Chicago Playbook for Chicago 6

When Velma takes the stand to testify against Roxie, she clears her throat saying “I haven’t worked in a while,” alluding to her testimony being an act, which Billy reinforces by saying: “Since you gave such an impressive performance for Mr. Harrison, I wonder if you’d do me the same honor.” Billy goes on to pull a few fast ones, after having anonymously added a few erroneous phrases to Roxie’s diary, which he then uses to hook the District Attorney into imaginably implicating himself. District Attorney Harrison unwittingly becomes a foil for Billy’s wild imaginings, and Harrison's protests only serve to play further into Billy’s hands. While Billy is spinning these fantasies, he readily admits they’re ridiculous, absurd, outrageous, beyond all imaginings, and inconceivable, yet Billy actually gets the jury to consider them and apparently they buy his story. Billy has orchestrated the whole trial through his imaginative tricks and traps, not only behind the scenes, but through his thrilling theatrics and tapdancing. Billy uses fancy footwork and fast-talking to free both Velma and Roxie.

Chicago is an example of what Scheckner (2002) refers to as “dark play.” Dark play, according to Scheckner “‘is playing with fire,’ ‘breaking the rules,’ ‘getting away with murder.’ Playing which emphasizes risk, deception, and sheer thrill” (p. 106). Chicago is all of this, and then some! Dark play is related to deep play, already discussed in relation to Shiva’s dice game, which is all-absorbing, and where the stakes are so high that it is irrational to engage in it at all. Scheckner explicates:

“Playing in the dark” means that some of the players don’t know they are playing. It is connected to maya-lila and to the feeling of being caught in the toils of fate or chance. It involves fantasy, risk, luck, daring, invention and deception. Dark play may be entirely private, known to the player alone. Or it can erupt suddenly, a bit of microplay, seizing the player(s) and then as quickly subsiding—a wisecrack, burst of frenzy, delirium, or deadly risk. Dark play subverts order, dissolves frames, and breaks its own rules—so much so that the playing itself in danger of being destroyed, as in spying, double agentry, con games, and stings. Unlike carnivals or ritual clowns whose inversions of established order is sanctioned by authorities, dark play is truly subversive, its agendas always hidden. Dark play’s goals are deceit, disruption, excess and gratification. First they subvert the metacommunicative message this is play, some players do not know that a game is being played. These non-knowing players—innocents, dupes, butts, victims—are essential to the playing. (pp. 106-107)

Scheckner (2002) notes that some kinds of dark play are also engaged by children. They find ways around the rules, mock adults, play pranks. In doing these things, children establish autonomous social orders and hierarchies, explore or explode limits of power, and resist the adult world. Assuming new or alternative identity is a very important element in this, Sheckner says, and masking or cloaking one’s ordinary self just to get away from the humdrum is also important (p. 108). ∆RC[ch9]

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, Who’s the Most Narcissistic One of All?

Mirrors, mirrored surfaces, or glittery things figure prominently in several of Roxie’s reveries. In “Funny Honey,” where Roxie sings about how much her husband loves her, the jet-black piano has a mirror finish in which we can see Roxie’s reflection. In “All I Care About”—the inmates wear skimpy sequined costumes and silver-dollar sized Mylar silver confetti rains down; showing what Billy actually cares about, money and his own self- interest. In the Roxie number, not only is there a mirror finish on the jet-black floor and a mirrorlike quality to Roxie’s diamond costume, but also actual mirrors appear and multiply throughout the song, while Roxie imagines her act. In “Razzle Dazzle,” Billy’s suit has sequin-like stripes, and the surrealistic scene is awash with sequins, rhinestones, sparkling confetti and other kinds of glittering “eye-candy.” These imaginal mirrors allude to narcissism (Marshall, 2003b, DVD).

The mirrors may also allude to getting trapped by the allure of surfaces, especially sparkling ones, and seeing only reflections of ourselves in others—but they also can show some deeper truths, too, as we saw in Hillman’s discussion of the underworld and shadows. Could this symptom, so brilliantly mirrored to us in this movie be saying something else as well? Could narcissism be asking us to reflect deeply, to be with our images and see ourselves in them, allowing us to die into them and possibly be reborn differently? Could the desire for celebrity and stars be a misguided attempt to get back to our cosmic origins? Mirrors may sometimes reveal the truth, and sometimes just reflect fantasy and illusion; if we are not careful, we can get caught in our own reflection.

Mirrors occur during and immediately before important actions in the move, in “real world” Chicago. They seem to have a different meaning than the mirrors in Roxie’s imagination, which generally are references to narcissism. In the real world, there is a mirror in back of the Onyx Theater at the beginning in which we see the reflection of the back of the theatre; what is going on behind the scenes. The mirror is slanted, letting us see things from a different angle. We only get a brief glimpse of this first mirror as the manager is searching for Velma, right before she arrives. The next mirror we see is in Velma’s dressing room. Prior to preparing to go on, it is in the mirror that we see Velma unwrap the bloody gun getting blood on her hands.

After Fred gets out of Roxie’s bed for the last time, we see him in the mirror in the bathroom, his back is reflected as he uses the toilet, and Roxie is reminiscing about Velma on the night of the murder. A few moments later, while Fred is looking in the mirror adjusting his tie, we see both his and Roxie's reflection as Fred disillusions Roxie by telling her she’ll never have an act: "you're a two-bit talent and I'm a furniture salesman." Fred says as admits he lied about knowing the manager of the Onyx Theater. In this mirror, we see that Fred is a narcissistic man, who was only using Roxie for his own needs. We also see Roxie’s astonished reaction that he didn’t tell anyone about her. Then after Roxie kills Fred, she looks in the same mirror, and we see Roxie with the gun in her hand. As Roxie then dissociates, we see her flash back to the Onyx Theater stage and we hear “hacha whoopee.” In this mirror, we are reminded of Velma’s performance where Roxie identified with her. Just prior to that performance, Velma had committed a double murder, killing her husband and sister, who she caught in bed together. We see that Roxie has avenged herself in a similar manner. The blurring that occurs suggests that the line between fantasy and reality may not always be clear, and also perhaps alludes to Roxie’s fusion with Velma. In those mirrors, we see that both Roxie and Velma have guns in their hands.

During the “Cell Block Tango,” we see one of the murderess’s reflection in a small mirror explaining unconvincingly how her husband ran into her knife, ten times. The next time we see a mirror is on the medicine cabinet in the bathroom next to Mama’s office as Roxie eavesdrops and uses the mirror to look through the door to see Mama and Velma. Through this mirror, Roxie can see behind the scenes, what is hidden from her direct view: Roxie learns the cost of communication, and can reflect on her possibilities, because at that moment, Roxie sees a possible way out for herself.

Lastly, Roxie looks at herself in the mirror right before the trial, truly seeing that the dress Billy has picked is actually appropriate. She seems to be honestly assessing the situation, in the same room where she formerly had her “diva scene” when she fired Billy over the same dress before the innocent Hunyak’s hanging. We see Roxie's reflection as Billy joins her in the mirror giving her last minute coaching. The dress is black with a white collar, subtly reminiscent of a nun’s habit, which perfectly fits Roxie’s created character, alluding to innocence.

Other more subtle forms of reflection, which show that what we are really looking at the whole time is ourselves occur in the opening shot, with Roxie’s eye, and in the closing number with Roxie’s and Velma’s chosen color—white. We see the "C" lights flickering in Roxie’s eye, around her pupil. This is reminiscent of Jung's Bollingen stone. When Jung(1961/1989) wrote about the Telesphoros on his stone, he said that was a pupilla. The pupilla, Jung explains, is a little doll: the reflection of yourself that you see in another’s eye. Thus, we can see ourselves, as we look into Roxie’s eye, just as we can see Chicago in Roxie’s eye, and through Roxie’s eyes. Roxie is Chicago and Roxie is us, too: we are Chicago. The ending merely reinforces this, because white is the color that reflects nearly everything back, that is, nearly all light from all visible wavelengths (Encarta, 1999, Word dictionary).

Roxie and Velma remind us, the audience, that they couldn’t have done it without us. Their white sequined gowns reflect back to us. They are merely reflecting us, indeed they couldn’t have done it without us. They are also double, they sing and dance in unison. According to von Franz (1977), when a symbol appears in double form, in general, it means that what is symbolized is about to come into consciousness: “So doubleness means touching the threshold of consciousness, being still a little ambiguous, consciousness not yet knowing how to say what is what, partly still mixed up with the continuum of other unconscious contents” (pp. 26-27). And what is coming to consciousness through this doubling is that we are complicit, we are responsible for what we have witnessed, it is our lives that we see reflected back to us. Our obsession with celebrity and crime and our fascination with the shadows and seamier side of life can all be seen in the projected images of the film Chicago.

One last mirror is the poetry of the lyrics of the songs that are sung at the Onyx. The Onyx itself provides a vehicle for reflection, and the songs themselves are also mirrors. Paz (1991) discusses how poetry is a mirror:

The relationship between man and poetry is as old as our history: it began when human beings began to be human. The first hunters and gatherers looked at themselves in astonishment one day, for an interminable instant, in the still waters of a poem. Since that moment, people have not stopped looking at themselves in this mirror. And they have seen themselves, at one and the same time, as creators of images and as images of their creations. For that reason I can say with a modicum of certainty, that as long as there are people, there will be poetry. The relationship, however, may be broken. Born of the human imagination, it may die if imagination dies or is corrupted. If human beings forget poetry, they will forget themselves. And return to original chaos. (p. 159-60) ∆RC[ch10]

Now, we will go on to look at Chicago a little more closely, through these lyrics, through song and story, as we contemplate Chicago: “Chapter and Verse.”

Continued on page 7