Thursday Night Movies

Here's why blogs are ridiculous: I rented Some Like It Hot to watch with the girls. I figured that once I fast-forwarded past the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, the whole cross-dressing/slapstick thing would amuse them. I think M would have gone for it, but E was pretty impatient. I, however, was in heaven. That is one great movie, even if I only got to watch twenty minutes of it.

But here's the ridiculous blog thing: I remembered the cross-dressing and slapstick, but I had completely forgotten how outrageously amazing Marilyn Monroe is. With those amazing breasts and hips, and that incredible breathy voice, and that soft gaze, and the way she coos "I'm not that bright," or whatever it is she coos. You watch the movie and you realize why we have been so obsessed with her for the last fifty years. The woman is a phenomenon. She is the ur-object of desire.

Now isn't that just a ridiculous thing to say? I mean, everyone knows that Marilyn Monroe is a phenomenon and the ur-object of desire. Is the world altered in any way by me saying it here on Not Quite Sure? No, not one bit. Yet I still feel compelled to say it because it is just so true, even though I know my saying it means absolutely nothing. Dumb, really dumb.

Anyway, after we turned off Some Like It Hot, we watched The Challenge. What? You never heard of The Challenge? The last straight-to-video Mary-Kate and Ashley movie where they play twin sisters who hate each other and end up on the same team in a Survivor-rip-off reality game show, and of course their team wins, they learn to appreciate each other, and they get the guys?

Confession time: I like Mary-Kate and Ashley movies (if you feel that you can't read my blog any more, I respect your decision--I mean, after all, blogs are ridiculous, no?). I don't like them like I like Some Like It Hot or Heights or any other real movies that I like. But I like them a lot better than most of the things I am forced to watch with my children--like Blues Clues for the forty-seven-thousandth time.

Mary-Kate and Ashley movies are funny. They take place in visually pleasurable locations like London, Paris, and, in this case, Mexico. And they have this weird little subversive streak.

Really, they do. It has to with breaking the frame, and I remember it happened in the Bahamas one too, though I don't remember the specifics. But in this one, at the very end, after they have won the game show, they reunite with the boys. At that point I started to scoff about how it always ends with them getting the guys and asked if we could turn it off, but M insisted we keep watching. Then one of them tells her guy that he is her first love, and all of a sudden another guy bursts in and says "Hey Mary-Kate [or maybe it was Ashley--in the movie their names were Shane and Lizzie], I was your first love, in Passport to Paris, remember?" And then all these other guys come in from the other movies and start insisting that they are their boyfriends, reminding them of the other movies (are you following this?). And then Ashley says (or maybe it's Mary-Kate), "You guys are all ridiculous, you're just our movie boyfriends," or something like that, and then as the guys continue to fight over them, M-K and A look at each other, shrug, and walk away. Then it gets totally cheesy as they say something about boys coming and going but always having each other, but really, is that a challenge to the hegemony of the marriage plot, teen version, or what?! (Yes, I know, it's a carefully-manufactured have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too challenge, but that's the best you're going to get from popular culture, and it's certainly preferable to straight acceptance of the dominant paradigm.)