The Tragedy of Passing

A little fine print to begin...This blog will discuss the movie, The Greatest Showman, as a work of art. Without touching on the historical accuracy of the story, I will consider the characters, plot, lyrics, and themes of the story as the theater and English major I am. I will use "passing" according to Merriam-Webster's definition 10c, "to identify oneself or be identified as something one is not."

Oddly, I noticed that my old blog, Exceptional, received two hits this week. Good! That's the blog in which I claim that any student considered average just hasn't been caught being exceptional. I'm going to double down on that claim. ANYONE considered average just hasn't been caught yet--they're passing as average and that is tragic.

I firmly believe that good art addresses the deepest wounds of the society in which its made. As The Greatest Showman sweeps the nation, let's think about why. What wounds does it expose in all of us? And what can it tell us about how to heal?

The movie's very effective structure sets up lots of contrasts among the characters--Barnum and Lind come from poverty, Charity and Carlisle come from wealth.  And, most notably, all four can pass as average, which the individuals--the freaks--Barnum hires cannot.

Barnum hires freaks for his show by selling them a community in which they can fully belong. He sings,
Come one!
Come all!
You hear
The call
To anyone who's searching for a way to break free

To quote the story's love song, "we're able to be/just you and me/inside these walls." Barnum sells his show as place to celebrate difference, to applaud each individual's uniqueness. In the beginning of the movie, it's implied that he may not be fully invested in that as a principle--it seems to be more of an opportunity to profit. By the end of the movie, in a powerful, traditional story arc, the salesman has sold something that's more real than knows. The illusion he sold to those who are visibly outliers becomes salvation for Barnum, who is equally, if less visibly, an outlier.

Barnum sees the status of Jenny Lind as the ultimate goal. A renowned, internationally celebrated artist, Lind moves among the upper class, even royalty. In the movie's story, Barnum and Lind come from similar impoverished backgrounds and so feel themselves to be outliers. Internally, their pasts mark them apart from average as much as physical traits mark Barnum's employees as outliers. Yet, outwardly, Barnum and Lind can pass. Given the right money, opportunities, connections, and talents, they can impersonate what they can never be, what no one can ever be: Average. Acceptable. Normal. Socially untroubling.

What makes a tragedy out of successfully passing? What we must do to pass. If we humans deny what makes us unique, if we try to amputate all the parts that don't fit into the cookie cutter, if we hide parts of ourselves as deadly secrets, we become walking wounded. We live lives ruled by fear of discovery, consumed by a cannibalistic level of the natural human desire for belonging.

Lind, in her insecurity, has lived alone. She sings alone. Her costuming is iconically cold and untouchable. Cold, solitary images fill lyrics of her song--she sings of stealing the cold, distant, unattainable stars, she sings of towers--solitary structures, she sings of a soloist's spotlights, she sings of how it will "never be enough." In the movie, she pushes too hard to seize on her tentative sense of belonging with Barnum and she loses him. She also triggers a crisis in  Barnum's life.

Barnum, in contrast, has unwittingly created a community--a community that welcomes all, without any requirement of passing. In crisis, he turns back to the people he worked with in the beginning, the team that created his success. Among them, he can be fully himself. He reclaims his unique place in that group and his sense of belonging in the song "From Now On."  With his community, he sings the driving refrain of "And we will come back home/Home again!"

Why does this story resonate so profoundly--and not just with the eternally alienated teen population? My husband, our fourth grade son, and I were as affected as our teen daughter. Maybe it's because each and every human being is an outlier. We are all unique. And we are constantly being told to fit the norm. To be physically standard with inoffensive thoughts and experiences. To speak what others accept. To be an acceptable weight with an acceptable education and income and possessions... I could list items we are pressured to police about ourselves until this blog ran a hundred screens long.

For the love of humanity, people, it will never happen! We don't need a normal ticket to belong in the greatest show. We just need to decide that we all belong in this existence. We all belong. In every beautiful variation on this planet, in every facet of uniqueness, every person belongs. We. All. Belong. As. We. Are.

And if you want a scientific pathway to the idea that average is the true fiction, look up the story of Gilbert S. Daniels and his 1940s research on pilot size for the Air Force. You can find the story almost anywhere--here's a good version.