*SPOILER ALERT* If you intend to see Sweet Charity and don't want me to ruin it, scroll down a bit until you see the picture for the movie Sweet Charity and keep reading.
*brief/awkward pause*
Okay, for everyone who's still here: Sweet Charity is about a girl named Charity Hope Valentine (and apparently she's not in anyway associated with Audrey Hepburn or her alias, Holly Golightly) who lives in New York City in the sixties. She's a *ahem* "dance hostess"- or, as Charity's friends and coworkers Nickie and Helene put it, "the Rent-a-Body Business".
The first part of the musical is kinda raunchy because a lot of the scenes take place at the Fandango Ballroom, where Charity works, and they give a few examples of dancing-but-not-really-dancing that you might have scene in clubs and bars in the sixties. But there's a lot to be said for the way the whole dance hostess business is portrayed. They don't candy-coat it. It makes you uncomfortable because you're not supposed to like it. And every single one of the girls working there wants out, but they don't know how to get out.
Charity has lots of strange little adventures, and a very long line of crummy boyfriends under her belt. In fact, the last one, Charlie, pushed her in the lake and stole her handbag, which was naturally full of money. Then, she meets this guy (who's a lot like Adrian Monk) when they're both trapped inside an elevator at the YMCA. His name is Oscar Lindquist, and he's very claustrophobic, so she calms him down while their stuck, and when they eventually get out, Oscar asks her on a date. They go to this hippie gathering under a bridge called "The Rhythm of Life Church" which is led by this guy called Daddy, and after they are both thoroughly freaked out by all the potheads, and after the "service" is broken up by the fuzz, Charity agrees to go on another date with Oscar.
She's kept the fact that she's a dance hostess on the down low, but she intends to tell him about it when they go on a trip to Coney Island. They get stuck on a ride, (they have a knack for finding broken machinery) only this time Oscar is comforting Charity, who is terrified of heights. She still can't bring herself to tell him about her true line of work, especially since Oscar has now declared her "a virgin in the most poetical sense of the word." But eventually, she breaks down. She leaves the Fandango Ballroom for good, and meets with Oscar at a diner. There, sitting back-to-back because Charity doesn't want Oscar to look at her, she tells him everything, and Oscar passionately declares that none of it matters, because he already knew anyway, and right there he asks her to marry him.
This is the part where I got thoroughly excited. If a couple as quirky and odd as Charity Hope Valentine and Oscar Lindquist can make it in the world, there must be somebody for everybody. Right?
But the show's not over yet. The dance hostesses of the Fandango Ballroom, the owner Herman, the janitor, and the Ballroom's Three Regular Customers Since 1954 have a surprise party for Charity, and all of them pitched in and bought her a seventeen dollar cake. Oscar shows up and takes Charity on a walk through the park so they can talk. He goes on to say that he keeps thinking about all the "other men" Charity has been with, and that he can't marry her, because if he did, he would "destroy her"- a ludicrous assumption, considering everything else has gone so swimmingly. He then accidentally pushes Charity into the same lake Charlie did at the beginning of the show, and after much hesitation and wringing of hands, Oscar runs away, just like Charlie did, showing that he was no different than any of the other guys Charity has known.
Charity has to pull herself out of the lake. Remarking that at least she still has her money, she goes walking through the park and is met by some hippies who hand her flowers. And then, a voice over from "Daddy" says, "And she lived Hopefully Ever After."
At first, I just sat there, blinking. Excuse me? A musical where the protagonist has not found her true love? Are you kidding? Is that even allowed in musicals? Who cares about being hopeful?! Musicals are supposed to be the one place where everything turns out right. I mean, how many people do you know who watch a musical for a healthy whiff of Real Life?
But then I realized something... which will be revealed post-picture.
Welcome back, Unspoiled Friends!
So, story continued:
By the end of the show, I just kept thinking the same thing that Princess Pea shouts in The Tale of Desperaux: "Love! Why must everyone always speak of love?"
I like happy endings, which means I have a problem with real life. My mom said that the whole point of the show was that after everything Charity had been through, she pulled herself out of the lake and walked off with her head held high. But I mean, a girl's going to get tired of thinking, "Maybe this time it'll work out." And she's going to get tired of having to pull herself out of a lake every time she thinks she's found The One. Eventually, finding that she's back where she started, she might just stay in the lake and never come out again. I would.
I mean, it just sucks, you know? And it's not very rewarding, and there's no point in it.
So, I asked myself, why does she keep doing it? Why does she continuously allow herself to be in a situation where some rotten jerk has the option to push her the lake and run away?
For those of you who have read The Tale of Desperaux, I'm sure another line has crossed your mind about now:
"Reader, do you think it is such a terrible thing to hope when there is really no reason to hope at all? Or is it (as the soldier said about happiness) something that you might just as well do, since, in the end, it really makes no difference to anyone but you?"
I don't know the answer to that. I only know that everybody does it. Yes, even you, rolling your eyes and shaking your head- don't sit there and pretend like no one can see you. Cynics are the worst offenders.
Everybody, in my opinion, has love. But your love is a lot like a wad of cash: It's your choice what you do with it. And that's where we all get tripped up.
Some people spend their love. They go out, and they spend it all on people they don't really need. People like Charity and the Giving Tree, who gave everything she had to the boy because she loved him, until she was nothing but a stump because he hadn't nourished her in return. Some people would say that's the way you should be, but I don't think so. I mean, there comes a point when you have to stop. If all you do is spend and spend and spend, hoping for somebody to reimburse you, you'll wind up an unhappy debtor.
There's people who are pretty reckless with their love. They're a lot like Charity, thwarted romantics, but unlike her, when the love runs out they become hopeless. Then they wind up slipping through the cracks, in the slums of the world, drowning their sorrows in drugs and booze. And the thing is, they think they're out of love, but they aren't. They still have some left. It just hurts a lot, and since it hurts so much, they avoid it and drink more or smoke more or do whatever they have to do to make the hurt go away. And that's why they're all so sad.
And then there's people who hoard love. They keep it all to themselves so they don't end up like the reckless ones in the above paragraph. They love objects instead, because an object, like a stamp collection or basketball trophies, or an antique lamp worth thousands of dollars- well, it may not be able to love you, but at least it can't break up with you either.
There are also people who invest their love. They don't keep it all to themselves, but they don't go spending it with hopes of a refund later either. Instead, they're patient and they watch the stock market, and when they see something to their liking, they put in a small sum. If things go well, they get some back, and then they put in a bit more, and they get more back, and they go on like this until we see an old married couple dancing to a song that nobody else knows but them. And if things go poorly, they might need a while to recuperate, but then they move on and find a new company to invest in, because that's business, and sometimes you lose.
I think the big problem is that the three other categories are looking for someone ideal, someone flawless, someone who won't mess up. And they meet someone, and they see their flaws, and they get scared and run away. But investors know something that the others don't. They know you don't love a personality, which after all is only a vague idea. You love a person. A human being. Someone who puts their pants on one leg at a time. They've made mistakes, sure, but so have you. You don't love the mistakes, and they're not asking you to. But just because you don't love their mistakes doesn't mean that you don't love that person. You love them in spite of what they've done.
See, that was Oscar's problem with Charity. He saw a mistake, and he didn't like it. He thought that because the mistake made him uncomfortable, he didn't love Charity anymore. He misread his feelings, and Charity wound up in a lake.
So.
I have a feeling that I have a very, very wet future ahead of me...
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