jammies

I felt the focus on labor throughout the film was very minimal. The film seemed to be focused much more heavily around the romance, with the labor concepts functioning more as a background device used to provide context for the relationship between Sid and Babe. All of the events in the film seem to serve or move the relationship, and the relationship is always at the foreground of the story.

As mentioned in previous blog posts, the trials of the union and the laborers are belittled in the film, taking a back seat to the relationship between Sid and Babe. Their relationship seems to suck all the seriousness out of any other events. Sid fires Babe, but there are no significant consequences. Hines' chased Sid, the superintendent, with throwing-knives and nothing more became of that. The relationship on the other hand was very serious and, at least to me, seemed to be the only high stake in the film. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It is a musical with a lot of sentiment injected into it, but that's one tried and true way to sweep people off their feet (some people). The elements of romance, as we stated in class, are a little outdated now, so this film likely does not have the same effect on me as it did on the audiences of the '50s. The concept of manhood seemed to be pretty normal, not too exaggerated in this film, keeping in mind the times. The film seemed to be smoothed out and tamed to make it more accessible.

The dancing. I liked the dancing. I'm no critic when it comes to dancing, though, because I don't see a lot of dancing, I don't know anything about the technical or theoretical aspects of dancing, and I'm a poor dancer. Sooo I don't have much context to judge this musical against, but just as an initial thoughtless reaction, I enjoyed the dancing, particularly one of the union dances: the one that sounded like a swing/big bandish song where the dancers all went ssshshhhhhh as they put their hats on. I saw a lot of moves that probably influenced Michael Jackson's dancing. Well, maybe. There were a lot of jacksonish spins and this glidey sideways walking thing that looked like the prehistoric relative of the moonwalk.