My whole family, from the one-year-old right on up to my husband, is obsessed with the musical film THE GREATEST SHOWMAN. As a biopic it’s terribly inaccurate, glossing over the more questionable aspects of P.T. Barnum’s life and flat-out making up a bunch of stuff, but I don’t think the creators intended it as a biography, so I’m not interested in evaluating it as such.
As a piece of entertainment, it’s a fantastic movie. The music, the choreography, the cinematography, the performances…all of it was excellent. It’s a little thin on characterization in my opinion, but I find musicals always tend to have to sacrifice some aspect of storytelling in order to make the movie a reasonable length. And the musical numbers themselves do a lot in terms of carrying characterization and plot, which isn’t always the case with musicals.
One thing I can’t stop thinking about (as we obsessively rewatch the music clips) is the use of P.T. Barnum’s hat as a literary symbol (bear with me as I give you flashbacks to high school English and discussions of Othello’s handkerchief). As a writer, I’m always interested in examining literary devices in any form and then seeing how I can use them to take my own writing to a deeper level.
But back to the hat. This might range into spoiler territory, so if you haven’t seen the movie yet, go watch it already and come back and read this!
I’m not sure I’ve seen a more thorough use of an object as a symbol as in THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, so much so that very few scenes go by without P.T. Barnum’s hat making an appearance. But here’s the thing, it took me many viewings to really notice how pervasive it is, and that tells me that it was done with great care (or maybe I was being really dense and everyone else felt like the hat symbolism was hitting them over the head!).
The movie opens with a grown P.T. Barnum in the height of his circus career where we get a taste of the performances with the song “The Greatest Show”–hat front and center. Then it flashes back to a young P.T. Barnum staring at his reflection in a storefront, appearing as if he’s wearing the fancy outfit and top hat that are inside the store. The next musical sequence “A Million Dreams” plays out as P.T. Barnum grows up (inheriting the hat his father leaves behind when he dies) in a life of poverty, going off to work on the great railway, and finally returning as a grown man (hat on head) to claim his love’s hand.
Fast forward a bit to when a reviewer calls Barnum’s act humbug and a circus (in yet another musical sequence called “Come Alive”), Barnum latches on to the terms by beginning to call his show a circus and fashioning a sleeve for his hat that says “Barnum’s Humbug.”
The times when the hat is conspicuously absent from Barnum’s head are mostly when he is touring with opera singer Jenny Lind, which the movie presents as a time in Barnum’s life when he got away from who he truly was. With one of the movie’s main themes being be true to yourself, the hatlessness is true to form. When Barnum realizes his mistakes during the song “From Now On,” he declares, “What’s waited for tomorrow starts tonight,” pops his hat on, and runs for the train to reunite with his family.
The final song sequence of the film really solidifies the hat symbolism, so much so that my one-year-old always does the sign (we’ve done baby sign language with all our kiddos) for “hat” when it comes on. The hat passes from various characters in the circus act that have important roles in the movie, including a turn with one of the elephants, and lands back with Barnum. He then goes backstage to give it to his young business partner to take over the act, claiming he’s going to go “watch his girls grow up.” I’ve included that whole final song here, “The Greatest Show reprise,” because it really is worth another (and another and another…) watch!
I’m interested in seeing how I can incorporate more symbols into my fiction writing in an organic way, so it was fun exploring them in this film. Have you seen THE GREATEST SHOWMAN? Did you pick up on all the hat symbolism? Did I use too many GIFs in this post (is that even possible?)?
I hadn’t seen this movie and likely wouldn’t have thought to see it until I read your post. Now I will, especially since Hugh jackman stars, and I’m a hopeless fan of his uncommon talent.
As to literary devices, I’ve found them sneaking into my novels and later, in revision, I take care to enhance their function. I wouldn’t worry about it in first draft. To do it successfully you need an overview, IMO.
It was totally under my radar, too, until my husband started listening to the music all the time and got the kids into it. The cast is fabulous!
I don’t usually worry about literary devices in a first draft, though I do try and pay attention to opportunities to enhance them and make a note of it in my to-be-done-in-revision file I keep while drafting. As I near the end of this draft of the second Elixir book, my mind is already at work looking for ways to bring out themes and symbols and such when I move to revisions.
This was fascinating. Now I want to watch the movie again! We did buy the music.
The music is so good! We just watched the movie again the other day.