Comments | kattahj: the immoral 50s

kattahj

the immoral 50s

Mar 24, 2004 23:24

You know how the 50s are always portrayed as a time of innocense and clean family values ( Read more... )

Comments 15

raveninthewind March 24 2004, 15:40:24 UTC

I loved that movie as a teenager. Probaly explains something about my psyche, huh.

OTOH, I disliked Pretty Woman quite a lot.

kattahj March 24 2004, 15:49:08 UTC

I liked it too, actually. Even made an icon. *grin*

Though I used to like Pretty Woman as well. And I still like Hector Elizondo in it. I like him in everything - too bad he keeps showing up in bad Marshall movies.

anaid_rabbit March 24 2004, 16:02:35 UTC

I never saw Gigi (though I`d heard of it), but my grandmother sometimes talks about it and I`m really surprised, since she`s a fairly conservative person. I knew about the courtesan part of the movie, though. And the song, "Thank Heaven For Little Girls"? lol. Doesn`t it have lines like "thank heaven for little girls / for little girls grow bigger every day", or something like that? I think this whole thing has a totally different meaning nowadays.

kattahj March 24 2004, 16:15:27 UTC

It does indeed. And "without them what would little boys do?" It's really quite fascinating in its naive semi-pedophilia. And the whole movie... poor Gigi. Like all such girls, she was cuter before the makeover - I suppose I can give this film points for realizing that.

anaid_rabbit March 25 2004, 08:43:35 UTC

Like all such girls, she was cuter before the makeover - I suppose I can give this film points for realizing that.
Kinda like on My Fair Lady, no?

kattahj March 25 2004, 12:45:03 UTC

Yes, although that one is complicated because of the changed ending and all that. (In my opinion, both endings are awful - she can't possibly marry that fop Freddy, and she can't spend her life fetching Higgins's slippers. Perhaps if she could make him fetch *hers* - but he'd never do that.)

raincitygirl March 24 2004, 18:01:17 UTC

Howling with laughter over your appreciation of the innocent fifties. Oh man, that was my favourite movie in the whole world when I was eleven. The whole courtesan thing flew completely over my head, though. I watched it again when I was about sixteen, and just sat there for two hours with my mouth open going "Can they make a musical about *that*? How could I not have realized what this movie was about?"

kattahj March 25 2004, 01:44:41 UTC

It is a triumph of subtility - everything is so neat you don't listen to what's actually said. Like a double entendre, it's a way of escaping censorship. You can't say "whore" and "mistress" and "dirty old man", but you can say "courtesan" and "I'll take care of her future" and "thank Heaven for little girls". Plus, slap a wedding onto it and everything is fine.

And of course, it's much more fun that way. I read an article the other day about the double entendre, where they used as an example a woman who is standing in front of her friends with her hands apart as to show a huge size. Behind her, there's a stuffed fish and a photo of an athlete, and the text says "they didn't believe her". Now, that's *much* more fun than just saying "he had a big dick".

So hooray for the fifties when immorality could be shown as innocence!

I did like that movie illmantrim March 24 2004, 19:32:51 UTC

and always will--it'scute

Re: I did like that movie kattahj March 25 2004, 01:36:17 UTC

It *is* cute. And I adore it - I find it perfectly fascinating to see how you can blend the immorality of it with the cute 50s style. I didn't post about it because I don't *like* it, I posted about it to show the difference between style and content. It's well worth noting that despite the film's theme, there isn't even any proper kissing - the production code controls everything that's *shown* and nothing of what is *implied*.

starbright73 March 25 2004, 02:41:15 UTC

I miss implication. It's so much more tantalizing than having the story force fed to you. And not only the story ;)

And yes, back then they were far more progressive than we are today, despite the feigned openness about sexuality.

kattahj March 25 2004, 03:05:57 UTC

I have a CD called "Listen to the Banned", with forbidden songs from the 20s and 30s. It's one of my favourite CDs ever. Some of the songs are barely indecent, but they're nearly the funniest - like "I've gone and lost my little yo-yo" with lines like "I did all kinds of tricks with it, I could trail it up and down. I could swing it up and swing it down and swing it round and round."

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