never quite understand what it is like for him to be shunned because he is ugly.
The thing that hits me about this is, Christine could have loved him. She sees past his face, past even his music in that final scene. If only what she saw was something brighter, something more noble, something more humble -- then, she could certainly have loved him. As it is, she is left only to pity him.
***
Another thing that struck me about this performance was the way in which Christine can be defined through her relationships to the men in her life. There are really three important figures: her father, Raoul, and the Phantom. The thing I find interesting is that I can see how each of these corresponds to a different type of love as defined by the Greeks, who had three words for it: eros, filios, and agape.
For her father, Christine feels a love that is almost spiritual. She feels that he has the power to send her an angel from heaven now that he has died; she reveres him and his memory. This is quite like the idea of agape love, or love of the spirit. Often this is defined as the love one feels for god or the supreme being, but really I see it as a love where the relationship is not equal, and one partner is of a higher caliber than the other (or is perceived to be thus). Christine is really just a little girl who wishes she could look up to daddy for all the answers to life's questions. For her, her father represents the security of her childhood and her younger self, bringing her back to a time when there were fewer things for her to deal with.
I see Raoul as playing a very similar role, in that Christine attaches to him because he is a remnant of her past and makes her think of safer, calmer times. Also, she clings to him in the hope that he can protect her from the world around her. I would define their relatinoship as falling under the category of filios, sometimes defined as the love of siblings and friends, because although it is not purely platonic in nature, it is also not seriously sexual. It provides Christine once again with a safety net, something to lean back on. Raoul is the perfect example of the safe choice in love -- there is no danger to her being with him, and it is comfort that she feels when around him.
The Phantom, of course, is practically the embodiment of eros, or the physical/sexual side of love. If Christine's response to Raoul's attentions is to feel comforted, her response to the Phantom's is to feel excited. And it scares her -- of course it scares her! The Phantom represents something completely different to her, a total unknown, an unsolved variable. In addition, he is no figure from her childhood; he does not carry with him the safety of her youth. It's safe to say that her feelings for the Phantom and her feelings for Raoul could not be more dissimilar; Raoul offers her a safe love with no real mention of physical commitment, whereas the Phantom bombards her with the truth of an adult relatinoship. Christine is certainly frightened by her reaction to him, and his music -- I think that what scares her the most about the Phantom is that he can make her respond in a way others can't. He offers her great pleasure through music, but demands in return that she grow up a little. "Little Lotte" of the first act cannot be the same as the Christine who plays in Don Juan in the second act; there must be a change in Christine's character, or else she lacks the nerve to do anything about her situation. Where her father and Raoul have always made decisions for her, the Phantom emphasizes that she must choose for herself. And unlike in her younger years, the choices she makes now will have a great effect upon her future.
***
Dropping the scholarly and philosophical voice for a moment, I really have to say -- the sexual innuendos in this musical are great! In some places they're a bit obvious to even be called innuendo -- they'd put Shakespeare to shame! If you want to know what I mean, listen to "Music of the Night" or "Point of No Return" and try to see if sex isn't the first thing that comes to mind. Some lines from "Point of No Return":
Past all thought of right or wrong -- one final question:
How long should we two wait before we're one?
When will the blood begin to race,
The sleeping bud burst into bloom?
When will the flames, at last, consume us?
Ahem. Well. Yes. So I like it. But only because it's really well written, and the rhyming is good, too. (And because of the way the acting makes it seem all the more obvious when the play is staged that it is really all about sex, and I suppose I am still a teenager so while I don't sit and blush and giggle I am enormously entertained.)