My
Two Cents on The Phantom of the Opera
What is it about the Phantom that makes him an unordinary
villain? He has the dark clothing, the
dank dungeon in which he creates his fiendish schemes.
He has the disfigured features and the
unspeakably horrid plans. He has the
sneer, and he kills people to make his way towards his goal. So what is it about him that drives us to
want to hug his wretched soul and show him that there is somebody out
there who
truly cares?
No one truly wants to be alone in life, whether it is in the sense of family, friends, or a significant other. It is something we can all identify with, and as a result we feel for those who are alone. The Phantom is such a person. As explained in Joel Shumaker’s production of The Phantom of the Opera, the Phantom was born with a disfiguration in which he was rejected by his own mother. From there he was “included” into a band of gypsies, who then beat him and showed him off as the “Devil’s Child,” locked in a cage, shirtless, and with a burlap sack over his head. He ran away with the aid of an aspiring ballerina, and hid himself from the cruelties of the world. How can anyone hate someone who was ostracized that way since his first breath?
It is repeated many times in many songs and in many other mediums how one person’s life never truly began until they met the love of their life. It is their “rebirth.” In relevance to the Phantom, from both beginnings of his life he experiences disgust and hostile treatment. Even the love of his life, Christine, his ever doting, trusting pupil, turns her back on him for another man: “I gave you my music, made your song take wing. And now how you’ve repaid me, denied me and betrayed me….” That harsh reality combined with the harsh and haunting past easily drove the Phantom mad. And who can blame him? Who wouldn’t feel the same hurt? He’s a man just like any other, a person (albeit fictional) just like every one of us. Our feelings are the same. What is different, however, is how we manage them.
The action the
Phantom takes in his mad rampage is hardly
forgivable, and I in no way endorse his choice of action.
I do, however, see how he arrives at the
place in his life where he chooses (wrongly) to take such horrible
measures to
find happiness. If you discover the
challenges his life has presented him, all the disappointment and hurt
in the
world that was dumped on his shoulders, and see the heartache in his
face when
Christine chooses Raoul over him, unless you have a heart of
ice—no—even with a
heart of ice, your soul grieves for his.
This
is what makes him an
unordinary villain—a heartbreaking loneliness that is pitied by even
the most
cynical person. If you give an audience
something in which they can relate to or sympathize with, they feel for
the
villain. If you give them a glimpse into
the heart of the man who caused so much death and destruction, they
will see
the lonely man inside, deprived of all forms of love and tender human
contact,
who just wants the woman of his dreams to love him back. What
more does one need then, to commiserate
with this dark, lonely, Phantom of the Opèra Populaire?