(Credit: Far Out/Warner Bros.)
From 1969, when he first appeared on our screens in the TV movie The Indian Wants the BronxAl Pacino has stunned and excited audiences in equal measure.
He may seem like a natural at the art, but behind his explosive performances is a solid backbone of hard work. As he once said himself, “Forget the career, do the work. If you believe what you’re doing is right and you’re going somewhere and you have a vision and you stick with it, eventually things will happen.”
Pacino’s hard work isn’t limited to his art. Throughout his career, he has always strived to be a pioneer of positive change. As it happens, this very notion is something that attracts him to certain works of art. This is evident in his all-time favorite song, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s old show tune ‘You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught’.
This 1949 song was first performed on the classic Rodgers and the hammerstein musical South PacificAnd it’s the social foresight behind the track that ensnares Pacino. “It was an important time for our country’s history with racial tension. There’s a real passion in the song and its relevance to the times we were living in.” Heat Star Pacino once opined.
The musical is about a blossoming romance between a young nurse and an enigmatic French man who is being called on a dangerous military mission as he is stationed on a South Pacific island during World War II. The musical and subsequent film were described as “in the tradition of the thrilling Around the World in 80 Days” and “the world’s most amazing entertainment!” Can come up with as trite and trivial a tagline as possible. But there is a very serious thing behind this fanfare.
This commentary on race and society is subtly driven home with the lyrics of ‘You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught’, which begins with the brilliant opening lyric, “You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear.” This meant that upon release, the song was deemed “downright inappropriate” for the musical. But the public did not seem to agree. The vinyl soundtrack spent an unprecedented 115 weeks at the top of the album chart, remaining in the top five for 214 weeks (i.e. a little over four years).
Now, it’s clear that the song focuses on equality and racism, but upon release, it was actually banned in Georgia because it was claimed that it had “an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow”. However, this so-called Cold War panic was often projected to be used as a pretext to pursue other agendas.
At the time, one legislator dared to say cynically, “A song justifying interracial marriage was a clear threat to the American way of life.” This resulting reaction was the exact reason the song proved essential in the first place, and it inadvertently exposed the central point of the song itself.
Thus, Rodgers and Hammerstein remained defiant and kept the production on track. This boldly free stance is something Pacino has always admired beyond the sweet melody that makes the effect so musical. It has been his favorite song ever since he heard it for the first time. For godfather Tara, it defines the purpose of art.
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