h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Kiss Me Kate. 1953 Film Musical adaptation of Cole Porter’s 1948 Broadway show.

As St Augustine almost said ‘Time to get serious, but not just yet.’

This is a film musical about two musical theatre stars Fred and Lilly, who were once married but are now divorced, appearing in a theatrical musical based on ‘The Taming of the Shrew’. Naturally the war between Petruchio and Kate is reflected by the war between Fred and Lilly. Fred is still in love with Lilly but she is now engaged to a Texas cattle baron.

Being still in love with his ex wife doesn’t stop Fred ‘mentoring’ a young dancer called Lois Lane. I kept waiting for Superman to fly in. Lois is a generously emotional girl. She also has another beau who is a dancer in the show. He has a gambling habit and loses $2,000 dollars in a crap game (can I say that word on hootoo?). He hasn’t got that sort of money so he signs an IOU for the gangster he owes it to. To doubly insure himself against any ill effects he signs Fred’s name.

Fred sends flowers before the show to Lois but they are delivered to Lilly. Luckily she doesn’t read the card, and softens her attitude to Fred. The show commences. During the performance Lilly reads the card and turns on Fred. At the end of act one she quits the show.

Meanwhile two hoods turn up to collect from Fred on the gambling debt. He sees a chance to keep Lilly in the show by explaining to the hoods that Lilly is walking out and therefore he will have to pay back the box office cash leaving nothing for them. So they stop Lilly leaving, and to ensure her compliance, stick with her throughout the second act, unsuitably disguised as citizens of Padua.

At the second act interval the hoods check back with the boss. He cannot come to the phone as he is in conference with the boss from the North side, discussing the South side. He is tied up, to a chair. A burst of machine gun fire. The hood turns to Fred; the debt is cancelled due to the sudden demise of the boss.

Lilly can now escape and join her Texan. Fred sits outside the stage door, disconsolate. In an attempt to cheer him the hoods do a little song and dance routine. ‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare’. This is Cole Porter at his best (worst). The version in the movie had to be heavily cut compared to the original stage production, losing couplets like:

With the wife of the British ambessida
Try a crack out of Troilus and Cressida
If she says she won't buy it or tike it
Make her tike it, what's more As You Like It

[note: ‘tike it’ should be pronounced in original cockney, think Dick van Dyke in Mary Poppins, if you’re brave enough.]

At the finish, Lilly changes her mind, returns in time for the big finale and all’s well that ends well. (Who said that?)

It is a great movie, full of colour, movement, dance, and some superb hit tunes from Cole Porter. Some of the movement is a bit bizarre. Stuff keeps flying at the camera, but once you realise that the film was originally 3D it settles down. Although when Lilly (Kate) slings a tankard at me during the song ‘I Hate Men’ I did flinch.

Lois Lane is played by Ann Miller. Before the show starts she does a solo piece in Fred’s apartment, ‘Too Darned Hot’, and I can confirm that. She then gets a song in the show, with her three beaus. None of whom is available until Kate is wed. She’ll take anyone she cries:

Bianca: I'm a maid who wouldst marry.
Hortensio: Any Tom?
Lucentio: Dick?
Gremio: Or Harry?
Bianca: Any Harry, Tom, or Dick!

And then she dances across the stage chanting ‘Dick, Dick, Dick, Dick’ Don’t tell me Cole Porter didn’t know what he was writing.

The film is also interesting because it has an early appearance of the great choreographer Bob Fosse (Sweet Charity, Cabaret, All That Jazz) in a minor dance role, and a walk on part for the main choreographer for this movie, Hermes Pan. Hermes choreographed all the great Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' movies. I always imagined that he worked under a stage name but in fact he was christened Hermes Panagiotopoulos. I think his parents may have been Greek immigrants, just a wild guess.

I tried to resist the temptation to point out that if he had retained his full surname he would have been the first topoulos dancer in a mainstream movie, but failed. Badoom tish.

But now the serious stuff.

The Shrew is a play about a man taking an angry frustrated woman and beating her into the social ideal of the compliant wife. To be fair there isn’t any physical violence from Petruchio in the text of the play, although directors often like to add a bit in some movies. I think especially of the highly rated (but loathed by me), Zeferrelli movie with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, which Burton plays like a brutish Brian Blessed on amphetamines.

Even so, Petruchio baffles her, overrides her every wish, insults and embarrasses her at the wedding, hauls her away from the wedding feast, refuses her food, offers her pretty clothes and then finds fault with them and takes them away, and deprives her of sleep. Classic psychological tortures. Today it can be very difficult for a sensitive bloke, in touch with his feminine side, who has read Greer’s “Female Eunuch”, to watch and laugh at this play without feeling guilty. And how do all the ladies in the audience sit still and not raise loud protests?

Modern directors usually use one or both of two possible solutions. The first is the induction scenes. The induction is usually not played in film or television productions, but, especially nowadays, is played in the theatre. The induction introduces Christopher Sly, a tinker, who is hen pecked and dominated by women, especially his wife. We meet him just as he is being thrown out of the local pub by the landlady (another dominant female) for failing to pay for the drink that he has been drowning his sorrows in. While he is sitting in a drunken stupor, a party of aristocratic huntsmen come by and decide to play a joke on him.

They pick him up and convey him to the local Manor House, where they persuade him that he is the Lord of the Manor who has been very ill and lost his memory. One of the party puts on a dress and a wig and pretends to be his lady wife. They then put on a play for his amusement. The play is ‘The Taming of the Shrew’. Thus by this framing device the female oppression can be shown as ironic, satirical, a fantasy for a dominated male.

The other means of diluting the patriarchal message of the play is the treatment of Kate’s final submissive speech. It is a great piece of writing, and as a bloke I thrill to it. At one performance I actually applauded and cried ‘Brava’. If looks could kill, half the ladies in my section would be doing time in maximum security.

It is surely too famous to need too much explication. At the wedding feast for Bianca and Lucentio, are Kate and Petruchio and also the newly wed Hortensio and his wife. When the ladies leave the gentlemen to their port and cigars, or the Elizabethan equivalent, the boys start to josh Petruchio about the miserable life he is likely to inherit. He says that his wife is obedient to his will and so the lads bet on their wives, which is the most compliant. Of course Lucentio and Hortensio’s wives, when requested, return the answer that they will not come to their husbands. Kate is ordered to return, and does.

She then castigates the other wives for failure to obey their husbands. And ends the speech:

“Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hands below your husband's foot:
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready; may it do him ease.”

In the 1929 Movie with Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks (a real life Fred and Lilly at this time) Mary delivers the speech to a Petruchio who has a heavily bandaged head as a result of being struck by Kate with a frying pan. At the end of the speech Mary (Kate) turns to Bianca and the camera and winks.

The best version I have seen is Jonathon Miller’s BBC complete production with John Cleese and Sarah Badel. The speech is delivered by Badel straight from the heart. Miller explained that he felt that Petruchio recognised Kate's anger and frustration at the world she was trapped in where women were just disposable assets. Petruchio’s plan was to hold a mirror up to her to show that her obstinacy and unruliness was counter productive. By letting her see how she looked to other people, seeing how Petruchio looked to her, she would realise that there were better ways to find a workable compromise.

A comment overheard on the way out of the Globe Theatre production in 2012 is perhaps the best compromise I have yet heard. Petruchio wins a lot of money on the bet that his wife will come to him when ordered. Were Kate and Petruchio working a scam?

They may be modern readings. Let’s be honest the position of women in Elizabethan society (and most others even up to today) was subjugated, discriminated, denied many natural human rights. Kate is disposed of to Petruchio because he is willing to take her off Baptista’s hands, will she or nil she. Her sister Bianca may end up with her handsome young beau but she is essentially auctioned off to the highest bidder, who just by luck happens to be Lucentio.

There is a lot of discussion about moral relativity. Can we condemn people for actions, beliefs, that we consider reprehensible when it is considered perfectly reasonable in other times or places. This ain’t the place for that discussion; I think I have already set a new personal best for the length of this journal entry. I want to be able to go and watch ‘The Shrew’ because it is so much fun. But I really have to engage in moral gymnastics to stop myself feeling rather grubby with its essential theme of male dominance.

I wonder what the ladies think when watching. Do they disengage from the real world for the period of the entertainment? It occurs to me that the stock pratfall joke is the banana skin and the pompous fat gentleman. In reality he could break his back and spend the rest of his days in a wheel chair. We are against stupid and dangerous practical jokes as we also oppose thoughtless littering. Yet we always laugh.

Fascinating as ever.

Of course there has been a modern take on this. My daughters loved the film 10 Things I Hate About You and from what I can recall, the women are very strong characters.

Deb

[Amy P]

You're right about moral relativity. One of my favorite movies is "Death at a Funeral" (the British version), a classic farce with Peter Dinklage, that revolves around homosexual blackmail, among other things. The acceptance of homosexuality has evolved so rapidly that the plot device has become obsolete. And yet I still find the movie hysterically funny, and I can say I admired Dinklage before Game of Thrones.