emotional cat scenes and the pastiche

ok, i admit i had really low expectations coming into this movie…especially because kathy prefaced it by saying it was 134 minutes. but i have to say that, while parts of it were cheesy (katrin's attic narrations really could have been axed), it was a better narrative than i expected. although i was disappointed to learn that kathryn forbes' own life was nothing like that which she created in mama's bank account, i thought it made my point in class still ring true: that it doesn't matter if the stories are true, because they are real.

lipsitz spends a lot of time thinking about this "misappropriation," as he calls it–that we recreate the past in order to "see beyond our own experience" (80) in order to make sense of history, see it as a larger dialogue with meaning. it reminded me of an essay of jameson's that we've just read for LCS I, in which he talks about the pastiche, or the nostalgic recreation or amalgamation of histories which is colored by and colors how we judge the past. he even mentions star wars as an example of this, in its grasp of the epic, but the film i remember mama (i distinguish from the tv show) is also an amalgamation of values that are real in essence, if not set in one particular chronology.

then i guess lipsitz becomes afraid that he's too wishy-washy, as he goes on in the next paragraph to add that "commercial mass culture seeks credibility with its audience…by arbitrating the ideological tensions created by disparities between cultural promises and lived experiences" (80). but i like to think that the film (i haven't gotten to the play yet) was more motivated by the wish to pay tribute to these values, whereas in the tv show you can't help feeling the only value they're paying tribute to is that maxwell house is good to the last drop. but i got the sense from the film that the creators had read the book and said "yes! yes, i had such a family," or "i knew such a family" or at least, "i knew such a person." someone felt that what we learn from mama was worth recreating.

or maybe i'm just tired and that scene with uncle chris was surprisingly emotional. also i cried when the cat was dying.