#40 ‘The Sound of Music’
Twirling Through Patriarchy in a Curtain Dress
The Sound of Music (1965) is the cinematic equivalent of a heavily frosted cake: extravagant, beloved, and a little nauseating if you think too hard about what’s underneath. On the surface, it’s a wholesome story about love, music, and resisting Nazis through the power of song and family unity. But dig a little deeper, and what you’ll find is yet another story where a free-spirited woman is domesticated into submission—this time to a whistle-blowing patriarch and his seven precocious propagators of traditional values.
Julie Andrews plays Maria, the plucky postulate who can't seem to follow the rules of the abbey because—heaven forbid—she has opinions, joy, and a functioning personality. So the Mother Abbess (who, let’s be honest, sees a problem and sends it to someone else’s doorstep) ships her off to play governess to a widowed naval captain’s brood. Cue the curtain dresses, awkward guitar serenades, and a slow march toward marital obedience.
Maria is bright, spontaneous, and independent—until she meets Captain von Trapp, a man so emotionally constipated he needs a uniform just to feel feelings. At first, she challenges him. Then she softens him. And finally, she becomes the perfect maternal figure, no longer threatening the household with chaos or charisma but reinforcing his authority with a hymnal in hand. Her reward? Marriage, motherhood, and the honor of following her husband over a mountain and into exile.
And speaking of the Captain—Christopher Plummer gives a great performance, but let’s not pretend he isn’t the poster boy for “emotionally unavailable until a woman sings to him.” He begins the film treating his children like naval cadets, traumatizing them with whistles and marching orders. But because Maria gets them to yodel in harmony and wear matching outfits, he falls in love—and we’re supposed to find that romantic, not alarming.
Let’s also discuss Baroness Schrader, the only woman in the film who seems to own property, wear pants, and know what birth control is. She’s smart, stylish, and clearly out of place in a movie that punishes female autonomy. So naturally, she’s discarded halfway through in favor of Maria’s warm domestic servitude. You can’t yodel your way into a man’s heart and have a backbone—it’s one or the other.
Yes, the music is iconic. Yes, the Alps are breathtaking. And yes, “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” is basically a power ballad in a habit. But The Sound of Music is not a feminist fairy tale. It’s a cautionary lullaby: sing sweetly, learn to love children who aren’t yours, and eventually, if you behave, the stern man will open his heart and hand you a ring.
3 out of 5 lonely goatherds
(One for the songs. One for Julie Andrews being a literal beam of light. One for the cinematography. The missing stars are stuck in the abbey, whispering that maybe—just maybe—a woman’s destiny could be more than babysitting someone else’s legacy while twirling across fields of conformity.)
