kev

in trousers is at its core about misogyny, that is its core theme, which is shown by how marvin hurts the women in his life, specifically his wife, his sweetheart, and miss goldberg. it would conflict the themes and narrative if miss goldberg hurt marvin, as this would diminish what marvin does to the other women. marvin does come up with excuses for his actions/ tries to garner sympathy in the musical (im talking 1979 vers here, i’m not as well versed on the 1985) he is immediately hit with trina shutting him down with her telling us how his actions have hurt her more than they’ve hurt him.

another thing is that the women are mostly not themselves, but rather versions of themselves that exist in marvin’s head. this doesn’t apply to trina, as she is the only woman in the musical who tells her own story. for example, your lips and me and its reprise tell us very specifically events that are happening in her life and how she’s feeling, she also tells her about her past. she also addresses marvin directly in breakfast over sugar.

whereas his sweetheart and miss goldberg do not have songs like this. “my highschool sweetheart” doesn’t tell us anything about his sweetheart other than that she’s his sweetheart, she’s a person, and that she wants marvin to pay attention to her more. but there honestly isn’t much in the musical to confirm that she actually is a person at all, she insists her own existence but marvin never pays attention to her or even addresses her existence, in childhood or adulthood.

miss goldberg is interesting. she doesn’t play into marvin’s fantasy and feels like more of a real person than his sweetheart, having her own personality and opinions. she also sings i am wearing a hat where she seems to tell part of a story that could be her own, though it doesn’t really get more specific than “i’m wearing a hat, i am unloved”. she never quite seems to behave like a schoolteacher either, within the story she seems to be more of a narrator, likely due to her importance in marvin’s story. she is the biggest case of marvin insisting his heterosexually, while also forcing him to realise he is gay. she is not actually herself within the musical, the real miss goldberg is probably nothing like her. this is an internalised version of her than marvin came up with, though it’s more authentic feeling than his sweetheart since her role is to pull marvin out of his fantasies, since she’s probably the only way marvin can actually be honest with himself and recognise his actions.

many people bring up the lines “you might tell me you’re a victim, you might get what you deserve, but i won’t excuse, boy i cant excuse, a boy who’s lost his nerve” which i will admit. do not sound great, incredibly suspicious even. but taken in the context that miss goldberg is not actually saying this to marvin, and actually it’s a version of miss goldberg that marvin has made up to make himself “behave properly” it starts to make sense.

marvin victimises himself a LOT. he’s self aware enough to recognise when he does wrong but tends to refuse to believe that it’s truly his fault, and that he’s the victim somehow. this is pretty obvious in falsettos but it’s also true in in trousers. he sings a lot of songs trying to portray himself as the victim, facing a lot of opposition from the women. this is shown in How Marvin Eats His Breakfast where he is sure that he’s in the right and is the victim because he’s not getting what he wants, and the women in the song directly oppose him by describing all the insane things he’s doing and even insulting him. it’s also shown in The Nausea Before the Game, where he’s lamenting about how his life is so hard, and how trying to live up to societies expectations is nauseating (this is a very simplified analysis of the song, i do actually thing marvin’s feelings in this song are valid but that’s an entirely different conversation). the song transitions into his wife singing about how she met him, how he ghosted her for weeks but then came back. that part of the song is much more tragic than marvin’s, essentially telling the listener that while his feelings are valid, he also seriously hurt and damaged this woman, and that that cannot be forgotten. the musical never ever lets us believe that marvin is the victim, despite his insistence.

and then every pony, is what i think the first line of that quote is referring to. how marvin is convinced that he is the victim, he is telling *himself* that. and the part of himself who knows that isn’t true manifests as miss goldberg to tell him that no, no you aren’t. no matter what marvin says, he will never be the victim, he is the one hurting others.

“you might get what you deserve” is slightly more difficult. i can’t really tell if it’s positive or negative. it could either refer to how he got what he deserved by being in a loveless marriage, or how he got what he deserved by leaving his wife and kids (and bird) to leave with whizzer. personally i think it’s the second, going with how marvin is convinced that he’s the victim, he’s convinced him leaving his wife for whizzer is what he deserves after going through so much. he thinks he deserves something good for once. and like yay bro for breaking out of your forced heterosexuality but did you have to destroy your wife’s entire life in the process? when i say marvin isn’t a victim i do mean in the context of the musical, marvin is very much a victim of society and heteronormativity, but he is NOT a victim of any of the women in the musical, which he likes to pretend he is. it’s easier to blame them than himself.

“but i won’t excuse, boy i can’t excuse, a boy who’s lost his nerve.” much simpler to understand, the miss goldberg inside marvin’s head is very much the voice of outside influence, aka wider society, the one that expects him to conform. she can’t excuse him “loosing his nerve” by deciding to cheat on his wife with a man and run away with said nerve.

Me: yeah whatever. I don’t feel shit.

5 minutes later: dude who is man enough to march to march of the falsettos