Billy Elliot’s Pliés Warm the Wounded Hearts of Organized Labor

The travails of organized labor in the face of changing economies and political opposition is universal; the particularities, though, are all local. So as Wisconsin’s (losing?) battle cycles down, it’s worth considering how it will be represented later. Gallant workers standing up for their rights. Callous politicians and business leaders slagging them down. And surely, somewhere among the public workers walking the square in Madison, is a father–a social worker? engineer? city planner?–struggling to come to terms with the fact that his teenage son is disappointing him by skipping football practice to study biochemistry or computer engineering or pottery. And soon, the father, like so many before him, will have to come to terms.

Or at least this is what I understand from the movies. In October Sky, based on the memoir by Hiram Hickam, a young boy from a gritty West Virginia mining town is inspired by his teacher to pursue rocket science, a decidedly unwelcome turn of events in a town in which the only suitable route to college is football. But a hard-edged father trying to bring up his son in tough circumstances will eventually have to relent in the midst of a labor strike to help his kid get his rocket built. And thank God, because Hickam went on to work on the Apollo Program and sent a man to the moon.

Billy Elliot skips forward twenty years and across the pond, from Kennedy’s America to Thatcher’s England, where the Iron Lady for some reason decided that state controlled businesses should be privatized, turning the once respectably blue-collar middle-class north of England into the permanently depressed shit hole of boozing, male-stripping fathers we know and love from the Full Monty. (BTW, what the hell’s a “monty”?) As coal miners strike (I guess it’s always coal miners, isn’t it?) to try to save their careers, a young boy starts skipping out on his boxing lessons to study ballet.

And no, he’s not even gay.

If I seem like I’m making light of these stories, I’m not. In fact, as the child of a blue-collar, union family turned white collar office worker and performing arts writer, I get a little teary-eyed whenever I watch some burly dad come to terms with his son’s seemingly odd choice, not least because I hope it speaks well for my future. Anyway, however good the movie was, Billy Elliot just screams musical, and indeed, six years ago it hit the West End with music by Elton John, before a successful Broadway run where young Billy’s jazzy pliés and entrechats moved audiences. And now, the stirring tale is coming to Seattle, where it plays the Paramount Theatre through April 3 (tickets available online).