There is a monsoon outside my window. When I have my dog, I will be going for walks in such weather; I adore walking in the rain, so I look forward to this time. Meanwhile, I watched another musical.
13. Carefree (1938) - Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers. Fred Astaire is a psychiatrist, and Ginger Rogers is a lady who was sent to him by her fiance because she kept breaking off their engagement. Naturally, she falls in love with Fred Astaire; naturally, he doesn't realize he loves her back until he's already hypnotized her into hating him and loving her fiance instead. Fred tries to get back into her subconscious to fix his mistake, but the chance doesn't arise for him until the fiance accidentally punches Ginger in the face and knocks her out. Fred plants the idea that he loves her into her subconscious, and they get married.
I was offended within the first five minutes - Fred Astaire is all, "I bet she's just another dizzy female with no brain," until he sees how gorgeous she is. Then he changes his tune and decides that she's wonderful. COME ON, Fred Astaire. A little more integrity, please. It was at that moment that I discovered that I am looking for modern values in an OLD movie. Everyone thought about women that way. It's ingrained in my mind that women don't deserve to be thought of only in that way, but that kind of thinking wasn't around everywhere in the 30s. Boo, 1930s. Being a Psychology major, I also disliked the poor representation of what a psychiatrist can do. Hello, ethics. You can't just hypnotize people at the drop of a hat to serve your own purposes.
What I liked was that there was less dancing here, and also Ginger Rogers continues to be fantastic. There was a long scene in which she is hypnotized to act impulsively, so she runs through traffic and throws a cop's nightstick into a giant glass window and tosses her shoe into someone's car. I also liked Fred Astaire's singing - he has an amazing voice. His small head continues to bother me, but when he sings I have something else to focus on.
In a lot of these old movies that I get from the library, they include a Special Features section with old animated short movies. One of the ones on this dvd was called "September in the Rain," and before it was showed there was an interesting note: it said that the following cartoon depicted racial stereotypes, which were wrong at the time and are wrong now. They do not reflect the beliefs of the production company (which is a lie, because if they didn't, then the company wouldn't have presented it - they should have said "do not reflect the beliefs that the company holds today" or something), but to not show it would be to pretend that these stereotypes never existed.
I think that is really interesting. It seems like something that should be in front of a lot of old movies, especially ones that are set in the South and always seem to include a few token joyous slave segments. Also, with all the hoopla about taking the N-word out of The Adventures of Huck Finn - to take the word out and re-publish it with a new word in its place is like saying that kind of attitude towards African-American people never existed. I think it would be a lot more conducive to discussion and stuff if they left it in, with that kind of note in front of it. I don't know, though. I'm not an expert on racism and how to deal with stereotypes.
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