Have you ever seen the musical comedy “The Music Man”? Either the stage production or the movie? At least one movie channel on DirectTV, a TV provider through the internet, has been showing the original movie recently, and I’ve seen it again after I-don’t-know-how-many years. I’ve always liked it for its catchy music, well-done comedic action, and—somewhat unusual for a musical comedy—its well-thought-out story. That’s why I put it on my favorite movies list.
But there’s something else about “The Music Man” that deserves to be mentioned, and this has to do with the characters and their place within the general story structure. Most stories have a protagonist (the “good guy” or “gal”) and the antagonist (or the “bad person”). This is part of the classical story structure. But in “The Music Man,” the main character is not really the protagonist. Before I get into that in detail, let’s look at the story.
The general story line has to do with the main character, the so-called “Professor” Harold Hill, a traveling salesman who sells boy’s bands, including musical instruments and uniforms to unsuspecting and unsophisticated rural folk in the American Midwest in the early years of the 20th century. But he generally skips town after collecting all the money the town folk pay him, and no instruments or uniforms ever arrive. Then he comes to River City, Iowa, followed by Charlie Cowell, an anvil salesman who’s been hot on Harold Hill’s trail for a long time, intent on exposing him because Hill has been giving honest traveling salesmen a bad reputation. One might expect Hill would be the antagonist in this story, and Cowell the protagonist, and that’s how the show starts. But the monkey wrench in Hill’s plan is Marian Paroo, the town librarian. Hill falls for Marian, but she’s turned off by him when he makes a pass at her. That just wasn’t done in 1910 rural Iowa. She investigates his credentials in a book in the library and almost exposes him to the city government. That could result in him being tarred and feathered, something that might be expected for the “bad” guy. But in classic musical comedy style, Marian falls for him, and when he’s prevented from leaving town, and the musical instruments and uniforms do actually arrive, lo and behold, magic ensues and a boy’s band is actually formed. Hill and Marian (presumably) get married and live happily ever after.
What caught my eye and interest about this story is that Hill starts out as the antagonist, yet by the end of the story he’s transformed into the protagonist, since he actually carries out his claim that he could sell the town on a boy’s band. It’s a huge band, too, with 76 trombones, 110 cornets and all sorts of other players. (What a sound.) Here the antagonist has become the protagonist. (Cowell turns out to be a far less than decent character with the women than Hill ever was, and short of actually becoming the antagonist, he’s really just a bum.)
But the transformation from “bad” guy to “good” guy is a literary device I can’t remember ever running across before in reading fiction. It seems somewhat unusual in concept, though it’s carried out well in “The Music Man.” I’d like to see it done again. Maybe I’ll write a story like that sometime.