When The Morality is Messy...
But The Show Must Go On
It’s a tale as old as time. A woman caught between two men vying for her affection. The classic love triangle. For me it has not been done better than the chaotic, anachronistic, and ultimately tragic Moulin Rouge. Both in its 2001 film incarnation as well as its Broadway musical version.
Having recently seen the traveling version of the stage show, I could not help but think of the moral and ethical dilemmas it raises.
What is the right thing to do when you fall in love with a woman who is pledged to another man? Pursuing her forces deception and lies and the violation of the other suitor’s dignity. But what if she loves you too? Then if you do not pursue her does that violate her agency and dignity too?
And how to deal with the emotion of it all? Humans rarely make decisions of the heart with their heads. Did Aristotle ever experience the ache of unrequited love? Kant never married and as far as we know was celibate, making it hard to listen to him when inflamed with passion.
In both the film and stage versions of Moulin Rouge we are meant to cheer for Christian, the penniless artist who truly loves Satine, the tragic waif starlet, and root against The Duke, the man who wants to possess Satine like any number of other beautiful objects he owns.
The Duke wants Satine as an adornment for himself, while Christian is the one who truly loves her. This we know because he says so in verse.
Funny thing… neither seem to know she is dying from tuberculosis.
The hero we are meant to root for, the one who really loves the woman in the center of this love triangle, he thinks he really loves her. But despite them stealing moments of passion wherever they can find them, he doesn’t know about the pressure her family is putting on her to choose the other suitor?
Wait… that’s not in Moulin Rouge.
I meant that he doesn’t know about her bloodied handkerchiefs and gasping for breath?
He doesn’t care about what people at the gym whisper about her behind their backs…
Gym? I meant in the theater…
Maybe he thinks… no, he believes he loves her… but truthfully he is in love with an idealized version of her, and what being with that version informs him about himself…
And belief is a powerful force to push back against.
I know, because I believed I loved her. Not the brilliant sparkling diamond at the heart of the Moulin Rouge. But a beautiful fitness instructor at my gym. A married fitness instructor.
We’d been friends for years. I’d never thought of her as a romantic partner, she’d been married as long as I’d known her. But she’d separated from her husband. And was dating.
I was dating a friend of hers. She was jealous. And I was jealous that she was dating someone else. And in a moment that felt scripted in a romcom, we got into an argument about our mutual jealousies, an argument that ended in A Big Damn Kiss™ on her front doorstep.
We had a whirlwind romance. But she wasn’t just my friend. She wasn’t just a beautiful fitness instructor. She was also a mother of two. And still someone’s wife.
He had a better job than me. He was well liked by her family. So much so that they told her he was too good for her. He provided. And from the opinion of her family, he provided more than she had any right to expect.
Under pressure from her estranged husband and her family, she broke things off with me and gave him another chance. For the kids. For the house. For her family.
But not for love. At least, that’s what I told myself. The rejection was devastating for me. Not only was she my friend, and my lover, but she’d also helped me get into better health. With her professional guidance I’d lost 70 pounds and whipped myself into the best shape of my life. Losing her, for me, was evidence that despite all of that, I wasn’t good enough.
I consoled myself with repeated viewings of Moulin Rouge. I saw myself as Christian. She was my Satine, and her husband was The Duke.
I knew it would be wrong to pursue her. But I also knew I loved her, that she loved me, and that love conquered all, right?
After all…
Love is a Many Splendored Thing…
Love Lifts Us Up Where We Belong…
All You Need is Love…
And like Christian, I ignored her sensible objections. The power of love would overcome all else, right?
Right?
Like it overcame Satine’s tuberculosis…
We are all the heroes in our own story. And hero centric morality is very appealing. Some deception, some violation some vows, that’s ok in the face of true love, right?
Ethically speaking, asking her to deny her own desire for me would be a denial of her agency and dignity, and therefore that was bad. And if that was bad, some bad things done in opposition would be ok, right?
I know now from the vantage point of time that no matter how I tried to justify our affair, she and I were firmly doing harm. It worked out as well as these things tend to. Not well at all.
Not quite so dramatic as the woman dying of tuberculosis on the stage in the arms of the man who loved her. But it ended poorly all the same.
The husband found out. They got divorced. Our relationship was no longer one of stolen kisses and secret rendezvous, but one of mundane everyday life.
I still saw her as the sparkling ideal woman who validated my sense of self-worth. She was just a person trying to juggle the life I’d helped to wreck. Few relationships would survive that. Ours included.
It ended bitterly.
I stewed in my sorrow and grief. Only later did I see the harm I’d done.
The lesson here is not that life is messier than the stories we tell. The lesson is not that seeing morals through the lens of our own desires allows us to do harm. And it’s not a confession for absolution.
The harms I committed were real and cannot be undone. So too were the harms done by the woman I loved, and by her now ex-husband.
The victims were real too. For me it was a torrid affair and a failed relationship. For her children it was the thing that broke their family. For the husband it was a romantic failure despite providing a home, fathering two children, and winning the approval of her family. Many were harmed.
In the process I made it easier to justify doing harm. I made myself a person who is slightly more likely to do further harm.
The harm I did remains. The debt remains in my ledger.
The debit remains, but the person I am and will continue to become need not remain identical to the one who incurred it.
People who have done harms they recognize can then lose themselves to that harm. Why bother being better when you’ve proven you’re not? But despite the irreversible nature of the harms we cause, we can always be better tomorrow.
Christian never had to live with what he built. The show ends. The curtain falls. The myth is sealed in amber by Satine’s death, preserved and perfect and consequence-free.
I had to keep building. With the wreckage, with the debt, with the person I had actually become rather than the one I believed I was. That’s the difference between myth and life. In life the curtain doesn’t fall. Tomorrow arrives whether you’re ready for it or not.
The project is never finished. We are always building. And that is not a consolation. It’s a demand.
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