Holy Smoke
by Damian Thompson
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Damian Thompson is a leader writer for the Daily Telegraph and editor-in-chief of a major Catholic newspaper. He is the author of Counterknowledge: How we surrendered to conspiracy theories, quack medicine, bogus science and fake history.

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Google Reader or Homepage My Yahoo! Bloglines My AOL Technorati Favorites Netvibes Pageflakes Windows Live Other readers 'The Sound of Music will rot your soul'
Posted by Damian Thompson on 10 Mar 2008 at 09:59
Tags: Catholicism, The Sound of Music, Nazis, Nuns, Bishop Richard Williamson, Julie Andrews
Bishop Richard Williamson, the ultra-traditionalist rebel Catholic prelate exposed as a raging anti-Semite in this week’s Catholic Herald, does not confine his attention to Jews. He is also disgusted by the “soul-rotting slush” of the film of The Sound of Music.


Julie Andrews: where's her sense of discipline?

According to Williamson, Maria as portrayed by Julie Andrews is a sluttish adventuress. Having abandoned her godly vocation, she is undermining the discipline of Captain von Trapp’s family – and probably planning to steal his children.

Writing to fellow members of the rebel Society of St Pius X to warn them against re-runs of the film on television, the Winchester- and Cambridge-educated bishop adopts a tone of biting sarcasm:


Julie Andrews is nice (of course), but she is too high-spirited to be a nun (of course), for instance she dances over the Austrian mountain meadows, in springtime, waving her arms around and singing (presumably to the grass) that ‘The hills are alive with the sound of music’. The hills seem unmoved but they do look beautiful, as does Julie Andrews (of course. We know she would wear perfume and make-up to go jogging).

Fortunately the Mother Superior is also nice (of course, at least in 1965. Today she would be a child abuser), so she and the other nuns let Julie Andrews go, to try out being governess of a tyrannical widower’s unruly children … Sure enough, she gives a dazzling demonstration of the superiority of liberty and equality over stuffy old Austrian ways! Immediately undermining – in front of the children – the Captain’s discipline over them, she proceeds to win their hearts (of course) by a combination of being their friend, taking their side, making them sing and have fun, all this without a trace of motherliness and all the time looking as cute as a kitten. She even looks cute when she prays; in fact, who would not pray when it makes you look so specially cute?

The stern Captain is soon won over by his domain being turned into a gigantic playpen, so he breaks out in that favourite Austrian number Edelweiss, whereupon they all burst into song. By now Julie Andrews is looking goofy around the Captain (of course), so there is a ball, and they dance, whereupon the Captain also looks goofy around her. But enter now the villains! Firstly a glamorous Baroness schemes to get Julie Andrews out of the way, back to the convent. Secondly, villain of villains, a - a - a NAZI!

Pan back to the convent for a heart-warming feminine dialogue: Mother Superior: ‘Are you in love?’ Julie Andrews: ‘Oh, I don't know.’ Mother Superior: ‘Go back to him.’ He is delighted when she returns, so there is a duet of swooning, spooning and crooning by moonlight. Shiny white wedding dress (of course), wedding bells all over the place and a lovely ceremony, to be spoiled only by the brutal re-appearance of the nasty Nazi.

The family tries to sneak away. The nasty Nazi spots them, so now they all break out into singing Edelweiss. The nasty Nazi is foiled when the family escape to the convent ... The last shots show the ‘family’ climbing a mountain path to get out of the Third Reich, amidst hills which are once more ‘alive with the sound of music’. How truly heart warming.

Clean family edification? Nothing of the kind! Can you imagine this Julie Andrews staying with the Captain if ‘the romance went out of their marriage’? Would she not divorce him and grab his children from him to be her toys? Such romance is not actually pornographic but all the elements of pornography are there, just waiting to break out. One remembers the media sensation when a few years later Julie Andrews appeared topless in another film. That was no sensation, just a natural development for one rolling canine female.

The Sound of Music puts selfishness in the place of selflessness between husband and wife, and by putting friendliness and fun in the place of authority and rules, it invites disorder between parents and children. This is a new model family, which in short order will be no family at all, its liberated members flying off in all different directions.

The nuns in The Sound of Music, I seem to recall, helped shelter the von Trapps from the Germans. You can’t help wondering: if Bishop Williamson had been the convent chaplain, would the family have managed to escape?