"Get me to the church on time"

And now another cinematic masterpiece, "My Fair Lady" with Rex and Audrey speaks to me through Engl 342.

In one of my favourite books and plays and movies, "Get me to the church on time" is well known song of the end of bachelorhood. Just before this number, Alfred Doolittle claims that Henry Higgens has "delivered him into middle class morality" - "happy I was, and free" he says. Money left to him by plot twist changes his life and makes an honest man of him. Which he deeply resents. He remains distinctly lower class, but now he has the means to marry and lead a "normal" middle class life.

This number does little to forward the plot (in the movie anyway) but contains the last vestige of the reformed Eliza's connection to her street waif ways - even her father has "moved up". It's prominent place in the film harkens to the comments the play makes on class values and the sensibilities of class transition (as much as it is possible).

After all, Higgens "passes Eliza off" as upper class with a new accent and dress. At the beginning of the movie he claims that it is not our values or salary that make the English hate each other but rather they make those judgments at the moment of speech, which places the speaker in their distinct social stratosphere.

So, this film shows one version of "the yobs winning" in that they can disguise themselves or buy their way into institutions and values of upperclasses. In the end though, Alfred Doolittle's accent and view of the middle class remains, as does Eliza's discomfort in her new upperclass position (her accent, now changed keeps her from going back) until she finally clinches it with Higgens (which happens in the stage version) - after all marriage can move people between the classes.
(In a hilarious line, she says that she'll marry her upper class beau - as soon as she can support him. "I don't want him to work - he wasn't brought up for it as I was.")

Language also comes into play here (connecting it more directly to our discussion of the actual term yob or hooligan). The idea that words and speech places an individual distinctly and irrefutably in their place, "creates" them. "The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she acts, but how she is treated" - the difference between a lowerclass man and a yob (in the derogatory sense) is the value placed on their specific role in society. Or, rather, that they have a role at all. As Stephen mentioned, it is the middle class that wants all to be middle class, to have classlessness. This is not necessarily a bad thing (though it could be argued either way), but a thing to be conscious of.

(Another point: when Eliza says that she can do without him, he claims to have created this in her - but when she leaves it is he who is lost. One could go on for hours - a genius genius film, play and text [Pygmalion])