Gone with the Pun

There are some serious posts on the horizon, but this morning I'm in a comic mood and can't manage to type a reasonably complex sentence. I know that doesn't sound promising, but stay with me.

Gone with the Wind is easily a template for epic melodrama. The title is also handy for renaming other films that are similarly epic in tone, style, or story (whether intentionally or unintentionally). The idea is not to include any word from the original title, although "Gone with the Ring" seems an inevitable mock-title for Lord of the Rings. "Gone with the Elves"? Anyway.

Some obvious epic mash-ups:

Gone with the Old Testament – The Ten Commandments
Gone with the Chariot – Ben-Hur
Gone with the Snow – Doctor Zhivago
Gone with the Sand – Lawrence of Arabia

This also works well with sci-fi:

Gone with the Final Frontier – Star Trek
Gone with the Monkeys – Planet of the Apes
Gone with the Force/Jedi – Star Wars
Gone with the Spice/Worms – Dune
Gone with the Spoon – The Matrix

Some other titles:

Gone with the Rum – Pirates of the Caribbean
Gone with the Vampires – Twilight
Gone with the Candles – Phantom of the Opera (2004)
Gone with the Staring – Pride and Prejudice (2005)
Gone with the Cattle – Australia
Gone with the CGI – pick a special-effects extravaganza
Gone with the Bodice – pick a costume-drama spectacular

Next time I'll post something less flip, although I can't absolutely guarantee that it will be a lot less flip.

(Somewhat) Shameless Promotion

Just a brief post to say that I did an interview with Mark Andrushko of Scriptapalooza over at the ever wonderful The View from Here magazine. A lot has been going on at The View over the past few months – lots of interviews and guest articles, along with the usual features of the talented crew.

That's not a very subtle hint to check it out, huh?

Hope you're all having a good week.

Two for the Road

together we ride
scratching each other's eyes out
sadly, lovingly

A Year of Possibilities

Are you drowning in lists yet?

Best/worst [whatever] of the year/decade, resolutions, wishes…

While the end of 2009 (and the '00s – whatever they're called) and the beginning of 2010 (and the teens) are bringing the usual bout of introspection and inventorying, the thing that strikes me most is that we don't know what's going to happen. The coming year is full of possibilities and no matter how many lists we make (and I'm fond of making lists), we know that something could happen tomorrow or next week that will make those conclusions and plans irrelevant. Wherever you are and whatever you're doing, I hope that even if you're not dancing in the street, that you're at least looking forward to something, and that if it doesn't work out, you'll find something else.

Now enough with the philosophy.

I've yet to run across a decent slogan for 2010 and how oh how can we start the New Year without one? I couldn't come up with many. "Ten" has a surprisingly limited range of rhymes.

2010: Here We Go Again
- resigned and maybe more than a tad cynical

2010: Begin Again
- determined, optimistic

2010: The Year of Zen
- think calm and collected

2010: New Decade, Amen
- hallelujah

2010: Year of the Pen
- ambitious...


Happy New Year, everyone.

Special The Women Marathon

The Women (1939)
it's quite a pity
feminism can't be seen
for all the SHRIEKING

Mrs. Stephen Haines
you're a lovely gal
too bad you're stuck with a jerk
and seem to LOVE it

Mrs. Howard Fowler
you're a sweet ice pick
chipping away at the heart
relentless and SHRILL

Crystal Allen
the modern woman (?)
resourceful and ambitious
too bad you're a BITCH

The Men
we can safely say
though you're never on screen, you -
SUCK. COLLECTIVELY.

Don't judge a girl by her hair color.

We're all familiar with the stock descriptions cool blonde, sassy brunette, and fiery redhead – as if a person's hair color were a significant clue to their personality. We naturally make assumptions about people’s personalities according to their looks (or physiognomy, if you want to be fancy and technical) – sensual lips, soulful eyes, etc. – but nothing provides a result as effortlessly as hair color. Red hair, for instance, even if it’s not accompanied by an adjective such as “fiery,” projects a vibrant, independent personality. It's almost counter-intuitive to think of a redhead as icy, weak, or boring.

King David was supposedly a redhead, and though it doesn't say anywhere in the Bible that she was, Mary Magdalene frequently turns up in art with rosy tresses. Brigid O'Shaughnessy, The Maltese Falcon's delicious femme fatale, is another notable redhead. On the opposite end of the innocence spectrum, there's Anne (of Green Gables) Shirley with her carrot-colored curls. In the black and white film version of The Maltese Falcon, Miss O'Shaughnessy's hair color couldn't register, and neither could the locks of spoiled socialite, Tracy "Red" Lord, in The Philadelphia Story.

You need Technicolor for that kind of thing: Vicky Page, the doomed ballerina in The Red Shoes; Mary Kate Danaher, the tempestuous spinster (and then wife) in The Quiet Man; and Glinda, the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz. Speaking of redheaded witches, Buffy has Willow Rosenberg (though she and Glinda don't hail from the same coven). Bree van de Camp is the special red brand of soapy goodness on Desperate Housewives. And while we're on the subject of television, someone on the Mad Men crew simply adores redheads: Joan, Peggy, Helen Bishop, and Bobbie Barrett. Cartoon-wise, Ariel the Little Mermaid and Jessica Rabbit immediately come to mind.

Aside from the fact that all of these (with the exception of King David) are females, they also have an unconventional, feisty nature in common – whether they're witches, housewives, socialites, secretaries, or femme fatales. There is also the time-honored tradition of casting redheads as prostitutes with hearts of gold – Mary Magdalene, Belle Watling (Gone with the Wind), Vivian (Pretty Woman), and Satine (Moulin Rouge). You can do this sort of character-analysis-by-hair-color for blondes and brunettes and come up with some common denominator – which may seem either less or more arbitrary. Yes, blondes are sophisticated or dumb, and brunettes are adorable or bitchy, but if she has red hair, whether she's good or bad, nice or nasty, she will be extraordinary, rebellious.

On a somewhat off-topic note, I'm curious where "dumb blonde" comes from. I suspect it didn't originally imply "stupid", but silent – as the ideal (for women) was to be fair and quiet. Thus Brunettes, by default, wound up being known as smart, since "dark" is the opposite of fair. Red, though it can vary in shade, doesn't quite fall into either category. Hence, apart from the natural association of red with fire and all its connotations, the additional rebellious quality attributed to redheads. After all, you can have a rotten temper and still be a conformist. But I'm simplifying – hugely.

Any character functions on the basis of more than something as superficial as hair color. There are surely fictional redheads that don’t fit the rebellious model (though I can’t come up with any specific examples at the moment), just like there are hot-blooded blondes and dumb brunettes – and any character can be a misfit regardless of hair color. The crucial point, I think, is that when we pick a character’s hair color, we sometimes let it shape the character more than we realize. Or vice versa – we’ll pick the color according to the personality type.

So here’s to breaking the old molds and making new ones.

Les Diaboliques

had I been able
to believe the translation
this might have been good


I'm referring to my haiku, of course, and not the film (which was good). The following occurred when I tried to translate "What would happen if I gave away the ending?" into French via online translator:

Qu'arriverait-il si j'ai donné la fin?

Which I then translated back into English to see if it (mostly) made sense:

What if I gave the end?

So I tried "What if I revealed the ending?" instead:

Que faire si j'ai révélé la fin?

Which apparently means:

What if I showed up late?

For laughs I translated it back into French so I could then translate it again into English:

Que faire si je arrivé en retard? ---> What if I come late? ---> which translated back into French identically.

Which must mean that I'm really more concerned with being punctual than spoiling the end of the film. So everyone can relax.

SciFaiku

a poetic form
(google it!) science and art
in symbiosis

Musings: Bright Idea

Up

I am not crying.
They... well-up... naturally.
All on their own. Yes.