Racism, Sexism and Mitzi Gaynor in South Pacific

If you love this movie, I will warn you now: I did not. In fact, it was so bad I didn’t pay much atten­tion. The almost con­stant orange or pink glow was just too annoying. 

Nevertheless, I paid enough atten­tion to fig­ure out that it’s WWII and the Americans are on an island. The island clos­est to them, Bali Ha’i, is seen as an oasis. Not only can you get shrunken heads there (!), but there are “dames” there. Tonkinese “dames.” There’s also some sus­pi­cious Japanese activ­ity, which is why Emile de Becque (Rossano Brazzi) and Lt. Joseph Cable (John Kerr) are sent there to spy. Before this mis­sion, the men were involved with Nellie Forbush (Mitzi Gaynor) and Liat (France Nuyen) respec­tively. Neither rela­tion­ship works because of Nellie’s and Lt. Cable’s racist upbringing. 

Nellie can’t bring her­self to com­mit to Emile’s mar­riage pro­posal because his for­mer wife was Tokinese and he had two chil­dren with her. Meanwhile, Cable can­not imag­ine bring­ing a non-white woman home to his fam­ily, despite his ado­ra­tion of Liat, which is demon­strated in this song. 

Although the film makes a state­ment about inter­ra­cial rela­tion­ships, it does so in a sex­ist way. We don’t get to see any Tonkinese men at all! And even if we did, I’m sure that they weren’t going to pair one off with some white woman. In a way, the movie says that it’s okay for a white man to be with a non-white woman, but it doesn’t dare go fur­ther. Of course, we must keep the time period (1958) in mind. 

I chose South Pacific because of Mitzi Gaynor. She used to visit Vancouver reg­u­larly to per­fect her Las Vegas show rou­tines at a night­club called The Cave, which was torn down in 1981. After learn­ing about The Cave’s place in Vancouver his­tory, I wanted to know more about Mitzi. 

Besides her film career, Mitzi per­formed in annual TV spe­cials from 1967 to 1978. Some of those moments were col­lected in a doc­u­men­tary, Mitzi Gaynor Razzle Dazzle: The Special Years.

And now, at 77 years of age, Mitzi is on tour again with her one-woman show, Razzle Dazzle! My Life Behind the Sequins. So my only ques­tions are, When is Mitzi com­ing “home” to Vancouver? And where will she play now that The Cave is no more?