'The Greatest Showman' is a Gleefully Ignorant Spectacle

Following the unparalleled success of Damian Chazelle’s 2016 hit La La Land and the outrageous movement that revitalized and modernized Broadway theater called Hamilton, it is no mystery that big-budget movie musicals are making a comeback. With 2017 adding Coco and Beauty and The Beast to the roster, and The Grinch, Mama Mia 2, and Mary Poppins Returns not far on the horizon, the genre is clearly in high demand. However, this development has led to what some may note as a fairly troubling trend. In order to bring these potentially risky genre pieces back into the mainstream, filmmakers are essentially forced to place the music of their musical in one of three categories: The Loyal Biography, The Sequel, or The Modernized Pop Show. At this point in time, there is no other financially viable form of musical without delving into smaller, more independent productions like the recent Irish gem Sing Street. The first option, which we will likely be seeing later this year in Bohemian Rhapsody, adapts the music of a given band or musical artist and puts it to screen, along with a typically inspiring origin story. The second option, which regrettably appears to be the most popular path for studios at the moment, with a Frozen 2, Trolls 2, and Sing 2 all set to be released in the next few years, simply expands upon previously published materials. It is a surefire moneymaker, especially for any film geared towards a younger demographic. The third and final option is the most problematic. This subgenre tends to tell a genuinely intriguing story, whether fiction or no, and instead of adapting its music to fit this narrative, it subjects the entire film to a technique that I have come to call “popwashing”; essentially replacing any attempt at a story specific musical number with a completely obligatory pop song fit for the radio. This is the vainest and most inauthentic attempt to reign in audiences, and it completely sacrifices any integrity between a film’s narrative and its music to appeal to the widest crowd of ticket buyers. Ironically, this sacrifice of integrity is not unlike that of P.T. Barnum, the subject of the latest movie musical, The Greatest Showman.

It is worth noting The Greatest Showman is not a bad film. Nor even is it, by today’s standards, a bad musical. It simply falls victim to age-old tropes and hollowed out structural storytelling that ultimately robs it of its full potential and instills a degree of hypocrisy in its message.

Hugh Jackman stars as the titular showman P.T. Barnum, an overeager businessman and founder of the modern ‘circus’. His wife Charity Barnum, played with expected excellence by Michelle Williams, struggles to keep her husband’s ambition in check while he strays farther from his responsibilities as a father in pursuit of financial success. Zac Efron and Zendaya are present too, though the purpose of their role in the film boggles the mind. With Seamus McGarvey, the cinematographer of Atonement, Anna Karenina, and Nocturnal Animals, behind the camera, the film is a visual treasure. An enchanting deluge of color accompanies every major number and in rousing pieces like “Come Alive”, the viewer is fully immersed in the magic of the circus. The song “Tightrope” truly shines as Williams sings longingly for the return of her husband from his international tour amid a cascade of optical time jumps, gracefully cutting back and forth between the lonely Barnum home, the struggling local circus troupe and Jackman’s success abroad. There is no doubt that the film is beyond satisfactory in its imagery from start to finish.

Regrettably, the film suffers greatly from a number of unnecessary plot devices, such as the severely undeveloped and ultimately inconsequential romance between Efron and Zendaya that continues to hog screen time for the sole reason that the two individuals involved are celebrities. This, in turn, detracts from time that could have been spent developing Jackman and Williams’ relationship; one of the project’s stronger dynamics. The film also decides to deliberately shy away from the circus’s long history of animal abuse for the entirety of the narrative, instead replacing every animal with awkwardly rendered CGI elephants and tigers. Perhaps most notably, there was no reference to P.T. Barnum’s known racist tendencies, which are one of the most enduring aspects of his tainted legacy.

However, what is most prominently problematic in this film has to do with the relationship between the music and the ensemble of ‘freaks’. A core value the film is individuality, and it is most often expressed through the band of lovable misfits’ frequent songs together. However, as discussed above regarding the nature of the film’s music, these songs are not reminiscent of 19th century America. Where La La Land music brought MGM into the present and blended it with modern jazz, The Greatest Showman music finds no coherent excuse to make its music a muddled mix of musical theatre, blithely inspirational pop and loose gospel. Each track is a specifically crafted, radio-ready tune that serves only to sell the eventual album to the public rather than shed light on the true nature of these people’s past suffering and the gravity of their defiance. Their physical abnormalities and plethora of bizarre tricks and talents should distinguish their own identities, but with the script paying hardly any attention to each person’s background and the popwashed soundtrack advancing the plot to a minimal degree, these disenfranchised individuals are wholly generalized. This generalization becomes laughably obvious during one particular scene where Lettie “Bearded Woman” Lutz claims that every member of the freak show had unaccepting mothers, leaving no room to shed any more light on a single individual’s backstory. By the end of the film, Lutz has become the figurehead of the ‘freaks’, and everyone else is not remembered as individuals but as oddities.

This could not be more clear than in the film’s hit single, moneymaking smash “This Is Me”, which, as ghastly as it sounds, is up for an Oscar this year. The song is an absolute embodiment of generalization, the most blatant instance of popwashing in the whole project and the most demeaning track to the characters singing it. There is simply no excuse to include a number so unabashedly targeted at middle school theater kids while the film effectively gives the same treatment to the small person “Tom Thumb” as the local circus-goers did at the time; shunning their existence as human beings, and reducing them to their appearance. And on top of everything else, the troupe is forced to split their screen time with an additional dance ensemble that appears and disappears with little subtlety.

I maintain that The Greatest Showman is not a bad film. I have no doubts that it was created with the intent to tell a truly inspiring story of wholesome American success. In some regards, it succeeds in telling it. However, in ignoring the real historical events, rendering the entire soundtrack irrelevant to the narrative and failing to portray an authentic and empathetic stance towards the less fortunate performers, the film’s existing magic becomes inevitably overshadowed by its foundational issues. I can’t say that I hold high hopes for the future of movie musicals, especially as they continue to be approached from a financial angle over a creative one, but I certainly think future filmmakers can make something stronger and more memorable than this.