A Tribute to the Magnificent Whale

On Sunday night, the Legend channel (formerly Horror), aired the Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935) as part of its Vintage Vault series. When I had finished screaming and hollering with delight, I concluded that BOF is one of the best little movies to emerge from Hollywood in the past 100 years. From its opening moment, the plot veers on a roller coaster from the heights of sublimity to the depths of ludocrity, and back up again. Overall, it is a feast of visual jokes, gothic cliches and an array of characters worthy of a Dickens’ novel: the rather pompous Henry (changed from Victor) Frankenstein (Colin Clive), who is desperate to be seen as the victim but really is the instigator of all of the mischief. Valerie Hobson plays his beautiful girlfriend, Elizabeth, while Dr Septimus Pretorius (Ernest Thesiger) is the new evil genius. The irascible servant Minnie (Una O’Connor) delivers marvellous comic asides and needless to say, the inimitable Boris Karloff sparkles darkly in his original role as the misunderstood Monster. Highlights include the tender scenes where the all-too-human Monster, longing for food, warmth and friendship is drawn into the cottage of a blind old man and bonds with him, the fabulous steampunky apparatus that elevates the female cadaver to the lightening storm, and the moment she emerges from her bandages, her hairdo a combo of Egyptian queen and Marge Simpson gone wrong. We even get to meet the ghosts of Mary Shelley (Elsa Lanchester), her husband the poet Percy Bysse Shelley and their friend Lord Byron. When the Bride rejects her intended spouse, the Monster’s bitterness is palpably human. But I won’t spoil all the surprises: do see this masterpiece of classic cinema from the magnificent Whale.

Cracking down on...

I don’t know who first coined the phrase or whenever it fell into common currency, but according to the received wisdom of the English lexicon, “crack down” is a phrasal verb that means “to take severe action against”, a subject, presumably a person or organisation that is engaged upon activities of a dubious or criminal nature. But nowadays, the phrase has become the go-to term that expresses the merest rumblings of personal discontent, every bellyache and grumble with life, to grave political issues. While in the supermarket, I heard a woman stating that she was going to crack down on her partner’s excessive use of toilet paper. I ask you. When my brain had finished its 1001 boggles, it set about a whistle-stop tour of those finer verbs, more subtle in intent, that could be used in place of the insidious CD: discourage, explore, investigate, inhibit, modify, prevent, probe, question or simply offer an alternative. Best wishes to my consumer companion and her tissue issues.

Dear Diary: sympathetic magic

Sun, sun, go to hell; bring to us a rainy spell; sun, sun, go to hell; bring to us a rainy spell...
With the straw bonnet perched upon his head, and the black chevrons painted about his eyes, and the straw kilt spinning about his waist, and the bone of an indeterminate animal clutched in his hand, Albert has never looked so cool. In time to his rhyme, shaman Steven shakes the pebble-filled beer can.
‘Sun, sun, go to hell,’ he intones together with Albert. Steven too wanted to don a straw kilt and bonnet. But the store “Corn Dollies and Other Follies” had run out of stock before Steven arrived. “Got to wait for this year’s harvest to be woven into men’s desires,’ the forlorn proprietor told him. So, the shaman had to settle for a pair of tartan Bermuda shorts and Marcia’s old gardening hat. And that worthy was herself skipping about in a black bodystocking, imprinted with white skeleton markings, left over from last Halloween, no doubt.
‘What do you want to wear that for?’ I asked, when I saw it.
‘It’ll bring us closer to the spirit world: isn’t that what we want?’
As for the origin of Albert’s animal bone, don’t ask.
Plan A had been for us gals to rush through a lush meadow, clad in broderie anglaise and chanting the name of an innocuous flower, just as in a certain Marc Jacobs perfume ad. But the continuing drought means a dearth of lush meadows. So Marcia dons her skeleton kit and I sit cross-legged on the scorched grass, a dish of the scarce commodity placed at the crux of my limbs. Albert’s chanting continues, us all hoping that between us, we can generate enough spirit energy to bring the heavens down to earth.
Sun, sun, go to hell; bring to us a rainy spell...
Personally, I blame James Frazer, (1854 to 1941) you know, that Victorian geezer who devoted his life to detailing tribal and local customs the world over. In his book, The Golden Bough, Frazer writes much on the meaning of sympathetic magic. Basically this involves creating a simile or likeness of a desired happening and placing it significantly to bring about the desired effect, thus my dish of water. For example, if you wished a newly-wed couple to conceive a child, you presented them with a doll on their wedding night. North American Indians drew a likeness of someone they did not like in sand or clay and then pricked with a stick or some other sharp instrument the area of the drawing, arm, head or leg, in the belief that the subject would suffer injury in that area. And among some tribes, if that year’s crop failed then the king was tossed off his throne or even killed. Here, do not smile unless you have NEVER torn up a picture of someone that you did not like or told an adversary to ‘get lost’ or ‘drop dead’. Back in the present, the chanting and prancing continues until a pair of eyes looks over the hedge.
‘What are you doing here?’ demands a male voice. Albert stops in his tracks.
‘We are doing this for you,’ he says, ‘to make the crops grow and to feed your cattle, else you will go out of business.’
But the man interrupts him.
‘I have just bought this property and I am going to build upon it and you people are trespassing. GET OUT. Now.’
Sheepishly, we leave the field and I empty my dish of water in the hedge as we do so. Well, it’s precipitation of a sort. Later, we cut our losses. You see, if the rain dance had worked, we were going to use it to enchant a magic money tree. And it hasn’t rained yet.

I’ve got my eye on Synecdoche

We use synecdoche daily, hourly, many of us never even knowing the name of this quirky, life-enhancing art. We have all referred to champagne as ‘bubbly’, and the colours of fruits like oranges and lemons are the names of the fruits themselves and the juices derived there from. We routinely talk about the head when referring to the principal teacher of a school. Or taking a matter to the top. Or going shopping with plastic. Or shaking our heads sadly for a friend who is not on wheels It is all delightfully post modern, yet synecdoche has been enriching our speech for centuries. At the time of the French Revolution, the peasantry was referred to as the sans culottes, meaning that they didn’t wear the same kind of trousers as the men of the upper classes. In England, sharp-witted cartoonists drew hordes of rampaging French males with only long-tailed shirts to cover their nether bits. Revolutionaries were referred to as bonnets rouges, because of the characteristic red hats they wore.
In the nineteenth century, synecdoche came into its own through the pen of Charles Dickens. His novels are overflowing with verbal images like the Black-eyed, Aged Parent, and the Mercuries (footmen). Dickens himself was often – and still is – referred to as The Inimitable. And ordinary folk are often referred to as – jokingly, I trust – the
Great Unwashed. Right now, I am going to put on the kettle and then spend the evening with my feet up, before going to bed.

Confession of a snowflake

Odd weather in which to talk about snowflakes, I know. But a recent comment by an MP suggesting that those of us who simply want to slow down during this Siroccan weather are snowflakes left me seething. When I cooled down, I pondered: wherein lies the insult? Did said MP actually intend his likening of us to these beautiful, magical flakes as a compliment? Because the more I think about it, the more I liken a collection of snowflakes to the human race. On the surface, a ball of snow is just a ball of snow. Looked at under a microscope, the snowball is a collection of beautiful and precise crystals, each one as unique as a fingerprint. On its own, a snowflake melts in a heartbeat. Collectively, snowflakes form a carpet on the earth’s surface, modifying global warming, providing a facility for snow sports and inspiring creative works, from Old Master paintings to Christmas cards and songs. What snowflakes don’t do is fly the flag for rugged individualism: perhaps this is what our politician friend is missing?

We’re havin’ a heatwave...

Something about extremes of heat lends an air of unreality to everything. Heat blunts the edges of longing, softens feeling, heightens colour. It is no wonder that during certain illness, the body turns on a fever to take away the harshness of the symptoms. Or that many people flock to the warmer corners of the world when on holiday, to add another dimension to the experience of getting away from it all. A wonderful experience and yet, the effects of heat are too like those of opiate drugs, effects that make it too much of a good thing. This heady cocktail of muted colour, hushed sound and somnolent emotion can act as a wanton siren, calling one away from one’s focus, the cutting edge of purpose.

Dear Diary: family planning

The summer ploughs on; the dog days are upon us and our desire to climb on board the property ladder grows ever stronger. I turn over our conversation to you.
Albert: (looking at his phone) a government minister says that if we need more money, we got to find better-paying jobs.
Me: why didn’t we think of that before?
Steven: I did find one, actually, in an animation studio, but it is in London, where rents are higher.
Marcia: your own fault for getting a Mickey Mouse degree: why not go back to college?
Steven: And add to my student loans?
Albert: are we going to admit defeat?
Me: more research is needed, methinks.
(Six nights later and as always, Albert takes the chair.)
Albert: findings on the table, everybody. (deafening silence) Alright, I’ve just found out about the plans for fifty-year mortgages.
Me: what does it mean?
Albert: It means that we can now take out a mortgage and pay it back over fifty years instead of the normal twenty-five.
Steven: so, the payments will be lower?
Albert: you got it in one, me boy.
Me: but we might not live that long?
Albert: no problem: our children will pick up the tab.
Marcia: but we haven’t got any children?
Albert: What a bright bunch I live amongst. (winks at Marcia) Let’s get going on the breeding programme.
Steven: a great move, since it says here (looks at phone) that they are going to tax the child-free.
Albert: (winks at Marcia again) Then, we’d better get to work, quickly.
(to be continued)