I'm not going to comment on the actual trial, but it was an odd experience going through Twitter soon after it ended and seeing people lament its end. Most recently we can think of the Heard/Depp case.
Consider the publicization of celebrity trials, the way we all flock to every piece of evidence and public display of the people involved. We watch documentaries or retellings of horrific crimes, sometimes against the wishes of victims and families, investigating them for spectacle. One of the largest subgenres in contemporary mainstream entertainment. Oddly, its highly specific message and satirization have only become more relevant.Ĭonsider for example true crime. The inspiration for the original 1920s play was a genuine culture of criminal celebrity in Chicago at the time. We are meant to understand that what we are doing is clapping, snapping, and laughing along to a murderer getting off, a warden taking bribes, and a lawyer committing perjury. This is why we are being performed to, this is why the fourth wall is constantly broken, the film is about us, and we are meant to understand that it is. The connection between crime and show business is the way we watch both for entertainment the connection between the two worlds is us the audience. What Chicago attempts to do by presenting criminal justice, murder, and the law as equivalent in some way to show business is to hold a mirror up to the audience. It's never clearer than when the Warden Mama ( Queen Latifah) says, “In this town murder is a form of entertainment." A master of razzle-dazzle who can forge evidence, twist words and hide it all behind an expert performance and performative speech. Billy Flynn is a ventriloquist and expert tap-dancer. Throughout the film, there’s this constant effort to intertwine show business and the criminal justice system, to make them seem essentially the same. Right before her hanging, the announcer comes out to introduce her “disappearing act” as he says, “For your pleasure and entertainment”. The result is that, even though she seems to be the only truly innocent prisoner in the film, she’s the only one we see get hung. Helinszki is a Hungarian prisoner, she can’t speak any English and as a result, isn’t able to turn her life into the kind of spectacle and entertainment the other prisoners can. We receive the same song and dance that the public in the universe receives, but we also get a peek behind the curtain, letting us in on the fact that we are knowingly consuming and enjoying the lies of crooks.Ĭonsider the death scene of Katalin Helinszki. Every piece of music is performed for us, the audience. Like Billy Flynn’s number “All I Care About Is Love” – a bald-faced lie in which a charismatic Billy Flynn tries to convince us that he does what he does for love when we really know all, he really cares for is money. They each begin with an announcer telling us who’s about to perform before they come out on a stage and lie to us. They aren’t embedded into the world, they’re a performance the characters put on for us, they’re fourth wall breaking. First off, the musical numbers are separated from the actual film. The 2002 musical film would continue this tradition expanding on it further. The 1975 stage musical would make significant changes to the story, including the addition of musical numbers, in order to lean into the satirization of what it sees as an almost farcical criminal justice system. Though subsequent versions of it would downplay or emphasize this depending on what the writers were looking for. The original play was intended to be a cynical satire on the corrupt criminal justice system and concept of a celebrity criminal at the time.
Set in 1920s Chicago, every version of the story follows a Roxie Hart that murders a man and has her husband pay exorbitant amounts of money for legal defense that turns her into a criminal celebrity and results in her attaining a not-guilty verdict. The Musical film was based on stage musical from 1975, which was based on a film from 1927, which was based on a play from 1926… confusing I know. 20 years ago Chicago won six Academy Awards including best picture.
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