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SERENITY TRAILER!
A black day for all who lunch. The soup stall at the station has closed down and been replaced by a pasty emporium. Want soup! How to get soup? Plan to buy up vegetarian chicken carcasses and boil them in a big pot for hours. Freeze the concentrate in multiple ice cube trays. But freezer already stuffed to the gunnels with complementary packs of oven fries. Freezing stops them from breeding or maybe it just slows things down.
Our vegetable love will grow
Vaster then empires and more slow
Chips are vegetables aren’t they?
Speaking of horti-culture I had some thoughts about Moulin Rouge. And story structure and audience deception. At least I thought I had some thoughts but now I try to think them they don’t seem to amount to so much. Like when you dream that you come up with the perfect riposte to someone and it’s so good you even write it down. Then wake up to find fuck off fish face scrawled all over the walls. Where was I? Moulin Rouge.
Moulin Rouge is a film of many layers each addressing a slightly different audience with a slightly different message. Most obviously, it’s a musical about making a musical and as such forms part of a major sub-genre that ranges from Busby Berkely’s oeuvre to all those Mickey and Judy “let’s put on a show right here” shows, and from Singing in the Rain to A Chorus Line. In Moulin Rouge the show within the show, rather than simply acting as a pretext to put on production numbers, has a love triangle plotline that mirrors Christian and the Duke’s competition for Satine’s soul. While the Duke, as the paying audience, demands one ending to the story, the actors subversively stage another. Chaos breaks out on stage and in the end the Duke admits defeat.
So the show outwith the show appears to conform to the classic formula for its sub-genre. The forces of reaction, the old regime, the money men are forced to yield to the unstoppable creative energy of youth combined with popular music. This is the subtext or even the text of many many Hollywood movies that incestuously celebrate populism. From Dames to Summer Stock to Rock Around the Clock to Summer Holiday to Footloose and seemingly to Luhrman’s own Strictly Ballroom. But if you look closely at Strictly Ballroom it’s actually rather snooty about modern popular culture as represented by the ballroom dancing and even dismisses the individualistic version pioneered by Scott. Artistic redemption in this movie is found by returning to your flamenco roots. Similarily with Moulin Rouge the soft chewy centre of musical comedy goodness is embedded in the tragic high art shell of La Boheme. Or possibly Manon Lescaut. At the height of the final triumphant production Satine collapses and dies of consumption. However, before things become too maudlin this story too is shown to be part of yet another more meditative tale, in which the audience for Satine’s tragedy, the older and wiser Christian, reflects on his experiences and begins to turn them into art. Briefly, before the eponymous Red Curtain closes leaving the real live audience back where they began. Outside.
Our vegetable love will grow
Vaster then empires and more slow
Chips are vegetables aren’t they?
Speaking of horti-culture I had some thoughts about Moulin Rouge. And story structure and audience deception. At least I thought I had some thoughts but now I try to think them they don’t seem to amount to so much. Like when you dream that you come up with the perfect riposte to someone and it’s so good you even write it down. Then wake up to find fuck off fish face scrawled all over the walls. Where was I? Moulin Rouge.
Moulin Rouge is a film of many layers each addressing a slightly different audience with a slightly different message. Most obviously, it’s a musical about making a musical and as such forms part of a major sub-genre that ranges from Busby Berkely’s oeuvre to all those Mickey and Judy “let’s put on a show right here” shows, and from Singing in the Rain to A Chorus Line. In Moulin Rouge the show within the show, rather than simply acting as a pretext to put on production numbers, has a love triangle plotline that mirrors Christian and the Duke’s competition for Satine’s soul. While the Duke, as the paying audience, demands one ending to the story, the actors subversively stage another. Chaos breaks out on stage and in the end the Duke admits defeat.
So the show outwith the show appears to conform to the classic formula for its sub-genre. The forces of reaction, the old regime, the money men are forced to yield to the unstoppable creative energy of youth combined with popular music. This is the subtext or even the text of many many Hollywood movies that incestuously celebrate populism. From Dames to Summer Stock to Rock Around the Clock to Summer Holiday to Footloose and seemingly to Luhrman’s own Strictly Ballroom. But if you look closely at Strictly Ballroom it’s actually rather snooty about modern popular culture as represented by the ballroom dancing and even dismisses the individualistic version pioneered by Scott. Artistic redemption in this movie is found by returning to your flamenco roots. Similarily with Moulin Rouge the soft chewy centre of musical comedy goodness is embedded in the tragic high art shell of La Boheme. Or possibly Manon Lescaut. At the height of the final triumphant production Satine collapses and dies of consumption. However, before things become too maudlin this story too is shown to be part of yet another more meditative tale, in which the audience for Satine’s tragedy, the older and wiser Christian, reflects on his experiences and begins to turn them into art. Briefly, before the eponymous Red Curtain closes leaving the real live audience back where they began. Outside.