Fred 'n Ginger

An abbreviated version of my upcoming introduction to my public lecture on Swing Time:

Many students who become familiar with my taste for risqué material are often surprised when I declare my devotion to musicals. I suppose that musicals are slightly embarrassing for some. Perhaps this is why audiences either love them or hate them: the only other genre to evoke such a divided response of equal virulence is the horror film. Maybe musicals are equally horrifying, in a way. As with horror, it’s not so much that many find their flagrant disregard for realist conventions discomforting; perhaps it has more to do with our fear of exposure and vulnerability.

Musicals seek to evoke joy from audiences, but their aestheticizing of raw emotion can also be off-putting. I always find these kinds of responses surprising. Personally, I'm enthralled by the idea that characters in musicals sing and dance in order to tap into feelings that they can’t express through ordinary language. These characters give shape to their feelings through performance, and in so doing, they’re laying themselves bare for an audience. In fact, characters in musicals are doubly exposed and doubly vulnerable: 1) their performance is an offering of themselves to you for your approval; and 2) they declare their emotion in the most grand way possible - by proclaiming it through song and dance.

For me, Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire represent the quintessential musical couple who offer themselves for your approval and declare their mutual affection in the grandest of terms. The pair were in ten films together between 1933 and 1939, all of which they made for RKO (discounting, of course, their one-off for MGM in 1949, The Barkleys of Broadway). It's not at all surprising that they're the most famous dance team in movie history: rarely have two dancers been so perfectly suited to each other’s rhythms.

One of the recurring comments about Astaire is that “he made them all look good,” and indeed it’s remarkable how he adapts himself to suit the character and style of his partners. Take a look at Easter Parade and Funny Face to see how Astaire plays off of and supports the strengths of Judy Garland and Audrey Hepburn respectively, neither of whom are known for their skill as dancers.Rogers, however, needs no such support. Her skill as a ballroom dancer is enviable, and one of the most iconic images from classical musicals is from Top Hat, with Rogers adorned in a feathered gown that give impression of weightlessness. She does not dance so much as she floats.

Ultimately, the pair takes on legendary status for their perfect symbiosis. They are the quintessence of elegance and effortlessness, and we return to them over and over to observe the alchemy of two bodies achieving perfect synchronicity. I love Fred and Ginger for the same reason I love screwball couples like Grant and Hepburn, Fonda and Stanwyck, Sandler and Watson: their dances evoke the dream of compatibility, of finding someone with whom you can move in perfect unison.

Some naysayers have pointed out that the Rogers/Astaire relationship frequently moves from one of equality to inequality. In Swing Time, for example, the “challenge” dance in which the two playfully perform as equals (“Pick Yourself Up”) eventually gives way to the ballroom dance in which Fred leads and Ginger follows (“Waltz in Swing Time”).

Of course, those who want to locate sexist ideology in the classical musical’s emphasis on romantic partnership will no doubt find it there. But for me, partnership in the musical is the means by which characters gain access to and articulate emotion that is otherwise unavailable and inexpressible. Again, musicals seem slightly embarrassing because they are unapologetic about the way they make the inward, private self manifest in the most spectacular way possible. In other words, characters literally make spectacles of themselves. It’s in this disregard for propriety that musicals have their greatest force: there’s nothing that violates middle-class decorum more than putting one’s self on display.

Astaire and Rogers’ means of expression seems to exceed "proper" communication. Indeed, in “Entertainment and Utopia” (2002), Richard Dyer suggests that their musicals offer a longed-for solution to the problems of communication. Complex or confused feelings are presented directly and vividly without being made to seem ambiguous as they are in real life, while the performers become absolutely certain about these feelings. When you can’t speak your mind in musicals, you’ve gotta' dance. In so doing, you look towards an other that can inspire you to proclaim emotion, someone who will understand you and move to your personal rhythms perfectly and naturally, someone who will simultaneously move you as elegantly as Fred and Ginger moved one another while dancing cheek to cheek.