Critique: My Fair Lady

This is a musical romantic-comedy. The main characters are Eliza Doolittle (a common, Cockney flower girl), Mr Higgins (a noble phonetics scholar) and Mr Pickering (a well-to-do linguist of Indian languages). Higgins and Pickering have a wager: can Higgins coach Eliza pass her off as a noblewoman at a ball?

 

*****SPOILERS****

 

Funny

 

This musical delivers humour from the start and until the very end (indeed, the last line is there for humour rather than plot).

            When Eliza first moves in with Higgins, he tells his housekeeper to clean Eliza with sandpaper. When the housekeeper objects to him hurting Eliza’s feelings, Higgins dismisses them by saying that Eliza has no feelings that they have to worry about. These two lines delivered in quick succession are funny precisely because they are so outrageous.

            At one point, Eliza storms out but is lured back in with chocolate. Later, it isn’t the threat of going without food or comforts that gets her to do as she’s told but the threat of no chocolate. To see an adult so swayed by one object is amusing; to see this objects is chocolate is relatable.

Eliza’s songs about Higgins are brilliant. One is a whole song about killing Higgins: considering when the film was filmed, one would have though such sentiment would be against the audience’s sensibilities, making the song far funnier. Another is how unnecessary Higgins is in her life and to the world in general. This one she sings directly to him so it’s a burn.

They have an argument in which they’re just shouting vowels at each other in their own accents. At another point, Higgins forces Eliza to speak with a mouth full of marbles (something inherently funny).

The races bring out funny reactions from the Higgins family. When we first see Higgins interacting with her son, it’s to say, “What a disagreeable surprise.” Perfect! Later, Higgins balances his saucer and teacup on top of his hat then walks away. Who knew gentlemen walked around with portable tables?

At the races, Eliza speaks in the same accent as everyone else. When he horse isn’t doing to well, she reverts back to Cockney to shout, “Move your bloody arse!” In a prim and proper place! (That’ll teach Higgins for only teaching accent and not dialect!)

After the ball, Eliza had been passed off as a highborn lady. Higgins and Pickering crow about their success and then the whole staff join in the song, too. All of this was ludicrous, considering Eliza was the one that did the actual work. (Although seeing how dejected Eliza looks isn’t funny at all.)

Higgins makes a big deal about not needing Eliza then stops dead in his tracks with the realisation, “Damn, I’ve grown accustomed to her face.” The least romantic romance in the history of the world right there.

 

Other

 

This film had many moments that left an impression on me. Not only that, but many of its songs had already made an impression on me years ago when hearing them as part of popular culture.

Higgins is nasty and manipulative. This is well established by the time the audience sees his beautiful library. So my firs thought? ‘He doesn’t deserve his library.’

Eliza’s dress and fascinator for the racing were perfect and she looked perfect in them. (Although, to be honest, I didn’t expect her to be able to sit down in it.) I’d never seen such a large fascinator before, which is good because I always want them to be bigger than they are.

Higgins says, “All women do is fix their hair. Why don’t they straighten up the mess that’s inside?” That’s a rich thought coming from a man from the time when men weren’t allowed to be emotional and hence men couldn’t straighten up what’s inside.

Eliza says one thing that really stuck with me. “The difference between a lady and a common flower girl isn’t how they behave but how they are treated.”  We know this to be true (in regards to this film) because neither Higgins nor Pickering change their behaviour towards Eliza.

Eliza tells Higgins to listen to the recordings of her when he missed her. Then she walks in on him as he does just that. That was a beautiful moment.

 

Problems

 

Higgins has two main complaints when it comes to language. One: that dialects/accent sustain the class divide. Two: that people can’t speak English anymore.

            So One. Higgins is judging people for how they speak. Classism is the reason behind judging accents (classism judges people based on their social station and hence everything they do). This means Higgins is making classism stereotypes. If he doesn’t think accents/dialects should divide the classes then he needs to first needs to change his classist attitudes.

            Now Two. The accent Higgins thinks is correct is Received Pronunciation. To say ‘anymore’ implies that accents diverged from RP. However, RP was artificially created: it didn’t emerge naturally like other accents. In fact, the accents Higgins despises have been around longer than RP, so an argument that’s based on ‘anymore’ should prefer these older accents?

 

Goodness, so many problems!

Pickering and Higgins are discussing Indian dialects. Higgins asks how many there are and Pickering replies that there are ‘147 Indian languages.’ They’re using dialect and language synonymously when they aren’t synonymous at all: languages are made up of dialects. Calling a dialect a language is like calling a finger a hand. As linguists, Pickering and Higgins of all people shouldn’t be making this mistake. When the film is about linguistics and basic linguistic concepts are presented incorrectly, that is a problem.

Eliza is offered gold and diamonds. She declines them because she says she’s ‘a good girl’. Eliza had been using ‘I’m a good girl’ to say she’s a respectable woman. What has being a respectable woman got to do with not wanting gold and diamonds (especially when ‘respectable women’ are the ones that can afford gold and diamonds)? I can’t reason out her thinking at all.

Higgins and Pickering have awful signing voices. So why were they cast in a musical, in leading roles no less? That’s like knowingly hiring an awful chef to lead a kitchen. At the very least, people with good singing voices couldn’t have been hired to do the singing, if the producers really wanted those actors.

At the end of the film, Eliza had changed the way she spoke and behaved, even though neither of those things were harming anymore. Meanwhile, Higgins hadn’t changed the way he spoke or behaved, even though they were objectively nasty. A woman shouldn’t have to change herself to suite the needs of a horrid man.

Nearing the end of the film, Eliza was making a fuss about doing as she was told in regard to household tasks. However, the audience doesn’t see her tasked with household tasks until she reveals it annoyed her. Yet the audience needs this information to understand why Eliza left and her later argument with Higgins. To have something so crucial to the plot just tacked on was bad writing! (Yes, the condition to her staying with Higgins was her doing as she was told, but that was presented as her language lessons, not household stuff.)

 

 

The film is clearly intended as a comedy. As with any comedy, taking it apart and analysing things too closely can be counterproductive. Plus, the problems don’t distract from the film being enjoyed. In that regard, the film was a successful comedy, no matter how astounding the problems.