Do I love you because you’re beautiful?
Or are you beautiful because I love you?
As a child, I watched the 1965 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Cinderella on TV every year. What a great team those guys were. But what really astounds me is that they could pose such a profound philosophical—possibly biological—question right in the middle of a story aimed at kids. In the middle of a fantasy, no less.
Do we love the one we sexualize? Or do we sexualize the one we love? Pheromones/genitalia or heart/mind: Who is really the leader here? Because I want to sleep with you, do I somehow decide that I love you? Or do I love you and eventually think, Hey! I could sleep with you too! What a fabulous idea!
It’s amazing to me that Cinderella and the prince actually took time out to ponder this.
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3 comments:
It is Sunday morning. I'm sipping coffee,I click on your blog and then BOOM.
I'm hit with such a profound philosophical—possibly biological—question/post right in the middle of a lazy Sunday morning.
You just woke up my brain and I'm still in my jammies.
Oh, this is such a great post. I never thought of Cinderella and the Prince contemplating anything other than the fit of her glass slipper and their life happily ever afterwards (or was that a different fairy tale?).
I love the song, but I love the musical even more. I loved Lesley Ann Warren as Cinderella, I loved Pat Carroll as one of the ugly stepsisters, Walter Pidgeon and Ginger Rogers as King and Queen, Celeste Holm as the fairy godmother....And then I discovered the original 1957 version with Julie Andrews as Cindy, Kaye Ballard and Alice Ghostley as the stepsisters, and as the fairy godmother, Edie Adams, back when she was still Edith Adams. For me, the Rogers and Hammerstein Cinderella was as much about Hollywood star power as it was about the music, though the latter was altogether lovely. The Music Man was the first musical that I memorized completely as a child or adolescent; R&H's Cinderella was the second.
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