She's a Maneater
Check this out:
Wouldn't I love to take credit for finding that gem on my own? If only. Actually, I just finished reading The Jane Austen Book Club, by Karen Joy Fowler, and she has this whole Reader's Guide worked out in the last 40 pages of her novel with 200 years of responses to about Austen's work. That quote was the definite winner.
[By the way, a close second in the race for pure excellence is "Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone." - Mark Twain, 1898. Note that, as torturous as he finds Austen, he does subtly 'fess up to repeated readings!
...One can only dream that my writing will be so repugnant to the authors of the future that they will long to exhume my rotting corpse to beat me down with my own femur (which is a sturdier bone and could do MUCH more permanent damage than a delicate shin--I know enough of Twain's brilliance to presume he would choose THAT bone instead, given the chance to select osteoweaponry again!)
So tell me, fellow citizens of 2004: how do you like them apples?
Manhunt?
Husband hunters?
Snaring a bachelor?
Taking a lesson from their example?
Oh, the gall of MGM! I'm so shocked!
Right?
Well, I was. Actually caused me to drop the book in surprise and run it to my sister for show and tell. "Can you believe this?" and the like.
It's condescending and chauvinistic. Tacky and trite.
Not to mention just plain silly.
And then, with an inward gasp of outright horror, I realized something:
I'm a husband hunter.
Of course I am. Not only is that idea unsurprising, it's expected. Understood. Implied.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman in possession of good breeding hips, must be in want of a husband.
That's not the shocking part.
The shock comes in openly admitting such a hideously antifeminist thing. In 2004. With a girls' school education, no less!
...that's just NOT done!
Which is a very antiquated notion in and of itself. Subjects being taboo, admitting such a thing is unladylike, everyone's thinking it, but no one's saying it, yadda yadda yadda.
It's "Elephant in the Room" syndrome.
You know, like that little dance we all have to do when we try to describe people without reference to race, body type, physical disfigurements, Siamese twins welded to their foreheads, etc.
Instead, we learn to refer to people as, "you know, that guy who was standing to the left of that girl who was wearing orange that one time?" Rubbish. When it would be far easier just to bust out with "I know a man with a wooden leg named Smith..." without fear of seeming like an a-hole for pointing out his general pegleggedness.
Poor Smith the Wooden Leg. The PC police won't let us speak of him anymore. Curious how being subtle about something is far preferred, albeit entirely less efficient.
"I'm a husband hunter" is the PC-equivalent of "Well, he's black" on the tact-o-meter. No one with an ounce of class would ever say that.
Which is precisely why I can.
Although (to be fair) I'm of a generation that has traded in cotillions for Girls Gone Wild, so I'm not exactly a pith-helmeted, tranquilizer-totin' big-game hunter compared to some ladies...
And thank goodness for that! But:
Even a person who seems Zen as can be--sitting in her rowboat, casting a line out onto a seemingly fishless glassy pond--is ultimately hoping to pierce through a trout-brain or two herself! Don't be fooled by the lack of outward-bound showiness...hunting is hunting either way; "getting your hooks into someone" isn't an expression that appeared out of nothingness!
As I was saying: I was shocked when I saw that MGM quote--especially the bit about "Girls! Take a Lesson!"
Jot down notes, learn their moves step-by-step, do as they do!
"Ew!" said I, for that is how I was raised to react.
Except we really do, you know. We take down notes.
Not out loud. Not in any notebook. Not in the secret depths of our girlhood diaries and journals. Not even in a way that we ourselves notice or recognize. But deep down (where we all know those fish are hiding!) we're taking mental notes. Imprinting ideas, thoughts, reactions, attitudes, responses deep in the subconscious levels of our brains.
We're using pop culture to program ourselves for future mating rituals. It's all very anthropologically sound. I'm sure, had I the formal sociological training, skills, knowledge and information, I could perform a formal study that would arrive at that very conclusion. We upload tidbits onto our own cerebral diskettes at a teeny-tiny age.
Ergo: everything I know about snaring bewildered bachelors, I learned from watching TV. And movies. Reading books. Or any time I stopped singing along with pop music long enough to comprehend the meaning behind the words.
Maybe I never enrolled in Olivier's school of man-snaring, but there's a whole stockpile of course notes coiled deep in my cerebrum from sources as far-flung as Anne of Green Gables, The Beatles, When Harry Met Sally, The X-Files, The Baby-Sitters Club and the Colin Firthization of Jane Austen herself.
Pride and Prejudice went on to be a monster hit in 1940 and is still in constant rotation over at Turner Classic Movies to this day. Most people would credit the widespread popularity of the source material. All apologies to Miss Jane, but that's fantastically naive. Advertising! Pure and simple. Savvy, match.com "Your ideal mate is waiting!" SPAM filtered into the inboxes of moviegoers 60 years before email.
In the age of political correctness, the League of Women Voters or Planned Parenthood or Gloria Steinem or Oprah's Book Club would tackle MGM in a second flat for throwing a movie tagline like that out into the open.
That's a bit of a shame. Still, I don't think I'd be comfortable in a culture where everyone felt free to wave their every inappropriate thought about completely unfettered. I prefer to be the only one lacking an internal network censor.
Although I can't have completely abandoned tact...after all, I made it all the way through this post without once mentioning MGM's description of their movie as the gayest manhunt ever.
Aw, phooey.
...almost made it!
"Five charming sisters on the gayest, merriest manhunt that ever snared a bewildered bachelor! Girls! Take a lesson from these husband hunters!"
-- An honest-to-Pete quote from the honest-to-Pete trailer for the 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice, starring Greer Garson and Sir Laurence Olivier.
Wouldn't I love to take credit for finding that gem on my own? If only. Actually, I just finished reading The Jane Austen Book Club, by Karen Joy Fowler, and she has this whole Reader's Guide worked out in the last 40 pages of her novel with 200 years of responses to about Austen's work. That quote was the definite winner.
[By the way, a close second in the race for pure excellence is "Every time I read 'Pride and Prejudice' I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone." - Mark Twain, 1898. Note that, as torturous as he finds Austen, he does subtly 'fess up to repeated readings!
...One can only dream that my writing will be so repugnant to the authors of the future that they will long to exhume my rotting corpse to beat me down with my own femur (which is a sturdier bone and could do MUCH more permanent damage than a delicate shin--I know enough of Twain's brilliance to presume he would choose THAT bone instead, given the chance to select osteoweaponry again!)
So tell me, fellow citizens of 2004: how do you like them apples?
Manhunt?
Husband hunters?
Snaring a bachelor?
Taking a lesson from their example?
Oh, the gall of MGM! I'm so shocked!
Right?
Well, I was. Actually caused me to drop the book in surprise and run it to my sister for show and tell. "Can you believe this?" and the like.
It's condescending and chauvinistic. Tacky and trite.
Not to mention just plain silly.
And then, with an inward gasp of outright horror, I realized something:
I'm a husband hunter.
Of course I am. Not only is that idea unsurprising, it's expected. Understood. Implied.
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman in possession of good breeding hips, must be in want of a husband.
That's not the shocking part.
The shock comes in openly admitting such a hideously antifeminist thing. In 2004. With a girls' school education, no less!
...that's just NOT done!
Which is a very antiquated notion in and of itself. Subjects being taboo, admitting such a thing is unladylike, everyone's thinking it, but no one's saying it, yadda yadda yadda.
It's "Elephant in the Room" syndrome.
You know, like that little dance we all have to do when we try to describe people without reference to race, body type, physical disfigurements, Siamese twins welded to their foreheads, etc.
Instead, we learn to refer to people as, "you know, that guy who was standing to the left of that girl who was wearing orange that one time?" Rubbish. When it would be far easier just to bust out with "I know a man with a wooden leg named Smith..." without fear of seeming like an a-hole for pointing out his general pegleggedness.
Poor Smith the Wooden Leg. The PC police won't let us speak of him anymore. Curious how being subtle about something is far preferred, albeit entirely less efficient.
"I'm a husband hunter" is the PC-equivalent of "Well, he's black" on the tact-o-meter. No one with an ounce of class would ever say that.
Which is precisely why I can.
Although (to be fair) I'm of a generation that has traded in cotillions for Girls Gone Wild, so I'm not exactly a pith-helmeted, tranquilizer-totin' big-game hunter compared to some ladies...
And thank goodness for that! But:
Even a person who seems Zen as can be--sitting in her rowboat, casting a line out onto a seemingly fishless glassy pond--is ultimately hoping to pierce through a trout-brain or two herself! Don't be fooled by the lack of outward-bound showiness...hunting is hunting either way; "getting your hooks into someone" isn't an expression that appeared out of nothingness!
As I was saying: I was shocked when I saw that MGM quote--especially the bit about "Girls! Take a Lesson!"
Jot down notes, learn their moves step-by-step, do as they do!
"Ew!" said I, for that is how I was raised to react.
Except we really do, you know. We take down notes.
Not out loud. Not in any notebook. Not in the secret depths of our girlhood diaries and journals. Not even in a way that we ourselves notice or recognize. But deep down (where we all know those fish are hiding!) we're taking mental notes. Imprinting ideas, thoughts, reactions, attitudes, responses deep in the subconscious levels of our brains.
We're using pop culture to program ourselves for future mating rituals. It's all very anthropologically sound. I'm sure, had I the formal sociological training, skills, knowledge and information, I could perform a formal study that would arrive at that very conclusion. We upload tidbits onto our own cerebral diskettes at a teeny-tiny age.
Ergo: everything I know about snaring bewildered bachelors, I learned from watching TV. And movies. Reading books. Or any time I stopped singing along with pop music long enough to comprehend the meaning behind the words.
Maybe I never enrolled in Olivier's school of man-snaring, but there's a whole stockpile of course notes coiled deep in my cerebrum from sources as far-flung as Anne of Green Gables, The Beatles, When Harry Met Sally, The X-Files, The Baby-Sitters Club and the Colin Firthization of Jane Austen herself.
Pride and Prejudice went on to be a monster hit in 1940 and is still in constant rotation over at Turner Classic Movies to this day. Most people would credit the widespread popularity of the source material. All apologies to Miss Jane, but that's fantastically naive. Advertising! Pure and simple. Savvy, match.com "Your ideal mate is waiting!" SPAM filtered into the inboxes of moviegoers 60 years before email.
In the age of political correctness, the League of Women Voters or Planned Parenthood or Gloria Steinem or Oprah's Book Club would tackle MGM in a second flat for throwing a movie tagline like that out into the open.
That's a bit of a shame. Still, I don't think I'd be comfortable in a culture where everyone felt free to wave their every inappropriate thought about completely unfettered. I prefer to be the only one lacking an internal network censor.
Although I can't have completely abandoned tact...after all, I made it all the way through this post without once mentioning MGM's description of their movie as the gayest manhunt ever.
Aw, phooey.
...almost made it!
posted by Tangentially Yours at
11:36 PM
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