Cultural English 430 - My Fair Lady; Chautauquas; Q&A

Complete Transcript

You’re listening to ESL Podcast’s English Café number 430.

This is English as a Second Language Podcast’s English Café episode 430.

I'm your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.

On this Café, we’re going to talk about one of the most famous musicals and movies of the twentieth century, My Fair Lady. We’re also going to talk about Chautauquas – what they were and why they were so important to American education in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. And, as always, we’ll answer a few of your questions. Let's get started.

We begin with a discussion of one of the most famous musicals and movies of the twentieth century, My Fair Lady. My Fair Lady is, as I said, a musical. A “musical” (musical) is basically a play that has singing in it – where the people in the play sing songs in addition to just talking. My Fair Lady was a musical that first opened in New York City in 1956. However, the story of My Fair Lady was based on a play written many years earlier by the Irish playwright, or writer of plays, George Bernard Shaw. Pygmalion was first performed on the London stage back in 1913.

We’ll start with the story of the original play, Pygmalion, and then you'll be able to see how it relates to the musical My Fair Lady. The play Pygmalion was based on a Greek myth. A “myth” is a traditional story, often to explain why the world is as it is. In this myth, there is an artist named Pygmalion who is considered the best sculptor of statues in Greece. A “sculpture” is a physical object, a piece of art that is three-dimensional – that is, it's not a flat painting, but rather it's an object that you can walk around and look at. A “statue” is a piece in sculpture that represents typically a person or a character or perhaps even an animal.

These sculptures that Pygmalion made, according to the myth, were so beautiful that they looked like real people. One day, Pygmalion made a sculpture of a beautiful woman. When he finished, he dressed the statue and called her “Galatea,” which means “sleeping love.” Then he went to the temple of the goddess of love in Greece, Aphrodite, and asked for her help to find him a wife as beautiful as his statue. Aphrodite then went to the house of Pygmalion and looked at this statue and realized how beautiful the statue was. So, to make things simple, she simply changed the statue into a real woman. Then, Pygmalion and Galatea could get married. They did, and were forever thankful to Aphrodite for allowing them to live together.

This theme of the artist creating something that then comes to life was of course used, and has been used, in many different stories in many different cultures over the years. But the original, or at least one of the original versions of the story, is this Greek myth. The play Pygmalion, and later the musical My Fair Lady, don't involve a physical statue. However, they do involve someone trying to change another person and make this person into something that they are not right now. In the play and in the musical, Professor Henry Higgins is a phonetics professor. “Phonetics” (phonetics) is the study of speech and how to make certain sounds.

Professor Higgins has a friend named Colonel Pickering. Colonel Pickering gives Professor Higgins a challenge, a difficult task. He says if he is such a good professor, he should be able to take an uneducated girl who works selling flowers on the streets of London and make her sound like an aristocrat. An “aristocrat” (aristocrat) is a person who comes from a family with a lot of money, who typically has a good education and a high position in the society where he lives. An “aristocrat” would be someone who would speak very proper English, who would pronounce all the words correctly.

Professor Higgins says okay, I will take a flower girl (a young woman who sells flowers on the street), who doesn't have very much education and who doesn't speak the way that aristocrats speak, and change that woman – change that flower girl – into someone who sounds like an aristocrat. Higgins begins then to work with a flower girl by the name of Eliza Doolittle. He takes Eliza home with him and teaches her how to speak properly. Just as in the Greek myth where Galatea was just a sculpture of Pygmalion’s, Eliza is just a project of Professor Higgins. Eliza is poor and uneducated, so she doesn't think of herself as being very important.

However, as the two work together, Professor Higgins begins to see her not as a project, but rather as a real person, as a woman. Eliza then also begins to change her own opinion of herself, and begins to fall in love with Professor Higgins. I won’t tell you how it ends, although you can probably guess. My Fair Lady, the musical, was based on the play Pygmalion. It first opened in 1956. When I say, “It first opened,” I mean it was first performed as a play in New York City in that year. The musical was written by two of the most famous composers of the mid-twentieth century, Lerner and Loewe – Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner.

The musical starred one of the great stars of the 1950s, Rex Harrison, as Professor Higgins, and Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle. It was a very popular play. It was considered one of the best plays of the year and won many awards. It went on to be performed more than 2,700 times on Broadway, the theater district of New York City. It also was performed in London more than 2,200 times. It became, then, one of the longest-running shows. When we say it was a “long-running show,” we mean it was performed for many months, even years.

Finally, in 1964, the musical was turned into a movie. Rex Harrison once again starred as Professor Higgins. However, Eliza Doolittle was played not by Julie Andrews, but by another famous American actress, Audrey Hepburn. Although Hepburn was trained to sing for the character of Eliza Doolittle in the movie, it was actually the voice of another woman, Marni Nixon, that was dubbed, or substituted, for Hepburn's. So, if you watch the movie and if you haven't seen it, I strongly recommend seeing it. It's a wonderful movie. The voice you will hear coming from Audrey Hepburn's mouth is not her voice, but rather that of another singer.

The movie, like the play, was extremely popular. It won nine Oscars, or nine Academy Awards, including the award for best picture, best actor, best director, and best music. Many of the songs in the musical have become very well known to Americans for two reasons. First, the movie has been shown on television many times. It was very popular in the 1970s and 80s when I was growing up. I've seen the movie at least a couple of times. That's one reason why Americans are familiar with the music from the musical. The other reason is that the musical itself, as a play, continued to be performed in local high schools.

As I think I may have mentioned many Cafés ago, American high schools have the tradition every year of putting on a play, typically a musical where the students sing and act. This play, My Fair Lady, has been performed in many different high schools throughout the United States. So, young children, young students growing up, hear the music and learn the songs from the music. My school had My Fair Lady performed. I remember it very well. Some of the songs that Americans know and that are famous in the movie include “Wouldn't It Be Loverly” and “The Rain in Spain.”

“Wouldn't It Be Loverly” is a song that introduces Eliza Doolittle to us in the movie. She sings about having a very simple dream. She says:

All I want is a room somewhere
Far away from the cold night air
With one enormous chair
Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly (loverly, loverly)

And so on.

Eliza says, “All I want is a room somewhere.” She wants a place to stay that is “far away from the cold night air.” She doesn't have a warm place to stay because she's poor. She wants the room with “one enormous chair” – one very large chair to sit in. She said, “Wouldn't that be loverly?” “Loverly” means, here, “lovely.” “Wouldn't that be wonderful?” is what she’s saying. Eliza is also saying that she doesn't want to be a rich aristocrat. She just wants to live a simple, comfortable life.

Another song that is performed towards the end of the musical (and movie) is “The Rain in Spain.” “The Rain in Spain” is not a song about the country of Spain, really. It's a song that uses a sentence that Professor Higgins has given Eliza to help improve her pronunciation. The sentence is: “The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain.” Of course, you can hear all the words that rhyme in that sentence. And that's the reason why Professor Higgins gives it to Eliza to practice her pronunciation.

The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain.

That ending part isn't sung; that's just the music, you see. “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.” A “plain” (plain) is a flat area of land. Don't confuse that with the word that sounds the same (plane), which is of course something that you fly – or for most of us, fly in. After Eliza sings the song “The Rain in Spain,” she is congratulated by Professor Higgins. He sings, “She's got it. By George, she's got it.” This is an important part of the musical, when Professor Higgins decides that Eliza is now ready to go out and sound like an aristocrat.

Eventually Professor Higgins begins to fall in love with Eliza. He sings a song towards the end of the movie, “I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” “To grow accustomed (accustomed) to” something means to get used to something. My Fair Lady is available on DVD and probably somewhere on the Internet. If you have a chance to see it, I think you’ll really enjoy it.

Our second topic is something called “Chautauquas.” Actually, this was a movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that attempted to bring education to the average adult living in various towns and cities throughout the United States. The Chautauqua Movement brought lectures, or educational speeches, as well as music, plays, and musicals to small towns as a way of educating them – as a way of educating the average person who didn't have time to go to school and perhaps didn't have money to go to college. The Chautauquas were trying to give education to the average person.

The idea of what we would now call “adult education” did not begin with the Chautauquas. In fact, there's a long history in the United States of people organizing lectures and speeches and other presentations to try to educate people in different small communities throughout the country. The first movement of this sort was called the “Lyceum Movement.” The “Lyceum” (Lyceum) was the place where Aristotle had his school back in ancient Athens. The Lyceum Movement tried to bring education to many different places by organizing lectures.

The people organizing the lectures in the small towns would pay money to famous people to come and give a speech, give a talk, give a lecture to the people of that town. And some of the most famous Americans of that time participated in the Lyceum Movement – of course, they were paid to go and talk – people like Henry David Thoreau, Daniel Webster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Susan B. Anthony. The Lyceum Movement was very popular up until the middle of the nineteenth century when, of course, the U.S. had a civil war. That made it rather difficult to continue the Lyceum Movement.

However, after the war, the movement continued, but under a different name and under a different kind of organization, and that's what we’re talking about today – the Chautauqua Movement. There is a Lake Chautauqua in the state of New York, and in this community near Lake Chautauqua there were two men, one of them a Methodist minister, or religious leader, who decided to organize classes for the teachers in the Sunday school. “Sunday school” is the place where young children go to learn about their religion. These two men, Lewis Miller and John Vincent, organized the first lectures for the teachers who were teaching the children.

Originally, it was just religious training. However, the lectures became so popular that they decided to expand them and make them include other topics for adults. Eventually, other members of the community were invited who weren't Sunday school teachers, but who were interested in learning more about the topics. The idea, then, continuing on from the Lyceum Movement of the early part of the century, began to grow and other communities, other small towns, decided to have their own Chautauquas – their own series of lectures and classes.

These imitators – people who copied the program – began in all different parts of the United States, and like the Lyceum Movement, they invited famous writers, speakers, musicians, and playwrights to come to small towns all across the United States and to give lectures or to perform. The talent – that is, the famous people who are part of these Chautauquas – were often booked, or arranged to be there, by a central organizer, someone who worked with all the little different Chautauquas in the cities and towns throughout the United States.

The Chautauqua Movement became so popular that in several towns, they actually built a building or bought a building and used it as a . . . what we would now call a “lecture hall” – a place where they could meet frequently and have these classes and lectures. Some of the Chautauquas were what were called “tent (tent) Chautauquas.” These were lectures that would move from one city to another. The first Chautauqua was in 1874, but by the 1920s there were more than 10,000 rural communities, small towns outside of big cities, that had Chautauquas or had Chautauquas that visited their town.

This was a very popular movement. In fact, it was a movement that was praised by different presidents of the United States as being a wonderful opportunity for the average American to get additional education. Some people criticized the Chautauquas as not having a very high quality of educational value. They considered the content of the Chautauquas to be mediocre. When we say something is “mediocre” (mediocre), we mean it's not of a good quality, not of a high quality. Others thought that there was too much entertainment – too many songs, too many plays and other kinds of popular entertainment that were introduced and included in the Chautauquas.

However, the musical performances were often very diverse – they were very different. You could hear opera. You could hear popular music. You could hear spirituals, which were religious songs originally sung by African Americans. During the 1930s, when the United States was going through its Great Depression, its great economic crisis, the Chautauquas lost their appeal. They were no longer as popular because people didn't have money to organize them anymore. And by World War II, the movement was pretty much over.

However, the idea of community education, of adult education, continued after World War II in the United States. It took a somewhat different format. I think one continuation of this tradition was the so-called “Great Books Movement” of the 1950s and 60s. This, interestingly enough, was organized and supported by a couple of people at the University of Chicago, which is one of the better universities in the United States. The Great Books Movement tried to get people to come together and read the very best books of philosophy and of history and of science, as well as literature. It organized people to come together in small groups of five or six people and to read and discuss books every month or, in some cases, every week.

This movement, interestingly enough which was in part sponsored by Encyclopedia Britannica, was originally organized by a couple of professors at the University of Chicago. The reason that's interesting is that the person who started the University of Chicago back in the nineteenth century – a man by the name of William Harper, who was the first president there – was one of the original organizers of the Chautauqua Movement. So, you can see a connection across the centuries of these adult education movements attempting to bring education to the average person.

And now let’s answer some of the questions you have sent to us.

Our first question comes from Mohammed (Mohammed) in France. Mohammed wants to know the meaning of “to reply,” “to comply,” and “to meet.” “To reply” (reply) means to respond to some action or some words that were spoken to you. “I asked my boss if I could leave early and her reply – her answer – was no.”

“To comply” (comply) means to follow some sort of rule, regulation, guideline, or law. “You must comply with the new regulations.” Notice, we typically use the preposition “with” after the verb “to comply.” You “comply with” the law, you “comply with” the rules, and so forth.

“To meet” (meet) means to satisfy or to have the appropriate qualifications for, or characteristics of, whatever is being required by someone else. We often use the word “requirement” with the verb “to meet” when it has this meaning. “Does he meet the requirements?” means “Does he have the skills, the qualifications, the characteristics that we are asking for?”

So, “to meet” is usually something you are trying to do in order to get something. “To comply” means you are following a rule that someone has given you. “To reply” doesn't really have anything to do with “to comply” or “to meet.” “To reply” means to give an answer back or to respond to someone who has spoken to you or written to you.

Mohamed (Mohamed) – in Algeria this time, not the same Mohammed – wants to know the difference between “mild” and “tender.” “Mild” (mild), when we’re talking about describing a person, is an adjective meaning gentle or kind in the way that you behave. There's an old expression, “to be mild-mannered” (mannered). “To be mild-mannered” means to be a person who is very kind, who is very gentle, who doesn't criticize other people or say mean things to other people. “Mild” is also used in cooking. When we talk about food being “mild,” we use it there to mean the opposite of spicy, or to be less spicy.

“Tender” (tender) has a couple of meanings. One meaning, as an adjective, is “delicate.” We talk about a baby's “tender” skin. The baby has very soft skin that you can hurt very easily, for example, if you put your baby out into the sun. We don't recommend that, because the baby has tender – what we might also describe as “sensitive” – skin. We also have the expression “at a tender age.” That means very young. “He learned his lesson at a tender age,” or “at the tender age of ten.”

Gunther (Gunther) in Germany wants to know the meaning of the word he heard: “munchies.” “Munchies” (munchies) is a very informal term for snacks – food that you eat in between meals that is often not very good for you – things like popcorn or pretzels or potato chips. Those would all be examples of “snacks” or “munchies.” We also have an expression “to have the munchies,” which means to have the urge to, or the desire to, eat a lot of food, especially snack food. This expression, “to have the munchies,” is often associated with people who are smoking certain drugs such as marijuana, after which – people have told me – you have the desire to eat snacks.

Finally, Hyoseok (Hyoseok) in South Korea wants to know how to pronounce a couple of different words. The first word is (accept). The second word is (except). For many speakers of American English, these two words are pronounced very similarly, especially when they are pronounced quickly in the middle of a sentence. “I'm going to accept his proposal.” That would be (accept). You can also say, “I want everything except the one on the right.” That is (except).

There really isn't much of a difference in pronunciation, at least in my accent, my Midwestern/Los Angeles accent. However, if you look it up in the dictionary, they will indicate that there is a difference. (Accept) has more of an “a” sound at the beginning. So, “accept,” especially when pronounced slowly or carefully. (Except) is pronounced slowly and carefully as if there were an “i” at the beginning. So, it’s “except.” “Accept,” “except.” However, in normal conversation, it's quite difficult to distinguish between the two. And as I say, for many speakers of American English, in regular use there isn't a great difference, if any difference at all, between the pronunciation of these two words.

It depends on what we would call your “dialect.” Your “dialect” (dialect) is the particular variety or kind of English that you speak, which depends on the area in the country where you live, the people you grew up with – especially as a teenager or an adolescent – and, in some cases, the social class in which you find yourself. But that's the short answer. So, thank you for that question.

From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan. Thank you for listening. Come back and listen to us again right here on the English Café.

Glossary

musical – a stage performance that includes dialogue and songs

* The musical included 15 songs that helped explain the story.

myth – a traditional story typically about people or creatures that did not exist and explained why the natural world is the way it is

* The myth about the founding of Rome says that two brothers were raised by a female wolf after being abandoned by their parents.

phonetics – the area of study focusing on the different sounds of a language

* The phonetics class studied the differences in the ways that words were pronounced in different parts of the country.

aristocrat – someone of a high social class typically with a good education and a lot of money

* Some members of the aristocracy in England have titles like “duke” and “earl.”

dubbed – when one voice is substituted for another in a movie or television show

* The movie was dubbed into Chinese so that Chinese-speaking audiences could understand it.

to be accustomed to – to be used to seeing or doing something

* Amir was accustomed to waking up at 6:00 a.m. on weekdays, so he often woke up early on the weekends as well.

lecture – an educational speech or talk about a specific topic

* Masha attended a lecture about the influence of Mozart’s music on Vienna during his lifetime.

correspondence course – a way of learning where educational materials are sent and received through the mail

* Now that most people have access to the Internet, correspondence courses have been replaced by online education.

imitator – someone who copies what another person does, trying to appear and behave like that person

* Although there are many imitators, there is only one original Jeff’s Burgers restaurant.

talent – a person who performs for an audience

* The talent who perform at these shows usually bring bodyguards for their own protection.

spiritual – a religious song that originally came from African American culture in the southern United States

* “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” is a famous spiritual from the 1800s.

medocre – of low quality and not very interesting or entertaining

* The movie was just mediocre so many people walked out in the middle of it.

to reply – to respond by speech, gesture, writing, or action

* We need to reply by email whether or not we plan to attend the party.

to comply – to follow, obey, or act according to a law, rule, regulation, or guideline

* Employees who don’t comply with the company’s policies can be fired.

to meet – to comply or follow any requirements, regulation, and rules that are set by another person or organization; to be introduced to; to come together

* Will we be able to finish this project and meet the deadline?

mild – gentle or kind, in the way one behaves; not too strong in flavor

* Jenna’s son has a mild temper and is easy to get along with.

tender – delicate; of a young age

* Kaila has tender feelings and is easily hurt when others say unkind things to her.

to have the munchies – to have the urge to eat a lot of food, especially snacks

* How can you have the munchies when we just had lunch an hour ago?

What Insiders Know

The Pygmalion Effect

The Pygmalion Effect is a “concept” (idea) thought of by two “psychologists” (professionals whose job is to study the mind and how people think) that people’s expectations of how others will “perform” (accomplish or do something) affects how people actually perform. The idea is that the expectations we have of people affect the way we treat them or behave toward them. As a result, treating people as though we expect them to do well actually helps them do better. This concept is named after Pygmalion, the play by George Bernard Shaw.

If the Pygmalion Effect is true, then so is the opposite effect called the “Golem Effect.” The Golem Effect is the idea that if we have low expectations of someone, than that person will actually perform worse.

Both the Pygmalion Effect and the Golem Effect are forms or kinds of what is known as “self-fulfilling prophecies,” which means that what we expect to happen actually occurs because we change our behavior to match those expectations.

The psychologists identified these effects when they “conducted” (did; performed) a study in 1968. The researchers Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson gave all students in one California “elementary school” (school for children, usually ages six to 12) an IQ test, or an intelligence test. Their scores were not “disclosed” or made known to the teachers, but teachers were told that some of the students could be expected to improve quickly that year and that those students were expected to do better than their classmates.

At the end of the experiment, all students were again given the same IQ test and the results showed a “significant” (important) growth in the scores of all six grades that participated, especially “first and second graders” (students age 7 to 9). This led to the conclusion that expectations from the teachers, especially for the younger students, helped influence the improvement in students’ performance in class.