Harold and Maude

Harold and Maudeⁱ is the story of an emo kid that loses his virginity to an (almost) 80 year old... new-age-y allegorical personification of life itself.

Maude is the best possible facade that could be stretched on the spindly underwires of Suzanne Verdal-McCallister, that specific sort of madam Blavatski that the cowboylands produced. Yes, an old woman, and yes tediously female in both worldview and approachⁱⁱ, structurally, necessarily. However, not very much so, and definitely not militantly so. Resistance of the medium, yes, but nothing like the contrived, deliberately designed idiocy of the medium that the latter female state ended up producing. Under the demanding if unyielding grip of a better rider Maude would still sing, and perhaps her song'd even be worth hearing ; that the only rider to be had's inept Harold is not, properly speaking, Maude's fault.

But even without an adequate rider in her saddle, Maude still manages to treat "authority" properly -- I know of no better display of how to deal with young women, either alone or arrayed than what she applies upon that mustachioed six year old girly in boots (thinking herself a "policeman"). None that I didn't write myself, at any rate.

Capitalism is supposedly that system of thought oriented towards the superlative production of objects ; nowhere is this more evident than in the sets and decors of Harold and Maude. There's indeed an abundance of objects, of all kinds and descriptions, highly designed and intricately specified -- walls covered in correct ivy, elegant hearses, blocks of ice and aromatrons, you name it. The quality of the people, however...

But what can you do, you gotta pick something, right ?

PS. The priest is epic. Flabby... buttocks!

1. 1971, by Hal Ashby, with Bud Cort, Ruth Gordon [↩]
2. But then again note that Socrates was just as much a tedious old woman, no need to look any further than say

   εἰ ἄρα τὰ ὀφειλόμενα ἑκάστῳ ἀποδιδόναι φησίν τις δίκαιον εἶναι, τοῦτο δὲ δὴ νοεῖ αὐτῷ τοῖς μὲν ἐχθροῖς βλάβην ὀφείλεσθαι παρὰ τοῦ δικαίου ἀνδρός, τοῖς δὲ φίλοις ὠφελίαν, οὐκ ἦν σοφὸς ὁ ταῦτα εἰπών. οὐ γὰρ ἀληθῆ ἔλεγεν: οὐδαμοῦ γὰρ δίκαιον οὐδένα ἡμῖν ἐφάνη ὂν βλάπτειν.

   herpderpage. [↩]