As it turns out, the adult version of me is in much greater agreement with the parents (just more proof that the inevitable is slowly, but surely, unfolding.) What do I remember about the show fourteen years later? Almost nothing. What did I gain from those countless hours of lying stomach-down on the couch in front of the TV, cross-eyed and drooling like Spunky? Hardly anything. A bad back, maybe.
There is, however, one small nugget from the show that I have held on to all these years, one tiny clip that has colored the way I approach one of the most routine and mundane aspects of life: house-cleaning.
After such an inspiring rendition, one might almost be galvanized into action, possessed, as it were, with the desire to purge one's house of whatever funk had dared accumulate. As soon as I saw this episode, I was naive enough to believe that cleaning could be this fun. Even though I was well into the banal swing of cleaning for money by that time, I somehow forgot every experience up until that point and hoped I could will a similar experience into being. I soon learned that it would never happen.
When I next cleaned my bathroom, the whole town didn't clean with me, and there certainly wasn't any singing involved. If I tried to insert a jazz square as I scrubbed out the tub, I would wind up on the floor covered in Comet instead of sporting my best jazz hands. I was devastated. Not even the $4.00 allowance I received each weekend upon completion of my chores was enough to abate the continual disappointment.
I have had to live with that disappointment every day of my life since seeing that episode. There are times when I overcome, however. Life's not all fun and games, after all. The dust mites aren't going to roll themselves out from under the bed (though they've been down there so long I wouldn't be surprised if they were ambulatory by now.) I don the proverbial rubber gloves, buckle down, and scrub the hell out of that sink. It is at these times that I overcome, that I am able to steel myself to clean with a bitter resolve. But then Center Stage comes on TV and I have to start all over again.
The magic starts at 3:10.
Thanks, Center Stage. I knew I would never be a dancer, but did we really have to add "Merry Mirror Maid" to the list? At least Enchanted is a bit more honest. There may be choreography and a sweetly singing princess involved, but no amount of minced words can eclipse the image of sewer rats cleaning your toilet.
Enchanted was subversive. It understood the tendency to glorify cleaning and spit in that tendency's face. And then made it clean it up. But what is with all the attempts to make us forget how irksome, insipid, and downright depressing cleaning can be? Why set us up for disappointment when we're all going to discover the truth eventually? I like to think it's because, someday, we'll climb that mountain of dirty dishes and reach the top to find that the joy was in the struggle all along. We'll see.
The struggle to face the facts of cleaning can seem like a Sisyphean effort, but at least no movie or TV show has ever tried to glorify fumigation. That untainted reality is still ours to embrace.
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