South Pacific and the Rejection of America

I was very interested in Christina Klein’s arguments surrounding South Pacific. I’ve always thought of that show as surprisingly extreme, for its time, in its rejection of American racism and even America, and I think Klein softens that with her claim that it’s actually “a kind of promotional literature for postwar expansion” (163), based partly on Michener’s ideas of his book, which I, obviously, cannot refute. Her argument is persuasive, but it smoothes some of the sharper elements of the show’s really knotty questions about whether or not America is a lost cause, at least for the time being.

Klein argues that the final scene of South Pacific “shows that Americans can overcome their racism and that this will enable them to move into the Pacific with a clean conscience. Overcoming racism becomes here a precondition for successful expansion, and expansion the reward for overcoming racism” (164). I think Klein’s argument makes a lot of sense, especially as read into to the final scene of the show. However, casting the removal of racism as a tool with which to “clean the conscience” of possible “colonizers” (is there a word for “expanders”?), all funneled through the figure of the mother, ignores the fact that the characters who remain in the South Pacific—Nellie and Cable (Cable can never leave because he dies there)—do so because it would be impossible for them to return. Having moved passed the racism of their culture, they have somehow become less American.

Here’s a scene from the original script of South Pacific that will shed some light on this I think (Klein talks about this scene on page 162 of her book). It’s just after Joe Cable has again refused to marry “Bloody Mary’s” daughter Liat, because he can’t bring himself to believe in interracial relationships. He runs into Nellie who, a few scenes back, similarly decided she couldn’t marry Emile de Becque because, years ago, he had two children with a Polynesian woman, who has since died. Nellie accuses Joe of trying to get to Balai Hai, the island where Liat lives.

Cable: (Nodding thoughtfully) Liat. I’ve just seen her for the last time, I guess. I love her and yet I just heard myself saying I can’t marry her. What’s the matter with me, Nellie? What kind of a guy am I, anyway?

Nellie: You’re all right. You’re just far away from home. We’re both so far away from home.

(… Emile enters. He is earnest and importunate)

Emile: Nellie! I must see you.

Nellie: Emile! I—

Emile: Will you excuse us, Lieutenant Cable?

(Cable starts to leave)

Nellie: No, wait a minute, Joe. Stay. Please! (To Emile) I’ve been meaning to call you but—

Emile: You have asked for a transfer, why? What does it mean?

Nellie: I’ll explain it to you tomorrow, Emile. I’m—

Emile: No. Now. What does it mean, Nellie?

Nellie: It means that I can’t marry you. Do you understand? I can’t marry you.

Emile. Nellie— Because of my children?

Nellie: Not because of your children. They’re sweet.

Emile: It is their Polynesian mother then—their mother and I.

Nellie: …Yes. I can’t help it. It isn’t as if I could give you a good reason. There is no reason. This is emotional. This is something that is born in me.

Emile: (Shouting the words in bitter protest) It is not. I do not believe this is born in you.

Nellie: Then why do I feel the way I do? All I know is that I can’t help it. I can’t help it! Explain how we feel, Joe—

(Joe gives her no help. She runs up to the door of the dressing shack)

Emile: Nellie!

Nellie: (Calling in) Dinah, are you ready?

Nurse: Yes, Nellie.

Nellie: I’ll go with you

(The other nurse comes out and they exit quickly. Emile turns angrily to Cable)

Emile: What makes her talk like that? Why do you have this feeling, you and she? I do not believe it is born in you. I do not believe it.

Cable: It’s not born in you! It happens after you’re born…

(Cable sings the following words, as if figuring this whole question out for the first time)

You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear,

You’ve got to be taught from year to year,

It’s got to be drummed in you dear little ear—

You’ve got to be carefully taught!

You’ve got to be taught to be afraid

Of people whose eyes are oddly made,

And people whose skin is a different shade—

You’ve got to be carefully taught.

You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,

Before you are six or seven or eight,

To hate all the people your relatives hate—

You’ve got to be carefully taught!

You’ve got to be carefully taught!

(Speaking, going close to Emile, his voice filled with the emotion of discovery and firm in a new determination)

You’ve got the right idea de Becque—live on an island. Yes, sir, if I get out of this thing alive, I’m not going back there! I’m coming here. All I care about is right here. To hell with the rest.

(6 Plays by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Modern Library, 345-7)

So here, Nellie, Cable, and Emile try to explain American racism, culminating in the song “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.” Apart from the damning lyrics of this song, which Klein discusses, the most important moment is Cable’s declaration that “if I get out of this thing alive, I’m not going back there! I’m coming here” (6 Plays by Rodgers and Hammerstein 347). Cable rejects Nellie’s “we,” which can translate to “Americans,” when she asks him to “explain how we feel” (346) to Emile, just before he rejects America as his home (notably, he decides not to go back to America because he finally understands what it has done to him, not necessarily because he decides to marry Liat after all, as Klein claims [162]). Nellie will eventually do the same when she chooses to stay in the South Pacific, with Emile’s children, despite the fact that she is unsure if Emile has survived the mission that killed Cable. Nellie’s new family can’t be an American export. It’s not an export from anywhere. It’s only possible “out here” in the almost mythical South Pacific—Cable’s ideal “island.”

To me, this show seems to threaten rather than soothe its audience about the subject of Asia and the possibility of Americans living in the Pacific. The traditional marriage plot is dangled like a carrot, as it were, in front of the middlebrow white American audience. Fail to fix this deeply imbedded problem in your culture, it warns, or this happy family will no longer belong to you, as it does not belong to you within the context of this narrative. The nuclear family, rather than being, as Klein argues, the main weapon in the American arsenal, is what is at stake in this story.

There are a lot of problems with this argument, the first of which is that I’m very persuaded by Klein’s. Also, I’m not as familiar with the movie version of South Pacific as I am with the theatrical version, so there could be a whole other group of possibilities there. But apart from everything else, how crazy is it that a piece of 1949 middlebrow American pop culture shows an American soldier in WWII rejecting the United States in favor of the Pacific island on which he’s been stationed?

In case you’re interested, here’s the above scene from the 2008 Broadway revival of South Pacific. The part I quoted is from about 3:25 to 7:40. There are some additions and some changes, most interestingly “back there” becomes “back to the United States of America,” and Cable elaborates much more on his feelings about America’s racism beforehand. “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” starts at 7:25. Sorry about the overacting. I’m not sure live musicals really translate well to Youtube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMLKmOJfM24&feature=related