| Memphis (spoilers) | |
| Last Edit: mikem 12:33 am EDT 09/18/24 | |
| Posted by: mikem 12:32 am EDT 09/18/24 | |
| In reply to: how would you change the ending? - sc2 10:42 am EDT 09/17/24 | |
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| (spoilers) I really dislike the ending of Memphis. Huey gets fired because he kisses a Black woman (Felicia) on TV and is in love with her. Years later, Huey is down on his luck, his career going nowhere because he stood up to racism, and apparently without a significant other. Then Felicia, who bailed on him for the sake of her own career and no longer keeps in touch with him, comes in, tells him that her career is going great and she's engaged to someone else, and wants him to join her on stage one last time, apparently to soothe her guilty conscience for abandoning him for the spotlight. He agrees to appear, they appear on stage together, and the final curtain comes down. It's such a strange ending to a show that, at least as directed on Broadway, is a typical Broadway musical in that it seems primarily interested in giving the audience a good time rather than delving deeply into the troubles of society. Felicia, whom the audience has grown to care about over the course of the show, comes across horribly here, and I think the ending is major character assassination in that Huey sacrifices his career for her, and her response is to dump him and save her own career. And Huey's reward for standing up to racism is that he loses his career and the girl. I found the ending very depressing (although I think we are supposed to be cheering...something...at the end of the show because the final number is an uptempo big number which tells us to "never let anyone steal your rock and roll!!"), and completely at odds with 90% of the show that came before it. Huey is loosely based on a DJ who had a sad ending, dying at age 42 with his career going downhill, but I haven't read anything about his having an interracial relationship. And I don't think the show has to mirror the real-life rough end to the man Huey is loosely based on. The show doesn't follow the real man's life story that closely. At the end, Felicia should have come back, apologized, and gotten back together with Huey (or at least not be engaged to someone else while Huey has no one - for the writers to include that was really rubbing Huey's face in it). |
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| Previous: | how would you change the ending? - sc2 10:42 am EDT 09/17/24 |
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