Christmas Crass and Christmas Heart

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There is something slightly crass about the Holiday… oh hell. Let’s call it what it really is: the Christmas Season.

Retailers are desperate to make sure Black Friday puts them solidly in the Black and gives them enough revenue to make it through the next year. Commercialism runs rampant, but is pretty much understandable because livelihoods – staving off foreclosure, repossession and starvation - depend on sales at this time of year.

Advertising is the vehicle by which these retailers get their message to the buying public, and many times the result is heartwarming and kinda fun (think big red bows and just in the nick of time snowfall saving the day and inducing spontaneous song singing). Other times it is just tawdry, screaming in your face, even guilt-inducing (YOU MUST BUY THIS OR YOU ARE A BAAAAD HUSBAND, PARENT, FRIEND, etc.). Either way – and all the ways in between – again, it is still pretty understandable.

Christmas movies… now there is another story.

Some movies are wonderful and stand the test of time, and others can, and do, disappear into the ethereal if slightly stale celluloid misty void where they belong amidst dusty distintegrating costumes and old chipped and cracked props.

Every year, movie makers attempt to reinvent the classics, with remakes and “re-imaginings”. Some brave souls even try new stories. For some reason beyond my real understanding, many of these seem hastily made and a rather desperate attempt to “cash in” rather than making an honest living selling stuff to people who are desperate to buy that same stuff.

Maybe if the quality of these “re-imaginings”, remakes and even some new stories were able to truly capture even the tiniest modicum of the magic we are all searching for this time of year, we could embrace their stories and add them to our DVD shelves for yearly watching huddled around the TV flickering like a cold fire, fighting over the popcorn and arguing over who has to go get the paper towels because SOMEone spilled their soda.

*sigh* Good times.

Anyway, I could probably forgive their attempts if they had some “heart”, that indefinable something that gives a film that special extra push that resonates long after the credits roll.

Take "A Christmas Carol", a novel that has been remade in film and on stage soooo many times that a true aficionado would have a hard time getting through all of them without either a boxful of Kleenex or a very large glass of wine and a steady hand on the mute button.

For those who have actually READ the classic book by Charles Dickens, you all know the story is not only about personal redemption via ghost dreams, but it is filled with humor, pathos, social commentary and an interesting history lesson on how people dealt with death of a hated colleague or beloved family member in an era where death was a sad but very frequent personal visitor.

So why is it that so many remakes fail to get past the ghosts and at least give a nod in the general direction of some of these underlying themes in this very slim volume? A clever writer would be able to interject the requisite pathos, a layered cast would play it just so and a competent director and editor would work it to allow the seasoning of the story to come through to elevate it beyond the obvious.

Alastair Sim, Albert Finney, Bill Murray, Fred Flintstone, Mr. Magoo, George C. Scott, Uncle Scrooge, Michael Caine, Patrick Stewart, Jim Carrey… so many Scrooges, so little time…

And we all have our favorite; for whatever reason, the one single version that sings to us; that one translation that tugs at our heartstrings year after year. Upon expanding these favorite versions, you can dig beneath the layers and find… more layers; layers that touch on or deeply explore one or more of the underlying themes laid out so carefully by the inestimable Mr. Dickens.

Whether the emphasis on the sub-themes is on the pathos or the social commentary or even the humor (gallows though it often is), there is something for all of us in this deceptively simple story.

Personally, even though a couple of very significant sub-stories are missing (like Scrooge's beloved sister, who emotionally ties him to his oft-maligned nephew), my favorite is … "The Muppet Christmas Carol".

Really. I am completely serious here.

Pathos, humor, social commentary, dealing with death… it is all touched on there, brilliantly executed by the Muppet cast and Michael Cain and a slew of other real live actors mingling seamlessly in with the legless puppets.

Only the dramatic reading by Patrick Stewart (not his film version...but the far superior stage reading – which I have seen in person TWICE!!! - also out on CD, available at Amazon.com…) even comes close.

Muppet Christmas Carol (also available at Amazon.com... hmmmmm starting to sound like a commercial here) is more than just fun, and the throw away lines and visual jokes really are hilarious, but the heart is deep, the layers complex and the simple felt Muppet puppets portray the cast that surrounds Michael Cain with a depth that is simply amazing.

Muppets and Charles Dickens… whoda thunk it??

Just Musing,
Susan





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Memory - or Lack Thereof

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I keep thinking I am still a young woman... but then things keep cropping up: grey hair (only at the roots!), weird pains, the look on my mother's face in the mirror, my inability to recognise any current music or artists or actors, and now the most dreaded of all aging un-fair-ables: Memory Loss.

I have been trying to get back into this blog post to write for more than two weeks. I simply could not remember my log in and password. I naturally assumed it was the email address with the extension The Powers That Be requested and spent hours, days, weeks, decades, eons, for EVER trying to figure out what the *$(%@ was wrong. In the end, I created another account, but it still wouldn't let me into my own blog...

Frustration, thy name is Technology.

It got me thinking about other recent bouts of forgetfulness. Where I left my keys. Where the heck is my credit card?? Why did I come into this room?? What in tarnation is the name of my BFF????? HOW do I open an escrow?? My phone number? Ummmmmm.....

I figure there has to be an explanation for this seemingly random series of brain fades since other times I am sharp and quick and witty. I can even do the word puzzles in the paper every morning in my head.

Obviously I am either a target of a Forget Me Now Ray gun (scary to think I might know something so terrible that the Super Secret Arm of the US Gvm'nt would use this buggy and dangerous techonology in a metro area!!! *gasp*) or, and this is a far more likely scenario, I am beset by Forgettery Fairies.

I have been whacked over the head by these Forgetteries more and more often in recent months... So often in fact, that I have acquired my own personal one who follows me around all day. I shall call her Frosince. I can't see Frosince except out of the corner of my eye, but I picture this fairy as being kinda scrunchy looking, green leafy dress all wrinkled because she forgot to take it out of the dryer, a perpetual slightly puzzled scowl on her little face from constant concentration and frustration, cold toes because she forgot to put on her tiny little shoes (from the hundreds she steals from little girl's Barbies), and her teeth are all fuzzy because, well, you get the idea.

Frosince is not a happy camper. My theory is that in addition to forgetting to brush her teeth yesterday, she also forgot where she left her car (a Beetle, of course) on the three hundred and forty-seventh level of the parking structure at Disneyland when she was on a pilgrimage to pay homage to the epitome of achievable fairy success, Tink, and had to hitchhike back home on the luggage rack of a Kia. (BTW, anyone who would even SUGGEST that she use her wings to fly nearly 100 miles is a cad.)

I am certain that she has weilded her Wand of Formatible Forgetty-fulness, all 2 inches and 37 grams of it, repeatedly at my head and THAT is the reason I have been waking up with little headaches and odd lumps on my head in the morning. That is certainly a more logical explanation than rolling over too close ot the edge of the bed and ker-bonging my head on the nightstand!

Ouch.

Fairy clobbering notwithstanding, I am back, and expect to get back on some sort of writing schedule.

Just... watch out for fairies with bad breath. It could be Frosince or one of her BFF Forgettery Friends like Freida or Frescura, coming to visit YOU... ker-BONNNNG!!!!

Just Musing,
Susan


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