In the Bond film “Moonraker”, after a fight scene Bond asks Dr. Goodhead:“who taught you fight like that? NASA?”
She replied “No, VASA!” Didn’t mean anything to me, didn’t really care.
But then on the Simpsons, Lisa says “I probably won’t even get into VASA!”
What is VASA? Google keeps giving me hits about Sweden. I’ve tried a few alternative spellings, but no luck.
Lisa is referring to “Vassar”, the college. I don’t know about the James Bond reference.
Holly Goodhead was apparently a crewmember of the Vasa, the flagship of the Swedish navy, which sank soon into its maiden voyage in 1628 in Stockholm Harbor.
Or maybe she went to Vassar, too.
Actually, Goodhead’s reply WAS Vassar, indicating either the college, or that she had taken martial arts lessons from fiddler Vassar Clement.
Hmmm. That’s a very USA-specific reference for a British film. Is it a well-known college? Lisa’s remark seemed kind of derogatory.
Yes, it is a very well known college. It is one of the “seven sisters”, a group of very prestigous private women’s universities (Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe, and Barnard are a few of the others). Vassar went coed a few decades ago. Lisa’s remark was intended to be ironic, a comment on the current regard a once very exclusive institution now holds.
And recall, Homer did chastise her for “Vasser-bashing”.
OK, a little bit about the Seven Sisters. Radcliffe College, founded as the women’s college of Harvard University, is now a women’s studies institute and no longer admits undergraduates. It lost most of its reason to exist when Harvard College went co-ed. Barnard College, the equivalent at Columbia University, still holds on, although no one really knows why - Columbia College started admitting women in the early 80s. Bryn Mawr College, in Pennsylvania, is only nominally all-women, as there’s extensive cross-registration with (formerly all-male) Haverford College. Wellesley College, near Boston, is also still “all women”, but provides for extensive cross-registration with MIT. Mt. Holyoke College, in South Hadley, Mass., and Smith College, in nearby Northampton, remain all-women but are part of a five-college consortium that includes Hampshire and Amherst Colleges and the University of Massachusetts. Finally, **Vassar College ** (note: 2 "a"s), Poughkeepsie (“poo-kip-see”), New York, went co-ed in the early 70s, I suspect largely because it lacked the cross-pollination its sisters already had.
wrong, wrong, wrong!
If you listen closely to Dr. Goodhead, what she said was “WEGA,” (pronounced :Vega") as in a Sony wide-screen television. Obviously she was using a prototype model and had received instruction from a distance-learning Aikido academy in Tokyo.