Dancing Bread Rolls

I found our class discussion very surprising. I think the most interesting thing I learned was about lighting cigarettes as a sign of sexual entanglement and/or desire. Wasn’t aware that the meaning of the gesture was quite as overt as that. I’m not surprised about the sexual subtext in an old film–often, older movies have a greater amount of sexual suggestion than newer ones. Sure, they actually SHOW sex in new movies, but they’re not nearly as suggestive nowadays. I’m constantly shocked when I go back to old films I haven’t seen since I was a little kid, because there’s so much implied that I just didn’t catch when I was younger.

I just watched Harvey (great movie, by the way) (yay, Jimmy Stewart) (mmm, parentheses) today, and was shocked at the amount of either sexual implication or even DISCUSSION going on in a movie from that time period. I just hadn’t remembered that about it. By the way, can a giant invisible rabbit be considered a phallic symbol? Hm.

So I guess I shouldn’t be shocked, because the only difference in sexual content between old movies and new ones is simply how overt it is. In fact, I would argue that in some ways old films are far worse (or better, depending on perspective) because they include MORE sexual subtext due to the fact that they can’t show anything even remotely sexual on screen. As for Jeff’s illicit homosexual love for “Ed”, I haven’t decided if there’s enough evidence to support that yet. It’s an interesting thought.