Last night Claire and I watched The Greatest Showman for the first time, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m sure you all know that it’s the fictionalised, musical biography of P.T. Barnum. At the end there is a quotation by Barnum which reads, “the noblest art is that of making others happy.” So what was it about this film that made me happy?
The music was wonderful, the music got the only Oscar nomination. What for me made it a great film was that it had a clear moral message. It shows us how to be better people. There are two clear themes that jump out at me: forbidden love and hatred. The forbidden love is nuanced. There is the potential love between Barnum and the opera singer, which is rightly forbidden because he’s married with children. Then there’s the love between the white playwright and the black trapeze artist.
This brings us to the second theme which is hatred. The love between a white man and a black woman engenders hatred. Barnum’s circus is chock full of people who are different. There are giants, dwarfs, bearded ladies, you name it. The public jeer at them. Why do we hate people who are different? Different colour, different religion, disability, different accent, different sexual preference. Why do people hate difference? I’ll hazard a guess that it’s fear.
I’ve posted before about my experience on the Camino de Santiago. I was walking alone through a forest, with the town of San Justo de la Vega on the horizon, when I saw two large dogs, or were they wolves, coming towards me. I looked for their master, but there was nobody within miles. As the dogs approached I noticed that they didn’t have collars. They could quite easily have taken me down and torn me to shreds. I don’t mind admitting that I felt fear. They fell in behind me and sniffed me. They probably thought I smelt rather rank. They walked beside me for perhaps half a mile. I looked in their eyes, and they looked in mine. I felt a connection. We were sharing a moment of just being alive: together in this incredible, brief, existence. Then I think they sensed a rabbit, and ran off into the forest.
So my present on the fifth day of Christmas is not five gold rings, but the suggestion that we set aside our fear of difference and simply relish the connections between us.