Phantom

I finally managed to catch Phantom the other day, with a bunch of other law school friends who were visiting in NYC.

I hate spoilers, so I’ve taken every effort in my adolescence to avoid finding out about the story behind Phantom. When Channel 5 screened it, I would hide in my room and do sit-ups. When my friends talked about it I would sprint hastily away. When Phantom came to Singapore, I would… ok you get the idea.

So I got very fit. And I was blissfully unaware of the plot, aside from the nugget that there was a girl, and that there was a guy. I also suspected that one of them wore a mask, not sure who.

Last week, as I sat in Majestic Theatre and watched Phantom unfold, I was entranced, beguiled, captivated… and eventually horrified. Horrified!

What do you mean, Christine doesn’t end up with the Phantom!? Wait, is that Raoul she is going off with?! The Phantom forced her to choose, and she sacrificed herself to keep that smirky-slimy-opulent-arrogant-ratass-toyboy safe?!?!

I remember sitting there long after the curtains fell, long after the cast came on stage to receive the applause, long after the lights were turned on and people started filing out, just to see if the Phantom would prance out from behind a rock and stab that bilebag Raoul. That would have gotten the standing ovation from me.

Outside the theatre, I was righteously indignant at the way no one else gave a damn about the Phantom:

Me: Wait, so it didn’t bother you guys that the Phantom ended up alone?
Friend 1: Bo pian la, he must have been really fugly.
Me: But he was sincere! And nice to her! And he really loved her!
Friend 2: Raoul also what. Plus Raoul handsome.
Me: But, but…
Friend 3: If two girls loved you equally, and one looked like Fiona Xie and one looked like Boon Kiat, who would you pick?
Me: But, but…
Friend 1: But what?
Me: … but the Phantom got his own Bat Cave also ma. How cool. Right?

Later I realized that I had been insidiously poisoned by Disney. I had smugly expected that Christine, temporarily smitten with Raoul, would come to see how his soul was much uglier and darker than the Phantom could ever be. Like, it would come to light that Raoul trafficked in babies or something.

The Phantom, in a dramatic rousing scene, would then snatch Christine away from the evil clutches of Raoul, and spirit her away to a land of grassy plains, blooming flowers and cheap facials, and they would live happily ever after.

To my great distress, the plot for Phantom doesn’t vary much across the movie, the books, the comic books, the audiotapes. In every single iteration of the story, I kept witnessing the Phantom climb that heady staircase of Hope, only to inevitably fall so ungracefully after. It’s a most irksome story.

Some friends have tried to figure out why the story bugs me so. Some believe I see myself in the Phantom (ok maybe the singing bit only), some say that it's the disgust at how Raoul had everything whilst the Phantom ended up with nothing. It's simpler than that, I think.

I read elsewhere that humans are fascinated by tragedies – if a happy ending and a tragic one were to compete for the privilege of finishing off an epic story, chances are the tragic one would win out. That sense of injustice, of what could have been, would haunt audiences much longer than a cheesy nauseatingly happy one would.

Makes you wonder which of the endings we all subconsciously seek in our own, personal lives.