(no subject)
‘you aware of the myth of narcissus?’
littleredchucks:
culumacilinte:
So I wanna talk about this exchange between Howard and Vince, from the radio episode Stolen:
Howard: You aware of the myth of Narcissus?
Vince: What, that bloke who used to look in lakes?
Howard: Yeah, well he fell in one and drowned.
Vince: Did he?
Howard: Yeah.
Vince: Well, we got mirrors now.
Howard: You can fall into mirrors.
Vince: What?
Howard: Oh yeah.
Vince: Don’t be stupid.
AND I LOVE THIS WHOLE LITTLE MOMENT, because I think it is so perfectly illustrative of a few key facets of Howard’s character.
Firstly, and most obviously, he is desperate to appear to be a serious intellectual, hence: Greek mythology references. Because NOTHING SAYS SRS INTELLECTUAL like Greek mythology, amirite guys? It’s there in his phrasing too; ‘are you aware of the myth of Narcissus?’, which implies a presumption that Vince is not aware, and that Howard will have to have the onerous task of educating him. (Like Howard probably doesn’t have fantasies of Vince listening with rapt interest to one of his lectures)
But then, bless him, he gets it wrong. Narcissus does drown, of course, in some versions of the legend- he commits suicide, drowning himself upon realising that he can never be with the object of his love (in others, rather more horrifically, he simply wastes away, unable to leave his reflection), but the way Howard tells it makes it sound like a cautionary tale about being careful around lakes, rather than the dangers of excessive self-love. He’s got the basic trappings of how to look like an intellectual down; he can drop key words and affect airs, but he’s nnnnnnot really got much to back that up.
So we’ve got pretensions of intellectualism and the failure to back them up, but then, BUT THEN, and this is what I love, he takes a sharp dip into the absurd. ‘You can fall into mirrors,’ he says, with absolutely as much seriousness as anything preceding it. On one level, yeah, he is just saying it to fuck with Vince because he’s annoyed with him for his preening/calling Howard generic/not taking him seriously, but also… no that’s just true. In the Booshiverse, you can fall into mirrors. Whether or not they’re part of an extended metaphor about narcissism. And that doesn’t register as odd at all to Howard.
It’s such a wonderful mix of the thoroughly mundane and the magical, and the way Howard approaches the magical aspects of the world, and I love it.
Yes to all of this! It’s such a perfect example of how Howard’s posturing gets more and more absurd and out of control when he thinks Vince is on to him, because Vince calls him out and shows that he does indeed know about the myth and so Howard has to add things to the story that Vince won’t know to show that he’s more intelligent than Vince and in doing so just paints himself into the proverbial corner.
But then it’s also, possibly, a glimpse into the way the world of the Boosh evolved and was made because this was just an idea in a conversation which may or may not have been improvised in the day of recording but when they were bringing their ideas together to make that first TV series that truth of their world actually came to be. You can fall into mirrors, you can end up in the Mirror World and end up a shammy leather monster. And Vince just takes that in his stride when it happens because even when Howard seems to be talking nonsense Vince has learnt to give the ideas at least some credence because so often his ridiculous assertions do actually turn out to be fact in a roundabout sort of way. Sorry I’ll stop rambling now but I do so love the insights we get into their characters from the radio show.
Also ALL OF THESE THINGS. Never stop rambling, Chucks, your rambles are delightful. And also YES. That is a delightful thing, that regardless of how much Howard assumes Vince to be his intellectual inferior, he is also just as desperate to prove himself to Vince as he is to any number of Mrs. Gideons or Simon McFarnabys. And then, my god, yes, the same thing but in reverse from Vince, where even when he suspects Howard’s talking bollocks, he never quiiiiiiite dismisses it. Because you never know.
And really, the radio show is just a fucking gold mine when it comes to little improvised moments like that. Where you have NO IDEA whether a thing was scripted or not, but you can practically see the ideas building on each other, just Noel and Julian shut up in a room riffing, and that is such infectious delight.
littleredchucks:
culumacilinte:
So I wanna talk about this exchange between Howard and Vince, from the radio episode Stolen:
Howard: You aware of the myth of Narcissus?
Vince: What, that bloke who used to look in lakes?
Howard: Yeah, well he fell in one and drowned.
Vince: Did he?
Howard: Yeah.
Vince: Well, we got mirrors now.
Howard: You can fall into mirrors.
Vince: What?
Howard: Oh yeah.
Vince: Don’t be stupid.
AND I LOVE THIS WHOLE LITTLE MOMENT, because I think it is so perfectly illustrative of a few key facets of Howard’s character.
Firstly, and most obviously, he is desperate to appear to be a serious intellectual, hence: Greek mythology references. Because NOTHING SAYS SRS INTELLECTUAL like Greek mythology, amirite guys? It’s there in his phrasing too; ‘are you aware of the myth of Narcissus?’, which implies a presumption that Vince is not aware, and that Howard will have to have the onerous task of educating him. (Like Howard probably doesn’t have fantasies of Vince listening with rapt interest to one of his lectures)
But then, bless him, he gets it wrong. Narcissus does drown, of course, in some versions of the legend- he commits suicide, drowning himself upon realising that he can never be with the object of his love (in others, rather more horrifically, he simply wastes away, unable to leave his reflection), but the way Howard tells it makes it sound like a cautionary tale about being careful around lakes, rather than the dangers of excessive self-love. He’s got the basic trappings of how to look like an intellectual down; he can drop key words and affect airs, but he’s nnnnnnot really got much to back that up.
So we’ve got pretensions of intellectualism and the failure to back them up, but then, BUT THEN, and this is what I love, he takes a sharp dip into the absurd. ‘You can fall into mirrors,’ he says, with absolutely as much seriousness as anything preceding it. On one level, yeah, he is just saying it to fuck with Vince because he’s annoyed with him for his preening/calling Howard generic/not taking him seriously, but also… no that’s just true. In the Booshiverse, you can fall into mirrors. Whether or not they’re part of an extended metaphor about narcissism. And that doesn’t register as odd at all to Howard.
It’s such a wonderful mix of the thoroughly mundane and the magical, and the way Howard approaches the magical aspects of the world, and I love it.
Yes to all of this! It’s such a perfect example of how Howard’s posturing gets more and more absurd and out of control when he thinks Vince is on to him, because Vince calls him out and shows that he does indeed know about the myth and so Howard has to add things to the story that Vince won’t know to show that he’s more intelligent than Vince and in doing so just paints himself into the proverbial corner.
But then it’s also, possibly, a glimpse into the way the world of the Boosh evolved and was made because this was just an idea in a conversation which may or may not have been improvised in the day of recording but when they were bringing their ideas together to make that first TV series that truth of their world actually came to be. You can fall into mirrors, you can end up in the Mirror World and end up a shammy leather monster. And Vince just takes that in his stride when it happens because even when Howard seems to be talking nonsense Vince has learnt to give the ideas at least some credence because so often his ridiculous assertions do actually turn out to be fact in a roundabout sort of way. Sorry I’ll stop rambling now but I do so love the insights we get into their characters from the radio show.
Also ALL OF THESE THINGS. Never stop rambling, Chucks, your rambles are delightful. And also YES. That is a delightful thing, that regardless of how much Howard assumes Vince to be his intellectual inferior, he is also just as desperate to prove himself to Vince as he is to any number of Mrs. Gideons or Simon McFarnabys. And then, my god, yes, the same thing but in reverse from Vince, where even when he suspects Howard’s talking bollocks, he never quiiiiiiite dismisses it. Because you never know.
And really, the radio show is just a fucking gold mine when it comes to little improvised moments like that. Where you have NO IDEA whether a thing was scripted or not, but you can practically see the ideas building on each other, just Noel and Julian shut up in a room riffing, and that is such infectious delight.