"Somewhere That's Green"

This song maybe doesn't get its due. It's a bit complicated. Really, it's a monologue by a terrified victim of emotional and physical abuse. She would like to rise above her circumstances--but, as she informs us elsewhere, she doesn't really believe in herself. "Nobody ever treated me kindly...I'd meet a man, and I'd follow him blindly. He'd snap his fingers. Me? I'd say sure."

Howard Ashman is famous for his "I Want" songs. "Somewhere That's Green" is the first great one. You can draw a straight line from that moment to the legendary "Part of Your World," in "Little Mermaid." (The humor in "Somewhere That's Green" comes from the modesty of Audrey's ambitions. She becomes rhapsodic over "a fence of real chain-link," "a washer and a dryer, and an ironing machine." The humor in "Part of Your World" comes from Ariel's linguistic difficulties: "Strolling along on those--whaddya call them?--feet....." In both cases, an intelligent, confined woman is fighting to imagine a future for herself. There's a light touch, but also, you can't help but feel moved.)

In some ways, Ashman's Belle is the inverse of Ashman's Audrey. Audrey is a weirdo dreaming of bourgeois conformity. Belle is a semi-weirdo dreaming of the freedom to be even weirder. (That said, "Little Shop" and "Beauty and the Beast" have a striking similarity. It's in the figure of the villain. Many Disney classics make the villain an outcast, a mincing homosexual: Think of Scar or Hades. But both Gaston and the Dentist have conventional power and success. They are strutting, preening figures. They are even Trump-ian. The choice to make the bad guys swaggering heterosexual men: This seems, to me, to be classic Howard Ashman.)

"Somewhere That's Green" has many grace notes. There's the dramatic irony of the title: Audrey will, indeed, end up somewhere that's green--but we're talking about the innards of a killer alien cabbage plant, not a suburban garden. There's the winking use of cliche, sometimes with deliberate awkwardness: "December bride," "Father Knows Best," "Better Homes and Gardens." There's the way the vision builds to a nighttime climax: "The kids play Howdy-Doody as the sun sets in the west..." And then there's the sad, graceful moment of "circling back" to the beginning: As the song started with reality, with the "semi-sadist," so it ends with reality: "Far from Skid Row....I dream I'll go...somewhere that's green."

To be gay is to mock something while also celebrating it. "Somewhere That's Green" gives us an A+ example. Ashman has snarky fun with his heroine; we can envision him smirking as he decrees that Audrey will lovingly caress the toaster. At the same time, he knows it's a universal thing to have a dream, and also to doubt one's ability/worthiness to realize that dream. And Ellen Greene's heart-wrenching performance is a way of insisting that we see Audrey as human, noble, and worthy of love.

And so: a gift for Labor Day Weekend. "Somewhere That's Green."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouLiQ7KhmYU

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