When it comes to Mad Men, Betty Draper Francis is certainly not an ideal parent. She's like Nora in Ibsen's A Doll's House, or even Daisy in The Great Gatsby, a woman-child who is in serious need of some classes on parenting (Slapping a child for cutting her hair is not the way to go, Bets). She's a terrible mother, and her usual parenting pattern is to scold, say "Don't do that!" to daughter Sally, and act completely clueless about why her daughter is the way she is. However, Betty did deliver one piece of fantastic motherly advice to Sally (which is probably something I'll save for my unborn daughter):
"You don't kiss boys. Boys kiss you." Betty to Sally Draper, Mad Men Season 3, Episode 8 "Souvenir"
Sometimes I wish I had a (Google) translator for things my mother tells me. All those times in high school when she told me not to be friendly towards boys, she meant something else.
Google, can you translate my mother for me?
Actually, can you translate the opposite sex for me instead?
What she really meant and was unable to articulate is that the good ones will go after you to prove their worth and the bad ones will weed themselves out so please be an ice queen. This also loosely parallels a sidetrack conversation I had with one of my undergrad film profs like a zillion years ago (okay, it was two years ago): all the directors, the legends, the good ones (i.e. Martin Scorsese) will last and have a fruitful lifelong career and all the other bad ones will weed themselves out. It's like saying, "If you're a bad egg, you'll eventually disappear. Poof."
(here I go again, wearing my Carrie Bradshaw hat) So should all modern women forgo the notion that since both sexes are equal, they should be allowed to initiate plans or make the first move, just so they won't be taken for granted and get treated like crap? Do we all have to resort to the feminine stereotype of playing the waiting damsel just so all of us hetero-females won't be treated as some guy's second best (and not his number one)?
Taylor Swift as a waiting damsel in "Love Story"
I've had guy friends who would bitch and moan (yea boys do bitch, especially manboys) about how they feel the pressure of having to make the first move and it's always so hard when girls don't lend them a hand. At the same time, they are disinterested in perfectly decent female specimens when these girls do show interest in them and "lend a hand." Make up your mind. You can't have the chase and want the other party to do the work for your lazy ass. Those two things are mutually exclusive, boys. Get your act together. It's not rocket science.
The chase is such a mind game. It's basically playing "catch me if you can." I understand why it's there but I don't like it at all.
Today is a lovely day because it's my sister's birthday and she's x years young. Not only is she older than me (the age difference is apparent when you ask both of us whether we remember the Regal Beagle) but she looks younger than me - perhaps because she is shorter than me? or maybe it's her cute button nose that I lack? If you compared her current photos with the ones taken from middle school, she looks kind of the same except with a shorter, trendier haircut and her 90s plaid shirts are now replaced with a chic modern wardrobe, adorned with pretty prints and colors (yes, sometimes I borrow her clothes and vice versa). So when she was pregnant with bebe B over 3 years back, the nurse thought she was delivering bad news of pregnancy to an Asian teenager (silly nurse).
The awesome thing about her birthday is that it also happens to be Don Lockwood's lucky day in Singin' in the Rain (1952):
Don: Fellas, I feel this is my lucky day, March 23rd.
Cosmo: Your lucky day's the 24th.
Don: What do you mean the 24th?
Cosmo: It's 1:30 already. It's morning!
Kathy: Yes. And what a lovely morning!
So happy birthday, sis ♥!! ju ni sheng ri kuai! ¡feliz cumpleaños! bon anniversaire!
Also here's some pretty tunes on getting old or staying young for ya if you're feeling old and want to feel younger:
Mary (Donna Reed) and George Bailey (James Stewart) singing "Buffalo Gals"
on a moonlit night in It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
For centuries upon centuries, even after the first moon landing, the celestial entity that is the moon has marveled people, became a muse for some, and has been a larger than life element in someone's romantically cliché mise-en-scène, a persuasive tip over the iceberg for someone to get some. Lip service and the moon especially with a little booze are a deadly combination. There's nothing like a moonlit walk that steers your heart in a certain direction. I myself have fallen for that tactic of using the moon to set up the scene at least twice. One would only hope that I'll be a little more careful next time.
Is the moon masculine or feminine? There is supposed to be a Man in the Moon, or what looks like a human face on the moon made by its darker regions. Is the man in the moon a woman or a man? In Mame (1974), Vera says that "[t]he man in the moon is a bitch." In Georges Méliès'sLe voyage dans la lune (1902) (A Trip to the Moon), the man in the moon looks like a crabby old man.
Le voyage dans la lune (1902)
If I didn't know that thing in his eye is a rocket,
I'd say that he got hit by a giant can.
I often think of the moon as a feminine entity since Latin-based languages such as Spanish (la luna) or French (la lune) refer to it as a feminine noun.
In Chinese folklore, Cháng'é was a sort of Pandora-like character who opened a box she wasn't supposed to open, which contained a magical pill she swallowed and caused her to float and land on the moon. Thus she became the moon goddess in Chinese mythology. As it happens, a rabbit lives on the moon as well and serves as her companion.
Cháng'é, the Moon Goddess
Kenneth Anger makes references to the rabbit on the moon in his avant-garde short Rabbit's Moon (1950):
In Rabbit's Moon, Pierrot the clown is enchanted by the moon and wants to jump up and catch the rabbit that is on the moon. The other clown Harlequin appears and teases him with an illusion of Columbine with whom Pierrot falls in love with. Pierrot is the lovefool in this scenario as clowns are often associated as fools in most cases.
For example, in the silent film He Who Gets Slapped (1924), Lon Chaney plays Paul Beaumont, a genius theorist turned fool who gets screwed over by a baron and his wife. He resorts to being a clown for the remainder of his life as "He who gets slapped" since life is always playing a cruel joke on him, allowing others to laugh at him in derision. Even though he is heartbroken, he sees that his audience get so much joy in watching him play the fool in an act where a whole entourage of clowns slap him in the face and stomp on his little prop heart.
a French poster for He Who Gets Slapped renamed as Larmes de Clown (Tears of a Clown)
You can see his prop heart sown on by Norma Shearer here.
The moon has also fascinated people as a faraway destination, a larger than life goal as illustrated by Méliès'sLe voyage dans la lune (1902). In A Grand Day Out (1989), Wallace and Gromit take a trip to the moon in search of cheese (since the moon is made of cheese in this narrative).
Wallace and Gromit, having a cheese themed picnic on the moon in A Grand Day Out (1989)
In Despicable Me (2010), Gru seeks to steal the moon by shrinking it down to the size of his hand.
If you look at quotes regarding the moon in movies, it's seen as an unattainable, symbolic aspiration of some kind; it's an untouchable.
The famous ending line of Now, Voyager (1942) shows how protagonist Charlotte Vale acknowledges the fact that something she wants can never be and so she'll settle for the next best thing.
In Sabrina (1954), attaining the affections of rich playboy David Larrabee is synonymous with the moon in two different cases:
1. When David fails to realize that Sabrina has a crush on him:
"He doesn't know I exist. I mind as well be reaching for the moon." -Sabrina Fairchild
and
2. When Sabrina comes back from a cooking school in Paris as a beautiful, fashionable young lady and David likes what he sees:
Thomas Fairchild: Nothing's changed. He's still David Larrabee. And you're still the chauffeur's daughter. And you're still reaching for the moon.
Sabrina Fairchild: No, Father. The moon's reaching for me.
I love how after she says, "The moon's reading for me" in a kind of kooky lovesick way,
a moon is superimposed close to her face as we switch to a new scene.
If you look at songs as well, the moon is usually adored by lovelorn or lovesick people. In Billie Holiday's cover of "Blue Moon," the person in the song is asking the moon for help as she is "saying a prayer for / [s]omebody [she] really could care for."
The best known crooner's song in reference to the moon is "Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words)." Even though the most famous version is sung by Frank Sinatra, I prefer Julie London's cover. This is kind of a nice juxtaposition between Sinatra's version and Astrud Gilberto's version of this song:
Down With Love (2003)
(The disproportional ratio of this video irks me.)
I've also had a lifelong love affair with Norah Jones's "Shoot the Moon," which is a song for what I call a "seasonal change of partners," a bittersweet acceptance of faces who come and go.
Like some of the people in these moon references who are reaching for loftier things, I never know if I'll ever find whatever I'm looking for. To the kind people who are taking the time to read this and to the people who are so dear to me, I hope somewhere out there you'll find whatever you're looking for wherever you are. I'm still dreaming. The little girl in me is still reaching for the moon.
