A fascist "Singin' in the Rain'

Everyone loves Singin' in the Rain, right? As Steve Cohen recently noted in BSR, the American Film Institute voted it the best movie musical of all time and ranked it the fifth greatest American film overall. With its spectacular song-and-dance numbers, its broad comedy and its light but perceptive portrayal of Hollywood's conversion from silent films to talkies, what's not to like?

I thought you'd never ask. Critics often cite one of the film's showpiece numbers— "Moses Supposes"— for its spectacularly athletic display of tap-dancing by Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor. But "Moses Supposes" has bothered me for 60 years— not for its dancing, but for its message. At its root, it's a fascistic celebration in which sheer physical prowess trumps intellectual deficiencies.

If you haven't seen "Moses Supposes," or if you'd like to see it again, click here. It takes about four minutes. Then let's talk.

What exactly is going on here? In preparation for talking pictures, circa 1929, a Hollywood studio hires a speech therapist (Bobby Watson) to provide elocution lessons for two silent film stars (Kelly and O'Connor). The professor, of course, is a pompous fuddy-duddy, obsessed with the ridiculous tongue-twisting exercises in his phrasebook, such as "Around the rocks the ragged rascal ran" and "Sinful Caesar sipped his snifter, seized his knees and sneezed."

Trashing the office

But Kelly and O'Connor will have none of it. After all, they're young, handsome, sexy and terrific dancers (think of the blue-collar John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever). What can this doofus with his book knowledge possibly teach them? Besides, they have him outnumbered, two to one.

So in short order they mock the teacher, throw aside his phrasebook, undo his tie, drag him around the room, drape a curtain over his head and force him into a chair to watch them dance on the floor and table. In effect their message to the prof is, "You can't do this, buster, so why should we listen to you?"

Ah, but they're not quite finished. At the conclusion of "Moses Supposes," Kelly and O'Connor drag the teacher onto the table, trash his office and bury him beneath his roomful of teaching aids. When the number ends, the professor is completely dehumanized— we can't see him at all beneath that mound of vowel signs— and Kelly and O'Connor are smiling broadly, as if to say, "Mission accomplished."

(Even the actor who so gamely portrayed the speech therapist— Bobby Watson, better known for playing Hitler in more than half a dozen films— was dehumanized: He received no credit in the film itself.)

Remember Blackboard Jungle?

I ask you: Is this a lighthearted musical comedy, or is it The Blackboard Jungle— specifically, the scene in which an earnest teacher, trying to find a common link with his class of juvenile delinquents, brings his precious collection of jazz records to class, only to see the ungrateful goons smash his records and break his glasses too, for good measure?

Better still— think of the smiling Lynndie England and her Army boyfriend Charles Graner, posing for thumbs-up pictures of themselves with their torture victims at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. If O'Connor and Kelly had been there, would they be performing the Mexican hat dance on their helpless victims?

I know, I know— I'm taking "Moses Supposes" way too seriously. This whole scene is really just an excuse for a dance number. The speech therapist, like every movie sidekick (not to mention Shakespeare's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern), exists only to serve the dramatic needs of the principal characters.

Later that night…

Still, whenever I watch "Moses Supposes," I can't help imagining the scene that evening, when the professor returns home and his wife asks, "How was your day, dear?"

"Well," the speech therapist replies, "I tried to help two silent film actors improve their diction, so they'll be able to make a living when talkies come in. But in return, these idiots beat me up, trashed my office and destroyed all of my visual aids. Something tells me elocution isn't the only kind of therapy these guys need.

"They're terrific dancers, for sure. But that seems to be the only thing they've ever learned. In fact, these guys are walking advertisements for liberal arts education. I mean, where will great tap dancing get you if you lack manners, basic decency, respect for one's fellow man and simple common sense?"♦


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