Viva Forever

Watched Oliver! a few days ago and have been a bit obsessed with the soundtrack for a few days now. Oliver! was the first musical I’ve ever seen I think, back when I was in year 4 and we had to watch it to learn the song “Consider Yourself”. Even though looking back, it’s certainly not the best musical ever with only about half the songs being any good, it nonetheless kick started my enthusiasm and love for musicals in general (some exceptions of course, one of them being the movie, Rent).

Watching Oliver! again reminded me how terrifying a villian Bill Sikes is. You know how you can tell he’s a horrible person? He doesn’t sing. Everyone else in the movie sings, even the horrible governor in the beginning who sells Oliver to a creepy and white trashy undertaker people, whom at one point, throws Oliver into a coffin then sits on it to stop him coming out. There’s of course those extras who don’t get singing lines but at least they dance! Sikes doesn’t dance either.

Oh and there’s the other stuff he does. Spoilers ahead (are spoiler warnings necessary for a movie that’s 40 years old based on a novel that’s 169 years old?).

Did I mention Sikes is incredibly violent? In one of the songs that Nancy, his girlfriend, sings, she says

“Though you sometimes do come by
The occasional black eye
You can always cover one
‘Til he blacks the other one
But you don’t dare cry. “

I totally missed that verse when I was a kid, but it horrifies me now how nonchalant and joyous she was singing about serious domestic violence.

Oh and the other thing. He kills Nancy at the end of the movie by clubbing her to death. I don’t mean the dancing-at-a-bar kind of clubbing either. To be fair, we don’t see it directly, but when it’s happening we watch Oliver watching it, we hear the sounds of her screaming and him killing her and we see Oliver squirming and being traumatised. Did I mention this movie was rated G and is considered a family movie?

People complain nowadays of kids watching violence on TV and what not, and how that never used to happen but I don’t think such acts would ever get a “G” rating these days.

In other news, I’ve finished my last University class last week. As in… no more Uni classes ever. After my next two assessments (one that I’m supposed to be doing right now) University should be officially over!

While Pocahontas is not on my favourites list, I still remember it to be vaguely entertaining. Also, its theme song, “Colors of the Wind” is a lovely song, melodically speaking. However, at times it makes little sense, both in terms of the lyrics and the part from the movie where it’s sung. Tim and I had a number of spirited discussions about it, and I thought I’d note down the main points we came up with. Below is the clip, and the lyrics can be found here.

Title
Firstly, what’s with the title? Wind doesn’t have colour (even though the wind in the clip IS coloured… doesn’t that make it smoke?). You can’t just slap on a description in front of a thing and have it make sense. It’ll kinda like having a title such as “scent of music” or “sourness of sand”. Does Pocahontas have synesthesia? I’d be happy if the title was just a a metaphor, but what’s it a metaphor of? Towards the end of the song, she talks about the “voices of the mountains” and that’s at least understandable as a metaphor for how wind around mountains may sound melodic to human ears or something. But colours of the wind? It’s incredibly odd that her song would be able the very thing that doesn’t have colour when she could’ve talked about any other physical object around them that do.

“You don’t know”

But still I cannot see
If the savage one is me
Now can there be so much that you don’t know?
You don’t know …

How patronising and INCREDIBLY offensive would it be if it was John Smith saying that to her instead? Imagine if, rather than being set in a lush forest landscape, they were in the middle of a British town and he was showing her stuff around the place while saying lines like that? Maybe replace the words “savage one” with, I dunno, “dumb white man”. I don’t think many people would be happy about that, even though in this context, having Pocahontas saying that to him is seen as being okay. Interesting double standard.

However, I can’t remember what happens before this song, so maybe Smith had previous alluded to being way smarter than Pocahontas or something, and now she’s laying the smack down on him.

Rocks Don’t Have Life

You think you own whatever land you land on
The Earth is just a dead thing you can claim
But I know every rock and tree and creature
Has a life, has a spirit, has a name

I’m not much into the whole property ownership thing myself. Especially with intellectual property, monopolising information is just WTF to me. I would agree to some extent that owning living things is problematic (especially sentient things); the fact that people are allowed to patent (and hence monopolise the use of) genetic material and microbiological process is just such bad idea for society as a whole. :(

However, while trees and creatures have life, rocks don’t. I don’t know what’s the point of saying that rocks have a life and spirit. And yes, they all have names, but I’m pretty sure the names were given by human beings to these things, regardless of what race of humans we’re talking about. It’s not like the nasty Brits went around pillaging this and that by purposefully not giving those things a name.

Watch Out For Bears!
Around the 0:58 mark on the video, Pocahontas and Smith sees a female bear and follows her to her den full of bear cubs. There, Pocahontas picks up a cuddly lil’ bear and hands it to Smith while the female bear shyly looks on.

In real life, probably even before Pocahontas and Smith reached the mouth of the cave, the mother bear would’ve FUCKING KILLED THEM for trying to go near her cubs. For someone who seems so familiar with nature, you’d think Pocahontas would know how protective mother bears get of her babies. Or maybe the bears in Disney-verse are just so used to human contact that people can just pick up their cubs. Because THAT’S NATURAL. Thanks, Disney. At least you made bears a little bit more realistic in Brother Bear.

Why Did the Grinning Bobcat Cross the Road Grin?

Or asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned?

Pocahontas is implying that possibly the answer is that the bobcat are just happy fellas or something and that the narrow-minded Brits never got it into their arrogant heads to query bobcats of the reasons behind their continuous joy. Even just ignoring the fact that bobcats obviously can’t answer, the more sobering question is, why does she imply that the bobcat WANTS to be grinning? It’s kinda like asking why the Joker is always smiling. Maybe bobcats are actually miserable animals who suffer the additional insult to injury by looking like they’re happy all the time. Or maybe the insult is assuming there’s a point in anthropomorphising them, rather than treating them as animals in their own right without needing to twisted them to fit a list of human traits. Did you ever think of that, Pocahontas?

Eh the rest of the song doesn’t warrant much more critique. It’s a nice point she makes that creatures such as herons and otters are valuable, though I don’t need to call them my friends and family to know they’re worth protecting. I think she might be exaggerating Smith’s narrow-mindedness (I certainly don’t remember him being the racist that she paints him to be in the song), but still, yay for advocating diversity. :) As I said, I like the song, it’s nice to listen to. Still, kinda silly in some parts. :P

I enjoy pop music though I’m more of a 90s girl myself. There’s plenty of crappy-but-catchy pop music out there today and I’m pretty tolerant of most songs I hear on the air these days. Songs like “My Humps” by the Black Eyed Peas are hilarious! I’m still uncertain whether I think musicians have the duty to be role models to the kiddies or not and usually I’m pretty apathetic (though often accompanied by a bit of eye-rolling) to the over-sexed music clips showcasing the likes of the Pussycat Dolls, Beyonce etc.

And then a few days ago I saw the videoclip the the song “Girlfriend” by Avril Lavigne. Because the clip is SO AMAZING, it warrants embedding into this very entry:

This clip POSITIVELY portrays:

• Unprovoked violence
• Stealing someone’s boyfriend
• Being a “motherfucking princess” (that comes straight from the lyrics!)
• Bullying

What the hell is wrong with you, Avril Lavigne? You’re a grown woman, OLDER THAN ME, and THAT’S what you come up with?? Oh yes, let’s all laugh along with her at that nerdy (you can tell by the glasses!) redhead! Let’s push said “nerd” around and launch a golfball at her head! Let’s be amazed that she must be a FUCKING PSYCHIC with her “knowledge” when a man (who’s already in a seemingly smooth relationship) likes her! Let’s revel in her “princess” behaviour when she and her lackeys brutishly shove people out of the way so she can use the bathroom mirror (to draw on it!)! Because I know that’s acceptable behaviour!

I’m going to look pass the fact that this is a 22 year old woman dressed up as a punky 14 year old. What annoys me is the way she plays up bad behaviour to be a good thing. I annoys me how she packages such terrible behaviours with a sugary “princess” label. What is this, a precursor to being a “bitch”? That’s not “confidence”, that’s plain old douchebaggyness. But then again, I personally have a deep dislike for the Bitch = Good Thing mentality.

Yesterday night I watched a bit of this season’s Australia’s Next Top Model (A bunch of clips found here too). I’ve always had a morbid sense of curiousity towards the modelling industry, especially their behind-the-scenes. I like to catch American’s Next Top Model too, when that’s on. There’s something fascinating about their obsession with appearance and bitching at each other.

It’s almost surreal to see A GROWN WOMAN, make disgusted face while going “ugh, she’s got a muffin top!” while referring to a selected contestant who has a slight bulge around her waist because she was wearing tight-ass jeans. It’s eye-opening to hear critiques of contestants being something like, “you might be pretty enough to attract boys, but you’re a model and your target audience are women”. What do they mean by that? Do men and women see pretty girls that differently? And it’s alarming when girls as young as 16 (they lowered the age of entry this year) break down because of the weird (I daresay, arbitary, vague and confusing) standards of expectations placed on them.

Also, Tim and I heard the song Ridin’ and wow, how INANE are those lyrics? Just to take the chorus,

They see me rollin
They hatin
Patrolling they tryin to catch me ridin dirty

“They” obviously refer to the police. I think it’s reasonable to assume that “ridin’ dirty” refers to committing an offence in a car, or using a car to transport illegal material. So basically the whole song is about the protagonist who openly admits to having committed a crime, and complaining that the police are “hatin’” because they are trying to catch him. Oh yes, #$%# the Po-lice for doing their job and trying to catch criminals. Why can’t they stop their hatin’ and let people like the protagonist do they (criminal) thing (or should I say, thang?)? I admit the song is very catchy, but damn, talk about stupid lyrics! Weird Al’s White and Nerdy parody is so much cleverer.

I love comedy in all its forms and it irks me when I see people use the term “irony” in the wrong way. My favourite meaning of the word is:

“Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs”

Getting to school late on the day when you’re supposed to hand in an essay, and the car broke down; that is not irony, that’s a misfortune.

Seeing a random dog walks by and it looks sadly at you after you left your house without patting your own dog before you left, that’s not irony, that’s a coincidence.

Criticising someone’s grammar or spelling being bad when the person is talking vehemently about, say, animal rights, is not ironic, that’s grammar nazi-ing (though it would be ironic if you criticise someone’s topic on grammar and spelling when the post contains terrible grammar and spelling. I think the best example is when people rave on about how people have bad “grammer” :P).

Which makes me sad that the only (popular) song called “Ironic” by Alanis Morisette… doesn’t have an ounce of irony in any of the examples that it gives! From the first stanza:

“An old man turned ninety-eight
He won the lottery and died the next day”

That’s not irony! What WOULD be ironic was if (for example) the old man had cheated the lottery ticket from another person by killing them, then before he could claim the money, he died.

“It’s a traffic jam when you’re already late
It’s a no-smoking sign on your cigarette break”

That is also a misfortune! Again, the situation would actually be ironic if (for example) you are the traffic conductor who coordinated the traffic lights to be green so you can go, but you had made the situation worse by having done that. There’s almost something karmic about irony. All the examples she gives are tragic misfortunes and not actually ironic in any way, even though she names the entire song to be about it. Isn’t THAT ironic, don’t you think?

A visual example of irony: The Tree of Irony (<3 PBF).