Oklahoma

After becoming invested in AppleTV’s musical homage/send-up, “Schmigadoon!,” we decided to watch one of the most iconic musicals ever: “Oklahoma!.” To see and hear iconic songs of the Great American Songbook be performed in context was a joy, but the politics, message, and characterization feel horribly out of date. If not for the iconic songs, this movie would be largely forgettable if not outright embarrassing.

The best part of “Oklahoma!” was imagining what it must have been like in a theatre for my mom:

The giant title “OKLAHOMA!,” the overture in booming sound, the vivid technicolor photography and then the gorgeous voice of Gordon MacRae belting out “O What a Beautiful Morning,” showing Rogers & Hammerstein at the height of their powers. It must have been a spectacle down at the State Theatre on Main Street.

Top that off with:

• The delightful banter between Curly and Aunt Eller
• The “Moonlighting”-style sexual tension between Laurey and Curly
• Then visual daydream of “Pretty Little Surrey”

and you have a powerful, beautiful, fantastical romance of an idealized figment of pioneer life for the opening twenty minutes.

But boy, the scene where Aunt Eller advises her niece be grabbed and kissed against her will plays with a lot of wincing these days. In some ways, these opening twenty minutes let us in on a pattern that repeats for the entire runtime:

“Great music, great filming, and my God, are these rustics all sociopaths?”

While I can recognize “Oklahoma!” as a work of its time presented in a different cultural landscape, it was hard not to feel like its blind spots were a bit bigger than mere spots and that were also probably not all-that-invisible in their time. In this regard, “Oklahoma!” has aged much more poorly than, say, R&H’s “The Sound of Music.”

There’s not much to say about the plot because, well, there really isn’t one. Laurey is unsure of her feelings for no apparent reason; Curly likes her; she toys with a farmhand to make Curly jealous; the farmhand is a homicidal deviant; just deserts are had; “Oklahoma!” is sung. Oh, also Ado Annie is horny but is expected to settle down. And, by the way, don’t trust the brown(-faced) guy. Whew, just that paragraph is bursting with cringey hints of problematic tropes.

First, consider that we see nary a dispossessed Native American on the land formerly called “Indian Territory.”

It’s also hard not to notice that the triumphant finish in celebration of Oklahoma’s statehood (1907) where farmer and rancher can be pals, is but a mere 14 years from the Tulsa Massacre). One could easily imagine a slightly more lined, richer, land-owning Curly (younger than I am presently) singing praises to the beautiful mornin’ as his horse treads the ashes of an incinerated Black Tulsa. “But Curly wouldn’t do that? Oh? As segue, didn’t he literally try to coach a man to suicide?.

He what?!

Yep, Curly is coaching a depressive outsider with a porn problem, feeble bank account, and a head full of domination-based masculinity claptrap to kill himself. The British heavy metal act Judas Priest got taken to court on the allegation that they said “Do it” as a subliminal track. Here’s a man literally praising the charms of being observed as a dead, lifeless corpse to a socially disconnected outsider. What a sociopath.

And it’s not just Curly, Laurey toys with the work hand, “Jud Fry” merely to spite Curly. Cold.

That said, and lest I be accused of some uber-woke revisionism of a lighthearted fantasie, let me acknowledge that the film attempts to make Jud’s accidental death at the end “just deserts” because he peeped in on a Laurey. That’s wrong. He shouldn’t have done that. Those are grounds for dismissal or calling the marshal, they don’t justify coaxing a mentally feeble man to kill himself. Think of the cyberbullied kids’ suicides in recent years: Curly delivers something 100 times worse and he gets to walk offstage the hero?

An adult aside

Aside: There’s a modern take on this story where Laurey runs an onlyfans page; Jud Fry is her lighting guy; Curly is a local bitcoin millionaire (on paper) and Aunt Eller is Laurey’s “agent.”

The Problematic Grab-Bag

1. Hoo-boy. Eddie Albert in brown-face: because brown faces are lusty, untrustworthy libertines who will screw you out of your fair two bits or your daughter’s market value as a virgin
2. The sexual politics and policing of Ado Annie. I don’t even know where to start on that one: selling her for $50, passing her between suitors, her own libido, Laurey’s policing…it’s too much.
3. Gloria Graham’s singing. Graham did many wonderful things on screen. If I could un-see “I Cain’t Say No” I would be better off. I know Graham said she couldn’t sing and was promised they’d fix it in post.

Conclusion

Frankly, the best of the film could be experienced from

• overture to Will mounts his horse from a moving train
• skip to the post-intermission
• watch unto the final song

Doing so gives the best of the music, a tense 40-minute drama, and then a Whiggish anthem.