From Now On: A Lent Course on Hope and Redemption in The Greatest Showman.

Rachel Mann introduces a new and original Lent course for 2019 based on the life of Phineas T. Barnum and the popular Hollywood movie, starring Hugh Jackman …

The Bible suggests that, in the beginning, God created the world and saw it was good (Genesis 1:1-3). Given how often religious people tell us that the world is a fallen place, full of sin and in need of redemption, to remember that God finds his created world delightful is an important corrective. The modern poet Glyn Maxwell suggests that, as our ancestors left the trees and began to spread across the African plains and savannahs, they ‘looked upon’ the world and saw it was good. [1] In short, our ancestors apprehended the beauty of the world and were filled with delight. In a world which is full of challenges, pain and insecurity, it can be very difficult to keep hold of this vision. It’s very easy to fall into cynicism and selfishness and meanness. If the Bible is appropriately realistic about the tragic limits of human beings, it is always worth remembering that – from God’s point of view – there is so much about the world that should fill us with hope, faith and love. The world remains the stuff on which dreams are made.

The Greatest Showman has become something of a popular culture phenomenon. It has generated singalongs, parties and countless repeat viewings. After a slow start at the box office on the back of critical panning, it became the most successful film in UK cinema of 2018. Its tale of Phineas T. Barnum and his Circus has chimed with a world hungry for both hope and for fun, not least because it shows a world in which being an outsider is no bar to success and respect. Above all, it is a film that brings delight to the forefront and is unafraid of dreaming. In a scary world, shaped by aggressive regimes and authoritarian leaders, it is perhaps unsurprising that The Greatest Showman has generated such a devoted following. Indeed, though it is a highly-fictionalised account of Barnum’s life, it manages to offer a powerful echo of God’s original delight in the world and his ongoing desire for us to celebrate his creation.

This film may seem a curious subject for a Lent book. The great themes of Lent – the longing for justice and mercy, the invitation to sober reflection on sin, and, most of all, the call for repentance – might strike us as very far away from those found in The Greatest Showman. Where the weeks of Lent traditionally represent a time of preparation for the joy of Easter, it might be suggested that The Greatest Showman wants to skip that reflection and leap too readily to the joy. If there are grounds for that claim, I want to counter with two thoughts: firstly, if The Greatest Showman mostly takes place in a ‘major key’, its power lies in contrast. When Barnum loses sight of what has made him a success and begins to stray from the path of faithfulness (to his family and beliefs), the film very much enters a ‘minor key’ shaped around doubt and betrayal. Furthermore, if the mood of the film is ‘joy’, it is one tempered by the ups-and-downs of Barnum, his friends’ and his family’s lives. In short, the film is not so much about mindless pleasure or happiness, but deep joy. This is closer to the joy we find in the Christian faith – the joy shaped through the Cross and God’s truth – than a fleeting happiness often offered by the world.

If, as I believe, this is a book which lends itself to study all year around, behind the bright and shiny chords of this musical’s songs are universal themes which chime with Lent. Most of all, The Greatest Showman asks, what does hope and love look like in a world which so readily tramples on those dreams? It frames that question through the lens of those considered outsiders, either because of poverty, class, disability, ethnicity and visual stereotyping. Jesus’ story speaks powerfully into this, not least because arguably his ministry represents a dramatic statement that those society considers ‘outsiders’, that is, those who are treated as ‘other’ and ‘second-rate’, are ‘centre-stage’ in God’s love. Jesus lives as one on the edges of respectable society and dies a criminal’s death. As God’s Son among us, it is as powerful a sign of God’s priorities as we can imagine.

This book, then, is an invitation to enjoy a delightful film, but also to look closer. Behind the shiny and sometimes overwhelming show tunes, is a story with real heart and imagination. If it is tempting to read Barnum as a Jesus-like saviour figure – what is sometimes called (with a serious critical intent) a ‘White Saviour Figure’, who uses his privilege to help the ‘less-fortunate’ – the story is more nuanced. It is much more about the power of outsider communities to claim hope and faith and love. Barnum is a deeply flawed character who is more like Peter or one of the other disciples than Jesus. As the film unfolds, we discover that it is the members of the Circus who hold the power to transform the world, rather than Barnum. The Greatest Showman opens vistas for people of faith and none to reflect on the nature of faith, hope and love. By taking time over the coming weeks to watch and re-watch this film slowly, I hope you will see how the story of Barnum and his Circus reveals Christian themes of hope and dreams, family and community, respectability and resistance, betrayal and redemption. Just as the outsider community around Barnum ‘comes alive’, I pray that this study guide helps your faith and thinking come alive.

AN HISTORICAL NOTE: BARNUM – BETWEEN FACT AND FICTION

The simple fact of the matter is that The Greatest Showman is – at best – loosely based on the life story of Phineas T. Barnum. For some, especially those who like ‘biopic’ films to stick to historical fact as closely as possible, this will diminish the value of the film. That attitude, if understandable, might matter if The Greatest Showman was trying to be a full-on biopic or documentary, but its purpose is quite different. First and foremost, it’s entertainment and there’s no harm in that. It’s a powerful and kinetic example of story-telling that gathers its power from the way it tells a story of human hope. If it’s unhelpful to hold The Greatest Showman to the standards of history or biography, a little historical background may help some to see where the film both connects with and departs from Barnum’s biography.

Phineas Taylor Barnum was born on 5 July 1810 in Bethel, Connecticut, the son of an innkeeper and tailor. The tailor connection is mirrored in the film, where the young Barnum is shown visiting the home of his future love, Charity, with his tailor father. In the film, he is presented as desperately poor and, following his father’s death, is made destitute and homeless. It’s a powerful plot device, but it’s pure bunkum. Barnum’s father died when Phineas was just 15, but young Phineas didn’t end up on the streets. He supported his mother and five siblings by doing odd jobs, including managing a boarding house. He led a relatively settled, middle-class life and became a shop keeper. He did marry Charity, but it did not emerge out of some illicit childhood romance. They married when he was 21 and she 19 and they went on to have four daughters.

Romance and family life is at the heart of The Greatest Showman. These themes and plot devices create momentum and tension in the film, but they are not faithful to the historical Barnum’s story. Charity and Barnum were married for forty-four years, and he said that the day he married her he became ‘the husband of the best woman in the world.’ However, Barnum’s life was taken up with business ventures and Charity’s life centred on child rearing. Equally, while it is true that Barnum promoted the ‘Swedish Nightingale’ Jenny Lind’s tour of the United States, there is no evidence of a relationship or infatuation between them. Lind attempted to leave show-business at 28, but Barnum convinced her to embark on a one-hundred-and-fifty night tour. While there is no evidence of romance between the two, Barnum’s promotion of her in the USA, where she was practically unknown, verged on genius. The scene in which she receives universal acclaim is grounded in fact.

Barnum’s move into the Museum and Show business was not as presented in the movie. The trigger to get into show-business was the decision of Connecticut’s state legislature to ban the state lottery. His shop business had depended on the income and without it his work was unviable. He sold up, moved his family to New York in 1836 and started a variety troupe, Barnum’s Grand Scientific and Musical Theater, to mixed success. A national financial crisis in 1837 placed his business under immense pressure for several years, a situation only turned around when he took over Scudder’s American Museum and reinvented it as Barnum’s American Museum.

Much is made in the film about Barnum’s bold recruitment strategies for his show. Barnum’s show is presented not so much as exploitative as a way for those who are mocked and abused by society to claim their power and dignity. The extent to which the historical Barnum offered this is moot. Consider, Charles Stratton aka General Tom Thumb. In the film, Stratton is 22 years old; in fact, Barnum recruited him at the age of 4! They were distant cousins, and if we may be shocked by the way Barnum worked a young child in his show, there is some evidence that Stratton changed the perception of circuses. Audiences began to see that those who didn’t fit society’s norms were not simply to be objectified as ‘freaks’. Yet, if the film portrays Barnum as a champion of respect and acceptance for those who are different to societal norms, history suggests otherwise. Most shocking of all is the story of how he got his break in show-business: he exploited an elderly slave-woman, Joice Heth, who he passed off as George Washington’s one-hundred-and-sixty-one year-old nurse. When she died, it was revealed she was (only) eighty or so years old. He was a businessman who enjoyed making money and sometimes needed quick money to pay off debts.

Barnum’s museum did burn down, on several occasions. On the first occasion in 1865, it was said that two whales were boiled alive. However, there is no evidence that the building was burned down by rioters, although the ‘confederate army of New York’ attempted to burn it down in 1864. If finding out more about the historical Barnum might make us uncomfortable and affect how we read The Greatest Showman, it should not destroy its power. The film is not intended as a historical documentary or a faithful biography. Ultimately it takes Barnum’s story as a leaping off point for a very modern reading of the ‘business that is show’; this is a world in which creativity and difference combine to set free the human spirit.

Part of this film is about claiming power for ourselves. It challenges a world that seeks to define who we are on the basis of how we look, or where we come from. At one point, the bearded lady Lettie Lutz, sings, ‘I’m not scared to be seen, I make no apologies, this is me.’ It is a powerful response to a world that would judge her – and all of us – on unfair grounds. If the real-life Barnum failed to live the kind of life we might hope, the world of The Greatest Showman argues that we are not to be judged by how the world stereotypes, but celebrated for inner convictions which lead us to the truth. Arguably, it commits Barnum, Lettie and the others to a Way that resists the limits of this world and aims to live through God’s vision for us. This vision invites us to live as people who show forth the image of God and who can grow into the likeness of Christ. The story of the historical Barnum can enrich and question this claim, but – on the film’s own terms – cannot diminish it.

From Now On: A Lent Course on Hope and Redemption in The Greatest Showman by Rachel Mann is available in paperback, price £6.99.

1 Glyn Maxwell, On Poetry (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2013).