The Problem of Miss Saigon:
Re-listening to Miss Saigon for the first time in a very long time, and I am utterly disgusted with myself as a young teen who thought this was one of the most romantic shows I'd ever heard... I could not have been more wrong.
Chis is the worst case of toxic masculinity . Chris literally tells Kim that he'll "take her out with him" and goes through the marriage ceremony in Saigon with her. Yes, he's clueless, but he doesn't even try to understand, he just goes along with it.
Then, much later, when he's with Ellen, he tells her "I'm an American, how could I fail to do good?!" - which is one of the worst lines I've ever heard and I wanted to slap the man. Dude, you might admit you made a mess, but the fact that you really, really really think this is ... worrying. Frightening. You're passionate about it and *Dear God* you're such a little man-child.
He constantly treats and talks of Kim as though she's a possession "you're the one good thing that I've found out here"... romantic, if he hadn't called her a *thing*. Then when Thuy comes to "claim" Kim (and he's a whole issue all on his own, that deserves another post), Chris bristles and says "this girl is mine!" - they've been together less than a *week*.
He gets caught up in the magic and the romance of being with Kim, then all but blames everyone else for it when the chickens come home to roost. Kim's hopes and dreams get treated as though she's lost the plot, when that's exactly what Chris had been promising her the entire time he's in Vietnam.
The only one who sees him for the Idiot he is appears to be John, ironically, who says during the number *317* "What sustained her for miles, Chris still knows nothing of," - which is such a powerful line and shows how well this man understands his best friend. And he tells Ellen and Chris to their faces when they're deciding Tam and Kim's fates that they are "talking like fools". I actually think he would have been an amazing person for Kim to have been with - if indeed, she *had* to be paired up with someone as seems to be the way with these old fashioned musicals.
There’s the line that Ellen and Chris share at the end of The Confrontation which never fails to make me bristle: We will do what is right - right for Tam, right for us, and for Kim. Kim is the last one that they consider, and I hate it so much.
Instead... well, those of you that know the musical know how it ends. Poor Tam; I would love to see how Chris and Ellen dealt with explaining it all to him when he's older. I would not be surprised if they completely avoided the topic of Kim, and, knowing Chris' saviour complex, simply told him they brought him back as one of the Boi-Doi children to raise. Kim would have faded into obscurity - I'm not sure that Tam would have been old enough to remember Kim, as heartbreaking as it is, before she died.
Chris would have gotten away with the wreck of what he's done, and Tam might have remained forever in the dark about his origins.
Chris is a terrible character, and this is *not* a romance tale - its just a tragedy.
