What Am I Doing Watching A Musical?

I still find musicals strange. Certainly there are people who will spontaneously sing in the course of their everyday lives, but I haven't seen anyone who does so at the volume people in musicals do. Fine, maybe I just live in places that where people are dead inside. Mostly, it's how other people join in, perfectly in harmony with the first singer. It's a hive mind, where one personality has become dominant and overwritten everyone else, so they must all sing and dance. Like Ultron and the Phalanx in Annihilation: Conquest, only resulting in less dead Kree. Except for that Skrull musical, The Importance of Being Deceptive, but most folks don't like to talk about that.

Anyway, Turner Classic was showing My Fair Lady last night, which I hadn't seen, and unlike Gone with the Wind, I actually watched most of this. I missed a little of the beginning, and there were two times during the film I had to change the channel because a particular musical number was dragging on to the point of madness. Eliza's bit about how she could have danced all night had me switching to the Military Channel for a few minutes of a piece on Japan in the run-up to WWII. Her father's song as he faces his looming wedding sent me scrambling to a Burn Notice rerun. I can only tolerate people singing 'Get me to the church on time' so often before I'm ready to leap into the movie and drag him there myself, just to shut him up.

Those issues aside, the movie was more engaging than I expected. I'm not quite sure how, though. It wasn't just that there wasn't much else on; I was actually interested in what was going to happen. Which is strange, because it wasn't an action movie, nor did I find it all that funny (the language expert at the Embassy Ball being an exception), and there was singing, but I wanted to keep watching. Strange. I'd guess I was curious as to what would happen with Eliza. I understood the basics of the story going in, passing her off as a highborn lady (which let's face it, if you're starting with Audrey Hepburn, your work is 75% done before you start), but I didn't know whether it worked, or what happened after.

I don't know what time period it's set in exactly, early 20th Century I suppose (1920s?), but the fashions, ye gods. Especially at the horse race. I'm pretty sure Britain conquered lands smaller than some of the hats those women were wearing.

Also, 'Draggle-tailed guttersnipe' is a pretty great insult.