A global extravaganza with countless Chinese performers. A glittering festival of song and dance. Fireworks!

No, not the Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing.

I am of course talking about the 1961 movie “Flower Drum Song” based on the musical by Rodgers and Hammerstein set in San Francisco Chinatown. It starred Nancy Kwan as the sassy showgirl Linda Lo and Miyeshi Umeki, the first Asian American to win an Oscar, as the dutiful picture bride, Mei Lee, smuggled in on a ship from China (wait, but she’s not Chinese…).

In over-the-top Broadway fashion, it depicted that age-old conundrum, how much to hold on to Old World ways in the New World - with liberal breaks for singing and dancing. “What are we going to do about/ the Other Generation” sang three Chinese American kids - a boy in baseball gear and two blue-jeaned, pony-tailed girls - in despair over their old-fashioned elders.

The music was infectious. The all-Asian cast was groundbreaking. As kids, my brother and I watched it over and over again on video and learned every song by heart.

Today of course, it’s completely and utterly politically in-correct. In one scene, the Chinese robe-wearing patriarch, Master Wang, mugged on the street, is asked what the robber looked like and retorts: “All white men look alike!”

Since Zoe and Maya had already discovered “The Sound of Music” and “Mary Poppins,” I I thought: Why not “Flower Drum Song?”

I figured they’d enjoy it. Boy, did they.

Funny how time changes how you see things. My husband, who’d never watched the movie, rolled his eyes from across the couch every 10 minutes. When Linda Lo emerged in a what looked like a very small towel to sing “I enjoy being a girl!” before a trio of mirrors, he spluttered in mock horror: “Are you really showing this to our daughters?”

Even I winced as Linda belted out:

“I flip when a fella sends me flowers!/I drool over dresses made of lace/I talk on the telephone for hours/With a pound-and-a-half of cream upon my face!”

Now Linda is Zoe’s favorite character, rivaling Cinderella. “Can I watch Linda Lo? Please, mommy?” she asks almost daily now, with beseeching eyes. (Yes, Cribsheeters, you can find the mirror scene on YouTube.)

I find myself rationalizing: how is this any worse than the fantasies spun by Disney? Uhm, at least a Chinatown showgirl gets paid to work, unlike Cinderella. And the male characters in this case aren’t perfect Prince Charmings but real men who make silly mistakes.

At least that’s what I tell myself.

Cribsheeters, ever shared a favorite old show with your kids and been shocked - in the bright daylight of parenthood - how inappropriate some of it is? (Remember that scene in Mary Poppins where the be-suited father ticks off his wife as she pops in from a suffragette march?)

This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Family Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.