Pleasantville dinner
I forget how good a film Pleasantville is until I'm in the middle of watching it. It's just full of so much interesting allusion wrapped up in the cute, vintage foil of "good times."
Amazing wardrobe aside, it manages to echo sentiments of civil rights, suffrage, feminism, bohemianism -- basically, whatever marginalization you can think of, you can insert into the Pleasantville universe and feel moved.
There was a very funny moment with my mother.
The dad comes home, puts his briefcase on the floor, hangs his hat, and says, "HONEY, I'M HOME!"
Silence.
He tries again. Nothing.
He wanders the house in confusion and peeks inside the kitchen. "Where's my dinner?" he wonders aloud.
He opens the oven and looks like a lost child. "Where's my dinner?" he keeps asking.
Finally, he goes outside and stands in the rain..."Where's my dinner?"
Eventually, he stumbles into the bowling alley where "the men" of the town are gathered and tells the horrific tale of no wife, no dinner.
My mother cracked up. English is not her first language, mind you, so she can only follow simple plots and straightforward dialogue. "Where's my dinner?" she got. With each repeated instance, she laughed harder.
My aunt (who's been staying with us since her hospital release last week), came in to see what the excitement was. My mother explained in Khmer about "Where's my dinner?" and how the man was useless and didn't know what to do because his wife did all the work, he can't even eat without her help.
XD XD XD
I die.
And cry a little inside knowing that she finds it so funny because she lived it at one point in her life.
Amazing wardrobe aside, it manages to echo sentiments of civil rights, suffrage, feminism, bohemianism -- basically, whatever marginalization you can think of, you can insert into the Pleasantville universe and feel moved.
There was a very funny moment with my mother.
The dad comes home, puts his briefcase on the floor, hangs his hat, and says, "HONEY, I'M HOME!"
Silence.
He tries again. Nothing.
He wanders the house in confusion and peeks inside the kitchen. "Where's my dinner?" he wonders aloud.
He opens the oven and looks like a lost child. "Where's my dinner?" he keeps asking.
Finally, he goes outside and stands in the rain..."Where's my dinner?"
Eventually, he stumbles into the bowling alley where "the men" of the town are gathered and tells the horrific tale of no wife, no dinner.
My mother cracked up. English is not her first language, mind you, so she can only follow simple plots and straightforward dialogue. "Where's my dinner?" she got. With each repeated instance, she laughed harder.
My aunt (who's been staying with us since her hospital release last week), came in to see what the excitement was. My mother explained in Khmer about "Where's my dinner?" and how the man was useless and didn't know what to do because his wife did all the work, he can't even eat without her help.
XD XD XD
I die.
And cry a little inside knowing that she finds it so funny because she lived it at one point in her life.