Being Born Into Adulthood__________________________

Given all the imagery of matriarchy, it is appropriate
that Oklahoma! also includes the imagery of birth,
and that the plot is based on the stages of birth.

In fact, the movie begins by symbolically giving birth to the audience.
The camera tunnels through the cornfield
and emerges into the Oklahoma plains,
which are comfortably contained by distant mountains.

As the stalks of corn separate and disappear
it is almost as if curtains are parting
to reveal the opening of the play.

But, as the camera pushes its way through
to reveal the open space of the plains,
there is a also sense that we are being symbolically born,
as birth canal, pubic hair, and legs make way for us.

We emerge, not into an unsheltered world
but into a womblike environment -- a kind of nursery --
in which we will vicariously experience a second birth
as the characters grow into adulthood.

In keeping with this symbolism,
the movie depicts six of the seven characters
as being born into adulthood:
Curly and Laurey; Will and Annie;
and the Peddler and extra female, Gertie.
The seventh member, Jud, dies
so the primary couple can be born.

In order for this process of birth to take place
Will, Annie and the Peddler
have to give up their adolescent promiscuity.
With Annie and Will, it is a case of
learning to exert adult control over sexual desires.
In the case of the Peddler, his comments make clear
that he sees marriage as a trap, and prefers to remain
a bachelor on the prowl.

But it is Laurey who is the most important
symbolic infant who is born in the movie
as she overcomes her fear
of vulnerability to another person,
and the change brought about by adult love.

As part of this imagery, we see Laurey go through
a set of experiences that correspond
to what the psychological theorist Stanislav Grof
has described as the stages of birth.

According to Grof,
the experience of being born
can be divided into four stages.
First, the fetus leads what is often an ideal existence
in the womb. Then, as contractions begin,
it has a sense of being threatened
but is trapped and unable to escape.
In the third stage, it moves through the birth canal
and undergoes a death and rebirth struggle
that seems to be of titanic proportions
in which its existence seems threatened.
In the final stage, it is born in a final struggle
and has a sense of deliverance and salvation.

Grof believes we not only experience this
at the time, but also remember and reenact
these experiences later in life,
and express them in art and mythology.

One of the many things that is interesting
about Grof's stages
is that they also seem to characterize
the young person's growth into adulthood,
as he (or she) goes from a childhood of innocent pleasures
to the disturbance and then the tumultuous conflicts
of adolescence, brought on by emerging sexuality
and issues of independence, which may then be resolved
by entering an adult relationship
that represents a new stage of life
and brings feelings of deliverance and salvation.

Given the similarities between
the stages of birth and of growing into adulthood,
we probably perceive growing up
as a process in which we are born a second time into adult life.
It is this archetypal perception
that is depicted in the movie
which shows Laurey as she passes through the stages of birth
on her way to adulthood.

The depiction begins with Laurey in a peaceful, untroubled, place
in which her simple desires are fulfilled,
which corresponds to the first stage of life in the womb.
Laurey expresses her desire to remain in this state, forever,
as she tells Aunt Eller that she wants everything
"to stay just the way it is."

By this time, however, there is already a growing sense of discomfort
brought on by her argument with Curly
and her fear of Jud, which corresponds
to the beginning of contractions in the womb.
As the trouble intensifies,
Laurey has a sense that there is no exit,
which would correspond to the infant's sense,
as contractions take place, that there is no way out.
Here, Laurey is trapped and her efforts to escape are futile,
as her world undergoes a malevolent transformation.

This sense of entrapment is found in most of the movie
as Laurey is unable to free herself from Jud.
But its most obvious expression is in her double's journey
through the underworld and dark womb of the dream
in which the malevolent transformation becomes explicit
and Laurey undergoes various demonic imitations of birth
that merely extend her entrapment.

Here, we see an example as Laurey's double in the dream
tries to escape Jud by running through a door.
But the door opens into a long, fenced-in, path
that leads only to Jud's smokehouse shack.
She is caught in a demonic imitation of birth
in which she goes down the birth canal
not into adulthood
but to a life of being enslaved by Jud
and being walled off from life.

Given the imagery described earlier
(and odd as this may sound to the conscious mind)
she is trying to be born but can emerge
only into Jud's hovel -- his anus --
meaning she is trapped into being born
into his life of anal deadness.

She then goes through another opening
that again leads to Jud, in the saloon,
where dancers who ludely emphasize their back ends
try to get her to be born again
as a fallen woman and bride to Jud as savior of darkness.

Here, she tries to escape Jud again
by running up a stairway to nowhere.

By some magic, it leads her
into a kind of haunted house
with a long hallway that is another depiction of a birth canal.
The door at the end then opens and gives birth to her.

She runs from the house,
right back to Jud, who she is unable to escape.

Just as Laurey's actual farm house
is an image of the good mother and womb
that she wants to be protected by forever,
so this haunted house is a demonic mother
giving birth to her into Jud's fallen world
in which she will be enslaved by dark desires.

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