Columns, Opinion

LISINSKI: Moulin Scrooge

Don’t go see Moulin Rouge.

Sorry, perhaps that was a bit negative. If you’re into decades-old themes about deifying the penis, and if you love seeing white people pretend to be races they once colonized, go see “Moulin Rouge.”

I saw the show with my parents while they were visiting Paris for Thanksgiving because, in all fairness, it’s often viewed as a classically Parisian experience. Maybe I set myself up for failure on this one by not understanding the background. I walked into the theater knowing only two facts about “Moulin Rouge”:

  1. It contains, as my mother so gracefully put it, “boobies.”
  2. Voulez-vous coucher avec moi? Ce soir?

To my grand disappointment, that brilliant song of debauchery did not make an appearance in the real “Moulin Rouge.” I suppose in reality, it only exists on radio stations advertising themselves as the “best hits of today and yesterday” (emphasis on the quotes).

It did, however, have plenty of breasts. In fact, just about every woman in the show was topless, save three or four exceptions.

Now, I have no problem with naked women. I quite like them, actually. The scores of nudity did not offend my delicate sentiments, nor do I see any character flaws in the dancers themselves.

But only the women were naked.

Within the first minute, all of the female dancers — who had been clothed up to this point — tore off their pants to rapturous cheers from the audience. They made their way back downstage as the men stepped up … and did a little shimmy. Nothing more.

The show continued in what I assume is typical “Moulin Rouge” fashion. Women promenaded around wearing only underwear and an elaborate headdress or glimmering beads that did not actually cover anything, or what I can only assume is an LSD-inspired cross between a “Sesame Street” costume and a turkey. The men wore turtlenecks under blazers or full pirate garb, each piece of which was covered in approximately one art classroom’s worth of glitter.

Certainly, the cultural history of cabaret and the theater itself plays a part in this — “Moulin Rouge” is located in what used to be the notorious red-light district of Pigalle — and I understand the liberating value of seeing beauty in the human body. But why is it that there was only beauty in the female body? What fun is there in denying an entire sexual identity any steamy parts to admire? Last time I checked, we have nude Greek statues of men and women.

The whole performance reeked of patriarchy and tone-deafness. Several scenes take place in stereotypically “exotic” settings, such as one where men in turbans are “attacked” by (mostly naked) women dressed as “jaguars” or another where (white) women do a “tribal” dance with African-style masks.

Again, I’m sure that much of this relates to the storied foundation of French cabaret, and perhaps this type of performance just isn’t for me, but in the modern age, it feels wildly out of place.

The low point for me came during another “exotic” segment, albeit one that draws from myth and not from colonialism. It began with a woman wearing an intricate headpiece made to look like snakes à la Medusa establishing her dominance. She then casts a prisoner, who is nude, save for a pale piece of underwear — the most nude anyone has been in the entire show — into an aquarium that has risen up from the stage.

Now, my hatred for this segment is multifaceted, but perhaps it stems mostly from one fact: my mother and I are both ophidiophobic. We cry at the sight of snakes.

And what did the aquarium happen to contain? Snakes. It was filled with hundreds of gallons of water and eight or nine really, really big snakes. Immediately, my mother and I let out harmonious moans and buried our faces into my stepfather’s shoulders.

From a purely technical standpoint, I must admit I am amazed — how did they fit a gigantic aquarium in the stage? How did they get the snakes in there? Where did the snakes go afterwards? Did they realize I could never feel safe again knowing those monstrosities were somewhere in the building?

As I saw it when I peeked through my fingers, our naked heroine splashed around frantically, but eventually evolved into a sort of underwater dance with the snakes. At the end, she grabbed the fat albino one, wrapped it around herself and held its head up out of the water in victory.

Then it hit me: “Oh, I get it! The snakes are dicks!”

Think about it: Medusa (a powerful woman who “coincidentally” loves snakes a.k.a. dicks) throws a pure, naked girl (virgin) into a dangerous setting surrounded by phallic beasts (sex). The young girl overcomes her fear and comes to love, of course, the whitest snake (penis).

Patriarchal symbolism strikes again. Smash it! Hasn’t this been done before? Give me more of the roller-skating acrobats or the slapstick buffoons. I like those better.

Maybe I should accept my American identity and sue the “Moulin Rouge” for emotional damages. But at least I got about seven glasses of champagne out of it.

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