Growing up, my sister and I were fed a steady diet of George Bernard Shaw and Rodgers and Hammerstein. One of our favourite musicals of all time is R&H’s South Pacific.
But I am ashamed to confess that I’d never realised the significance of the movie, until today. South Pacific, as many may know, is about an all-American nurse from Little Rock, Arkansas, who falls in love with a French man, and a young Lieutenant from Philadelphia who becomes smitten by a young Polynesian-French girl. The backdrop is World War II and the Allies are holding off the Japanese in the Pacific.
What you may not know, if you’ve not seen the movie in 20 years like me, is that South Pacific had boldly explored the complexities of interracial courtship, which in 1958, must’ve been quite revolutionary.
How much has changed in the 49 years since? Fortunately, quite a lot. Today, multi-ethnic families and interracial relationships are abound, and diversity is celebrated – not in all, but many countries, made even more popular by the Brangelina clan. As such, someone watching the movie for the first time must find it so strange to see “Lootellan” Joseph Cable turning away from the beautiful Liat simply because she is Polynesian, or Nellie Forbush spurning the love of handsome Emile de Becque because he was married to a Polynesian. Feelings of confusion may also be intensified when you hear Lt. Cable sing You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught, where one is also moved by the same anger the dashing ‘Lootellan’ feels about how children of that era are conditioned to hate and fear people who look different. And then the irony sets in, that the backdrop of this movie is a war that was born of the same demons.
It is both reassuring and alarming to realise that the battle against racism was wrought so long ago (isn’t it inspiring to know that R&H were so far ahead of their time?).While we may now live in a world that by and large celebrates racial and religious diversity in love and family, the road to true acceptance and understanding still stretches long before us. Will it be another 50 years before someone watches a movie, say An Inconvenient Truth, and then wonder, whimsically, how enlightened Al Gore truly is?
I guess I’ll never know.
I think there should be some sort of ‘history of’ class taught in schools so that young’ins can get a very clear picture of exactly how far we’ve come. It would awesome to see them inspired by social activism and then carry on in the spirit of hope to create further change!
Definitely! Don’t they already have that? Thanks for visiting Fey!
South Pacific – a definite favorite. Too bad interracial relationships still aren’t all that common place in everyday media even 50 years later. Maybe advertising is different in Seattle but I never see multiracial families or interracial marriages depicted in commercials, TV shows or movies. I am hard pressed to find stock photos of interracial romance. If we didn’t have Brangelina and the discovery channel some people might think that it wasn’t possible to love someone of another race.
Beautiful blog, great content. We met while “speed dating” at Blogher. A google alert led me to this post where I “meet” you again.
Thanks Karin! Yea multi-racial family pictures are very rare, aren’t they? Am definitely Rssing your blog!