The Second Love Triangle

Oklahoma! is one of the most captivating movie's ever made.
Its dream sequence brilliantly evokes
images and ideas that are essential elements of the audience's psychology.
Unlike most fantasy and dream sequences,
which disrupt the audience's immersion in the story,
this one is so evocative, it draws the audience deeper in
and is a haunting presence for the rest of the movie.

It gives the story a mythic dimension
as Laurey descends from her rural paradise,
where she wants everything to remain the same,
into the underworld of her fears, which are threatening
to turn her paradise into a Hell on earth.

But there is something missing,
both from the dream sequence
and from the love triangle that is resolved
with the killing of Jud.
And this omission may keep the movie
from evoking the full range of emotions in audiences.

A key to understanding what is missing
can be found in the movie's second love triangle,
which parallels the first.

The hero of this second triangle is Will Parker,
the man who returned from Kansas City,
where he experienced wonder and temptation
in response to girls who go as far as they can go.

There's Will, as we saw him earlier,
telling the crowd about the marvels of the city.

Will, in many ways, is a double for Curly,
the hero of the primary love triangle.
Like Curly, he's young, good looking, romantic, and brave,
but he's a little less good looking,
and not too bright. Overall,
he's a more childlike and less idealized hero.

It turns out that Will needs $50 to win the approval
of Mr. Carnes, the father of Annie, the girl he loves.
He wins the money at a steer roping contest
at the fair in Kansas City,
and then wastes it on presents for Annie,
so, once again, he lacks the money.

He gets it back and, impulsively,
is ready to spend it again,
to buy the company of Annie and her picnic basket
at the charity auction at the social.
His actions unmistakably mark him as a lovable fool.

Meanwhile, Annie (actually her full name is Ado Annie)
is like Laurey in that she is
new to womanhood and interested in men.
But Annie's not as pretty as Laurey
and, unlike Laurey, who is virginal,
Annie is a girl who can't say no.

As Annie explains in a song at a local swimming hole,
"I heared a lot of stories and I reckon they are true
about how girls are put upon by men.
I know I mustn't fall into the pit.
But when I'm with a feller I forgit.
I'm just a girl who can't say no.
I'm in a terrible fix.
I always say 'Come on, let's go,' "
just when I oughta say 'Nix.' "

But Annie is also infatuated with the smooth-talking,
older, peddler, a Persian traveling salesman named Ali Hakim
(played by Eddie Albert). He's a man
who knows how to take advantage of people
who can't say no, whether they're customers
or impressionable young girls.
Annie has mistaken his romantic talk,
which is intended to get her into bed,
for a proposal of marriage.

Like Jud, the Peddler is an outsider
with a predatory nature.
But whereas Jud is violent and vengeful,
the Peddler is conniving and successful,
embodying a well-known cliché in American movies
in which merchants from the Mideast.
are depicted as expert manipulators.

Here's the Peddler trying to wolf his way
up Laurey's arm, despite the fact that Annie,
who he's just been romancing, is standing right there.

Here he is, having given one green garter belt
to Aunt Eller, and now trying to tempt her
into buying the second one to match it.

And here are the three participants
in the second love triangle.
On the left is the shrewd and older Peddler,
who is using Annie.
On the right is the loveable fool, Will, who really loves her,
with Annie caught in the middle.

Unfortunately for the Peddler,
Annie's father has chosen him for Annie,
in the hopes of saving her from foolish Will,
and the father is prepared to enforce his desires at the point of a gun.
Whereas Aunt Eller sees the correct man for her niece, Laurey,
this foolish father makes the wrong choice for his daughter.

So, in many ways,
this second love triangle is a less exalted double
for the primary love triangle,
just as the male and female in the dream
are doubles for Laurey and Curly in the primary triangle.

But this second love triangle
is different from the primary triangle
in at least one other way --
the female is romantically interested
in both the hero, Will, and the challenger, the Peddler,
which means the challenger -- the outcast --
has a chance to win her hand in marriage,
or at least would if he were so motivated.

And that's what is missing from Oklahoma! --
the romantic heroine, Laurey, in the primary love triangle
isn't drawn to Jud, the challenger.
She turns to him only because she's afraid of adulthood
and then spends the rest of the movie trying to escape him
and find her way back to her true love, Curly.
She's never really drawn to the dark side or seduced
and never really in conflict with herself over the two men.

Apparently, the creators wanted to keep the primary heroine
virginally pure, and they wanted her to represent a woman
who is running away from adult love,
so they displaced the image of a woman
capable of being seduced by her desires
onto Annie in the second love triangle.

Since Laurey can't be seduced,
her would-be seducer, Jud, must be repulsive
and not alluring, which makes him more two-dimensional.
And that's what Jud, played by Rod Steiger, is --
a lump of a villain who can only haunt Laurie,
but never act as a lure.

That makes for a consistent story,
but the result is a conflict -- and resolution --
that is less satisfying than it might be otherwise.
It means the journey of Laurey's double through the dream
is only a horror and never a temptation.
And she only learns a deeper version of what she knows
almost from the beginning -- that Jud frightens her --
rather than learning that an attraction to dangerous men
is a mistake.

It also means that the moment in the dream
when Laurey's double seems about to
go over to the dark side and become Jud's bride
doesn't make much sense
because there is nothing alluring to go over to.

It is interesting to compare this to
depictions in other movies.
In Dracula, for example
we see a stalker of women
who is both alluring and disturbing,
which makes things disturbingly interesting.
In King Kong, the monster visibly suffers
and has compassion, which adds some pathos.

By contrast, Jud is both an oafish villain
and a true monster, who is not only outwardly unappealing,
but lacks a soul.
He is neither gruesome enough to be horrible,
nor alluring or sympathetic,
which inevitably limits the audience's response.


Will, who isn't all that bright, and who returned from Kansas City	is in love with Annie, the girl who can't say "No". But she thinks she's in love with	the conniving Peddler, Ali Hakim, who is really just trying to seduce her.