{"id":106903,"date":"2017-01-20T16:49:46","date_gmt":"2017-01-20T21:49:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=106903"},"modified":"2017-01-20T16:49:46","modified_gmt":"2017-01-20T21:49:46","slug":"so-long-farewell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/20\/so-long-farewell\/","title":{"rendered":"So Long, Farewell"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_106906\" style=\"width: 1018px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/soundofmusic.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-106906\" class=\"size-full wp-image-106906\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/soundofmusic.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1008\" height=\"579\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/soundofmusic.jpg 1008w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/soundofmusic-300x172.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/soundofmusic-768x441.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-106906\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Still from <i>The Sound of Music<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>The Sound of Music<\/em> hasn\u2019t tarnished over time; it was always dated, always reviled by the learned. Rumor has it that Pauline Kael was fired from <em>McCall\u2019s<\/em> for her withering review of it (\u201cthe sugar-coated lie that people seem to want to eat\u201d) and that Joan Didion was fired from <em>Vogue<\/em> for hers, which described it as \u201cmore embarrassing than most, if only because of its suggestion that history need not happen to people \u2026 Just whistle a happy tune, and leave the Anschluss behind.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>She\u2019s right that the film hints at the limits of art\u2019s power in the face of real danger. \u201cBelieve me,\u201d Billy Wilder said at an industry party when he heard of Fox\u2019s production plans, \u201cno musical with swastikas in it will ever be a success!\u201d Of course he was wrong\u2014this was three years before <em>The Producers<\/em>\u2014though the film might have contained more swastikas than it does. Before Robert Wise could be convinced to sign on, William Wyler was meant to direct. He\u2019d lost relatives in concentration camps and was angling to add a military scene showing tanks decimating Salzburg.\u00a0Instead, the film treats Nazism as little more than a vague threat to the Austrian aristocracy. At the same time, it capitalizes on a villain everyone can get behind, rendering the Third Reich a least favorite thing. Who among us doesn\u2019t love siblings, lakeside villas, and grandma-chic floral prints\u2014and who <em>wouldn\u2019t<\/em> root for a Nazi-sympathizing boyfriend to get dumped?<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>When I was a tween, my mother, fearing for my intellectual development, suggested I try reading a book other than Charmian Carr\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Forever-Liesl-Memoir-Sound-Music\/dp\/0140298401\"><em>Forever Liesl: A Memoir of the Sound of Music<\/em><\/a>. This was long after she\u2019d first brought home the VHS of the film from the library and I\u2019d eyed the technical-sounding title with skepticism\u2014even now it strikes me as something pulled from a course catalog, a way to make science credits palatable to humanities kids in the style of Physics in the Arts. But I watched it and was transfixed, the story of love in the time of fascism and marionette theater proving too much to resist. I promptly sought out the sound track and, later, Carr\u2019s book. In September, Carr, who played the eldest daughter in the family von Trapp, died at seventy-three, of a rare form of Alzheimer\u2019s. <em>The Sound of Music<\/em>, for which she was plucked from obscurity at twenty-one, was the pinnacle of her public life, and so the obituaries were short, with <em>Forever Liesl <\/em>getting little more than a mention.<\/p>\n<p>In it, Carr recalls life on set, offering up fun facts and medium-grade gossip. She was one in a long line of potential Liesls (\u201crhymes with weasel,\u201d the associate producer, Saul Chaplin, instructed on her first day), Mia Farrow among them. Casting notes reveal that reasons for dismissal included \u201ctoo hammy,\u201d \u201ctoo-<em>too<\/em>!!\u201d \u201ccan\u2019t act,\u201d \u201cbig in fanny,\u201d and \u201ca little too worldly.\u201d Carr\u2019s eyes were thought to be too blue\u2014\u201clife is like that sometimes,\u201d she writes\u2014but Wise decided to give her a try, and she happily started reporting to Soundstage 15 at Twentieth Century Fox. Better than that was shooting on location in Austria, and a room at Salzburg\u2019s Bristol Hotel, where every night Christopher Plummer would assemble a crowd for some drunken singing at the upright piano.<\/p>\n<p>Carr\u2019s book came out in 2000, the same year my sixth-grade teacher announced that our class would put on <em>The Sound of Music<\/em>. I auditioned with fervor but lacked the talent to match, and so I was relegated to the understudy cast as the bookish Brigitta. Astonishingly, rehearsals were held in the midafternoon, in lieu of lessons: How could pre-algebra compare to this rare creative chance? I can still hear the sound of desks scraping against the floor to make room for the bed on wheels used for \u201cMy Favorite Things,\u201d and the not-dissimilar sound of boys on the cusp of puberty shooting for the high notes in \u201cEdelweiss.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps more than any other song in the book, \u201cEdelweiss,\u201d which Rodgers and Hammerstein had dreamed up for the 1959 stage musical, speaks to the extent that <em>The Sound of Music<\/em> has wormed its way into our collective memory. Thinking it was a real folk song\u2014and the Austrian national anthem to boot\u2014Reagan famously played it for the Austrian president at a White House state dinner in 1984.<\/p>\n<p>A recent story in <em>The New York Times Magazine<\/em> reveals that, as a child, Chelsea Clinton wrote a letter to Reagan imploring him not to visit Germany\u2019s Bitburg Cemetery, where many SS men are buried. \u201cI\u2019ve seen <em>The Sound of Music<\/em>,\u201d it read. \u201cThe Nazis are not nice people.\u201d In October, while she was on the campaign trail for an election I thought her mother had in the bag, I went to the Soho Playhouse and saw <em>The Radicalization of Rolfe<\/em>, an unfortunate counterexample to the newly popular phrase \u201cNow more than ever, we need the arts.\u201d Art being good is not the same thing as art doing good, to say nothing of art that is bad. <em>The Radicalization of Rolfe<\/em> has as much right to exist as the next Fringe Festival transfer, but what about art or attempts at art that do damage, which we sometimes call propaganda? Kael thought that <em>The Sound of Music<\/em> fit the bill, predicting it would prove \u201cthe single most repressive influence on artistic freedom in movies for the next few years.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>If Didion took issue with the film\u2019s historical dishonesty, Kael spoke of a general \u201cluxuriant falseness,\u201d finding the combined effect of the wholesome story and high production value to be emotional manipulation. One suspects she teared up in spite of herself during \u201cEdelweiss\u201d and vowed she\u2019d never forget. \u201cThe worst despots in history, the most cynical purveyors of mass culture respond at <em>this<\/em> level and may feel pleased at how tenderhearted they <em>really<\/em> are because they do,\u201d she wrote. Indeed, it\u2019s easy to imagine our new president, a person who might be said to have confidence in confidence alone, tweeting something about the film: \u201cJust wached the Sound of Music with Ivanka and the kids. Good movie, very successfull! Shows family values and when America was great!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The line <small>THE LAST GOLDEN DAYS OF THE THIRTIES<\/small> appears onscreen after the opening credits of the film, which came out in 1965, as notions of postwar propriety were losing ground. Clearly the family at the heart of the movie is white, nationalist, heteronormative, and eager to be saved by a sexless nun. Ironically, though, the bland balm has appealed to plenty outside of these categories, remaining a favorite of the gay community and one ripe for riffs, from Doug Elkin\u2019s \u201cFr\u00e4ulein Maria,\u201d a dance show in drag, to the \u201cVonTrapped\u201d episode of <em>Will &amp; Grace<\/em>. Some of us go to the hills not to remember so much as to forget. Rosie O\u2019Donnell has spoken of the movie as something to pin her sadness on. She watches it whenever she\u2019s in a funk, and at least once a year with her whole family.<\/p>\n<p>In December, I watched it again with mine, and found it to be a less escapist three hours than I\u2019d bargained for. At one point the captain, stewing on the terrace after being confronted with a \u201cHeil Hitler\u201d from Rolfe and apolitical complacency from Max, tells the baroness he\u2019s afraid he\u2019s \u201cin a world that\u2019s disappearing,\u201d and this time the line didn\u2019t smack of empty nostalgia.<\/p>\n<p>Carr didn\u2019t relate to compulsive repeat viewers. \u201cI don\u2019t understand that kind of obsession,\u201d she wrote. \u201cI\u2019ve never felt such a strong attachment to something so intangible.\u201d Perhaps, like my mother, she was a no-nonsense type who liked to pause in the doorframe of the TV room and tell her children to \u201cdo something productive.\u201d Definitely Carr and her screen siblings were polite about deferring to their real-life counterparts as the ones who really did something. The true von Trapps, not to be blamed for looking more hearty than Hollywood in their lederhosen, really did have their assets frozen\u2014Himmler used their house as his headquarters for a time\u2014and relied on their voices to get by, eventually escaping war-torn Europe and running a ski resort in hilly Vermont.<\/p>\n<p>This year, I\u2019m hoping to channel their spirit and feel less useless, to read and write more, yes, but also to show up for others. Most likely I will not watch <em>The Sound of Music<\/em> again for a long time, four or maybe even eight years, and that\u2019s okay. I\u2019m glad to go. I cannot tell a lie.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Kate Guadagnino is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Sound of Music hasn\u2019t tarnished over time; it was always dated, always reviled by the learned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1122,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[26811,13504,26809,26816,26813,26807,26821,25288,26817,26815,26814,1362,26824,26810,26812,10588,26808,8061,4693,4721,26820,26819,26818,6031,3467,25743,3791,26823,26822],"class_list":["post-106903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-anschluss","tag-austria","tag-austrian","tag-bland","tag-chairmain-carr","tag-danger","tag-donald","tag-donald-j-trump","tag-edelweiss","tag-forever-liesl","tag-forever-liesl-a-meoir-of-the-sound-of-music","tag-joan-didion","tag-luxuriant-falseness","tag-mccalls","tag-my-favorite-things","tag-nazis","tag-nazism","tag-new-york-times-magazine","tag-nostalgia-2","tag-pauline-kael","tag-president-trump","tag-soho-playhous","tag-the-radicalization-of-rolfe","tag-the-sound-of-music","tag-third-reich","tag-trump","tag-vogue","tag-vontrapped","tag-will-grace"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Empty Nostalgia of \u2018The Sound of Music\u2019<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u2018The Sound of Music\u2019 treats Nazism as little more than a vague threat to the Austrian aristocracy, and capitalizes on a villain everyone can get behind.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/20\/so-long-farewell\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"So Long, Farewell by Kate Guadagnino\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"January 20, 2017 \u2013 The Sound of Music hasn\u2019t tarnished over time; it was always dated, always reviled by the learned.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/20\/so-long-farewell\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-01-20T21:49:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/soundofmusic.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1008\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"579\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kate Guadagnino\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kate Guadagnino\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/20\/so-long-farewell\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/20\/so-long-farewell\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Kate Guadagnino\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/24a8ef2f492d32ee328374dfb57a28dc\"},\"headline\":\"So Long, Farewell\",\"datePublished\":\"2017-01-20T21:49:46+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/20\/so-long-farewell\/\"},\"wordCount\":1491,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2017\/01\/20\/so-long-farewell\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/soundofmusic.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Anschluss\",\"Austria\",\"Austrian\",\"bland\",\"Chairmain Carr\",\"danger\",\"Donald\",\"Donald J. 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