Armadillo's Book Blog

About 11 years ago, desperate for a distraction for my then-4 yr. old daughter, I sat her down in front of a TV, popped a tape of Carousel into the VCR and walked away. When I stopped by to check up on her 45 minutes later, I found her facing the screen, tears streaming down her face. It was then I should have
realized that musicals’ pretty costumes and music often disguise powerful messages.

Years later, I found myself in the video rental store on my birthday. The plan was to eat a festive dinner and watch a video of my choosing.  “Old musicals are always safe,” I thought, addled by the aging process. I brought home the 1950 screen adaptation of Annie Get Your Gun, starring Betty Hutton and Howard Keel.

Annie Get Your Gun tells the story of Annie Oakley, best shot in the West, in music and lyrics by Irving Berlin. Much-loved songs from the show include Doin’ What Comes Natur’lly, The Girl That I Marry, I Got The Sun In The Morning,
Anything You Can Do, and There’s No Business Like Show Business.

Annie Oakley sings the theme of musical loud and clear in the brilliant lyrics of You Can’t Get A Man With A Gun, which include:

… When I’m with a pistol
I sparkle like a crystal,
Yes, I shine like the morning sun.
But I lose all my luster
When with a Bronco Buster.
Oh you can’t get a man with a gun.

While Frank Butler, the man Annie aspires to wed, sings:

The girl that I marry will have to be
As soft and as pink as a nursery

The girl I call my own
Will wear satin and laces and smell of cologne

…
A doll I can carry,
The girl that I marry must be.

There we sat, the daughter (by now a teenager) who cried through Carousel, younger daughter about 6, parents, and even the cat watched, rapt, as the music traced Annie Oakely’s life. Annie evolves from an ignorant hillbilly (Doin’ What Comes Naturly) whose shooting must be sharp if she is to feed her family, into the most talented and renowned sharpshooter in the world. Which threatens to destroy her romantic relationship with the second-most talented sharpshooter in the world, Frank Butler. So after watching for nearly two hours, the lesson my daughters learn is that in order to catch and keep the man she loves, a talented, beautiful, intelligent young woman does best to convince him that she’s just not as good a shot as he is.

Which is why, several days later, I was not thrilled to observe my usually-retiring young one scale to the top of a pile of bags of manure outside our drug store and unabashedly belt out multiple choruses of There’s no business
like show business to the amazed and delighted stares of our fellow-patrons.  “That’s alright,” I told myself,  “these people have no idea that this song, which has no doubt delighted millions, is from a reactionary musical that delivers a negative message about the need for girls to scale back their ambitions and hide their talents in order to succeed in the world.”

My feelings of failure as a parent worsened when my young daughter became infatuated with a CD of the Broadway revival of Annie Get Your Gun starring Bernadette Peters. Not only is the message of the show in this very recent production unimproved — and how could it be, it’s deeply embedded in the book? — but the performance by Peters is a real disappointment. Her hillybilly accent goes in and out and is embarrassingly influenced by Brooklynese.

Thank goodness my daughter was most interested in the funny competition song, Anything You Can Do, which Annie (at a point in the story where she is still mercifully unaware that a woman’s place is second to the man’s) sings with her rival/intended, Frank Butler:

Anything you can do,

I can do better.
I can do anything
Better than you.

Since dear daughter objects to “mushy love songs”, she (and I) were mostly able to avoid Annie’s decision to permanently hide her gifts. Unfortunately, You can’t get a man with a gun is such a funny but direct description of the thought process that leads to Annie’s capitulation that it proved impossible to ignore. I hate the meaning in the following words, but I just adore the word play:

A man’s love is mighty
It’ll leave him buy a nightie
For a gal who he thinks is fun.

But they don’t buy pajamas
For pistol packin’ mamas,
And you can’t get a hug

From a mug with a slug,
Oh you can’t get a man with a gun.

Anyone who rode in our car listened to this song over and over again until our local librarians finally compelled us to return the CD.

We’re now on to You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat and Weird Al Yankovic. The music and lyrics aren’t as fantastic, but at least the messages are slightly more positive, for girls at least.

The lessons I hope I’ve learned from this experience are:

• Musicals do pack a punch. The songs that make them compelling also project their messages to impressionable children.
• Children do listen, hear, and, worst, understand these messages. Stephen Soundheim told us this in Into the Woods. But I had forgotten.

Happy listening.

–Emily

If you’re going to watch Annie Get Your Gun, get the DVD or VHS video of the 1950 movie. The CD of Bernadette Peter’s performance is certainly interesting, but the Ethel Merman version’s the one I recommend.

Carousel, on the other hand, is gorgeous, if depressing. There’s a VHS version but the DVD is not much more expensive.