Ellen Goodman and Eileen McNamara: two peas in the anti-Catholic pod of the Boston Globe. This time Eileen launches into the stratosphere over the monumental issue of foot-washing. Actually her launching point is Archbishop Sean O’Malley’s comment that part of the hostile environment for Christianity in the US is feminism.
PMC,
You must have just missed voting for Reagan in 1980, ‘cuz I was born in ‘62 as well, and cast my first vote for the Gipper. I was a freshman at ND at the time. If I’m a boomer, you’re a boomer too. Not proud of it, mind you. But that’s the demographic breakdown.
But Dom:
Listen, to what the Flower People say.
Listen, it’s getting louder every day.
Listen, it’s like a bolt out of the blue.
Listen, it could be calling now for you.
Okay, I’ve made a deal with the powers that be.
If Eileen shows up at an agreed upon time at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, I will personally wash her feet. Afterwards, I will personally escort her to a nearby manicurist shop.
Eileen? Have your girl call my—oh, wait, I don’t have a secretary. Okay, just have your girl call me.
Sheesh.
WARNING: Boring and pedantic film talk with the sole excuse being prompted by the Generational talk of others and an offhand joke riffing off the title of Dom’s thread.
Please do not read.
Joanne:
I’d never previously thought of THIS IS SPINAL TAP as a particularly generational film in its depicitions (though it IS a canonical film for me and other fanboys of my age: born 1966). But your short note made me think a bit about it in this context.
One of the things it is clearly about is the way Spinal Tap evolved over the years, and the many different looks and sounds they had in their 20-year career—from the Mersey sound of “Gimme Some Money” to the Jefferson Airplane look of “Listen to the Flower People,” to the art-rock of the concept albums whose reviews we hear, and finally to the heavy-metal hair-band they are in the film’s present tense.
The clips of what Spinal Tap had been are, in addition to funny, quite shocking … they were THAT different? Didn’t they have a soul. Well, no. Spinal Tap was a group that went along with musical fashion, and surrounded themselves with whatever looked commercial at the time, which is they defined themselves by cultural conformity. They always managed to follow the wave and blend in, Zelig-like, and those particular styles of music we see are very specifically tied to a particular generation’s experience and passage to and through adulthood. But the film is harshly critical of the group—there are some cruel moments of self-knowledge at how their trajectory and its ephemerality has made them irrelevant and passe: the way they get dissed in the Memphis hotel by The Next Big Thing; when the radio starts playing one of their old hits and the DJ says they belong in the “Where Are They Now” category; the conversation at Elvis’ grave; the whole trajectory of the tour (cancelled dates, smaller gigs, until the Air Force base at the end); even the happy-ending reunion tour at the end has to come in Japan.
It’s all hidden behind musical genre parody, and I have no doubt that Reiner, McKean and Guest weren’t trying to be Douglas Coupland avant la lettre. But still a critical satire of Boomer proteanism is there for those with eyes to see.
Incidentally…to those of you X’ers who are not only getting older (35+? You’re old. Face it) but also annoying?
Why not sing yourselves to sleep with your anthem…what was it called? Oh yeah!
“Don’t Worry. Be Happy!”
Well Joanne, a lot of people spotaneously combust every year; you just don’t read very much about it.