The Pajama Party (edit at end)

OK, so I stole that from Rachael. But it's true; the end of the film kind of does turn into a big pajama party. The whole film is pretty much a pajama party. Like the story, none of the things that happen in the movie seem dire -- except for maybe Hines throwing knives. And I noticed that the film did try to create more of a conflict by having Sid fire Babe, but even that seemed to be fixed pretty quickly and easily at the end. And like Professor Newman said in class, the same thing happens at the end of the story.

Watching the film, I wondered how its creators were first inspired to turn the story into a musical. I mean, it didn't really scream song and dance numbers when I read it. But Sid does have a really heavy view of love in the story; he talks about how Babe makes everything totally fantastic, and the language he used to describe being in love was really different from his otherwise sarcastic voice. Like I said yesterday, though, I didn't really find the story that funny. But I think that the tone of the novel gave itself to the kind of raunchy humor that was displayed in the film, and Sid's view of love - yeah, when he wasn't being a pseudo-rapist - was represented in the love songs.

I also noticed that Doris Day's hair wasn't red, which was disappointing, because Sid called Babe "the redhead" in the story. But like I told Agatha, I think it's petty when people think a character's ruined just because the hair color's changed. At the same time, though, hair color has always meant a lot to me when reading about a character; it says something about their personality, about who they are. But I liked Doris Day as Babe. And to be honest, I didn't think that Sid seemed that operatic -- beyond his singing voice and that he seemed to dance with a very stiff spine.

As far as the dancing goes, I don't think it added anything political to the film. I'm not quite sure how it would. Parts of it were coyly sexual and there was that one song where Sid acted like a cowboy, which might have been a reference to his dominant attitude toward women. But the only big musicals I've seen are the most recent Hairspray and West Side Story, so I can't really say if being coyly sexual is part of most musicals or not. Rachael said that the Broadway version of The Pajama Game has much more explicit lyrics, though, that the film had to censor them.

* I just wanted to add that I may have heard that thing about musicals being coyly sexual in another class (es); I actually watched West Side Story for Juvenile Delinquency (go figure).