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Mar. 7th, 2007 12:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckFor the last two days, Word's given me no problems. I'm fitting work on the Weiss Day fic into the crannies of my days with Delia, but today, so far, hasn't offered any opportunities. I decided to write something else in order to see how Word would behave.
Because of Delia, I'm watching a lot of children's TV and rewatching a lot of movies that I remember from my own childhood. We had an advantage, in a way, over some parents because, back before I thought I'd ever have a child, I started collecting Disney movies on VHS. I didn't do it systematically, didn't seek them out in stores or put them on birthday wishlists. I just bought them as I happened upon them and only bought the ones I thought I'd want to watch again (resulting in a few notable gaps in my collection). There are also things that I wouldn't have bought for Delia but own anyway (Cinderella and Snow White being well known examples).
I didn't, however, buy very many live action kids' movies, Disney or otherwise. Looking at the shelf, I see Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (which disappointed me profoundly as an adult but which I adored as a child) and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Of the lot of them, Delia's latched onto Bedknobs and Broomsticks and periodically watches and rewatches and rewatches it.
I know that I saw Bedknobs and Broomsticks at least once when I was a child. I'm not sure if it was in the theater or on TV (via the Disney TV show rather than as a movie). I remember that we had an LP with the music strung together by a narrative done by the the actor who played Emilius Browne and in first person from that character. My mother got rid of the LP (and a lot of others that she decided that my sister and I were too old for) in a garage sale when I was ten or eleven, right after she stopped running an in-house daycare center and started law school. I missed it quite a bit.
Rewatching the movie as an adult, I've realized how biased that first person narration was. It fits the character, but a child doesn't necessarily understand that the person telling the story is unreliable and lying. Basically, I missed just how much of a conman and slitherer-outer he is. I can't be sure how much of that is that the narrative was constructed in Browne's voice and so would avoid admitting his failings and how much is due to simple childhood obliviousness. I suppose I'll never know.
Scott had never seen the movie. His first comment was to wonder if Angela Lansbury has always looked the same. His second was to look at Roddy McDowall's brief appearance and say something about how we all have to start somewhere.
My own reactions are more complicated. I suspect that a big part of that is because I've now seen the dratted thing at least a dozen times and because I have time to think about it and not so many other things to distract me. I have two major areas of irritation. The bigger of the two is the ending and the lesser is the character of the Bookman.
I'm not entirely sure what it is about the Bookman that bothers me. It's like a pebble in my shoe, one that I can't locate when I look to try to remove it. He's a villain of sorts and a relatively minor character. I think his part in the film is over in under ten minutes. I'm notoriously bad at spotting visual cues or at figuring out subtleties in any visual medium. I think that I'm reading the cues and taking him as coded as Jewish, as a scholar, as a mage and as a murderous criminal. I'm not sure if I'm reading all of that correctly or not (particularly the Jewish part). This is, after all, a Disney kids' movie rather than something filled with deliberate symbolism and social message (though implicit social messages are generally worse. They assume that everybody agrees with them to begin with and don't invite thought). Still, all of the other characters who don't look mainstream white respectable are either cartoons or attached to the British war effort in one way or another (the movie's set during WWII and was made in 1971).
I am, however, fairly clear about what irritates me about the ending of the movie. Throughout the entire story, Miss Price dedicates herself fully to learning magic so that she can aid the war effort. She's forgetful and needs to refer to her written notes frequently, but her spells *work*. They may not always work for long or work the way she expects them to, but they work. She proves, in the last part of the movie, that she can single handedly drive off a German raid. Then, because her workshop got blown up and because she decides that she's not suited to being a witch, she gives up on magic forever to wait at home with her foster children for her man (her reformed conman who joins the army to show that he's now a Good Man) to come home from the war.
::bangs head::
Okay, she lost her copies of the spells. The Bookman has the spellbook from which they originally came. But... Professor Browne is a conman. She can't have been the only student in his correspondence school (he didn't recognize her name when they first met in person). Another student might well still have copies of the spells.
Additionally, Professor Browne admitted that he'd altered the spells in copying them over, to make them more showman like. He has to have another copy somewhere. I can't see him mailing out all the copies. After all, there would always be a chance that he'd catch another sucker and be able to get some money out of her, too, and he wouldn't want to have to do the work of altering the spells again.
Failing either of those options, the Bookman is still an option. Dealing with him wouldn't be safe, but he wanted the Substitutiary Locomotion spell very badly. Miss Price has that now and could trade. (Yes, that might give him a powerful tool for whatever criminal activities he's involved in, but... It might not.) He was quite civilized to her at first and was happy to trade halves of the book.
I can see two Doylist explanations for the end of the movie. The first is that Miss Price and her magic would decidedly shift the course of the war, particularly if (as is implied by Professor Browne learning a spell from her) she can teach others. The only realistic way to keep history as we know it is to kill her off quickly, and that would ruin the happy ending. The second Doylist explanation is that good women aren't supposed to want to be witches for any reason. This is in spite of magic in Bedknobs and Broomsticks being presented as a set of tools rather than a moral or immoral thing.
I actually can't come up with a Watsonian justification for the ending of the movie. Well, maybe the magic overloaded Miss Price's brain and left her damaged and altered into a person who could give up her previous sense of responsibility. Or maybe she knew her magic was gone (somehow) and lied to the children about why she wasn't going to do magic any more. I don't care for either of those as explanations.
Because of Delia, I'm watching a lot of children's TV and rewatching a lot of movies that I remember from my own childhood. We had an advantage, in a way, over some parents because, back before I thought I'd ever have a child, I started collecting Disney movies on VHS. I didn't do it systematically, didn't seek them out in stores or put them on birthday wishlists. I just bought them as I happened upon them and only bought the ones I thought I'd want to watch again (resulting in a few notable gaps in my collection). There are also things that I wouldn't have bought for Delia but own anyway (Cinderella and Snow White being well known examples).
I didn't, however, buy very many live action kids' movies, Disney or otherwise. Looking at the shelf, I see Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Matilda, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (which disappointed me profoundly as an adult but which I adored as a child) and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Of the lot of them, Delia's latched onto Bedknobs and Broomsticks and periodically watches and rewatches and rewatches it.
I know that I saw Bedknobs and Broomsticks at least once when I was a child. I'm not sure if it was in the theater or on TV (via the Disney TV show rather than as a movie). I remember that we had an LP with the music strung together by a narrative done by the the actor who played Emilius Browne and in first person from that character. My mother got rid of the LP (and a lot of others that she decided that my sister and I were too old for) in a garage sale when I was ten or eleven, right after she stopped running an in-house daycare center and started law school. I missed it quite a bit.
Rewatching the movie as an adult, I've realized how biased that first person narration was. It fits the character, but a child doesn't necessarily understand that the person telling the story is unreliable and lying. Basically, I missed just how much of a conman and slitherer-outer he is. I can't be sure how much of that is that the narrative was constructed in Browne's voice and so would avoid admitting his failings and how much is due to simple childhood obliviousness. I suppose I'll never know.
Scott had never seen the movie. His first comment was to wonder if Angela Lansbury has always looked the same. His second was to look at Roddy McDowall's brief appearance and say something about how we all have to start somewhere.
My own reactions are more complicated. I suspect that a big part of that is because I've now seen the dratted thing at least a dozen times and because I have time to think about it and not so many other things to distract me. I have two major areas of irritation. The bigger of the two is the ending and the lesser is the character of the Bookman.
I'm not entirely sure what it is about the Bookman that bothers me. It's like a pebble in my shoe, one that I can't locate when I look to try to remove it. He's a villain of sorts and a relatively minor character. I think his part in the film is over in under ten minutes. I'm notoriously bad at spotting visual cues or at figuring out subtleties in any visual medium. I think that I'm reading the cues and taking him as coded as Jewish, as a scholar, as a mage and as a murderous criminal. I'm not sure if I'm reading all of that correctly or not (particularly the Jewish part). This is, after all, a Disney kids' movie rather than something filled with deliberate symbolism and social message (though implicit social messages are generally worse. They assume that everybody agrees with them to begin with and don't invite thought). Still, all of the other characters who don't look mainstream white respectable are either cartoons or attached to the British war effort in one way or another (the movie's set during WWII and was made in 1971).
I am, however, fairly clear about what irritates me about the ending of the movie. Throughout the entire story, Miss Price dedicates herself fully to learning magic so that she can aid the war effort. She's forgetful and needs to refer to her written notes frequently, but her spells *work*. They may not always work for long or work the way she expects them to, but they work. She proves, in the last part of the movie, that she can single handedly drive off a German raid. Then, because her workshop got blown up and because she decides that she's not suited to being a witch, she gives up on magic forever to wait at home with her foster children for her man (her reformed conman who joins the army to show that he's now a Good Man) to come home from the war.
::bangs head::
Okay, she lost her copies of the spells. The Bookman has the spellbook from which they originally came. But... Professor Browne is a conman. She can't have been the only student in his correspondence school (he didn't recognize her name when they first met in person). Another student might well still have copies of the spells.
Additionally, Professor Browne admitted that he'd altered the spells in copying them over, to make them more showman like. He has to have another copy somewhere. I can't see him mailing out all the copies. After all, there would always be a chance that he'd catch another sucker and be able to get some money out of her, too, and he wouldn't want to have to do the work of altering the spells again.
Failing either of those options, the Bookman is still an option. Dealing with him wouldn't be safe, but he wanted the Substitutiary Locomotion spell very badly. Miss Price has that now and could trade. (Yes, that might give him a powerful tool for whatever criminal activities he's involved in, but... It might not.) He was quite civilized to her at first and was happy to trade halves of the book.
I can see two Doylist explanations for the end of the movie. The first is that Miss Price and her magic would decidedly shift the course of the war, particularly if (as is implied by Professor Browne learning a spell from her) she can teach others. The only realistic way to keep history as we know it is to kill her off quickly, and that would ruin the happy ending. The second Doylist explanation is that good women aren't supposed to want to be witches for any reason. This is in spite of magic in Bedknobs and Broomsticks being presented as a set of tools rather than a moral or immoral thing.
I actually can't come up with a Watsonian justification for the ending of the movie. Well, maybe the magic overloaded Miss Price's brain and left her damaged and altered into a person who could give up her previous sense of responsibility. Or maybe she knew her magic was gone (somehow) and lied to the children about why she wasn't going to do magic any more. I don't care for either of those as explanations.
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Date: 2007-03-07 06:33 pm (UTC)I agree about the ending -- I love the German raid, I love the moving suits of armor and the feel of it all, and I can't imagine her really giving it all up so easily.
As for the Bookman, I never got the Jewish vibe from him, but I agree that he was "foreign" and a scholar/criminal. I didn't think of him as a mage, since he was so shocked about the bed disappearing.
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Date: 2007-03-07 06:52 pm (UTC)As to the Jewishness or lack of it-- I may be generalizing from knowing that the actor playing the character was Jewish. http://imdb.com/name/nm0415488/ It may also come from a sense that othered scholars somehow equals Jewish in that weird media shorthand that doesn't *say* anything but still expects us to follow the implications.
I attempted to read the book once but didn't get very far. It definitely wasn't set in the same time as the movie was. It's by Mary Norton, the author of the Borrower books. As I recall, there was some time travel involved, but it's all very vague in my head.
Here's the Amazon entry. There's a review that compares the plot of the book with that of the movie. http://www.amazon.com/Bed-Knob-Broomstick-Mary-Norton/dp/0613298861/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3/104-3767606-6787927?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173293435&sr=8-3