The universal dream, for those who
wish to seem, those who wish to be, must put aside the alienation and get on
with the fascination, a tune that has wailed since 1981 from the vocal chords
of Geddy Lee, lead singer of Rush.
The lyrics to the melodic song Limelight, seem like they came straight from Pygmalion. Mr. Higgins, a blunt man with
intimidating intelligence, says that all individuals are savages mangling
themselves trying to fit into society. “They might as well be blocks of wood. I
might as well be a block of wood,” Higgins says of his students and himself.
Blocks of wood are carve-able. They can be transformed and altered into
whatever the carver, or artist, desires. The sculptor finds something beautiful
and influential enough to want to recreate. Ultimately the sculpture is an
imitation of what the creator believes is desirable. Individuals, too, in
society seek to imitate something they perceive to be desirable and something
they think others will perceive as desirable. All the world’s indeed a stage
and we are merely players, performers and portrayers, each another’s audience,
Limelight plays on. Rush couldn’t have synthesized lyrics more reflective of
Higgins sentiments. Higgins recognizes that the customs in high society are
just facades, ways to deter from the fact that we’re all humans and our
inherent individuation isolates to our own world, our own reality. Higgins
knows that people want to avoid loneliness and therefore want others to
perceive them in attractive ways to avoid lonesomeness. He monetizes off of
this natural human tendency. It’s no wonder he frequently treats people poorly,
he can see their intentions and perceptions. That alone allots a state of power
in social situations, and a capability to manipulate the people in them. Higgins
saw Eliza alienated in her low-class life and, while often petulant and rude, he
chose to show her that even if she learned a different dialect that she would
still be her flower-girl self and that some people would fall for her learned behaviors
and others would see through her portrayal of high-class jargon. Higgins
demonstrated that every person, including himself, is bound to living life on a
stage, performing portrayals of who we want to be, and the performer is the
realest one in the audience. The performer may execute intricate acts of self-deception,
but that at the end of the day, that individual will always know where they’ve
come from in society. He proved that the upper class, with its capricious
customs, could be rendered to believe that Eliza was of high society namely because
of her imitation of fancy speech and dress.
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