Male equivalent of 'My White Knight'- Page 2

[John Adams]

Posted: 5/9/13 at 8:39pm

>> " I'd like to know what the bolded line below means to people:

"And I would like him to be more interested in me than he is in himself.
And more interested in us than in me."

That's such a beautiful line!
She's setting up a progression, in order of importance. "Love ME more than himself, but even above me, love the union of US (as a couple)". She's recognizing that there are two individuals, but that their union as "one" is even more important than the individual components. Updated On: 5/9/13 at 08:39 PM

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 5/9/13 at 9:07pm

Yeah, yeah, guys, I get what the lyricist INTENDED. But I've been happily married for more than 36 years now and it still sounds like gibberish to me. What does it really mean to value a relationship more highly than a person, your partner. As if the two can be separated!

**

Marian is a "woman of the world"? Not in the sense the phrase usually means. As her mother points out, the librarian has a great deal of knowledge about the world which she has garnered from books. But that's not the same as direct experience in matters of the heart.

Marian is a grown woman who wishes on a star and sings "Goodnight My Someone". And though she imagines she wants quiet evenings discussing Great Books, she discovers she is in love with the man who cures her disabled brother's stutter by acting as substitute-father. (If you want the back-story for Winthrop, that's it: his stutter is a response to the early death of his father; it is cured when that father is replaced, symbolically.)

Marian thinks she is a realist when she is really a romantic at heart.

Harold pretends to be a cynic ("the sadder-but-wiser girl's the girl for me") when he is really a romantic ("I always think there's a band, kid.") at heart.

And THAT's why they are perfect for each other.
Updated On: 5/9/13 at 09:07 PM

[John Adams]

Posted: 5/9/13 at 9:48pm

>> "Yeah, yeah, guys, I get what the lyricist INTENDED. But I've been happily married for more than 36 years now and it still sounds like gibberish to me."

LOL!!!
Obviously, all couples are different when it comes to their happiness.

According to how she prioritizes it, her man will make decisions and govern his actions to demonstrate that their marriage (as one unit) is the priority. She wants to feel "adored", but not to a point where he forgets himself as being part of the "team".

She seems to be indicating that she wants a man who understands "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" - but still finds ways to let her know that she's his "better half".

[Taryn]

Posted: 5/10/13 at 12:25am

It's kind of like one of the pieces of advice my parents give to newlyweds they're close to: make decisions based on not what's best for one partner or the other, but for what's best for the marriage.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 5/10/13 at 7:29am

Georg in She Loves Me is amorously drawn to Amalia's intellect and sensitivity before actually meeting her. So "Three Letters" and "Tonight at Eight," while in many ways different than "My White Night," express similar emotions and longing from a male point of view. George and Amalia's shared love of great books is the glue here with Tolstoy substituting for Shakespeare and Beethoven.

To be fair, there are few female characters in musical theater who musically wax about wanting erudition and sensitivity in a male partner the way Marian does.

in terms of musical theater characters wanting what Marian wants in a partner, Georg and Amalia come the closest to hoping for that degree of intellectual and artistic communion. In Fiddler, Chava and Fyedka share similar hopes but don't express them musically (Chava's romantic needs are included with those of her sisters in Matchmaker)

On a different but somewhat similarly appealing note, and as already suggested by EPerkins, consider Chuck's exultation that Fran "Likes Basketball.: Though sports mania differs from an appreciation for the fine arts, here you find a man excited about the woman he admires having a shared interest - that his favorite girl would like his favorite sport. And in "You'll Think of Someone" Chuck longs for Fran sharing different pastimes with him. Chuck and Fran are not particularly artistic types, but in these songs we see the male lead thinking longingly of sharing things he values and enjoys in life with a woman.

A Quiet Girl?- yes and no. In that song, Bob expresses frustration with Ruth's intellect and longs for someone quite different, less confident, outspoken and much more demure (and perhaps less brainy or at least less expressively so) - still, in subtext, a savvy actor would likely communicate how drawn Bob truly is to Ruth's spirit and smarts.












Updated On: 5/10/13 at 07:29 AM

[PalJoey]

Posted: 5/10/13 at 7:59am

What does it really mean to value a relationship more highly than a person, your partner.

What does it mean? Everything.

[jayinchelsea]

Posted: 5/10/13 at 8:21am

I LOVE reading these posts about one of my favorite songs in musical theatre. As a child, listening to these beautiful lyrics and learning the words, I did not understand the sentiment "and more interested in us than in me." But one day, years later as an adult, I suddenly understood, and of course the sentiment is just right.

It's true, most songs of this ilk are written for women (I think Ethan Mordden refers to them as "yearning" songs), but I do think both of Robert's songs in COMPANY fill the bill. Robert is dreaming and hoping for an ideal, sparked by someone he already knows, and both songs seem to be the male counterpart to "My White Knight," imo.

[Jon]

Posted: 5/10/13 at 8:26am

Since previous posts have mentioned "I'll Know", it should be pointed out that there is a persistent rumor that "My White Knight" was actually written by Frank Loesser.

[Musicaldudepeter]

Posted: 5/10/13 at 8:40am

Are you serious, Jon? I feel like My White Knight's writing is very similar to that of I'll Know, and even more to the point, My Time of Day. The triplets, the differing tempi, time signatures, the hazy feeling of the song, the 'recitative' style lapsing once again into full song... Very interesting.

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 5/10/13 at 6:18pm

Re the Loesser rumor, it's certainly interesting how "My White Knight" sounds nothing like the rest of the score and was the one song replaced for the film.

***

As for "more interested in us than in me", I suspect we have just become accustomed to the lyric. Because we love the song, we assumed the line makes sense.

But substitute any other group and subset:

"I hope he likes dogs more then cocker spaniels."

"I hope he likes apples more than Mackintosh apples."

...and the problem becomes apparent.

Talking about "the relationship" as if it were an independent entity is contemporary pop psych speak, not the language of a classically read spinster in 1912 Iowa.

[John Adams]

Posted: 5/10/13 at 7:01pm

>> "As for "more interested in us than in me", I suspect we have just become accustomed to the lyric. Because we love the song, we assumed the line makes sense."

If we're gonna substitute lyrics, we need to do it in a similar context. All the elements have to be related in the sense that they are components of a bigger picture. Like:

"I hope he likes Swiss cheese more than corned beef, and that he'd rather have a Reuben than just Swiss on rye."

To use your dogs example, you'd have to reverse the order: "I hope he likes cocker spaniels more than collies, but that he's more interested in the welfare of dogs as a whole."

___________________

^^
Those analogies suck. Maybe a better one would be:
I hope he like Yellow better than Blue, but it would be best of all if he loved Green.
Updated On: 5/10/13 at 07:01 PM

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 5/10/13 at 7:50pm

Sorry, John, my new friend, but you have the logic backwards.

"Me" is a subset of "us".

"Cocker spaniels" is a subset of "dogs".

The logical problem lies in saying you prefer the whole to the subset, because the inescapable implication is that therefore you prefer the subset to itself.

THAT BEING SAID, I realize that a relationship is not as tangible as a category of animals or a type of fruit, so, as with poetry, if "more interested in us than in me" moves you or anyone else, don't let me talk you out of it. Lyrics, like poetry, often function in a non-rational way.

(ETA and "My White Knight" remains one of my all-time favorite songs.)

Updated On: 5/10/13 at 07:50 PM

[sinister teashop]

Posted: 5/11/13 at 1:08pm

"Bring Me My Bride" from "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum"

[Pawnee Bill]

Posted: 10/24/13 at 11:11pm

Gaveston: On her Carnegie Hall CD, Cook sings an earlier version of "My White Knight," and while it's just as unusual as the version they ended up with, it sounds a little more like the rest of the Music Man score. It's possible that Loesser mentored Willson in refining the number into its present state, and of course "mentored" could mean a lot of things.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 10/25/13 at 4:10pm

What does it really mean to value a relationship more highly than a person, your partner. As if the two can be separated!

I don't think its about value. It's about priorities. If you've ever been in a heavily lopsided relationship, the meaning is crystal clear. The two can easily be separated. That is why you can refer to something as "a pair" or distinguish its components as "a pair of ____s" or "two ____s". I've known many people who perceive their relationships as "a pair of" or "two" rather than "a pair". Marian is describing her own personal balance of priorities.

I love any chance to jump in on a discussion of one of the most perfect musicals ever written (if not THE most perfect musical).