One of those chance snatches of conversation that sticks with you – I remember someone saying, on the set of a film in which I had a minor part, that when middle class people grow up they listen to classical music, and when working class people grow up, they listen to the music of their childhood.
I suppose that makes me more working class than middle class. I do listen to some classical music, though. And I don't always listen to the music of my childhood. However, I think it is generally the music of my childhood that moves me most deeply.
The first film I ever saw at the cinema was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. I must have been very young indeed. I don't think I really understood the concept of cinema at the time. I thought we were going to see Snow White and her seven giraffes. I imagined it would be a small zoo enclosure, or maybe a bit like a circus, with a beautiful young lady showing us all her giraffes.
I don't remember actually sitting in the cinema and watching the film. What I do remember is that we had a soundtrack of the film on record in our house (presumably after we saw the film), and this would be played fairly often. Even though children do not have much experience of life, songs tend to move them deeply, as if they understand exactly what it is like to love and lose someone and so on. At least, that's how I remember it. I found the record utterly transporting, and Snow White's contralto voice was unearthly.
I have been trying to find clips of the songs from the film on YouTube, but for some reason, it seems impossible to find the English versions of the clips. Is this because of Anglo-Saxon uptightness over copyright, I wonder?
Anyway, I have found a number of versions of the songs. Someday My Prince Will Come and I'm Wishing are the two I remember best. Even in a foreign language, hearing Snow White's voice echo her antiphonally in the wishing well makes me weep. I'm not joking. I find it indescribably goosebumpily beautiful. I don't really care if it's all a lie. It has the same kind of beauty, for instance, as Oscar Wilde's 'The Happy Prince', which I cannot read without tears pouring down my face.
I remember reading somewhere the opinion that fairy tales are basically pornography for children. When we grow up 'fairy tale' is also a synonym for falsehood. These, however, are some pretty enduring, compelling and powerful falsehoods. I suppose I respect that. More than anything else, I want life to be like that. Except that I'm not so keen on Prince Charming. It's pretty obvious she got the wrong man there. She should have stuck with Dopey.
The older I get, the more important those fairy tales seem to become…
I find I really don’t like getting older. It feels like it’s getting older that’s the lie, somehow. That’s just me, maybe. In any case, yes, I’m more and more drawn to a certain kind of transcendant purity in fairy tales and their ilk.
Indeed. I was in the grocery store yesterday and happened to overhear two old women–one a customer, one behind the counter–hopelessly unable to communicate. The customer asked the price of something in the deli case; she couldn’t see well enough to read the price tag. The woman behind the counter couldn’t read it, either, and when she tried to tell the customer, the other old lady couldn’t really hear.”How much for the roast beef?””I’ll have to go check.””Eh? I just want to know how much is the roast beef; I can’t see the sign.””I just said, I’ll HAVE TO GO CHECK.””I can’t hear you, dear.”And more of the same Monty Python, absurd sort of exchange. I started to smirk, but then the thought crossed my mind that that could be ME in fifty years or so, if I’m lucky to live so long (lucky?), and the smirk vanished.And, as I’ve said before, fairy tales speak to something timeless. I pity the children (more and more these days) who never encounter fairy tales at all. True, there’s still Disney–and like you, I grew up with those movies as a childhood staple–and that’s a start–but I have to wonder how many kids got all the references even in the movie Shrek?
I often get really depressed when I look at another person and think to myself, “That’s me in the future”, or “I’m like that.” Or something else of the kind. For instance, because I have grey hair, I look at someone else with grey hair and suddenly totally identify myself with them, and think that because I have grey hair I am therefore also (for instance) an overweight bank manager who has compromised all his dreams.None of it’s true, of course. Even when I’m seventy I’ll still be me, and none of these other people. “I have to wonder how many kids got all the references even in the movie Shrek?”One thing I find rather irritating is when people mistake the allusion for the original source of something, to give a fairly lame example, when they wonder why Buddhists named their concept of spiritual liberation after a nineties grunge band. It happens all the time. But I have to remind myself – an idiot is someone who doesn’t know what I learned yesterday.
Good point–and I love the analogy! 😀
I grew up watching schlocky B-movies and violent anime. One of my fondest filmic childhood memories is sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night to watch Wicked City on the Sci Fi channel.
“One of my fondest filmic childhood memories is sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night to watch Wicked City on the Sci Fi channel.”I believe I’ve seen that one. I have a similar memory of when we first got a television in the house. It had a screen about five inches across, if that, and was black and white. I came downstairs in the evening just as a mottled corpse was rising from a slab in the sci-fi series Blake’s 7. The corpse proceeded to strangle the scientist who had just been examining it. I found it utterly terrifying and thrilling. It’s hard to come upon such thrills these days.
The Banana Splits. Honest to god truth, I’m ashamed to say. In fact, I heard the theme song playing somewhere the other day and experienced a little frisson of delight. Don’t know if you ever saw them in the UK, but in the US, people of a certain thirtysomething age ought to know what I mean. Terrible stuff :DAnd I very seldom listen to classical music, though I do like Mozart. I grew up listening to honky-tonk and Johnny Cash, and I still have a certain nostalgia for authentic American roots music. So there may be something to that saying, after all.
The Banana Splits?One day this banana is going to split from the bunch.