Obvious things about a creative work you realize after the millionth time (OPEN SPOILERS POSSIBLE)

[Lamia]

The Wizard of Oz has already been mentioned, but I think I’m the first with this particular point. A year or so ago I was watching the movie for the first time since I was a kid, and it struck me that the Cowardly Lion was gay. I mean, from a modern perspective all these “friends of Dorothy” seem kinda gay (three singing, dancing, single men who like Judy Garland? Say no more!), but it was surprising to realize that the Cowardly Lion was actually intended to be a big ol’ early Hollywood homosexual.

First off, the Cowardly Lion comes out and says he was “born to be a sissy” in “If I Only Had the Nerve”, although I’ll admit that this term doesn’t necessarily indicate homosexuality. But he also refers to himself as “a dandy lion” in the same song, which seems irrelevant unless we take this as code for “homosexual” (and thus stereotypically weak and effeminate).

Once in the Emerald City, the Tin Man and Scarecrow receive utilitarian repairs. At the same time, Dorothy and the Cowardly Lion get almost identical makeovers, including a perm and pretty hair ribbon. When they go to meet the Great and Powerful Oz, the Cowardly Lion even makes some comment about having had a permanent.

In the “King of the Forest” song, the Cowardly Lion once again displays an interest in fashion and a surprisingly specific knowledge of different fabrics. In a modern film if there were a male character insisting he wanted satin, not chintz, I think it would be clear he was intended to be a flaming queen.

Speaking of which, the same verse of the song refers to queens: “If I were King of the Forest! Not queen, not duke, not prince.” If the Cowardly Lion is simply making it clear that he’s talking about being a real king and not lesser nobility, why begin with a term referring to female royalty? As with “dandy lion”, this makes little sense unless “queen” is intended as code for “effete homosexual” and the lion is talking about what he’d be like if he butched up and were a “king” instead of a “queen”.

Finally, he lisps and tends to make limp-wristed gestures. Case closed.

[SciFiSam]

@FourDeer

Nobody: Your wife is correct about “Bones” < “Sawbones”; that’s straight from Roddenberry. And no, I can’t give a proper cite; it’s just something I remember from a TV Guide interview from a hundred years ago or so.

Eleanorigby: In your defense, the “Diagon Alley” thing works better in a British accent. Yanks say “die-YAG-gunnully”; Brits say, approximately, “DIE-a-GONN-elly”. If you had grown up saying DIE-a-GONN-elly instead of die-YAG-gunnully, I am sure you would have gotten Diagon Alley right away.

(Unless you are, in fact, British. In which case, oopsie!)

Panache45: Someone DID mention the FedEx arrow. Roadfood, post # 78, page 2, about halfway down.

That is not how British people pronounce diagonally. Where did you get that idea?

[kittenblue]

@jefahrbach

I agree. It was just too obvious that all she did was look at Latin translations of words and at mythology to name characters, places, and spells. It often disappointed me how easily decipherable they were.

I liked the books, but there really wasn’t much mystery to all of this even the first time I read them. I hope that with this extensive response to the Harry Potter thread on this post, this one can be laid to rest, unlike the Audi, Rosemary’s Baby, and “Brown-Eyed Girl” threads. If anyone is more interested, I recommend looking at “The Magical Worlds of Harry Potter” by David Colbert.

Sigh. You do realize the books are written for children, right? I know they’ve been around a while, and maybe you grew up with them, but they were not written for Latin scholars. And remember, she was a beginning author when she wrote the first one…total amateur. And magic doesn’t exist, so each author can make up their own rules on how it works.

Okay…rant over. I’m really enjoying this thread. But it has convinced me of one thing…the way some people can misinterpret something when they hear it wrong, and never question their firmly-held belief. h, and that my mother was right…rock and rollers mumble too much, and no one can understand what they are saying.

Carry on…

[EricJSmith]

1. “Pulling my leg” - Biblical story of Isaac and Esau. They were twins. Esau was born first, and Isaac immediately followed holding onto Esau’s leg as they were exiting the womb. Esau, being the firstborn, was awarded the birthright, until Isaac tricked him out of it.

2. In the film “Raising Arizona”. H.I., or “Hi”, a professional convict, and Edwina, a booking cop, meet everytime Hi is booked for a crime. It is Edwina’s job to take his mug shot. The routine is that she first takes a picture of him straight on, and then a profile shot; with a flash bulb flash, and Edwina saying “Turn to the right”.

Hi and Edwina fall in love, and on their wedding day, as they are standing side by side, the wedding photographer takes their picture with a flash bulb going off. Hi then automatically turns to the right. No attention is drawn to it, Hi just naturally does it.

[mbh]

@Ellen_Cherry

He whistles when he talks … remember now? He tries to get rabbit unstuck when he gets stuck in his hole.

That sounds like the beaver in Lady and the Tramp. Or are whistling rodents a recurrent leitmotif in Disney?

[Malleus_Incus_Stapes]

@EricJSmith

1. “Pulling my leg” - Biblical story of Isaac and Esau. They were twins. Esau was born first, and Isaac immediately followed holding onto Esau’s leg as they were exiting the womb. Esau, being the firstborn, was awarded the birthright, until Isaac tricked him out of it.

Isaac was Esau’s dad. Jacob was the twin brother.

Are you saying that “pulling one’s leg” comes from the Bible story?

[shantih]

@E-Sabbath

True. (Gopher is a Disney creation, by the way.) And you’re right, all the animals except Rabbit and Owl are toys, and named after ‘real’ toys.

Ooo! Ooo! I can pull out one of my bits of trivia here: Gopher says several times in the cartoon that he’s ‘not in the book,’ meaning not in the phone book, but it’s a sly nod to the fact that he was created specially for the cartoon.

[Chronos]

But he also refers to himself as “a dandy lion” in the same song, which seems irrelevant unless we take this as code for “homosexual” (and thus stereotypically weak and effeminate).

Even if there were no such thing as homosexuality, a dandelion is still a kind of flower, and flowers are the sort of thing that are associated with not being fierce. Unless you can come up with any examples of the Lion being actually, you know, attracted to other males, I don’t think there’s really a strong case for him being gay.

[TheseGoToEleven]

I’m don’t lean that way personally (not that there’s anything wrong with that), but way back around 1980 when I lived in San Francisco for a couple of years, I went with some gay friends to a showing of the Wizard of Oz at the Castro Theater, deep in the heart of a very openly gay part of town. Yes, Judy Garland was undoubtedly the main atraction, but as the Cowardly Lion sang his first song, the line “I’m just a Dandy Lion” practically got a standing ovation. That audience all sure thought they knew exactly what the references were about! That, plus the the consistency of the portrayal as pointed out by Lamia, leads me to agree.

[FourDeer]

Scifisam2009 and G. Odoreida both objected to my attempted explanation for why Eleanorigby didn’t get the Diagon Alley joke. Where, they ask, did I get that notion of a British version of “diagonally”?

From a televised interview with J.K. Rowling, actually; that is (VERY approximately) how she pronounced it, I thought. I assumed it was typical; perhaps she was just using that emphasis to make the joke work.

[Aspidistra]

I have heard people (UK and Oz) say DI-ag-nul-lee, with a slight emphasis on the first syllable. But never, as you wrote it, with the third syllable emphasized as well. That’s just wierd.

[waynemcdougall]

Ok, this is personal, but arguably about a creative work.

On my wedding night my wife gives me a present. Oh noes, think I. Nobody told me that you’re supposed to exchange gifts. I’ve got nothing. So I apologise, and this is all right. I unwrap…the present, you perverts - and it’s a large photograph. She’d got a large print of a photograph I’d taken of two swans swimming on a lake we visited while courting. Very nice, I say.

After our honeymoon I’m instructed to hang the photo over our bed, and I do as I am told.

Fast forward 15 years, and we have children. The oldest asks what this photo is about. I explained where it was taken, and how it’s a nice photo of swans, and Daddy took it, and Mummy gave it as a special present when we got married.

“You’ve forgotten the most important bit!” shrieks my wife.

“Uh, what bit’s that?” I ask eloquently.

“The bit about how swans mate for life, and that symbolism that explains why I gave it to you on the day we got married. Why do you think I made you hang it over our bed? You couldn’t think I was just giving you a photo of swans???”

“Well no…not NOW darling…”

She proceeds to explain how every day, in every way, I just show how much truly thicker I am than she had thought.

[The_Stafford_Cripps]

@FourDeer

Scifisam2009 and G. Odoreida both objected to my attempted explanation for why Eleanorigby didn’t get the Diagon Alley joke. Where, they ask, did I get that notion of a British version of “diagonally”?

From a televised interview with J.K. Rowling, actually; that is (VERY approximately) how she pronounced it, I thought. I assumed it was typical; perhaps she was just using that emphasis to make the joke work.

I haven’t seen that and I don’t know what her reasons for saying it like that were, but DIaGONally isn’t the way British people pronounce the word. Anyway, doesn’t it spoil the joke by burying the ‘a’ of ‘ally’?

[KneadToKnow]

It wasn’t until Ang Lee’s Hulk film came out that I made the Bruce Banner/Betty Ross connection.

(In case you’re having the same trouble I had for 30+ years: Banner = Flag. Betty = Betsy.)

[Annie-Xmas]

There was a thread looking for famous people whose names matched their jobs. Someone posted “It’s too bad Jeremy Irons isn’t known for playing golf.” and somoene responded “Too bad there isn’t a famous golfer with the last name of Woods.”:smack:

And I’ll post that infamous sign from the Simpsons so someone can ask for an explanation:

Sneed’s Feed and Seed
(formerly Chuck’s)

[PunditLisa]

A few months ago I heard Lindsey Buckingham sing “Tusk” solo. After he sang “Tusk!” he belted out “Aye-yeeh!” in a high pitched voice. I thought it was funky and kind of odd. Later I listened to the original version by Fleetwood Mac and, sure enough, the “aye-yeeh!” part was in there. In all those years I’d never heard it before. Now I can’t listen to it without belting out, “Aye-yeeh!”

I never realized that the “Village People” were flamboyantly gay or that the song “YMCA” was homoerotic until college. In my defense, I wasn’t familiar with Greenwich Village so that clue was lost on me.

I also didn’t connect “Queen” (the rock group) with “queens” a la gay men until around the same time. College was a real eye opening experience for me.

[Baal_Houtham]

@kittenblue

Sigh. You do realize the books are written for children, right? I know they’ve been around a while, and maybe you grew up with them, but they were not written for Latin scholars. And remember, she was a beginning author when she wrote the first one…total amateur. And magic doesn’t exist, so each author can make up their own rules on how it works.

Okay…rant over…

People often seem to expect too much from the Harry Potter books. The first time I encountered this, the posters (on another board) were discussing the ultimate resolution of the series, and the clues you could find that supported their theories.

This was after the third book.

My reaction was… uhh, you’re seeing a story arc that just doesn’t exist. The books are well done juvenile mysteries centered around a boarding school, and dressed up with magic, puns and child abuse. Maybe Rowlings got more grandiose notions as the series advanced, but I’d be amazed if she was aiming for profundity from the very beginning.

Maybe people expect too much from any popular series of books, comics or TV shows.

[Lamia]

@Chronos

Even if there were no such thing as homosexuality, a dandelion is still a kind of flower, and flowers are the sort of thing that are associated with not being fierce.

That’s largely because they’re strongly associated with (supposedly) non-fierce people like women and gay men.

Unless you can come up with any examples of the Lion being actually, you know, attracted to other males, I don’t think there’s really a strong case for him being gay.

A Production Code Era film could not have a male character openly attracted to other males, especially not if this character was one of the heroes. Within the restrictions of the Code, the Lion is about as gay as he could be. I’m not saying he’s a realistic depiction of a gay man, he’s extremely stereotyped, but this was 30 years pre-Stonewall.

[Jimmy_Joe_Meager]

In the movie version of Gone With the Wind, carefully watch the scene between Rhett and Belle where Belle’s talking about her son. There are unspoken acknowledgements, glances, a nod, a flicker of a smile… Rhett is the father!!

I swear! If you have it on disc watch it again and see if you agree.

[bri1600bv]

@RealityChuck

Didn’t they specifically mention that in the book? I remember it in the movie.

Rosemary’s baby?

I still don’t get what you’re saying.

There was someone named Rose and it was really mary’s baby?