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re: The song is only creepy if you choose to see it that way

Posted by: Alcindoro 06:58 pm EST 11/22/14
In reply to: re: The song is only creepy if you choose to see it that way - singleticket 06:38 pm EST 11/21/14

>Gaston follows an arc from doting on Gigi as "a little girl" to wanting to have sex with her.<

I think that's just as dirty a view of Gaston as someone who chooses to see Honoré as a covert child molester. Gaston has the revelation that he no longer has any choice BUT to see Gigi in a different light, as a poised, beautiful - and yes, desirable - young woman, no longer a charming, playful child. His understandable desire for her is confusing for him and, like an irrational child himself, he is angry at her for it. And she cannot understand this: as LegitOnce thoughtfully points out, she is only doing what everyone expects of her and is devastated when Gaston is angered by it. For the moment, they both seem to have lost a friend. To me this has always been so very touching about the film (I've never read Collette), and "Thank Heaven" more or less encapsulates the whole message of the upcoming story in song. Perhaps it's a problem because it is the opening number of the film and we haven't had the chance to get to know and like Honoré yet, but really it had never occurred to me that it was anything pervy until I was an adult and female (and gay male) friends pointed it out to me. Maybe the solution to the number would be positioning it later in the show, perhaps as Honoré explains his philosophy to other characters. I don't think making it a duet for the two older women "fixes" anything, in fact I think it can be construed just as negatively for different reasons.


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re: The song is only creepy if you choose to see it that way

Posted by: gcarl44 11:00 pm EST 11/22/14
In reply to: re: The song is only creepy if you choose to see it that way - Alcindoro 06:58 pm EST 11/22/14

Right on! Indeed, if given to the women to sing, it could just as easily be construed (by minds that naturally go to the perverse) as expectations of themselves being taken care of in their old age by the courtesan-in-training they are preparing for just such a life. People need to remember the era it is portraying and the whimsical and romantic nature of the piece. There is nothing in this that could be construed as perverse or inappropriate, except in the minds of the overly sensitive and overly PC (which, by the way, has already been taken to enough extremes of absurdity.)


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re: The song is only creepy if you choose to see it that way

Posted by: Alcindoro 11:56 am EST 11/23/14
In reply to: re: The song is only creepy if you choose to see it that way - gcarl44 11:00 pm EST 11/22/14

>the minds of the overly sensitive and overly PC<

Not to mention the doggedly cynical.


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re: The song is only creepy if you choose to see it that way

Posted by: singleticket 07:27 pm EST 11/22/14
In reply to: re: The song is only creepy if you choose to see it that way - Alcindoro 06:58 pm EST 11/22/14

I think that's just as dirty a view of Gaston as someone who chooses to see Honoré as a covert child molester.

Dirty? On the contrary, it's all quite proper. The characters operate in a grey area of middle class morality that at the same time has a very high respect for middle class economics. In that sense, it is kind of dirty.

I don't think making it a duet for the two older women "fixes" anything, in fact I think it can be construed just as negatively for different reasons.

Yes.


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