Based on my friend Stephanie's enthusiasm for Hairspray last month, I went to see the movie yesterday with my friends. The music was bouncy. My favorite song was "The Nicest Kids in Town." I liked the movie, but I still felt that something was off. It wasn't just John Travolta's grating performance. It wasn't just Amanda Bynes' orange skin. It was the concept I had expressed last month about remaking movies; something gets lost when you make a copy of a copy, i.e. a movie based on a musical based on a movie. Ranylt Richildis expresses her disappointment in the film in her review on Pajiba: Say It, Don't Spray It.
...The original Hairspray found eternal life thanks to its unusual cast...There’s something real at the core of Waters’ freak-parade—one of his least provocative, so designed to prevent its subcultural elements from upstaging the film’s gentle message about acceptance. Shankman’s Hairspray, conversely, suffers from the contrast effect—not against the original version, so much, but within its own structure. Its very effort and proportion reveal just how tinny its message really is—just how unrealistically tidy the struggle for integration is presented...The in-your-faceness of Shankman’s more corporate version turns the fragile backbone of the commentary to jelly; now we really notice that, in Hairspray’s world, racism only seems to exist as an institution, not as a widespread character flaw—most everyone is just so jim-dandy-ready to put the fat and the dark on a lime-lit pedestal because (shucks) people are just so great and accepting when those mean old rules get lifted...
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In Someone Needs to Stop Them News, here is the story that greeted me on Saturday morning: Lucky No. 17 born to Ark. couple, by Jill Zeman, AP.
It's a girl — again — for Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, the proud parents of 17 children.
And after Jennifer Danielle was born Thursday morning, her parents already were talking about having more children.
"We'd love to have more," Michelle Duggar said, adding that the girls are outnumbered seven to 10 in the family. "We love the ruffles and lace."
...Among the "fun facts" listed on Discovery Health's Web page devoted to the Duggars: A baby has been born in every month except June; the family has gone through about 90,000 diapers, and Michelle Duggar has been pregnant for 126 months — or 10.5 years — of her life.
I was first introduced to the Duggars via the TWoP Forum on their Discovery Health Channel special, 14 Children and Pregnant Again!. After I actually watched the special, my annoyance grew. Those Duggar parents have serious problems. Jeremy Slater elucidates one of my many concerns about "raising" that many children in his post, Seventeen kids? SEVENTEEN?.
...I certainly can't think of a compelling argument for NOT blasting Jim Bob (OF COURSE his name is Jim Bob) and his Amazing Vag-O-Matic wife into the cold comfort of deep space. As for his sad gaggle of emotionally-neglected Children of the Corn, the kindest thing would be to send them to 17 separate foster homes. Let them experience for the first time what it's like to have parents who actually give a shit about you.
Because let's face it--when you're having multiple children, there comes a point where you stop building a family and start building a collection. Some people choose Precious Moments figurines, others pick comic books or Pokemon monsters, and you chose wailing, ever-pooping drains on this planet's finite natural resources. Personally, I would have gone with the Pokemon...
I don't agree with the severity of Jeremy's suggested methods, but there is also something wrong with viewing your body as a "living sacrifice" to combat "forty years of destruction wrought by women's liberation: contraception, women's careers, abortion, divorce, homosexuality and child abuse."
Readers, what are your thoughts on the Quiverfull movement?
