Today, I have a new post up over at Splitsider concerning the greatest thing Bill Murray has ever done: The Looney Tunes 50th Anniversary Special. Click on this this link, watch the clips, and tell me I’m wrong. I dares ya.
This is seriously one of my favorite hours of television ever and it will become yours, too, once you watch it. I COMMAND IT.
My kid loves to watch movies in Spanish. Not Spanish language movies, but movies she’s already committed to memory with the Spanish audio track turned on. And now that she’s learning to read, she likes to see the Spanish subtitles, too.
I can’t tell you exactly why she likes to do this, but like most of her weirdness, it’s probably my fault. For years, I would bug my wife with questions about how to say this, that, and the other thing in Spanish. As an alternate means to expand my vocabulary, one meant to prevent my wife from murdering me, I began to watch Simpsons DVDs with the Spanish audio track on and Spanish subtitles. This was where I learned such valuable words as chuleta, salchicha, and trasero.
I’m sure my kid saw me doing this at some point in her formative years, because when she was very little, “Simpsons” was her catch-all word for “cartoons.” Now, she now gets really annoyed if she’s watching a DVD only to discover it doesn’t have a Spanish language track. Between DVDs, DVRs, and OnDemand, she lives in a world that denies her nothing. Healthy!
As I am still learning Spanish myself, I’ve been encouraging this curious proclivity of hers. The Harry Potter films are the ones she likes to watch in Spanish most often. (This is how I learned that cicatriz is scar and varita is wand; “muggle” is still “muggle.”) But last night, she asked to watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory in Spanish. To call this an experience would be a gross understatement.
Here are some highlights of the bilingual discoveries I made while viewing this classic film en español.
One thing that suffers in the translation is Willy Wonka himself. As far as I’m concerned, Gene Wilder is responsible for everything great about this movie, and removing his voice from the equation robs the film of some of that greatness.
However, there is one scene in the Spanish version that stands alone. It doesn’t surpass the original, but rather tears a whole in its reality and creates a new, terrifying universe unto itself.
I am speaking of the ultra-creepy boat scene. I will not attempt to capture exactly why this is so much more unsettling in Spanish. It defies explanation, and is something you need to experience. Think this scared the crap out of you before? That’s nothing compared to this. Once I saw it, my life was transformed, and now yours will be, too.
Of the remaining GOP presidential hopefuls, Newt Gingrich has the ugliest soul.
Rick Santorum possesses some vile views on gay rights and abortion (like thinking rape victims who get pregnant should just accept this “gift from god”), but he seems like such a brutally strange and damaged person that I’d pity him if he weren’t in such a position of power. Ron Paul seems sincere and I don’t disagree with his anti-war and anti-war-on-drugs stances, even if some his other positions bug me (not to mention his ugly newsletters, the racist content of which he’s never explained satisfatorily). Mitt Romney has the nonplussed cheesiness of a local news anchor.
All members of this trio possess varying degrees of harmlessness, as far as I’m concerned. So with Rick Perry out of the race, Gingrich stands above all of them as, hands down, the worst human being of the bunch.
Among them, Gingrich is the most eager practitioner of Bully Politics. This has been a feature of the Republican arsenal ever since Barry Goldwater and part of the general pushback against New Deal/Great Society ideals we’ve seen since those days. However, it’s never been practiced more brutally than now, and never more gleefully than by Newt. When he talks about making kids work as janitors, there is vengeance, and almost glee, in his voice. When he sneers at Juan Williams during a debate, he all but invites the riled-up audience to attack his outnumbered questioner and seems not too concerned about the consequences. He is never happier than when he attacks those can least defend themselves.
When Gingrich called Obama a “food stamp president,” it was an obvious dog-whistle statement. (Subtext: “Remember, guys, he’s BLACK. And he’s gonna give YOUR money to OTHER BLACK PEOPLE.”) But apart from the badly disguised racism, it was also part and parcel with the delight he takes from attacking the least of us, joyfully positing that the poorest among us are the most deserving of our scorn and ridicule.
Hearing this, I had an immediate, visceral, infuriated reaction, for reasons I couldn’t quite articulate at first. Yes, it was a reprehensible attitude, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on exactly it bothered me so much. And then it all flooded back to me, a memory I’d done my best to bury: My family was once on food stamps.