Singing Outlaws

I thought it best to kick off my random, long-anticipated return to blogging by discussing something I love: the Bonnie and Clyde musical.

 A failure on Broadway but not in my heart.

There is a lot wrong with this show, and despite my love for it, I’m not surprised it was a failure. First of all, the songs border on the goofy sometimes. This doesn’t bother me very much; I like camp. In fact, I love camp. I love things that are so bad they’re great—ahem Madman—but this show isn’t in that territory. It never quite goes far enough into the goofiness and camp to qualify for So Bad It’s Awesome status. It’s a bit of a mix, really. Songs like “This World Will Remember Me” and “Made in America” are fantastic. Not only do they move the story forward while keeping it firmly in context, but they're incredibly catchy (and fun). That is where the show succeeds the most: when it takes characters and events so ingrained in popular mythology and so flattened by inaccurate and sensationalized depictions and makes them dynamic and relateable. The opening song, “Picture Show” does a great job of this by showing us a young Bonnie and Clyde, separately, dreaming about the wealth and glory they will someday have. 

Unfortunately, for Bonnie’s character most of all, the lyrics to this song are rather strictly adhered to as the show progresses. While Clyde spends the show chasing the glory of an outlaw folk hero like Billy the Kid or a crime boss like Al Capone (sometimes it seems like the songwriters only knew of those two so often are their names repeated) Bonnie, well, she wants pretty things. She wants diamonds. She wants nice clothes. She wants to be a movie star. Now, there’s nothing wrong with these dreams. I want diamonds. I want nice—by my odd standards—clothes. However, there is a problem with the way the show repeatedly insists that’s all she wants. The dreams Bonnie and Clyde have conform pretty much to the standards of What Girls Want and What Boys Want. The young Clyde does mention clothes in “Picture Show” in the lines “I will wear Sunday clothes on a Tuesday/Someday”, but it’s the only time his character ever mentions anything like that. The Boy wants power, cash, and to join the ranks of outlaw folk heroes; basically, his dreams are active. The Girl wants to be pretty and adored, to ascend to It Girl status; basically, her dreams are passive. In some ways her desire to be a movie star is comparable to his desire to be an outlaw: both crave fame, for instance, but the fact is they each have a gender conforming plan for achieving it. This probably wouldn't bother me so much if Bonnie's character was ever allowed to express a desire for anything other than the spotlight or Clyde. While both are clearly the products of poverty and desperation, only she ends up seeming superficial--and as the story unfolds, kind of stupid. 

I'm not going to bother with a history lesson--my books are all the way across the room, after all--but I will say the show is about as historically accurate as the 1967 movie starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. If you've seen it, you know what I mean. If you haven't seen it, I recommend it, not because it's a well-made biopic, but because it's fucking hilarious without ever intending to be. The end is pretty intense, though. That's one thing the filmmakers did right even if they staged it differently. 

All that digression was to say the Bonnie of the musical and the Bonnie of history are not the same person. I don't necessarily expect them to be. After all, it's impossible to know what really went on when the two of them were just driving around on back roads and camping out in their car. Blanche Barrow's memoir gives a nice account of the time she and Clyde's brother Buck spent with them (a little over 3 months), but it's still far from the full story. Neither of them kept diaries or wrote letters during their time together (except for Clyde's letter to John Ford praising the Ford V-8 as a getaway car), and Bonnie's poems are the only writings from that time. So, yeah, I get that in order to flesh either of them out enough to write a film, novel, musical, etc a certain license has to be given to the writer. The problem is the Bonnie of the musical is a caricature of an unwilling gun moll, something the real Bonnie, by all accounts never was. Show Bonnie opposes the life of crime Clyde dreams of  up to and even after she helps him escape from prison. Despite her boyfriend's status as a fugitive, for of course he will come along, she still believes her dreams of Hollywood stardom can come true, only waking up to the reality of her situation after Clyde shoots a man during a robbery. 

Of course, she stays with him, abandoning her resolve to go home now that she understands just how serious armed robbery can get (And why didn't she get that before, one wonders) after Clyde convinces her not to. That's pretty much what happens. 

B:I'm leaving!

C: Please don't.

B: Okay.

I'm just going to say, that's not how it really happened. He wasn't the first criminal she got involved with; in fact, her husband Roy Thornton, whom she was still legally married to when she died, was a violent thug who engaged in petty crime. Her writings are littered with references to prostitution, drugs, and violence. Yeah, that's right. Bonnie wrote poems. I just think that needs to be said again. Sure, she wasn't a great poet, but the point is, she tried. She was an intelligent, literate girl from a West Dallas slum who desperately wanted something, anything else for her life. I'm not saying she would have turned down movie stardom; I'm just saying not only was she not obsessed with it, but she also didn't have a problem being a fugitive Juliet. So, when the musical insists on her opposition to crime and violence, from the start pretty much, until finally she gives in and accepts those are the terms for being with him, it's problematic. It makes an unsatisfying character for one thing, and for another, it smacks of Women are Civilizing cliches. It's up to her to make him a better person, and through her love, somehow, she will. 

Except she doesn't, and by all accounts, didn't want to. Also, that doesn't fucking happen in real life. Maybe there were moments of, "What the fuck have I gotten myself into?" or maybe there weren't. The same goes for him, except the musical only extends the doubt to her. Yeah, this is a lot of babbling about something that seems minor, but I don't think it is. I think the show reduces her to a cliche in a way it doesn't him, or any of the other characters, really. It's fitting his major songs are things like "Raise a Little Hell" and "This World Will Remember Me" while hers are "You Love Who You Love" (this one she sings with Blanche, but if I go into the implications of Blanche's lines we'll be here forever) and "Dyin Ain't So Bad", in which she explains dying is fine as long as the one you love goes with you. Sure, they sing a reprise together at the end, but I'd like to see him sing a song like that by himself. I'm not counting "Bonnie"; it isn't the same as either of hers. It's just a My Girlfiriend is Awesome song. There is never a sense that he's giving anything up to be with her; it's just the opposite. I'd like a song about how being on the run with someone who can barely walk, let alone shoot a gun (she actually couldn't) severely compromises his chances of remaining free (and alive) but it's worth it to have her with him. 

 If you don't know what I'm referring to, that may be because it isn't in the show or the movie. Long story short, Clyde didn't care for traffic rules or slowing down even when they weren't being pursued, and that led to a crash which left Bonnie pretty much unable to walk after she finished healing. She was trapped in the car when the gas tank began leaking, and by the time they got her out one of her legs was burned to the bone in some places. The people who saw them during the last months of their lives said she couldn't actually stand up on her own; he had to hold her up. Not to mention, after the accident, he went to get her sister to help take care of her and planned their hiding out and robbing around trying to keep her alive.

Now, to me, that's romantic. It may just be basic human decency, but it would have been so easy to just leave her to die or get captured. It's stories like that the musical (and the film) ignore, preferring instead to make their relationship a cliche. 

Okay, here's something it does well. I mentioned this way at the beginning. It perfectly captures the sense of desperation, of "I will not fucking live like this. I don't care if I die at 23." that makes them so appealing even today.  If you strip away the mythology surrounding their crime spree you don't get much that's impressive. In terms of crimes, they weren't comparable to John Dillinger or Pretty Boy Floyd or any of their other contemporaries. It was only after photos of them were published after a shootout in Joplin, Missouri that they started receiving attention nationally. Before the photos of Bonnie holding a gun and a cigar (phallic symbol for the public mind, anyone?) or Clyde grinning while she holds a gun on him, no-one outside of Texas knew or cared who they were.

The picture I really wanted I can't find. I guess it's just in books.I talked about this one, so there it is.

The facts of their crimes aren't what made or make them appealing. There's the sexiness, the Romeo and Juliet feel of it all, but there's also a very relateable sense of suffocating desperation.

 I do enjoy posting the songs. I admit it.

 It's this or nothing. It's be crushed by poverty trying to live honestly or take something while you can. It's any life but the one we have, and outlaw isn't a bad choice, really, if you think about it. It worked out for Jesse James and Billy the Kid; it's working for all those other guys right now. Why not? The musical nails that, at least for Clyde. That's probably why I like his songs the best.You know he's always been poor and hated every second of it. The thought of dying in obscurity terrifies him more than anything else because he has an innate sense of himself as someone who should not be forgotten. Needless to say, I identify with his character in a way I cannot identify with Bonnie's. I'm not sure anyone really can identify with her, half-drawn cliche that she finally ends up being, and that's a damn shame. There's a lot of potential when writing her.

How Bout a Dance is a great song, though.

And okay, I do like You Love Who Love, despite the cliches.