There's no future in England's dreaming...

This caught my eye over at Nancy's place:

Just for the record, I have no particular problem with the idea of a "constitutional monarchy". It seems to me that modern Britons have no fewer "freedoms" as "subjects" than modern Americans have as "citizens" which, for those people in my social milieu and income bracket, are largely the freedom to starve and sleep under bridges once their jobs are offshored or eliminated.

No, the interesting thing to me about this is the degree to which this picture - deliberately, I'm sure - could just as easily be Fildes or Sargent or, for that matter, Gainsborough or Reynolds. Nancy observed that the benefit of Diana Spencer's death prior to the photograph is that the People's Princess lacked the goofiness to fit into this little royal family portrait.

And it is pretty goofy, but I think it's a very peculiar quality of goofy that has nothing to do with Diana's own astrologist-and-aromatherapist-and skeevy-lover sort of goofy.

The goofy here is the Classic Old School British Goofy, composed equally of exaggerated self-worth, lack of introspection, hauteur, and noblesse oblige, the Stuff of Empire Goofy that doesn’t see any humor in pretending that it’s still 1894.

Diana had her own massive Goofy but it was a thoroughly New Age Goofy incomprehensible to the stodgy House of Grammy Windsor. The Goofy on display here is a Goofy of centuries of "breeding", a sort of stud book of Goofy that values humans for their lineage rather than their accomplishments.

Sad when you consider that the clan threw out the perfectly good surname Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, too. Sigh.

The idea of keeping a nice old granny around out of pure nostalgia is hardly worse, say, than the idea of Donnie Trump or Ted Cruz as Chief Executive of a nuclear superpower. But as government it's a very, very peculiarly goofy idea, an idea the presumes that the worth of one person or a small group of people is higher than the worth of many.

(Mind you, our own "system" that purports to exalt the worth of the many over any individual is kind of odd, too...)

But the only real issue I have with the British system is that it really only works if you can pretend that it's still 1894 and the King or Queen actually matters. It's kind of like spending a fairly sizeable chunk of cash to keep a long-running reality show on television and then insisting that everyone pretend that that's really important.

So I used to get a chuckle out of the ridiculous royal pantomime across the Pond, thinking that We the People had, at least, nothing equally ridiculous.

Then, of course, this Republican primary came along.

And now I feel kind of like that stone parrot, the one on the bottom that's clearly getting its psittacene conge' in the form that The Donald plainly intends for his own daughter and God help me how I wish I could scrub that image out of my brain.

Pump, 4M, Glass, 1pr.

Actually, I spent the evening with the family last night and DID find something that inspired me to blog about.

It's completely trivial and kid-centered, so if you're looking for more ire on the subject of private weaponry, prepare to be disappointed.

Anyway, the Girl is going though something of a Princess Stage.

It's not horribly awfully mawkish in the way I feared it might be, with her demanding to dress up in princess garb 24/7; yes, she loves all things sparkly and pretty and cute but retains an underlying snark about it all which saves us from disappearing underneath the quicksands of Terminally Cutesy. But, still - for the Girl, Princesses Über Alles.

So the other night when we came across the cable broadcast of the original 1950 Disney Cinderella we HAD to watch.

(The Boy, for all that he pretends to mock these princessy puff-pieces, watched - though he was able to throw in the occasional smartass comment when the whole macguffin got too ridiculous. The Cinderella royals really believed there was only one girl with size four feet in the whole damn kingdom? Riiiiight.)

The show actually entertained me, too, since it has been years since I actually watched it. We have all sorts of Disney Princess storybooks and picture-books and even the odd princess doll around the Fire Direction Center (though the ladies tend to shed their clothes rather quickly before ending up in the Tub Toy bin; along with that tramp Barbie I'm beginning to suspect that the Disney royals are a trifle naughty) but not the movie. So my recollection of the actual ur-Cindy was pretty vague, and the cartoon was kind of a surprise on several levels.

The first thing I had forgotten is how little Cinderella actually occupies the screen.

The damn flick should really be called "Animals in Clothes", since probably half the run time or more is taken up with the adventures of Cindy's animal pals, the mice and songbirds that she befriends and seems to have had time to sew teensy little shirts, hats, and shoes for.

Where she finds time or materials to do this heaven only knows, since she's portrayed as the overworked and impoverished slavey of her wretched stepfamily, but that's the kidVid biz for ya.

I found these animal antics rather flat but, then, I was raised on the old Warner's cartoons, where cat-versus-mouse or rabbit-versus-hound had a real nasty edge to the humor. I tend to like my anthropomorphic critters with a bit more bite to them. Sorry, Jacques. Sorry, Gus. Just sayin'.

Between them Cindy and Prince Charming got less on-screen business than the comic Grand Duke, or the comic animals, or the comic King; it was as if ol' Walt knew that his audience didn't care about the lovey-dovey stuff as much as having a bit of a larf. Or knew that his prince and princess were pretty...and boring...so he stuffed the story with everything else under the sun. But it certainly didn't make our heroine any more compelling, and that's even without all the sobbing.

Anyway.

The other bit I didn't recall was just how delightfully eeeeeevil stepmommy-dearest Lady Tremaine is.

Even the Disney Wiki mentions this at length, so, clearly, it's not just me. Lady T is a terrific villain in the classic melodramatic sense, in that she hurts and twists our heroine for no better reason than her own personal enjoyment. She's a colossal bee-yotch and - since Cindy is a bit of a drip and not really much of a character - her pure evil is about 85% of why you root for Cindy; because she's NOT a bitch like her stepmother.

The "ugly sisters" are nasty and spiteful, too, but no more. They're just cat-scratches, irritations, naethings. Cindy and the viewer can just ignore them.

Lady T is a deadly steel dagger hidden inside a silken sheath and never lets you forget it, and she never lets her stepdaughter forget it, either.

What I had also completely forgotten was the terrific voice work of the 1950 Lady T, Eleanor Audley. She's perfect and makes the original Evil Stepmother work on vocal strength alone; cold, controlled and controlling, but with a sort of frightful majesty that makes you afraid of her even when you know she's armed with nothing more dangerous than a mean backhand.

She's an unusual Disney baddie, too; she's got no magic, no powers, nothing but an iron will and a consuming, implacable selfishness. She's not even really "ugly" in the Cruella de Ville/Malificent tradition; she's not humpbacked or bug-eyed or snaggle-toothed. Her skin isn't green, she doesn't turn into anything nastier than a scary relative, and she can't command lethal huntsmen or flying monkeys.

Yeah, she's got that hook-nosed aristo face, but if you put her in a slinky drop-front black satin gown and quirked those lips into a sultry smile she'd be a sort of purple-gray-haired Step-MILF, a bit of grown-up sexytime for the fella that likes his ladies slim, arrogant, and evil.

Nope, she's frightening because she's just a regular human woman; her power comes from her pure malevolence, from her lambent hatred of her lovely stepdaughter.

She's the animated female Khan Noonien Singh; "From hell's heart I stab at thee!".

She's the Mother from Hell, every boyfriend's worst nightmare.

Can you imagine her as Charming's mother-in-law? Brrrr. I'll bet getting the whole family together for Christmas dinner at the Tremaines was a fucking nightmare.

I mean, the woman is a tartar. Even after she's lost the game, after it's all up, after her daughters' ginormous feet have defied every attempt to shoehorn the glass slipper, Lady T is by God going to screw over her stepkid or know the reason why. She trips the page and breaks the slipper, and it's not her fault she hasn't foreseen that Cindy still has crystal loafer #2. She's still in there swinging, horrible woman that she is, and I felt a certain affection for her because of it.

She's a wonderfully awful character and I have this mental picture of her post-defeat, lounging at the edge of the swimming pool in the expensive tropic hideaway she's fled to escape royal vengeance, sipping something with a paper umbrella in it as though she owns the place.

The way she arches that long predatory body and eyes the cabana boy makes him hunch over his groin protectively. And all the while her vulpine smile bodes very ill for the next encounter with that ungrateful stepchild of hers.

She's defeated, not beaten, and the loathing she feels for the entitled little bitch will ensure that her brain is still racing, still plotting a dire fate for the Happy Couple long after they've "moved on".

Lady T doesn't do "moving on". Fuck that shit. Lady T does "Revenge is a dish best served cold."

Good stuff.

The kids liked it, too.

Well, tonight the Boy and I are off to see what Peter Jackson makes of J.R.R. Tolkien's children's tale. I daresay I may have something to add on that subject when we return.

Don't bite any poison apples, now.