convention into account. If numbers are lyrical inserts that
bring book time to a pause, what about numbers that are called
for in the book? Book time cannot be said to come to a pause.
A bit of Aunt Eller’s morning is being taken up by Curly’s
singing. When number time is announced as belonging to
book time, how can they differ? This has to be looked into.
“Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man”
Let us examine one of the best diegetic numbers, “Can’t Help
Lovin’ Dat Man,” from Show Boat. This tune is first sung by
Julie, a black woman who is passing for white in order to keep
her starring role in the showboat troupe. She sings “Can’t
Help Lovin’ Dat Man” because her friend Magnolia, who has
just fallen for a man herself, has heard Julie sing this tune be-
fore and thinks it worth hearing again. The black cook Quee-
nie is surprised to hear Julie sing this tune (they are in the
kitchen pantry of the showboat) because it is supposed to be
known only to black folks. Julie is worried that her secret will
now come out. But she acts boldly and sings the song, which
Queenie then joins for a chorus herself, along with her hus-
band, Joe, who has come in to hear the familiar tune. Soon a
group of blacks are singing it and doing a bit of the shuffle. In a
wonderful move, Magnolia gets on her feet and starts to do the
shuffle herself. She has been learning it from the black people,
and she does it well this time.
This song is carefully joined to the plot, but it still functions
as the addition of another order of time, lyric time. It dovetails
neatly with the book dialogue calling for it, but it does the job
most songs do in musicals, which is to provide moments of
lyric elaboration and suspension for song-and-dance perfor-
mance to become the center of the show. A pause is a pause
even when the characters in the book hear it as a pause. Quee-
nie picks up something from the song that will matter when
the book resumes, and even mentions her discovery during the
song—“ah didn’t ever hear anybody but colored folks sing dat
song”—but this piece of clever dovetailing is not the main issue.