Why in hell are people so enamored of Phantom?
It is the most irritating musical, as I believe Amanda once said in regard to something totally different, "in the history of evar." I'm not even talking about last year's Joel Schumacher production, though it is what spurred this little post. It's the actual text, the content of the thing. Every character is annoying as shit. Christine seems to be a spineless bit of fluff who'll let herself be blown (heh) any way a domineering male character will blow 'er. The Phantom is batshit crazy. There is nothing healthy about lusting after someone you met when she was 7, mmmkay? Eew. Just...eew. And stop killing people, asshole. Raoul is, let's speak plainly, named motherfucking Raoul. Goddamned waste of 141 minutes if you ask me. Shit like this just doesn't happen with colored people. What is it about wispy little 18-year-old white girls that inspires so much drama? Damn. I'd rather be forced to watch Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge on a loop. Okay, not really. Taste the Haterade! It's derishus.
posted by Sid @ 8/27/2005 01:29:00 AM
8 Comments:
oh my god. finally. i am not a fan of the phantom either. in 6th class i sat next to a girl who was obsessed. i wanted to kill her.
and no not moulin rouge. baz needs to go into retirement.
I wonder if it's the melodrama. It's like a soap opera (probably Days or Passions) gone amuck with the costumes, bitchery and crazienss. Hell, I'll admit to loving it when I was in high school. But I think I loved it more for Carlotta than anything else. Divas are fun characters.
As for Moulin Rouge, I'd rather watch Phantom. Moulin Rogue offends my sensibilities so much that I'd probably force myself to have a brain aneurysm just to get out of watching it on loop. Phantom I can just tune out eventually.
Oh and anudder thing: As for colored folks -- be glad you don't have Miss Saigon or Madame Butterfly. I hate both those works because they make Asian women look like simpering idiots who would do anything for a white man.
Good lord Viv, you're right. I'd forgotten about those. They are the suck. See, that's what I mean, though. Even in the ones with the colored folk, the colored folk are just personally tortured and miserable. But I swear, put a little teenage non-colored gal in a movie, musical, or play, and as soon as she enters a scene you know who's going to be responsible for everybody elses' downfall and misery . Sucks, really, to be in that position--always needing rescuing, always being just so enchanting men cannae help them selves but go mad with desire, always falling over shit, opening the door er'ybody said better stay shut, etc., etc., etc. Just sucks worse to be the one who gets the shit end because of it! Ahem. Now I'm babbling. You see this is part of a long-held secret hypothesis...
Traditional musical theatre generally appeals to lame escapists, most of whom, apparently, are middle-class white folks--also known as the vast majority of ticket holders where I come from. 'Course, I've always argued that if they'd produce more interesting, edgy things, the audiences would appear. . . .
I never liked the stage production of Phantom, but the fil-um is perfectly abominable . . . for many reasons--not the least of which being the dancers' pointe shoes are historically inaccurate.
Now that's some shit I just can't get over.
I hated the movie. Viv can vouch for that, she got to hear (and participate in) most of my major rants concerning it.
Nevertheless, I really like the original book. The phantom (whose name is Erik, by the way) is not romantic at all, he's a bat-shit-loco psycho killer. And Christine knows it and freaks out as soon as she meets him. It's creepy and freaky, but still you feel kinda bad for all the characters because really they all have fucked up lives that intersect badly. Spectacularly badly. It's well written and generally a good read. And it's fairly short, as far as "classics" go. There's a great book on cd version with this super sexy british guy reading it, but I don't remember his name (it was from the library).
Anyway, hate the movie and musical (oh the angst - it's almost as bad as Vampire), but the book is actually pretty good.
Oh, and it sucks to look like the wispy little white girl too. Everyone expects you to be all fainty and helpless so they can sweep in and save you. It gets old fast.
I think Andrew Lloyd Weber in general, is just an over the top, completely unsubtle composer. But I would take Phantom over Moulin Rouge any day of the week. God I hate that piece of shit movie.
Thanks for the tip, Katie! I know, I think I was reading somewhere in the blogosphere that film is the realm of the white male, so all characters tend to conform to their fantasy, so a lot of "types" are done to death. Sad.
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