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October 08, 2003
HORSEFEATHERS GOES TO THE MOVIES FOR FUN AND FINDS PROPAGANDA One can take only so much of the New York Times’ handwringing, negativism, and tiresome Henny Pennyism. Every once in a while we need some respite. So we went to the movies the other night to see “Under the Tuscan Sun.” We knew that Frances Mayes, on whose books the movie is based, had written a couple of very popular books about her adventures in an Italian village. In her attempts to buy and renovate a small villa she and her loverl/husband have many comic encounters and learn to love the beauty of the land, the people, and folkways that are endearing and simple. We looked forward, as we handed our admission tickets to the usher, to a couple of hours of escape from the social and political agonizing of the American media and to being transported to scenes of beautiful Tuscany and some comic encounters with Italian contractors and workmen. What we got was a homily on Sisterhood and a stealth lesson on the joys of Lesbian Motherhood. Our hero, Frances, gets betrayed and screwed over by her estranged husband. To console her, her gay girl friends give her a trip to Tuscany with a gay men’s tour group. (Throughout this movie gay people are depicted as unfailingly bright, cheerful, warm, and accepting.) Clearly, from the beginning one can see the outline of an agenda taking shape. The director/writer Audrey Wells has transformed an innocent and enjoyable travelogue into a message movie. You get to see some of the adventures with the contractors and workmen, and a few scenes of the beauty of the countryside, but the heart of the movie centers on the lovesick, moping Frances and the feminist lessons she learns about the inconstancy of men. Although Frances is supposed to be a writer and professor of literature neither she nor Ms. Wells appears to have read or understood “Madame Bovary” or “Anna Karenina.” Her emotional life seems stuck at the level of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
Again and again men are depicted as exploitive, manipulating, disloyal, unfaithful and disappointing. And women are depicted as the only people you can depend on. In the end her lesbian friend and her new baby comes to live with Frances under the Tuscan sun and become her nuclear family, supplemented perhaps by a series of men who will drift in and out of her life. At the end it was a great relief to get back to reading the worried writing of the New York Times. Posted at 04:03 PM by
 
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See, this is what surprises me: commentary on a movie, having nothing to do with the New York Times, can't be done without taking a dig at the Grey Lady. Both to open and close!
Yale, are you aware that the Times recently did an article noting a similar superficiality in the treatment of men in sitcoms?
Posted by: Frank on October 8, 2003 04:21 PMAh for the GOOD OLD DAYS OF PETRIFIED FOREST with Leslie Howard, Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart (While watching the late show I relived my father's usher days - one of two jobs he worked during High School and College including the slaughterhouse at the UN site..once Mr. Sullivan his High School English teacher wanted to know why there was blood splattered on his English homework. My father answered simply it must have happened on break at 1AM)
Posted by: Ricardo Munro on October 9, 2003 03:14 AMNow second hand Lions was not exactly Shakespeare but it was a charming tour PG de force by Robert Duvall marred only by its insistence to put in the world B*** S*** for macho realism. Recommended. Don't mess with Texas. Actually parts of it reminded me of Auld Pop and his Dad -not my father- both famous head crackers and bar room brawlers when cornered.
Frank,
Posted by: Stephen on October 9, 2003 04:25 PMPerhaps you didn't notice the name and motto of this weblog. As one of the main repositories of folly, ignorance and cant, you can expect to see frequent references to the NYTimes.
Well, it's youse guys' blog, of course, but maybe it would work better if you had separate posts? One on the movie, and another dumping on the Times? That way, you can really dump on the Times, without dancing around a movie review. (It's kind of like that earlier post which credited an Israeli scientific discovery, but had to make a dig at Arab neighbors in the intro.)
Posted by: Frank on October 9, 2003 05:27 PMThat's right Frank, a "dig at Arab neighbors"! You really got the point, didn't you? How sweet. Let's all gather around the TV screen and sing "What a beautiful day in the neighborhood". The post had a title: Civilization vs. Barbarism. Those "neighbors" you cite are devoting themselves to destroying the culture that has worked hard to produce the wonders of modern science and medicine that may one day save your life.
Posted by: Stephen on October 9, 2003 09:33 PMAnd Frank, thanks for the helpful advice on how to make the blog "work better". It's based on the assumption that readers can't mentally chew gum and walk at the same time; for example, that they can't connect the political correctness of a movie with the political correctness of the NYTimes. We think they can. We think you can too, with a little more effort.
Like I said, it's youse guys' blog. Write the way you want. Me, if I wanted to praise an Israeli achievement, I wouldn't need to slam the surrounding countries in the process: the achievement would stand on its own. And if I wanted to complain about a movie, I would do that directly. But it's youse guys' blog.
Posted by: Frank on October 9, 2003 10:12 PMHey Frank, I sees dat youse has a web site 2. How come for there isn't no comments section?
Maybe all the people from other sites that has to put up with you would like to return the favor.
Posted by: Grumpy on October 10, 2003 03:59 AMBalderdash. "Negativity" doesn't equal "political correctness."
Posted by: Hired Contrarian on October 10, 2003 07:08 AMwhat's the point of life if you cant stick your finger in the nytimes' eye every chance you get?
Posted by: akaky on October 22, 2003 05:05 PMSomeone,please explain to me the meaning of "The Grey Lady" in relation to the NYTimes.Thank you in advance.
Posted by: linnhy on December 19, 2003 07:13 PM