Dark Carousel

.
Sometimes the Future erupts into the Present in such a way that you cannot but take notice, even if you hardly understand what’s going on at the time. It’s almost as if you were being prepared in advance for some traumatic event in your life.

For example, one of the films which distressed me as an adolescent (and even more so also after I got married), was the musical blockbuster “Carousel”. Every time I watched it, I found myself weeping after the first fifteen minutes, something that became embarrassing, (and a great joke in my family). It puzzled me because Carousel radiates positive energy, warm sentiment and many feel-good factors that defy any inclination towards melancholia

For someone who spends many long evenings playing the piano alone, my first presumption was (naturally) that the musical score by Richard Rogers was to blame. Carousel possesses some very delicate and moving numbers: “When you walk through a storm”, “If I loved you”, “My boy Bill”, etc. Easily moved to tears by music, I presumed my emotions were being stirred by the songs. But then I finally bought myself a CD of the music and quickly realized that any emotive elements (for me at least) had to lie in the story.

Once removed from its scaffolding of infectious music, Carousel reveals a more sinister side. Based on the play “Liliom” by the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar, it is about people on the fringes of society: outcasts, low-life, carnival characters. Molnar had experienced periods of domestic violence in his relationship with his wife which had eventually contributed to his marital break-up, and it during one of these periodical “flare-ups” that he had written his most famous play.

For those who don’t know it, Carousel is the story of a handsome carnival barker, Billy Bigelow (played by Gordon McCrae) who falls in love with a sweet innocent mill-worker called Julie Jordan (Shirley Jones). Although they both love one another, the marriage is a disaster.

The tragedy of Carousel is that the hero, (Billy Bigolow in the musical, Liliom in the original play) loves his wife but cannot communicate any of those feelings to her. He is an artist without an art; and is “unable” to work because “normal” work is beneath him. Everything he touches he destroys. Not because he wants to. He has to live everything at a distance. He wastes his time gambling, flirting, and making up big (unrealizable) plans. His basic requirements are attention and excitement. Faced with the prospect of a real love (Julie’s) he discovers he does not know what to do with it. He cannot bear her devotion, because beside her, his actions are revealed for the selfish deeds they are. So he vents out all his frustrations on his wife, beating her up periodically with his fists (which is understated in the Hollywood version). Julie, however, loves him in spite of the beatings and the bullying. With a child on the way, Billy agrees to take part in a robbery to obtain money to provide for his growing family. The attempt is bungled: he falls on his own knife and is killed. (In the original play he commits suicide in order to evade his responsibilities as a father, but the story had to be softened for the American market).

Once in Heaven, Billy refuses to admit his love for Julie, and shows no regret whatsoever for his actions.

Sixteen years later (after his death), he is allowed to return to earth for a single day to do some good there. He brings with him a star he has stolen from heaven, which he intends to give to his daughter whom he has never seen. She is now 16 years old, a pretty, but unhappy child who takes after her father. She does not recognize him when he arrives to speak to her. He offers her the Heavenly Star as a gift, but she refuses and asks him to go away. (Too much like her father, she cannot accept anything good). He insists that she take it, and when she continues to refuse, he lashes out at her in his frustration and slaps her (the only way he knows to gain attention).

The girl runs away to tell her mother: she has seen a man who has hit her hard, and yet (somehow) it did not hurt. “Is it possible”, she asks her mother, “for someone to hit you hard, and for it not to hurt at all?” Julie, intuiting what has happened, tells her daughter, “Yes. It is possible for someone to beat you, and beat you, and beat you – and not hurt you at all”. Now invisible, Billy whispers to his wife: "I loved you, Julie. Know that I loved you." And Julie, (somehow), hears him. She joins her daughter and the rest of the townsfolk in singing “You’ll never walk alone”, as Billy heads towards Heaven.

As it stands, the musical Carousel can be said to condone domestic violence. It says that it’s alright to beat up your partner as long as the victim loves you and forgives you continuously.

The ending motto of the play and the film are the same: that there is a violence that doesn’t hurt the victim: that domestic violence can be interpreted as a blind form of love; and that it can be forgiven, both here on earth and also in heaven..( Billy is, after all, redeemed not by any effort of his own, but by the “tear of Love” that comes into Julie’s eye on hearing her daughter’s story.).

Once you knock on the door of your own self, the answer you receive is seldom the one you expect. When I first saw Carousel many years ago, I identified with Billy Bigolow, the flawed hero: he had the best lines I thought, the most seductive songs. But it is Julie Jordan who is the real flawed heroine, putting up with her husband’s behaviour, rationalizing his brutal actions, returning his beatings with a Christian love.

Today I know it possible to love someone who beats and abuses you. I know this because I have done it. But whether this is “right” is a different kind of question.

© Ryszard Antolak

(picture: Bita Vakili)