Warning: spoilers ahead of Greatest Showman.
I like musicals. When I got the Wicked soundtrack cd, my entire family knew every word because they listened to it so many times booming out of my room, despite their protests. The Greatest Showman, however, is not a musical that I can get on board with. I am sure that this article will face a lot of controversy and I recommend you turn away now if you don’t want your love of The Greatest Showman to be dampened considerably. I may be accused of bearing a likeness way too much to The Greatest Showman’s very own stringent critic, James Gordon Bennet, but I left the cinema feeling disappointed and with a bitter taste in my mouth.
I get that it’s a Hollywood blockbuster. It’s not going to be 100% accurate and I wouldn’t expect it to be either. But when you’re basing your storyline on real people and historical events, I think it’s important that it bears some semblance to the truth, or at least doesn’t unnecessarily tarnish people’s memories in favour of cheap plot-filler. Although there are multiple characters who were subjected to this fate in the musical, the one in particular that I am thinking of is the ‘Swedish Nightingale’.
Before Abba, there was Jenny Lind – renowned as one of the greatest voices to ever emerge from Sweden. To give credit to the movie, her illegitimacy was not fabricated; she was born in 1820 to working-class parents out of wed-lock although it was because her mother, who had divorced her previous husband due to adultery, refused to marry Jenny’s father until her first husband had passed away. Jenny was first discovered as Sweden’s song-bird by chance when a maid of Mademoiselle Lundberg overheard 9-year-old Jenny singing and was promptly offered a place at the acting school of the Royal Dramatic Theatre. Throughout the following years, Jenny worked herself out of her childhood poverty and into the global operatic spotlight. You know that classic motivational quote, ‘you have as many hours in a day as Beyoncé’? The 19th century equivalent could easily use Jenny Lind instead of Queen Bee.
Most impressively, she was a huge philanthropist. She donated all of her profits to charities, with a large focus on free education in Sweden and vulnerable women. Her 9-month tour with Barnum earned her around $350,000 (about $9 million dollars today) which she proceeded to give away to charity. She would frequently sing without payment for benefit events, like the Orchestra Widows’ Fund in 1845, and used proceeds from her concerts to fund scholarships for other underfunded but talented musicians. I’ll admit, this was briefly touched upon in the movie, but I don’t feel that there was a fair emphasis on this incredibly impressive act of charity – particularly given the extreme amount of ballet recitals there was (seriously, I get that it was a big part of their childhood but bigger picture?).
As a result, it seems incredibly unjust that The Greatest Showman robs her of a chance to be shown for the feminist icon that she was and, instead, she is painted as the ‘evil’ man-stealer in the completely fictional storyline where her main purpose is to take Barnum away from poor, innocent Charity. Frankly, I think that both of those women deserved much better than him. He continuously disregards Charity’s wishes in life, choosing to believe that she would rather him pursue his egotistical venture into the world of show-biz than to listen to her repeatedly telling him that “she has everything she could ever want” in a simple but loving family home. When Jenny Lind’s character kisses him onstage, another event that was made up for the film, she is the villain for seducing him and yet Barnum faces little of the blame. A quick duet with Charity and all of the neglect that he showed her for the last few years was brushed aside.
In real life, Jenny Lind was far from a person you’d fear stealing your partner. She was renowned for keeping men at arm’s length as she focused on her music and charity-work and even turned down Hans Christian Anderson (as in The Ugly Duckling and The Little Mermaid’s author) because she prioritised her career and touring over him. In response, he based The Snow Queen with her “heart as cold as ice” on her. Mature. While there is nothing wrong with being a little (or lot) guy-obsessed, showing Jenny as the adulteress is not only factually inaccurate, but it also deflects the true blame of Charity and Barnum’s struggling marriage from Barnum onto Jenny.
Yes, the songs are undeniably catchy and the huge dance numbers are indeed spectacular. But after you the initial buzz wears off and the flawed plot line starts to become more and more apparent, particularly with the aid Google to get the real background of the people it was based on, that Barnum is still being used, almost two centuries on, to con audiences into accepting his ironically described “celebration of humanity.”