YMMV / Show Boat

• Fair for Its Day: Focuses on racial issues in a rather sympathetic light (for the 1930s), and Magnolia becomes a career woman after Gaylord abandons her, and raises her daughter well independently.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The subjects of racial prejudice, alcoholism, love, and abandonment are already serious. However, in the late '90s during an Australian production, cast member Marlon Brand stabbed his then-wife and fellow cast member Rebecca Jackson Mendoza nearly to death. She miraculously survived a massive tear in the aorta and a subsequent stroke, but Brand committed suicide. It makes the themes much sadder.
• Memetic Mutation: Ever heard the expression "Tote that barge, lift that bale"? It's from here.
• Signature Scene: "Ol' Man River" is easily the most iconic song, and has been covered countless times by many popular artists.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: "Ol' Man River" is an epic song that clearly sets up a story that's going to be all about racism and the struggles of black people...and then the plot decides to focus on the unrelated struggles of some white people instead. In fact the black character who emphatically sings the line "I'm tired of livin' and scared of dyin!'" ... later sings a song about how he's laid-back and mostly content, before the plot forgets about him entirely.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: It's likely that Gaylord was meant to be a flawed but sympathetic character. To a more modern audience, he's more the jerk who wouldn't let his wife work, and then runs away because of debt, abandoning his wife and child.
• Values Dissonance: Minstrel shows and a man telling his wife she shouldn't work and worry about the man's world. Considered pretty normal in the 1800s (and early 1900s) but rather shocking to a modern audience.
  • The original production used the N-word many times, mostly by bigoted whites or by blacks. It's even in the very first line of the opening song. Possibly accurate for the setting, but shocking even when the show premiered — and completely unacceptable today as originally written.
• Values Resonance: It’s amazing to think that a song like Old Man River, which is blatant about the racism experienced by black people, could be written and performed in 1927!
• The Woobie: Magnolia and Julie. Both of their husbands abandon them! Oh, and Julie ends up being alcoholic.

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