The Sound of Music has occupied a special place in the hearts of many-a-queer persons since forever. It’s not really one of my top favorites, but I do appreciate how its music can somehow lift my spirits. When I’m sad, I simply remember my favorite things and then I don’t feel so bad.
But I won’t be writing about raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens. What I’d like to point out is how the movie/musical defines and constricts the queerness of Maria. Now, she’s not necessarily gender queer, but she is coded, right from the very beginning, as subversive: she doesn’t like to conform, and doesn’t quite fit in anywhere.
I mean, this is woman who goes to the hill when her heart is lonely and wears curlers underneath her wimple.
This problem of non-conformity, of course, has to be contained. Just listen to those nuns rant about her. While it’s rather poetic to be compared to a wave upon the sand or a moonbeam held in your hand, it’s not quite as flattering to be called a flibbertigibbet, a wil-o-the-wisp, or a clown. Either way, Maria has to be controlled, like a cloud that needs to be pinned down. So how do you solve a problem like Maria?
You kick her out of her home and hand her over to a scary widower with seven rambunctious, equally subversive children.
Even more disturbing is how Maria tries to tame the children. And how Captain von Trapp seems so annoyed every time Kurt lets out a high note. But then, Maria does make dresses out of curtains, so props to her.
Then there’s the problem of Liesl, who seems to be in dire need of a sassy gay friend.
And then there’s the baroness, who is deliciously evil. Plus she’s rich. She’s Alexis Carrington pre-World War II!
The point is, the movie strictly reinforces the hegemony of patriarchy. Liesl falls in love with Rolfe, who seems more mature and worldly even though he’s only one year older than her. Then he turns out to be a Nazi. The baroness wants to marry Capt. Von Trapp (because let’s face it, he’s gorgeous) and so she disposes of Maria in the most devious of ways: by reminding her that, as a woman, she is open to being desired by all men, and she has no control over this. So Maria does the only thing she thinks is sensible – she runs back to the convent, to the Mother Abbess, who reminds her that the walls of the convent were built to keep women in, and not problems out. That and she goads Maria with a brilliant aria telling her to climb every mountain and ford every stream. Rodgers and Hammerstein seem to be immensely fond of metaphors.
And apparently, the metaphorical mountain that needs to be climbed is the Captain. Maria can never be happy just being her quirky self – she has to be with a man. They do end up climbing a literal mountain later on in the film, but that’s another story.
Finally, what is with the goats and the yodeling?!
Everything is queer 