The musical Oklahoma! There’s a line from the song Out of My Dreams [by Rogers and Hamerstein] that clearly represents postmodern [PoMo] thinking. Postmodernity was alive and well in the midst of modernity! This musical was written in 1943. I’ll get you up to speed...
Okay…Oklahoma is a love story…basically a modern/western/country take on Pride and Prejudice. Well, Laurey’s [lead woman] too proud to go to a dance with the protagonist Curly. Curly’s too proud to ask her to the dance.
They love each other but both are to proud to admit it. Meanwhile, the antagonist of the story, Judd, asks Laurey to the dance…naively she says, “Yes.”
Anyhow, she takes some smellin’ sauce [basically drugs] and starts hallucinating about how she wishes she could be with Curly. Before she takes it she sings this song Out of My Dreams. At the height of her passion and emotion in the song her friends encourage her by saying the following…
“Ask your heart, whatever it tells you will be true”
Sheesh! I love this musical especially the version with Hugh Jackman, but come on! It’s these kind of false philosophies that ruin things for me. I’m thinking, “good dancing, singing, fun lyrics…etc.,” and then this huge stinkin’ lie that so many people believe. Bummer…
I’ll have you know that I did enjoy the rest of the musical…just goes to show you that PoMo philosophies have been around for a long time…it’s just accepted generally as actually being true now. This stuff didn't start with Oprah folks:) Back then people might have believed it, but it seems was either just an exercise in romantics, e.g. this song, or a pipe-dream not generally accepted in the wider culture.
I’ll post on another song here in a minute.
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