Phantom of the Opera
February 21st, 2008This post is dedicated to Miladysa.
WWI may have been the most pointless multi-national war in the past one hundred years. In WWII, there were clearly good guys and bad guys. WWI was a war between imperialistic nations where millions of young working class men died in the trenches for pretty much nothing, and it resolved very little because less than a generation later, it had to be fought again with even more nations caught in the middle of it.
WWI also was pointlessly brutal, with thousands of young men literally getting their faces blown apart. Plastic surgery was still in its infancy and plastic surgeons at the time performed miracles, taking men who had next to nothing left of their faces and giving them something that was good enough to go in public again, although not good enough to lead normal lives.
The Smithsonian has a display of before and after masks of men with their faces demolished and the masks made after the fact. The pictures are quite graphic and will leave you both shocked and astonished that plastic surgeons back then were talented enough to give these men something.
Live Through This
Now imagine this - you’re a WWI Vet. You’ve been in a stinky, filthy trench infested with rats for two years. Your feet are covered in fungus and you and your buddy took turns fending off the rats who enjoyed nibbling at you when you were trying to get some sleep. Your bread’s full of maggots, but you eat it anyways because it’s better than starving. You can’t stand all the way up or else you’ll get your head literally shot off with machine gun fire.
Then a crude hand grenade falls in your trench. You get your face partially blown off. You lose an eyeball, half your nose, and the flesh from one side of your face. You wake up in a hospital with plastic surgeons doing the best they can, but your face is so bad that you get to wear a mask for the rest of your shortened life.
The thing is, you’re better off than your comrades. Shortly after being taken out of the war, they all got hit with mustard gas. You visit them often and watch them die slowly as they’re coughing and wheezing all day and then within a year, they’re all dead as they literally drown in the watery buildup in their lungs as their bodies do everything they can to rid them of that mustard gas.
The Phantom of the Opera
The Phantom of the Opera was a French novel written by Gaston Leroux in 1909 that probably would have faded into obscurity had it not been made into a 1925 silent film starring Lon Chaney as the hideously deformed Phantom. His character plays a tragic role that lives under an opera house, has a beautiful voice, and longs for the love of the beautiful actress/singer Christine who instead loves a fellow actor Raoul.
The movie ends with the Phantom’s death, but throughout the movie, although the Phantom does bad things, the audience feels for the Phantom. It is intentionally sympathetic to the Phantom, a sort of anti-hero with a full range of emotions.
It was very popular with WWI vets who often returned from that stupid war disfigured and shunned by society as children would stare at their battle scarred faces in horror. Although the story was written before WWI, the silent film appealed strongly to these Vets who would watch the movie over and over again, seeing themselves in that tragic role.
So this movie is right up your alley. For two hours, you notice people in the audience actually feel some remorse for how they treat freaks (like you). Before you die, you watch the movie ten times. Living vicariously through the Phantom is the closet you get to actual intimacy with a beautiful woman.
ZS
I am honoured that you have dedicated this wonderful post to me - thank you so much!
An excellent post, fantastic background information which of course hits home for me.
I remember my father had a couple of friends who had been disfigured during WWI. They were two mates who had been trapped together it a tank which had caught fire. Their faces literally looked as though they had melted.
As a little girl I was scared for a couple of minutes and then was distracted from staring at their faces by their wonderful sense of humour and personalities.
I never understood why Christina would not be able to see the beauty of the Phantom
thanks for providing the context for the show. i’ve seen the show and i read dalton trumbo’s ‘johnny got his gun’ (hated it but it at least gave context for the era). i didn’t realize that’s when the show was written and had forgottne about the time period when lon chaney first made it famous.
What a fantastic bit of trivia!
I read Johnny Got His Gun in Jr High, which was smack in the middle of Vietnam. That book forever changed my outlook on war and people who are in a supposed vegetative state.
Excellent post. I had no idea plastic surgery was even much of an option back then, and I’m glad they put it to good use! I read Johny Got His Gun, too, and that’s an eye-opener. A WWI vet loses most of his face, but is still able to communicate by tapping his head on his pillow in Morse Code.
The Phantom movies and the musical suck, but that novel is really good. I feel a lot of sympathy for the Phantom.
All - I never read Johnny Got His Gun. I’ve heard of the movie, but haven’t seen that either.
Miladysa - Well, I got this idea from your WWI stories to do this post. so thank you.
I feel bad for disfigured Vets. Can’t imagine the horrors they have to go through, so I kind of winged this story.
Lime - Sure. What’s neat is the ‘85 musical wore masks based off of the masks worn by disfigured Vets from WWI.
Tshsmom - Yes. Stuff like that makes you realize how horrible war is. That’s why war hawks scare me, especially chicken hawks who have no idea just how bad war is.
Now, if attacked, I’m all for war. But I won’t be sending our men and women into war unless we had to.
SME - Thanks. Yeah, the father of modern plastic surgery was Sir Harold Gillies who spent WWI fixing people’s faces.
I’ve never seen any of the movies and I’m very prejudiced against musicals. One of these days, I should read the book though.
I thought the movie was very appealing to people who had birthmarks or deformities like a port wine stain.
I liked the movie. I’ve seen it over 5 times. I saw the silent one twice, the other one three times, and the new musical once.
I’m reading a book that you would like I think about a French girl living in Cambodia during the Khmers rouges revolution and genocide between 1975 and 1980.
The lives of these young men during WW1 was terrible, most of them didn’t come back home. We have a remembrance day for them.
I never knew the real tragedy of WWI. Very descriptive and what a tie into Phantom of the Opera. I would have never made the relevance.
Nice blog. “President of the Zombieslayer Institute of Technology…..hehehe. I like that.
Kate - I haven’t seen any of those 3, although I may have the ‘25 one on DVD.
Kitem - that would be scary. Pol Pot ranks right up there with the most evil people in history. Since it’s that part of the world, most Americans though don’t know who he was.
Yes, France took it the worst in WWI. So much of the trenches were in France. Horrible way to die.
Moni - Welcome back! Good to see you again.
Yeah, most of the horrors of WWI were in Europe, because we didn’t enter until late. Still, a lot of Americans lost their lives in that stupid war as well.
There was also phosgene. Did you know that many of the pesticides used up until recently were built on nerve gas? And that they and it didn’t have an antidote?
How is it that we’re always busy finding new ways and new reasons to kill each other?
Excellent post, ZS. One of your best.
A bit off subject but one time the sergeant in charge of the Nuclear, Chemical, Biological warfare in my battalion got good and drunk one night hanging out with us lower enlisted and opened up maybe a little too much of some of the stuff he was trained on. He told us that the big guys wearing the stars on their shoulders were scared shitless of what an attack with “simply” stuff like mustard gas could do to troops. Some of the stuff like nerve agent, that was persistent over days, the big guys had calculated civilian and military death tolls in Europe in the disaster movie range. Whatever the reason the collected bozos were able to avoid WW3 in Europe I pray that others can copy it.
Bridget - No, I had no idea. Nice. I didn’t read Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring but that was probably in her book.
Why are we always finding new ways and new reasons to kill each other? Too many people, not enough resources. it’s the cause of war.
Beach - I would be scared shitless of the stuff too. Of the ways to die, it’s one of the worst.