I must be missing something
Today, I got to sit down and watch my favorite movie, The Phantom of the Opera (see the previous post about why I love Mondays). Everytime I've watched that movie, I realize that I like it all the more. Today, though, was a bit different. This time, while I watched the movie and listened to the songs I know by heart, I tried to think about what the movie says.
Most of the movies I watch have some sort of message that they are trying to impart. Indeed, most artistic works have that as a firm foundation for the story. Stories don't accidentally convey a message; a story is created to relay the message the artist wanted to convey.
When I finally thought about the message of POTO, I was horrified. The "moral of the story" is a terrible one to think about.
If you have never seen the movie or watched the show, I'll tell you how the story goes so that you understand the moral of the story:
Our hero, the Phantom, is very ugly, desperately poor, and lives in the sewer. Despite being a man of great genius and intense emotion, he is despised, exploited, physically and verbally abused, and is reduced to scrounging his life out beneath the Paris Operahouse. After living a life of unaccountable misery and desperate loneliness, he falls in love with a woman who has a beautiful voice. To help her, he gives her the benefit of his musical genius and she profits as a result.
Enter our villain: Raoul. Raoul is rich, handsome, and largely untalented. He has never had to worry about anything in his life, has never wanted for the adoration of others, and has been surrounded by luxuries since the day of his birth. Desiring the object of the Phantom's love, he steals her away from the Phantom.
Rather than give up, the hero says, "Enough is enough!" and demands of the universe that, since he is a basically good man, he should be allowed one tiny bit of beauty and happiness in his life. When he reaches out to take the woman he loves back, the universe rebuffs him and causes him extra anguish he would not have endured if he had simply let her go with the man who did not need the happiness and beauty in his life.
In the end, she goes off with the villain, and leaves the hero, miserable and alone, to walk the sewers for the rest of his life (which turns out to be a long time), knowing that what should have been his was wrongfully taken from him and that there is nothing he can do about it.
While I love the tragedy of the story, the message seems to me to be fairly clear when I lay out the story that way: Don't seek to rise above your station in life. Get used to the fact that society will value the rich and handsome above raw talent and genius, and that those in the latter category should be content to sate themselves on the drippings from the tables of their betters (i.e., the rich and handsome crowd).
That's clearly a terrible message for the movie, and an awful thing to suggest about the world, even if it seems to be true sometimes. I refuse to believe that I like a story with an embedded bad moral so much, so there must be something I'm missing.
What it is, though, I have not yet figured out.
Most of the movies I watch have some sort of message that they are trying to impart. Indeed, most artistic works have that as a firm foundation for the story. Stories don't accidentally convey a message; a story is created to relay the message the artist wanted to convey.
When I finally thought about the message of POTO, I was horrified. The "moral of the story" is a terrible one to think about.
If you have never seen the movie or watched the show, I'll tell you how the story goes so that you understand the moral of the story:
Our hero, the Phantom, is very ugly, desperately poor, and lives in the sewer. Despite being a man of great genius and intense emotion, he is despised, exploited, physically and verbally abused, and is reduced to scrounging his life out beneath the Paris Operahouse. After living a life of unaccountable misery and desperate loneliness, he falls in love with a woman who has a beautiful voice. To help her, he gives her the benefit of his musical genius and she profits as a result.
Enter our villain: Raoul. Raoul is rich, handsome, and largely untalented. He has never had to worry about anything in his life, has never wanted for the adoration of others, and has been surrounded by luxuries since the day of his birth. Desiring the object of the Phantom's love, he steals her away from the Phantom.
Rather than give up, the hero says, "Enough is enough!" and demands of the universe that, since he is a basically good man, he should be allowed one tiny bit of beauty and happiness in his life. When he reaches out to take the woman he loves back, the universe rebuffs him and causes him extra anguish he would not have endured if he had simply let her go with the man who did not need the happiness and beauty in his life.
In the end, she goes off with the villain, and leaves the hero, miserable and alone, to walk the sewers for the rest of his life (which turns out to be a long time), knowing that what should have been his was wrongfully taken from him and that there is nothing he can do about it.
While I love the tragedy of the story, the message seems to me to be fairly clear when I lay out the story that way: Don't seek to rise above your station in life. Get used to the fact that society will value the rich and handsome above raw talent and genius, and that those in the latter category should be content to sate themselves on the drippings from the tables of their betters (i.e., the rich and handsome crowd).
That's clearly a terrible message for the movie, and an awful thing to suggest about the world, even if it seems to be true sometimes. I refuse to believe that I like a story with an embedded bad moral so much, so there must be something I'm missing.
What it is, though, I have not yet figured out.
posted by The Academian | 4:32 PM
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