College Days: My Fair Lady

September 15, 2009

I walk into English 101 at a quarter to 7 pm. Strangely my class is quiet and dark. A.J. is an happy and upbeat teacher, so the quietness doesn't immediately make sense to me, however I enter the class anyway. I hope I have the right room. Thankfully I notice A.J. sitting at a table to the left hand side if the class as I walk in. A film is playing, it is "My Fair Lady".

I sit down and try to figure out exactly what is going on in the film. (For those of you that don't know this already: It's a musical.) The movie itself is very humorous, although probably not high on the "Recommended Viewing" of the feminist movement, even though the main male lead of the film is abusive and neglectful of the female lead.

After the class we have a short discussion about some of the points A.J. considers important. Namely the ending of the male lead not 'seeing' the female lead again. Answers about comprimise and seeing her as a lady and not as dirt are brought up. I keep silent. My views are radically different and don't really fit in with the class.

My view of "My Fair Lady" is simple and quaint. Even though my view focuses more broadly on the whole story, I find it to still be relevant to the theme. As I see it, "My Fair Lady" is about a social male that views himself to be outside of his social bracket. This is very apparent in on scene dealing with a horse race. The male lead shows up very under dressed for this event. This I found to be a visual approach to showing the audience his social status rather then explain it. He also mistreats the female lead for pretty much the whole film and describes himself as a established bachelor. He eventually swallows his pride and tells the female lead how he feels about her, but by that point he had already lost her.

In other words: The male lead is a jerk in order to establish his place with in his social bracket as well as to hide his flaws. This is only my view on "My Fair Lady" though. As I have been known to be wrong before, I urge anyone who is in school reading this to draw their own conclusions.

-A. Warren Johnson