slaytonf
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Days Won
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Posts posted by slaytonf
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1 hour ago, Swithin said:
As far as I have seen over the years, there is a gay subtext to everything, and someone or another has written something about it.
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2 hours ago, TheCid said:
Hoagy Carmichael has a larger than usual role in it as well.
Gosh, he was nearly as ubiquitous as Oscar Levant.
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I like it. It's different. Shorter, more concise. Just the essentials.
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21 minutes ago, misswonderly3 said:
I've heard of the book. in fact I know someone who owns the book, maybe I'll borrow it from her. As for the series, I remember wanting to watch it when it aired ( twenty years ago??) but for some reason never did. I'd love to see it, I'm extremely interested in etymology.
It's on YT, though you have to hunt around to get all the complete shows. And *gasp!* it's more like 35 years ago.
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I should have said they wouldn't have minded the expense.
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39 minutes ago, misswonderly3 said:
That's really interesting, I've never heard that before. However, I do have to ask - - how do you know that? How could anyone living today know that? Since there were no recordings of any kind two hundred years ago, how can anyone know how people spoke then??
I know from The Story of English. I fact I watched the sreies again before starting this thread to confirm my memory of it. That was only part of one segment, but I didn't mind watching the whole series.
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Well, the Krell wouldn't have worried about that.
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So you're saying the Krell were wiped out by whales?
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No, I haven't. But now it's going to ruin my sleep.
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5 hours ago, Swithin said:
Actually it's known as RP, or Received Pronunciation
Yes, that's the term. It slipped from my mind. There are other terms. They have also slipped. For all those interested in the subtleties and fine distinctions within even RP English, I recommend an old PBS TV series by Robert MacNeil, called The Story of English. You can find all of it on YouTube, with a little diligence.
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11 hours ago, jamesjazzguitar said:
Maybe I'm missing something or forgetting, but I don't see where the ending of the 1938 film is that much different than MFL. E.g. Howard (Higgins), asks Eilza for his slippers in a manner that suggest, that while he might now view her as a 'equal' (on paper), he was still going to treat her like a servant \ underling. My wife has been very vocal about that ending. Of course she is an Italian romantic; so her POV was that if it was clear they were going to get married, then a wife doing things for her husband makes sense (and vise versa of course!), but if not,,,, well the gal has the same status as the housekeeper.
Pygmalion (1938) ends the same way as My Fair Lady (1964). In fact, L & L probably stole the last line of the movie. Shaw strongly objected to the romanticized ending and continually worked to maintain Eliza''s independence. But he had no control over the movie, even though it was his play and he wrote the screenplay! Can you imagine it? An author, during his lifetime, owning the copyright, not having control over his own creation. Gives you an idea how powerful the force of convention is. There are other productions, mostly made-for-TV. You can find them on YouTube. One has Peter O'Toole, and one has Twiggy. And no, all you jokesters, O'Toole played Higgins in one, and Twiggy played Eliza in another. The ending of those have Eliza tell Higgins she's going to marry Freddy and walk out, leaving Higgins exclaiming: "She's going to marry Freddy!", and laughing more or less futilely.
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15 hours ago, Davehat said:
>Success and prosperity are tied to identification with the aristocracy and their mode of speech<<<
This is nothing new. Under Roman rule, the conquered Britons learned Roman-Latin to achieve success under the new regime.
The Anglo-Saxons brought a new language but still used the ruling Roman alphabet endorsed by the Pope.
In the 800s the King declared Winchester dialect to be the official language for documents. So people again imitated the ruling class for success in life.
In the 1600s a different King attempted to standardize spelling, and once again he used the language of nobility. We still use that 99% of that spelling today.
and so on.
My point wasn't that this was an insidious invention by the nineteenth century Brits. It was that all the noise that Higgins and others made about the nobility and the purity of the variety of English they spoke, and the disparagement of Eliza's speech as low and degraded was wrong. It turns out that she actually spoke the uncorrupted variety all her life. So to speak English properly like a loidy, she didn't have to do anything.
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they started marketing the film as “The Ultimate Trip.”
It still is.
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The closest I can come is Ernst Lubitsch's That Uncertain Feeling (1941) with Merle Oberon, Burgess Meredith, and Melvyn Douglas:
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/19199/That-Uncertain-Feeling/
Click on the READ THE FULL SYNOPSIS link for a detailed description.
You can watch it on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwzhUFfAAxw
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Shaw fought a battle all his life to preserve the original ending. The force of convention was overwhelmingly against him, even starting with the first production, where the actor playing Higgins, while not changing the text of the play, gave the impression that he and Eliza would stay together. To preserve his ending, he refused to sell the rights to Pygmalion for the musical. It was only after his death that the rights were sold and the final insult was delivered by the gooey sentimental ending of the musical.
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47 minutes ago, Dargo said:
OH so needless
That was a gift for you, Dargo. You tell 'em!
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Though Cukor, or Lerner and Loewe are not the originators, they certainly are in league with Mr. Shaw in his great celebration of snobbery and elitism. Despite the elements of satire and send-up, the story (from Shaw's play Pygmalion) is really a subtle promoter of privileged classes and their right and proper places in society through its humanization of them. Success and prosperity are tied to identification with the aristocracy and their mode of speech, notwithstanding Alfred P. Doolittle's reluctant induction, and it is portrayed as the goal of everyone who aspires to improve their state. By contrast, slovenliness, carousing, filth, and dissolute behaviour are associated with the commons. My Fair Lady (1964) adds an unjust twist to the end, having Eliza return to Henry Higgins at the end to resume her subordinate role, in accordance with proper Hollywood dictates. Doing so robs her of all the strength of character and independence she achieved through the whole picture. Shaw ended the play with Eliza retaining her independence and abandoning Higgins, upending expectations and the myth.
Oh, the irony? The cockney accent was the original London accent, spoken by all classes. It was only some two hundred years ago the aristocracy sought ways to further separate themselves from the dirty commons, and language was one of them. So they promoted an elite form of pronunciation in their boy-factories of Harrow and Eton and the like, now known as the accepted pronunciation, or BBC English.
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11 hours ago, SadPanda said:
Yes, everyone is a "socialist" to some degree - well, almost. There might be some outliers who are so selfish and/or independent that they may eschew society and community completely, but such as that are so rare as to be insignificant.
You don't need quotes around the word. I'll say it properly: everyone's a Socialist. Many of the ideals and policies of socialists have been so integrated into world societies and economies that they are not recognized. Want a few examples? How about the eight hour day/forty hour workweek, with extra pay for overtime? Unemployment insurance, workman's compensation, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid? Too bleeding heart liberal for you? Ok, how about deductions for mortgage interest, tax breaks and subsidies for businesses and farmers? How about FEMA, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health? How about the whole idea of deficit spending (which conservatives are better at than anyone else). Do you think that all the money we spend on national defense is needed for our security? It's mostly a social spending program that provides tens of thousands of tax-payer funded jobs. Also by keeping a large standing military, we keep a lot of potential workers out of the labor market, boosting wages. That's all Socialism, with a big "S".
I'm not saying any or all of that is right or wrong, I'm just saying be honest about it.
11 hours ago, SadPanda said:they just have a greater sense of the importance of each of us taking - and being held to - personal responsibility,
One of the great misrepresentations of conservatives. Their meaning is to have others be personally responsible. The ones who champion it loudest and work to force others to live by that standard are the ones who benefit most from the socialist institutions that exist in our economy and government.
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Everyone is a socialist. Not only conservatives, but even people who say they are socialists are socialists. Everyone is perfectly happy to benefit from the advantages of communities, associations, or government. The difference is conservatives refuse to acknowledge the benefits they gain, or any responsibilities they might have for those benefits.
The point about my post was that I get tired at the casual back-hand swipes people of a certain cast take at works like The Grapes of Wrath, both the book and movie, seeking to deligitimize it through trivialization. In this instance, citing its 'preachiness'. Calling out the brutal oppression and exploitation farmworkers and dust bowl refugees experienced in their trek for work and a place to live is not political, but human, even if it includes promoting the idea that people should be paid enough to keep them from starving to death after working sixty hours or more a week. I would like to point out that conditions for farmworkers still is exploitative and brutal. People die from exposure to pesticides and heat exhaustion.
My guess is some people feel threatened in some ways by great works of art, perhaps because they challenge comfortable assumptions they carry about the world. Sniffing at it, or casually dropping negative characterizations helps them cope with their insecurity. If you can look down on something, you must be above it.
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George Raft's acting was of the furniture style.
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And a femme fatale.
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1 hour ago, jakeem said:
(5) And some film histories consider 'The Maltese Falcon' the first film noir. It put down the foundations for that native American genre of mean streets, knife-edged heroes, dark shadows and tough dames."
And also a cynical view of the world. Spade, even though he finds Archer's murderer, does so not from loyalty or affection, but from practical considerations, which he so eloquently outlines to Brigid before he has her take the fall. And he had an affair with Archer's wife.
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I thought those figures were CGI.
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2 hours ago, Allhallowsday said:
And somewhat less preachy in the leftist message...
Ah, so condemning brutality, exploitation, tyranny, and viciousness is left. I had always thought it was human. Oh, it's the wages. That's what does it.
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Have you ever wondered why in Forbidden Planet...
in General Discussions
Posted
Oooo. Big boom.