Sorry, but if I don't rant I probably won't sleep.
It's been an extended week, somehow an extra day seems to have been inserted along the way (& a work day to boot).
I decided to take myself off to the movies this evening, something I don't make much time for these days. There was a new film that looked semi-promising. It was called Easy Virtue, & was based I was told, upon a play of the same name, by Noel Coward.
The reason I'm here tonight can be summed up in one word
"Knickers"
For anyone unused to my blog, this is my epithet for the world's most fashionably marketed & pharmaceutically popular disease, 'cancer' (small type used on purpose).
Here below lies my original article should anyone think I'm totally callous & not paying respectful homage to the 'cult of the big sea'.
Knickerstocancer
With that out of the way I proceed to my gripe.
Using wiki for speed - well it's Friday night & I thought Id be reclining on a sofa eating grapes, instead of spitting out wrath.
"Easy Virtue is a three-act play by Noel Coward. He wrote it in 1924 when he was 25 years old...The central characters of the play are John Whittaker and Larita, the American divorcée he has just married to his mother's great disapproval...John soon arrives with his new wife, Larita, "She is tall, exquisitely made-up and very beautiful...Larita remains calm in the face of her new mother-in-law's disdain - even admitting to being divorced."
Things go from bad to worse with the feisty new wife versing thedisapproving mother-in-law.
Things then go from worse to whatever comes after that when the new wife's past is revealed
"It seems that Larita once posed for a portrait. Her ex-husband, a jealous man, accused her of having an affair with the painter. She denied it, but the artist - tormented by unrequited love - committed suicide. This was presented as proof of infidelity at the divorce proceedings."
Oh the shame. You know I think movie goers realise that in those days things like that were shocking. We could actually believe in it.
However what I'm choking on my grapes about is that the 2008 version of Easy Virtue, has the lovely young bride as a widow who's husband suffered hideously & succumbed to what is known on this blog, as knickers.
In today's version, her shocking past has been extended (like my week) to a story line that includes her being accused of & standing trial for the murder of her first husband by lethally injectiing him out of his misery. She was of course acquitted, so she could come & make this movie (because that's what it is after all).
What thought I, after my initial wtf reaction, was that doing in a 1920's movie. Just how many people even knew what 'knickers' was back then? Surely a more fitting one liner, for the times, would have been;
"huh, what's that, some exotic version of the can-can ?" (which actually was in the movie - with a shot the Rebel would revel in).
This movie was speaking loud & clear to today's audience, to what we have been taught. I really doubt that many in the 20's, would have been familiar with 'knickers'- they were all still recovering from the War To End All Wars - 'knickers' would surely have been small fry compared to that.
Squeezing every last drop out of the audiences visceral connection to knickers, we are drawn towards the finale with a new (to me) basis for true love - do you love someone enough to kill them? HUH???
I thought I was going to the movies to see a 'period piece' with witty one liners & clever social commentary from the 20's. The only thing missing from the modernising was perhaps poor uncle Bertie who'd recently died of Swine Flu after pigging out on bacon sandwiches & champignon.
This isn't the only movie selling 'knickers', far from it - it's just the one I paid $14 for. A couple of people actually walked out of the movie, although I don't know why, afterwards I wished I'd thought to get up too.
My superbly trained catholic nose seems to be scenting out a new guilt strategy - the guilt of good health.
Knickers to that.
Continued... a morning after rant
Last night my son went to see the new Terminator movie. Although we were at completely different cinemas both our movies started at 6.30pm & that was not the only synch. This morning my son informed me that Terminator Salvation begins with Dr Serena Kogen, a woman dying of knickers convincing one Marcus Wright (Rite) to donate his body to medical research after he is executed by lethal injection.
Oh what a small (movie) world it is.
I wrote to a struggling friend today & in the thoughts that spilled forth I mentioned NZ's rugby team, the All Blacks. From there it was a hop skip & short jump to the Haka - the now famous All Black opener to rugby games. I found a short clip on YouTube & watched it - I tell you what, I felt fire flow through my veins watching it - where oh where else do we see that sort of energetic expression these days (except occasionally in Prague). The Haka is not exclusively an expression of war, but I couldn't help but feel it makes a wonderful antidote to the relentless poison of knicker marketing. Here's a very short clip (please note that Adidas do not own the Haka).
Haka
