Today my family saw “Hairspray”, the Broadway musical inspired movie, which starred John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Queen Latifah, and Christopher Walken, to name a few well-knowns and the newcomer who is also the leading lady of the movie Nikki Blonsky. And for the first time, the Hollywood leading lady doesn’t have to be as thin as a twig! Watching the movie, you enter in to a world were black and white become equal, and where fat people dance to wild applause and family is everything.
The movie opened with a short and fat, robust, stiff-haired teenager bounding out of bed and dashing into the streets of Kennedy-era
The movie celebrates the 60s peoples-right era. And halfway through the movie, you get the sensing that the movie is about everything that is wholesome, right and good, while raising real issues about human dignity, human rights and cultural standards of beauty.
The movie celebrates the outsider – the person who struggles to be accepted for his colour, his size and his place in society. But these very outsiders were the eventual culture changers. They defined the future by defying the culture of the day. In the film, it is these fringe people, these outsiders who were the ones with the right things - they carry both courage and character. And what so affirming to me about the film is that it casts these outside people as being heavier and probably uglier (and coloured!) but they are all so gifted, so courageous, so human. They become the heroes of the show!
My favourite scene in the movie was when Edna finds Velma (Michelle Pfeifer) downstairs in Wilbur's "Hardy-Har Hut" joke shop attempting to seduce Wilbur (what Edna does not see, however, is that Wilbur is completely oblivious to Velma's sexual advances). Edna was deeply hurt but her husband Wilbur managed to win her back and there is this wonderful song, You're Timeless To Me, where husband and wife sway and dance together, so in much love. In certain places, it really gets funny when you see a thinner old man romancing his big fat wife - but it is so sweet and so rare a scene these days and timeless indeed!
My take-home lesson from the film was that transformation in a community always begins with a chosen few, who will have to stand up, out of the crowd and dare to make a difference. Then begins a movement of change that grips the masses but somebody must dare to trail-blaze the way.
Martin Luther King was one such man. But there was One greater than him who is still bringing the ultimate transformation of peoples and communities. His Name is Jesus and in His day and time, He too was an outsider.
Provocative in its message of racial reconciliation, equality and prejudice, Hairspray succeeds in preaching without being preachy. In a world that seeks to divide, Tracy is at the forefront of leading the movement to tear down the wall of separation, not just between whites and blacks, but also the beautiful-looking people and those that look a little different .
In the words of Tracy Turnblad herself, Hairspray is "afro-tastic!"
