Never enough love: the failings of P.T. Barnum's fight for fame (The Greatest Showman)

The Greatest Showman was one of the greatest movies of the last few years. The catchy tunes, the exploration of the human condition, and the message of self-love were enough to propel the movie to a spot of lasting fame and notoriety among fans and the entertainment industry alike. Besides, it had a pretty solid cast of familiar faces and a few breakout performers.

It was fascinating to hear, as the movie quickly gained traction, that this was a story which Hugh Jackman had hoped to tell for a long time. I wondered while watching it what had so intrigued him about P.T. Barnum that he wanted to immortalize the man on screen—why did he want to tell Barnum's life story?

Something special

It is clear from this film that Barnum was unique. His mind worked in such a different way than the rest of the people around him. While the movie depicts this through his particular brand of imagination and inventive thinking as a child leading to an illustrious career, in reality he was a trendsetter of epic proportions. His love of the unusual and the misunderstood was unprecedented, leading to the creation of museums, shows, and circuses like nothing else. 

But his political views were also ahead of his time. Although only hinted at in the movie, Barnum was a firm believer in the equality of all of humankind. He demonstrated this through his acceptance of his "freaks" and his intention to help people come to appreciate their uniqueness. Furthermore, he had a short career in politics, where he used his position to push for racial equality.

What made Barnum so special was that the things that made him different from so many of the people around him were the same things that enabled him to more fully appreciate the uniqueness of those around him.

The other side of the coin

However, no one is perfect. Despite his progressive views, Barnum wasn't the greatest man (especially when it came to his shows). In his drive for greatness,  Barnum sometimes seems to have been so in love with the fame and success that he had no room in his heart left for the people in his life who made all of it possible.

Take, for example, his treatment of his "freaks." While he was awed by their uniqueness, and hoped to share their beauty with the world, he often turned medical conditions and uncommon physical traits into shows that weren't always the most dignified or respectful. More than that, though, the movie shows us that even he was ashamed of them at times, preventing them from socializing with the more "respectable" folks in society. It made me wonder, at times, whether he appreciated his stars more for the attention they brought him than because of their own personal merits.

And then, in a similar pattern of behaviour, Barnum began to neglect his family in order to chase fame. Having found his most notable and well-earning act, the singer Jenny Lind, he insisted on accompanying her grand tour, leaving his wife alone with their girls. While it was his big heart and his innovative thinking that attracted his wife, even she was pushed aside for his moment in the limelight. 

It would seem that Barnum's grab for glory left him so full of self-love that he didn't always have enough love left for anyone else.

Thinking of others

The way that The Greatest Showman wraps up the story, however, makes the ending a happy one. When everything he has been working for is destroyed and gone, Barnum is left empty, but it is through this loss that he comes to see that he'd been too focused on himself. While it unfortunately took losing everything else to realize that he had friends and family surrounding him with love and support, Barnum nonetheless came to understand that the community he built and the love he gave could make a greater impact than his circus ever could.

This is why we choose to tell stories of the past: to learn from the hard lessons that other people have had to face so that we hopefully don't make the same mistakes. Perhaps that is why Jackman was so set on sharing Barnum's with all of us.