Moulin Ruse

This is going to be a general rant. Don't expect anything extremely witty and or funny. I'm just horrified at the moment as to my mother's viewing choice on TV.
Today began all right. Got up around 11. (Ah Spring Break.) Considering my body clock usually sees fit to wake me up around 8 am (weekends included,) it's nice to know that I am able to sleep in SOMETIMES. Then again I was also up past midnight finishing TWO chapters of a fanfic because I was hit by a gargantuan guilt-trip along with creational fervour. I barely managed to brush my teeth and drag a nightshirt on over my head (because sleeping in blue jeans rarely turns out well the next morning. That is, unless you have a penchant for buckle and seam marks all up and down your legs and stomach. I don't, so I had to rouse myself enough to actually button this shirt. (Which, at 12:30 pm, I am still wearing, along with striped purple flannel drawstring pants. It's purple plaid, soft, fuzzy, warm, and comfortable. I went through a lot of trouble matching up the buttons and holes in a sleep-deprived, pain-racked state, and damnit I am going to wear it as long as humanly possible, in order to wring out the last drops of its usefulness as a garment.) I had a couple of storebought blueberry scones (they were okay. A little dry, but okay.) My mother also saw fit to hook up the juicer attachment to the food processor and make fresh squeezed orange juice. Always before in my life, orange juice was squeezed by hand more for the novelty of having "hand squeezed juice" rather than the need for liquid sustenance. These attempts usually resulted in two desecrated halves on an orange, which no one wanted to eat, and half a tablespoon of sour, pulpy-yet-watery, thin yellow liquid that was drunk for the sake of saying we didn't waste it. Anyhow, this orange juice was somehow better. It was the sweetest orange juice I've ever tasted (including stuff from concentrate) and the oranges were well and truly gutted by the machine juicer, not leaving me to feel guilty that my whim for fresh-squeezed orange juice was depriving a starving child of his vitamin C. The machine yielded more orange juice than Iwould have expected.
Anyhow. My mother woke me up this morning with a glass of the said orange juice. This leads me to remember my cocky-assed Foods teacher, who is a nice enough guy but a little bit odd in the head. Half of the girlsi n last year's graduating class were in my Foods class and those same females repeatedly expressed a wish to jump this guy. In my opinion, this was becauseh e was the only male teacher under 30 who wasn't A) Married B) An intern or C) Weirdly disfigured in the face. This guy looks normal. Which is a rarity at my school. The general male population was dropped on its face at birth. Considering that the girls in my Foods class hooked up on a regular basis with male from the general population base at my school, it's understandable that their tastes in men had been lower to fit the standards of their circle of acquaintance. Thus the lusting after the teacher. *shudders* Anyhow, this teacher, besides being a cocky little bitch most of the time, loved to hear us complain about how crappy it is to wake up on Monday mornings and have to go to school. He would regale us with tales of how, throughout his life, he never had an alarm clock, as his mother would always wake him up by shaking him gently and bringing him a glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. I'm pretty sure this wasn't the 50's, but still, I can picture his mother in a frilly apron and crinolines, with a freakishly bouffant blonde hair-do. She would get up, dress, do her hair and nails and make up, then set about fixing a full breakfast for her family, including toast, waffles, pancakes, oatmeal, cold cereal, sliced fruit, ten kinds of fruit juice, milk, tea and coffee. EVERY DAY. I kinda liked (read: felt pity for) this teacher, and though most of the time I felt like patting him on the head, I also felt the insistant urge to take an electric mixer to his face. Usually I just sat there and made caustic comments on his lack of female companionship, along with calling his sexuality into question. (Note that I never outright insulted the dude, I just made casual, smooth little observations about his life, or what we saw of it.) The other girls thought I had no sex drive because I wasn't eager to throw myself at this man and hump his leg. The legality of the case wasn't an issue to any of them, one of whom I know for a fact plans to become a lawyer. God help us all.
Incidentally, I've recently come to the realization that I have no sex drive. None. Nada. Libido es nunca. (Not sure if that is even proper Spanish, or any existing language for that matter.) This doesn't bother me beyond the vague irritating idea that as a teenager I really ought to be feeling some kind of tingly-ness over the opposite sex. (This doesn't mean I prefer girls. I don't. I happen to have a crush on a MALE celebrity, but I don't fixate on this as a possibility, so it's not like I'm eschewing all men of my own acquaintance to save myself for a certain heartthrob. I just...can't...feel anything romantic towards the men and boys I know.) Besides, the perfect men in history are all fictional, (Jesus aside. And I'm not about to go crushing on Jesus.)
But back to my main grievance at the moment. My mother, innocently channel surfing...has come across Moulin Rouge, which has been playing almost incessantly on MuchMusic or MuchMoreMusic for the past week or so. Now personally, I can't stand Moulin Rouge. The colours and lights are all very pretty, and the songs are good. But I'd rather listen to the songs without being forcefed the story as well. If MR were an indie film, or had done substantially less well at the box office, I might find it vaguely palatable. The fact that it is so overrated and every teenybopper from here to Boston just drools over this movie is enough to put me off even the best movie. (And this is NOT the best movie.) The story is predictable, and the only characters I ever liked was the midget and Jim Broadbent (whom I wuv as a cuddly wil' Bwitish actor. He's just so cherubic.) After hearing many many girls gushing over this, I got so fed up that I watched it once in its entirity (for far be it from me to judge a movie I haven't seen,) and vowed never to do so again, unless upon the pain of death. I have nothing against the cast, or director or anything. The set and costume design was lovely, the choerography watchable, the lighting magical. I loved Baz's "Sunscreen" monologue (never got around to watching Romeo + Juliet. The idea of Claire Danes wearing wings and making out with Leo is not enough to induce me to rent it.) Nicole Kidman divorced Tom Cruise and has a cute accent, so she must have SOMETHING going for her. Ewan was good in Big Fish (which was a good movie, I found, in spite of the HBC-ness. She was in so much makeup it was hard to tell who she really was half the time.)
Just the never-ending slew of "OMG I luved this movei it was so GR8!" and "OMG i totaly cryed at teh end, u guyz!!!11!1!1!!!!" was enough to render me ill. This story is classic. It ends tragically, and yet love perserveres beyond death. Try reading some romantic novels from the late 1700's, early 1800's. Many heroines met the same fate. There many Bollywood movies which have the star-crossed duo's dying. This ending is not rare, and simply because this is the first movie YOU have seen where it happens does not make this "teh best movei of teh centurie!" Just because Hollywood finally cashed in on the "tragic end to the bittersweet romantic tale" jackpot doesn't mean it's a breakthrough in film-making. MR made this ending mainstream, and somehow, the movie has managed to sell out its perfectly good story by revamping it so 15 year olds the world over are wishing they could fall into true love and then die. I'm not saying death is the end to love, but why mess with a good thing? If you're alive and in love, let's hope it lasts longer than that.
MR has made a classic story go big-time Hollywood, and what kills me is the fact that there are many great books and movies out there with similar stories which have been glossed over by the big-named-big-budget mask of the Moulin Rouge phenomena.
Don't tell me that the Bohemian lifestyle of 1899 Paris can be shown in a movie that cost $52.5 million to make, and raked in $58 million at the box office. In Hollywood terms, this might be paltry, but that is still more money than I plan to make in my lifetime. Bohemian Paris wouldn't have been full of fresh-faced young actors and gorgeous starlets wearing silks and satins and jewels (albeit costume jewelry) who live in decadent, well-lit apartments. It might have been more historically accurate (of not as visually appealing to the drooling masses,) if it had been a lower-budget production with realistic settings. I know, I know, the movie isn't supposed ot be 'real.' It's a movie about the once-in-a-thousand-liftimes kind of love that trancends death. Big whoop. The point is, my darling little pre-teens, that that's exactly it. Don't go looking for that kind of love any time before you're twenty, at least. You may not find it until you're 60. You may never find it. That's what the reality of it is. It's great that we've taught a generation to dream again, but at what cost? I, for one, do not want to sell my soul to Hollywood in order to achieve and maintain a sense of the miraculous in everyday life.
We shouldn't look to a fantasy movie for the basis of our reality. The fandom for MR is a mask to cover our society's desperate need for love, magic, freedom--whatever those Bohemian ideals are--and a desire to create the same. We need to look inside ourselves for this kind of happiness, freedom, and magic. Because you sure as hell won't find it by sitting inside a giant elephant's head while Ewan croons to you and Elton John has to be physically restrained to prevent him from beating someone to a bloody pulp.
If I had my life to live over again, I'd go to see Moulin Rouge in the theatres, and when I came out at the end, I'd find the producer, the director, the creative consultant, the popcorn-slinger--anyone would suffice--and throw a handful of toonies into their face, screaming: "I've paid my whore!"

Wearing jeans to bed, freshly squeezed orange juice, my former Foods teacher and his Stepford Mom (ick,) my sex drive, and most of all, Moulin Rouge-------------------->GUNNED DOWN!

P.S. If you're into bittersweet romantic musicals, I highly suggest seeing Elton John's Aida. (Verdi I think did the opera, which is great, but I like watching things in English.) Aida follows similar lines, (think R&J in ancient Egypt, sorta, but with twists,) and it has more of an uplifting ending, in my view. I like tragic endings too (DPS) but uplifting ones are good too, to show that people can recover. Aida puts an more interesting spin on things in my mind than does MR. Or R&J for that matter (if I have to read "I did this for my higschool english project..." one more time before I read a half-assed R&J fanfic poem, I will kill someone.)