The movie Chicago takes a slightly different perspective than the Broadway musical. The movie’s metaphor is that "it's all show business," and indeed all of Roxie’s reveries are show business. As we have seen elsewhere, this seems to be a pretty popular way of making sense of the world: In the Cosmic Game, from Shiva to Shakespeare, the metaphor was prevalent, and Jung, too, conceived of the psyche in this way. Roxie’s reveries reflect the poetic imagination, and are an example of the "life as show business" metaphor, too. As we have seen, dreams, reveries, fantasies, and hysterical symptoms are all ways that the psyche plays. Roxie’s reveries are all set on the stage of the Onyx theater, also referred to as the Onyx Club, and so one more excursion is in order. Let us take a fieldtrip to the Onyx Theater, a dark, shadowy, underworldly, speakeasy and then we will come back and finish looking at the remaining themes.

Onyx Theater Excursion

The Onyx Theater is the place where Roxie sees Velma for the first time, and projects herself onto the stage. The Onyx Theater is also the main setting for the musical numbers, when Roxie goes into her fanasties, the imaginal Onyx if you will. When we first see Roxie and Velma together, it is at the Onyx, with Roxie in the audience and Velma on the stage, later in the movie, the situation is somewhat reversed.

The Onyx is a dark place, the lights are low, and the band pours out rich jazz, as the booze flows freely. The curtains are sparkling black, reflecting the limelight, as Velma performs. The filmmakers, in describing the Onyx, describe its “beautiful faded glory wallpaper crimpling off walls, light fixtures cracked and broken” (Marshall, 2003a, DVD). This might be an allusion to the fleeting nature of fame, which Roxie seems to lament in her last fantasy in the song “Nowadays,” where Roxie mournfully sings “but nothing stays.” The Onyx was essentially a character in the movie, too. The director and set designer created a whole back-story for it:

“We decided that this Onyx Theater was once a working theater, maybe built around the turn of the century, and then for some reason it was closed down or just left vacant for about 10 or 15 years until Prohibition came along. And then somebody had this idea of selling some bootleg hooch there and reopened it. But they didn’t want to put any money into it.” And the Onyx onscreen coveys that vision with its chipped gilded boxes and the proscenium, the gold edged crimson curtains, the worn black stage, and the flickering amber lights around ebony tables. It’s the perfect platform for Roxie’s gritty glamorous dreamscape. (Kobel, 2003, pp. 54, 57)

When we see Roxie and Velma together again after their release from jail, it is again at the Onyx. Roxie has come full circle and is up on stage unsuccessfully auditioning “Nowadays” in a more upbeat cutesy way, than the darker fantasy version. Velma has been watching Roxie from the shadows in the audience area. This view of the Onyx is different. Since the stage and back wall are bare, the glamour and allure are absent in the harsh glare of the overhead lights. A lone piano accompanies Roxie’s song. Let us look more deeply into Onyx through a bit of amplification—or look at the "Onyx amplified," because this is one way that depth psychology plays!

A Colorful Perspective

Onyx is a deep jet-black color (CID, 2005, online), and black is often associated with the unconscious, the shadow, or the nigredo in alchemy. Black is completely dark with no light, because it absorbs nearly all visible light, which results in an absence of reflection. Black refers to dealing with serious things in a humorous and macabre way and to carrying out matters in utmost secrecy. Black also suggests being filled with anger or hostility, or being so depressed as to end all hope; black is associated with severely bad conditions or misfortune, and is also felt to be evil or associated with evil (Encarta, 1999, Word dictionary).

Mineralogical And Esoteric Qualities

Onyx is a mineral that is frequently used to make cameos, because it has different banded layers of different colors, most commonly black, white, and reddish brown. Onyx comes from the Greek word onyx meaning nail or claw (AHD, 2000c, p. 1231). Onyx represents the Astrological sign Leo: playful dramatic, royal, vain, pompous, and Melody (1995) reports some of onyx's purported healing properties:

Can also help one to see the duality of one’s nature and to synthesize the yin and yang into the whole. It can be used to provide glimpses of that which lies “beyond,” while providing for activation of the memory with respect to one’s “roots” and reality. It further helps one to follow the path alone, promoting the recognition of personal strengths and assisting one in the understanding of the reality of the moment. It helps one to become the master of one’s own future. (p. 452)

Esoterically, onyx is one of the tools for scrying or divination. Usually a black mirror, sometimes of glass, obsidian or onyx into which one would gaze to see or predict the future, to catch sight of something difficult to discern. It may be either flat or concave, and is usually created with special rituals and materials. (Esoteric, 2005, online) So here we have an allusion to a dark mirror that reveals hidden things. (Esoteric, 2005) http://en.mimi.hu/esoteric/onyx.html. Indeed it seems that the Onyx was an apt choice for the theater in which Roxie's reveries take place.

Mythical Look

The Onyx Club is also interesting from a mythic perspective. When I heard the word onyx, I first thought of the deep jet-black color, and then I thought of the Greek Goddess Nyx. So, let us follow that tangent and see where it takes us, remembering that one of the functions of both play and myth is to take us back to beginnings, and to illo tempore. By looking at Onyx in this way we can see the power of play to help us to see deeper into the nature of things. Of special note are the different progeny of Nyx who play an important role in the movie. “O” used before a name or pronoun refers to a person or thing being formally addressed (AHD, 2000c, p. 1210). "O" is also a preposition meaning, “derived from or coming from, caused by resulting from. Made from, belonging or connected to, centering on or directed towards” (p. 1219).

Nxy was the Greek goddess of night. She was considered to be among the first deities ever to exist, having originated from primeval Chaos at the same time as Erebus (darkness), Gaia, Tartarus, and Eros. With her brother, Erebus, she became the mother of Aether (the air) and Hemera (the day), “so from the dark womb of night came light of day” (R. E. Bell, 1991b, CD-Rom).

From Nyx were also born some of the most powerful and portentous of the personified forces: Thanatos (death), Hypnos (sleep), Moros (fate), Ker (doom), Oneiroi (dreams), Momus (reproach), Nemesis (retribution), Oizys (pain), Eris (strife), Geras (old age), the Three Fates (Moirae), Philotes (love), and the Hesperides. Nyx’s residence was the darkness of Hades, and her realm was in the Far West beyond the land of Atlas (Grant, 1993, CD-Rom; Grimal, 1991, CD-Rom).

The Theogony tells us of Eris’s children, Nyx’s grandchildren:

But abhorred Strife bore painful Toil and Forgetfulness and Famine and tearful Sorrows, Fightings also, Battles, Murders, Manslaughters, Quarrels, Lying Words, Disputes, [230] Lawlessness and Ruin, all of one nature, and Oath who most troubles men upon earth when anyone willfully swears a false oath. (Paris, 2000, CD-Rom)

These are some of the major themes portrayed in the movie Chicago, as the Broadway musical's tagline states: “Murder, Greed, Corruption, Violence, Exploitation, Adultery, Treachery, All those things we hold near and dear to our hearts.” (h2g2, 2003, online). (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/a839081)

In some accounts, Nyx was the daughter of the cosmic unifying force of nature, Eros. She was regarded as a subduer of gods and men. Sometimes seen as riding in a black chariot holding an extinguished torch inverted, she was envisioned as winged, with a dark dress, and on her head was a star-spangled veil. Stars blinked around her or perhaps through her. She was also sometimes seen carrying two children in her arms (one white, personifying Sleep, the other black, personifying Death) (Murray, 1993, CD-Rom). The dark sparkling curtains of the club are especially appropriate attire for Nyx.

The Orphics, whose tradition has shamanic roots, cunningly added their myths before and after Hesiod’s Theogony, so as not to conflict with the existing Greek structure (Ulansey, 2003, lecture). Their major god, Phanes, was the son of Night. Graves (1985, CD-Rom) gives this account:

Black-winged Night, a goddess of whom even Zeus stands in awe, was courted by the Wind and laid a silver egg in the womb of Darkness; and that Eros, whom some call Phanes, was hatched from this egg and set the Universe in motion . . . . Night . . . lived in a cave with him, displaying herself in triad: Night, Order, and Justice. Before this cave sat the inescapable mother Rhea, playing on a brazen drum, and compelling man's attention to the oracles of the goddess. Phanes created earth, sky, sun, and moon, but the triple-goddess ruled the universe, until her scepter passed to Uranus.

As we have seen in the method chapter, Eros-Phanes has been associated with Hermes and Kairos.

By delving deeper into the nature of onyx, we have been able to get a richer understanding of the setting, and have seen how truly apt this choice of name really is. The ludic function of the unconscious is like that: creative, deep, mysterious, multileveled, and multiperspectival. Onyx indeed shows us this. The Onyx Theater provides a stage where we can see things differently, with a metaphorical underworldly vision. The Onyx seems to be a dark mirror that we can see through, to learn more of our dual nature, apprehending our darker aspects, as they make cameo appearances. The contrasting layers alert us to our own dual nature, allowing us to go beyond our usual dayworld vision and discover hidden gems in the shadows of Hades's realm. ∆RC[ch8]

It’s All Show Business

Chicago is a “concept musical” where everything is in service to the metaphor—“life is vaudeville” (Marshall, 2003b, DVD). As Billy Flynn says to Roxie, when they are about to enter the courtroom: “It's all a circus, a three ring circus, these trials, the whole world, it's show business.” This should sound somewhat familiar, since it echoes the ideas we explored in the “Cosmic Game” chapter. Not only does the entire movie revolve around the interplay between fantasy and reality, it shows that the imagination can also affect real life—how we can make reality from fantasy, by taking bits and pieces of different events, as in dreams, and use them somewhere else in a creative way. In this way, life really is but a dream, and bricolage rules! Let us see how this "it's all show business theme" plays throughout Chicago.

Roxie learns from Mama that the truth will only get her hung and that good representation can save her: “the truth, that’s a one-way ticket to the death house . . . . In this town, murder’s a form of entertainment,” so Mama helps Roxie obtain Billy Flynn’s legal services. Without regard for the truth, Billy dreams up Roxie’s defense: “Sweetest little Jazz killer to ever hit Chicago, that’s the angle I’m after.” Billy creates Roxie’s character, which is a total fiction: Billy portrays Roxie as a victim, and the role no one can resist “a reformed sinner,” all in order to get sympathy, capture the public’s attention, and get people to care about Roxie.

Billy and Mama rehearse Roxie’s lines and history with her, and then Billy sells Roxie's story to the press. What the movie depicts was actually happening in Chicago during the 1920s, as we keep in mind that Chicago is based on reality, that reporters could and did affect public opinion. Queen Latifah reminds us: “the press is just as powerful today as it was then. The press, just by what they do shape people’s opinions.” The Jazz Age, after all, was the real coming of age of mass media; the 1920s saw national radio networks, the tabloids, talking movies, musicals, public relations, and the birth of television. The spin started here! The Jazz Age was all about the return of the repressed, shadowy things were very prominent. Although the journalists are manipulated by Billy, they can sell more papers when they spin things in certain ways. Richard Gere remarks that Chicago “is about the symbiotic nature of everyone involved with this judiciary show business…. It’s very cynical about it, and for good reason. We live in an age where that’s in our face all the time” (Kobel, 2003, p. 108). As Roxie reminds us: “not that the truth really matters.”

Roxie creates her own fiction with her false pregnancy to keep her name in the spotlight when it is in danger of being extinguished by Give ‘em Hell Kitty. Roxie also steals all of Velma’s “bits” during the trial. Speaking of the trial, immediately prior to Roxie testifying, Billy coaches Roxie again on her part, and she admits to being up all night practicing. At the trial, Billy tellingly slips and refers to the jury as “the audience,” then he mouths the words of Roxie’s testimony along with her. The entire song “Razzle Dazzle” beautifully and breathtakingly expands on Billy’s theatrical tactics. In the seductive shimmer of sequins, we almost lose ourselves, and are temporarily blinded to the sleazy nature of what is really occurring.

Continued on page 6