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Rugrats, Elmo, and the war
This evening, purely by chance, I caught the last fifteen minutes of the Rugrats episode that Mme. S was telling me about, where Chuckie and one of the twins (if the twins have names I don't know them; I don't watch the show) are playing around by trying on dresses with duckie patterns, jumping off beds to watch the skirt billow up et cetera, and end up mistakenly getting taken to the International Fair while they still have the dresses on. A trio of older boys tries to give them presents and be all nice, thinking they're girls, and when they find out the two are boys, they get angry and chase them around.
Our two intrepid heroes eventually end up running into a clan of Scots rugrats in kilts hanging out by the haggis booth, who decide they must be from the Clan of the Duck (because of the print on their skirts, see) and agree to help them out. When the older boys approach, all of the babies pull up their kilts and/or skirts and show the older boys their undergarments. The older boys get weirded out and flee. The parents discover the skirt mishap and do not get weirded out - much.
Mme. S cited this and some other examples to show that Rugrats has the right idea about gender - that in that universe, to the kids, it's all a big game of exploration and the message is simply that it's fun and healthy to try on the opposite trappings for a while.
But I also note that the violent threat is in there, if watered down: Wear a skirt in public and other boys will try to beat you up if they find out. And, as nice as the rest of the message is, this is still the part I take home with me.
However, like most Rugrats episodes, it was a blast to watch even a small amount of it. That's a well-written show.
Twins: What IS haggis, anyway?
Scots-baby Chieftain (with gusto): Sheep guts!
Twins (licking their lips): Mmmmmm.
And speaking of well-written shows, if you didn't see Cinderelmo tonight, you missed a real hoot. A nice show with a happy ending for everyone and plenty of jokes for the grownups. Kathy Najimy and Oliver Platt know the secret to co-starring with Muppets: You have to ham it up, or the little felt monsters will upstage your ass in a trice. Keri Russell didn't quite get it, but the princess is entitled to be a little dazed-looking anyway, and it was so refreshing seeing her with her proper hair again that I hardly noticed any weak spots.
Bert: If I marry the princess, I'll give her my paper clip collection.
Ernie: And if I marry the princess, I'll give her Rubber Duckie.
Bert: So for her it's win-win!
After Cinderelmo we flipped around for a while and landed on Turner Classic Movies, where we saw the last few minutes of Modern Times. I'm not sure Nonelvis has ever seen it in its entirety. I told her about how Paulette Goddard had actually been the favorite for Scarlett O'Hara, but her illicit relationship with Charlie Chaplin cost her the part. (Of course, Vivien Leigh was semi-openly carrying on with Olivier, and they were both married to other people, but apparently Selznick thought that would fly better with the public.)
And Nonelvis saw the sequence where Chaplin sings Italianesque gibberish in the cafe, and wondered if that was his real voice. I didn't know.
The movie ended, and the little commentator came on and explained that no one really knew if Goddard and Chaplin were ever married; they refused to say ... and explained how this may have cost her the Scarlett O'Hara role. Hey, stop reading my script, little man!
Then, when he introduced The Great Dictator - yes, it was back-to-back Chaplin night - he noted that Chaplin's singing in Modern Times had been the first time filmgoers ever heard his voice, and that The Great Dictator was his first full talkie ... ten years after the rest of Hollywood had started doing them.
TCM - where they read your mind and answer your questions!
It's been years since I'd seen the latter film, and Nonelvis had never seen it at all. Although I love it, I stopped watching midway through - I really needed to come write. Nonelvis was too tired to continue as well, but she taped the rest of it to watch later, so it must have made an impression on her.
It's hard to imagine what a stir this movie must have made when it came out. At the time (1940) America still didn't take Hitler completely seriously, and most Americans had no idea what was going on with the Jews. This film dared to show what was actually happening, coating it with enough satire and black humor to make the message palatable - and extra-effective. (Hitler banned the film in Germany; I can't say I blame him - the sequence where Chaplin as the dictator does a rousing public address is so dead-on that it must have hurt. Have you ever seen footage of one of Hitler's speeches?)
The thing is, Chaplin was at heart a European; he knew. This film was not for a European audience - by 1940 it was too late for that. This film was intended to wake up Americans.
I recently bought a collection of the war-editorial cartoons of Dr. Seuss. I see similarities. The coating of humor, the sheer ridiculousness of the art, does nothing to prevent the sharp pain as the knife stabs you between the ribs. If anything, it prevents you from seeing it coming. Dr. Seuss was a strong advocate of American involvement in the war - he felt that our attempts at isolationism were cowardly whitewash, and made us look bad to our allies to boot.
In 1941-1942 the British were basically fighting alone on the Allied side, and they were getting their posteriors kicked. There was a very real danger that without our involvement, the Germans would take over the world.
I say this from a modern perspective, of course. It's easy to look back now and say we were being thick-headed. Unfortunately I have the cynical outlook of someone born after Vietnam: My country has not yet fought, in my lifetime, for any cause I deem worth defending ... and I find it difficult to imagine one.
So if I'd been draftable in 1942, would I have pulled some sort of dodge? It wasn't hard for a smart person to do.
Well, I'm not sure I'd have avoided the service entirely - only the front lines. I'd have gladly taken some position to help the war effort; I don't mind lending my brains or my body to a cause I believe in - and I think defeating Hitler would have qualified. But I will not lend my life to anything. I'm too selfish, too scared of death.
In short, while there may be causes I'll fight for, I haven't found anything yet worth dying for.
And I don't believe I ever will.
Bet you didn't predict where this entry was going to end up, did you? Nor, frankly, did I. I don't plan these things before I write them.
Chaplin had a gift for putting one idea atop another in a perfectly reasonable manner, and ending up with the kind of situation you can't describe to someone who hasn't seen it ... because the person you're telling about it is just giving you this look and saying "Okay, now explain to me again why he was pouring soup through the chicken?"
And all you can do is shrug and say "It made sense at the time."
That's what I have to say about this entry. One fact followed from another in perfectly reasonable fashion. Just don't look back to see where you've been, or heaven help you.
© Columbine
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